Boston: New challenges

Barbara Bandler Steinmetz

Budapest is liberated from Nazi occupation by Soviet forces in February 1945, just weeks before the Bandlers receive word in March 1945 that their U.S. visas have been granted. One day towards the end of May 1945, Margit and Alexander appear at their daughters’ school to pick them up. They hurry the girls onto a bus bound for the Dominican capital without explanation. From there, they board a plane to Miami where they arrive on June 1, 1945. Barbara never has a chance to say goodbye to her friends, or her horse, but she has grown accustomed to a nomadic existence and is excited by yet another move. After a short stay in Miami’s South Beach area, the Bandlers board a bus to Boston and a new life.

 

Transcript

Barbara: And in 1945, we got a visa that-- and it said that we-- we were-- we were accepted. We were eligible to come to this country [the United States].

Interviewer: How was your journey?

Barbara: I remember my-- my sister and I didn't know any of this. I mean, all we knew-- we knew that summer vacation was coming. And this was in the spring of 1945. Summer vacation was coming, and that we were going to go back to Jarabacoa and have a life with our horses and-- and the people that we like there, and the guests from Sosua. And you know, one thing I do want to say, that one thing my parents had in Jarabacoa is a radio. That was the only contact. I mean, they were-- I mean, it's really far from civilization, I mean really far. But they-- they did have radio contact, so they knew what was going in the outside world, and I'm sure were very alert to what was going on.

But anyway, my sister and I, I don't think we knew that we were leaving. My parents-- from my recollection, my parents came by horseback to the school and fetched us, and that we then took a bus from the school to Ciudad Trujillo, which is the capital city in the southern part of the island. And from there we caught an airplane. And how-- what kind of arrangements, who made the arrangements, who paid for it, I have no idea. I'm going to guess that Cantor Glickstein [from the Mayer's synagogue] got some money together and-- and paid for our fare.

And with that, on June 1, 1945, we left the Dominican Republic-- frankly, the only stability that I remembered in my short life-- and we left. And we came to America. We landed in Miami, didn't know a word of English. We were met there by my Uncle Eugene, who was living in Miami. And we stayed in Miami-- in Miami for about two weeks. I remember we stayed in a hotel called the Neron Hotel across the street from the ocean, around 1st, 2nd Avenue in Miami. And it was a wonderful two weeks because we played, and we swam in the ocean. And-- and I don't know-- as a kid, I don't know what was up ahead for us. But because our sponsors were from Boston, it stood to reason that we would go to Boston. 

"We landed in Miami, didn't know a word of English."

USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, Interview 38619

Transcript

Barbara: And it was my parents' first experience with social workers because from there, the Jewish Welfare Federation took ahold of us. I mean, that's-- that's who managed our lives the first few years that we were here in this country, is the Jewish Welfare Federation. The-- one of the-- well, one of the things that the Jewish Welfare wanted to do was-- I mean had to do-- was to find employment for my parents. And when my parents were employed-- because we came here in June 1, so by the middle of June we were in Boston. There was no school. We had no place to live. My parents got jobs at a-- at a resort called Bretton Woods. And-- but the proviso was that they did not bring their children. And so the social workers who greeted my parents in Boston told my parents that we had to be-- we had to go to foster homes. And my mother hit the ceiling. She said she did not bring her family and schlep them from all parts of Europe to the Dominican Republic to the haven of the United States to send her children to a foster home. And she would hear none of it. And so-- I mean, that was my mother's first experience with social workers. From that day on, boy, you mentioned social workers to my mother, [LAUGHS] she was not very happy with them. She just thought it was the wrong decision for them to make.

But anyway, we did have to-- - they did have to find a place for us. And what they did, they found a summer camp for us up in New Hampshire called Camp Eden. And when my parents went to work in Bretton Woods, my sister and I were put on a train to Camp Eden, which was in the woods of New Hampshire. And it was the second most traumatic experience of our lives because my sister and I landed there. We did not know one word of English. No one knew Spanish. We didn't know a soul, and we were separated from our parents. And my sister and I stood there on the platform, and we just-- we sobbed and we sobbed for-- well, it was days before anybody could just pull us apart from one another. We just-- it was singularly such a frightening experience to be there with all these strangers.

Interviewer: How old were you at that time?

Barbara: I was 8 and 1/2. Yeah. 8 and 1/2, almost nine. 

"... she did not bring her family and schlep them from all parts of Europe to the Dominican Republic to the haven of the United States to send her children to a foster home."

USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, Interview 38619

Thanks to their friendship with the Mayers and connections to Jewish charitable agencies, Alexander and Margit find seasonal jobs at a grand hotel, the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. The historic hotel has hosted U.S. presidents and celebrities for decades. Only the summer before, in July 1944, the Hotel was the scene of a crucial conference that established the World Bank and set the stage for the international postwar economy. Margit and Alexander are fortunate to find work at such a prestigious resort and can’t pass up the opportunity. But there is one problem: the children of employees may not remain on site. For the first time since the outbreak of war, the Bandler family is to be separated for a long period of time.

