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Alex Levy was born in Berlin, Germany in 1936. He escaped in his mother's arms on Kristallnacht and spent the War years in hiding under an assumed identity in a Catholic orphanage. This blog chronicles that experience and what happened next.-
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Monthly Archives: January 2011
The Lower East Side
When Ruby and Hannah told us why our sponsors hadn’t shown up at Grand Central Station, it was a real shocker. While we were on the “Scythia”, crossing the Atlantic, our sponsors had died in a car accident. Simple as … Continue reading
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We Arrive at HIAS
My mother’s luck continued as it always had. Now we were waiting inside Grand Central station, waiting for our sponsors to arrive, whoever they were. We waited, and then we waited some more, but no one showed up for us. … Continue reading
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Arrival in New York City
The “Scythia” docked in Quebec, not Halifax. This meant that the immigration official spoke French, not English, but not French as I knew it. It was a strange dialect I had trouble understanding. The process was brief; I answered a … Continue reading
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On the Way to Canada
The voyage to America turned out to be more complicated than expected. It involved a train trip to Paris, then another train to Le Havre where we boarded the Cunard-White Star liner, “Scythia.” The “Scythia”, while quite luxurious, was a … Continue reading
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We Prepare for America
At my Aunt Paula’s, I had met an old woman who had once been in America, and had returned to Europe because she didn’t like it. What was the matter with that woman? Was she crazy? Everyone loved America! However, … Continue reading
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Summer Vacations
My own life continued pleasantly enough. The only irritant was my Hebrew class, which I really didn’t like. It involved reading, translating and memorizing, religious texts, mostly “Genesis” (“Berechis,” in Hebrew, after the first word of the “Torah” (the “Pentateuch” … Continue reading
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Part of My Mother’s Troubled Life
My mother’s first contact with death came in 1919, when she was nine years old. My mother and her mother had survived World War I, and the famine caused by the British blockade, but many had not. Famine kills. With … Continue reading
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On the Misinterpretation of Content
After the war, my father had established a pleasant home with a woman named Olga, in an apartment at the other end of Brussels. I guess that was the reason that both he and my mother were now working on … Continue reading
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The Call of the Wild West
Somehow, my father re-emerged. What it meant to me was that each Sunday I would either board a tram or walk to his new apartment and have lunch there. My mother had tried to get him to contribute to … Continue reading
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Swimming
There was also a different set of questions when I began reading Jules Verne. I knew there were submarines, but could Captain Nemo’s Nautilus really work? What about flight to the Moon? At fifty kilometers an hour, how many years … Continue reading
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