My American Childhood

We had family in New York City, so once we arrived in the U.S., we settled in the overwhelmingly immigrant Lower East Side. I vaguely remember my parents’ struggle to find jobs as they navigated living during the Great Depression. The Great Depression was an extremely difficult time for everyone. My dad was fortunate enough to find a job as a math teacher at Thomas Jefferson High School in Brooklyn. He would come home everyday discouraged by the conditions his students were living in.

My early childhood years were bleak. I attended elementary school at a school that had very few immigrants. I rarely made any friends as a result of the fact that no one understood what it was like to be forced out of your home. People made fun of my accent, of my clothes, and of my intelligence. I began to throw myself into my studies. It was not easy trying to do well in elementary school during wartime, but I forced my way through. At the same time that I was learning, I began to forget my German heritage. I fully embraced my new life, and my past stayed behind me. 

I attended Thomas Jefferson High School--where my father taught. It was August 1945 when classes began. At this point, almost everyone living in the Lower East Side was Jewish. I began to make more friends; we were able to relate to each other in how we had to leave Europe to save ourselves. At the same time that I began developing these great friendships, the war was ending and people were more verbal about the effects of the holocaust in Europe. My German roots began to show up again as I would return home to my parents attempting to hide their despair. Almost every day, we would find out another family member in Germany had been killed in concentration camps. My friends and I began discussing this at school. Although it was comforting to be able to talk to them about it, I began to resent not only the Nazi party, but also my own American government for not stopping this genocide. I could not let go of the fact that people were able to so easily turn a blind eye.

At the same time that we were sad about the loss of so many family members, most of my peers were ecstatic about the end of the war. It seemed as though everyone was optimistic. However, it was impossible to get through the beginning of the year without seeing photographs of the bombs. I was appalled by the destruction that I saw. I could not believe that my friends, my neighbors, and my country could feel so incredible when we caused such devastation to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the first few weeks of high school, teachers explained that the bomb was necessary to end the war. Regardless, no justification was able to convince me that this new technology was reasonable or necessary. I was only fifteen, but the pain my country caused to these innocent people influenced me to yearn to devote the rest of my life to some form of service of others.