Barbara and Ann have barely been in America two weeks when they are whisked off to a Jewish summer camp in New Hampshire for two months. “We didn’t know a soul or a word of English,” Barbara remembers. “We were put on a train”—a symbol of terror for Jews who knew of recent Nazi atrocities—“and my sister and I were just holding each other and crying. I remember standing there sobbing. We didn’t even know how to ask to go to the bathroom.” But she and her sister quickly acclimate to their new language and surroundings. Barbara had learned how to swim at the age of three in Lussinpicolo and becomes the youngest girl at Camp Eden to swim across the lake. And by the end of the summer, she says, “the other kids had taught us English through comic books.” When Barbara and her sister are reunited with their parents in Boston, they are able to attend public school thanks to their newly acquired English skills.

Cover of a songbook from Camp Eden, the Jewish summer camp where Barbara and Ann spent their first summer in the U.S. while their parents worked in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire.

Courtesy of Barbara Bandler Steinmetz

Barbara’s Beginner in Swimming certificate issued by the Red Cross in July 1945.

Courtesy of Barbara Bandler Steinmetz

In Boston, Barbara and her family live together in a one-room apartment on Saint Botolph Street in the Back Bay neighborhood. They have no kitchen, only a hotplate, and no privacy—they share their hallway bathroom with the building’s other tenants. Though it would later become a desirable address, in 1945 Back Bay is a dreary Irish-American working class neighborhood that serves as the Boston headquarters of the Christian Front, a nationwide, antisemitic, Catholic organization. Barbara, only nine, is blissfully unaware of any lingering Nazi sympathies in the neighborhood. “I’m not even sure anyone knew we were Jewish,” Barbara recalls, “And Ann and I had learned not to discuss our religion. Judaism wasn’t part of our daily family life.” Alexander and Margit don’t find the wider Jewish community inviting. They don’t speak Yiddish, like many of their generation, and they work long hours, weekends, and holidays—all of which interfere with Jewish observance.

The Jewish community in the postwar era is complicated by mixed emotions: Barbara’s parents feel “both guilty and relieved.” Guilty, because like many Jewish Americans, they worry that they had not done enough to save family or their coreligionists in Europe. And they also feel relief to have been in the U.S. during the war. Many want the Jewish survivors who have found their way to the U.S. to be grateful and to keep a low profile. Barbara says: “They didn’t want to hear about the details” of the Holocaust. Barbara remembers her mother being told: “Put it behind you.” As a consequence, her parents don’t even speak about the recent past with Barbara or her sister.

For Barbara that first miserable New England winter will remain etched in her memory: “My God we were so cold!” The clothes the Bandlers brought with them from the Dominican Republic are insufficient for the frigid temperatures of Boston. Jewish charities step in to provide proper winter clothing for the family. Margit and Alexander meanwhile bounce from job to job trying to eke out a living, but their difficulties learning English keep them from gaining steady employment. Margit is especially resentful when she is sometimes called a greenhorn—a derogatory term for a new immigrant—by well-meaning Jewish social workers. One social worker offers to put Barbara and Ann into foster care. Margit is horrified. “I didn’t schlep [drag] my family across the world so that they would take my children away!”

Transcript

Barbara: ...in September, when we went to live in Boston, my sister and I started school. I started the fourth grade. My sister must have started the eighth grade. I'm gonna guess. I can't remember. But anyway, I started the fourth grade.

My parents went to work. My mother worked in a chocolate factory-- Schrafft's. And she had a very difficult time, because not only didn't she speak English-- maybe by that time she-- she knew a few words-- but her co-workers called her a greenhorn and had all kinds of negative things to say to her. Refugees were not looked at kindly. Now, I don't know whether it was because they were taking employment away or whether they were threatened-- they were a threat to people. But anyway, they were not very kind to her.

My father went to work as a chef. Now, my dad knew a lot about hotels, but he didn't know much about actually doing the cooking, because my mother, in the Dominican Republic, did all the cooking. But now this was the only kind of work that he was able to get. And so he was fired from one place after another. He would-- he would get hired. He would say that he was a chef from the continent. And they would hire him. And he and my mother would look through recipes at night. And while he was at work during the daytime, he would look at what other chefs were doing, and he would try and copy them. And then they'd fire him. So he had multiple jobs that first year.

And as I say, his use of the language was very bad. Her use of the language was bad. And-- and they-- they had a very difficult time. We lived in one room in a little furnished apartment in Back Bay, Boston. And everything-- all the clothing that we had-- everything came from the Jewish welfare. We-- nothing was our own. And after several months, my parents accumulated enough money that my father came home one night with a brand new radio. And you would think that it was the greatest thing in the whole world. We were so excited about this radio. But it-- life was difficult. Somehow or other we made it through that first year in Boston. It was a horrible, cold winter. [PAUSES FOR 3 SECONDS] If you recall now, we were in the Dominican Republic, where it was [LAUGHS] very hot. And all of a sudden, we were in Boston where it was miserably cold and windy and rainy. And it-- and we-- we all suffered terribly that first winter.

"... everything--all the clothing that we had--everything came from the Jewish welfare. [...] nothing was our own."

USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, Interview 38619

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