Page 119 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

Escape to New York
was buy myself a loaf of bread, the food most people in Eastern
Europe live on. Only once in the four days that we passed through
Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Germany did I have a glass of coffee,
when we stopped in the city of Rheine in the Ruhr district: we went
into a bakery which also served coffee, and the bakery women gave
us free coffee.
In Russia, a soldier was the most rude and ignorant type of
person, detested by civilians. His coarse clothing, profane talk,
bullying manners, and smell of cheap tobacco was obnoxious to men
and even more so to women. When in Ulmitz waiting overnight for
the cheap train I met some Austrian soldiers. Their uniforms fit
better and were of higher quality material than the Russians’, and
their caps were of the type the Union Army used to wear. They
talked to us and inquired about our travels; it was like meeting men
from another planet—especially one of them who was a Jew and
conversed intelligently like a real gentleman.
Oldenzahl was the first city in Holland we reached; there we were
free of the danger of being detained by the German police. The
inspection at the border took hours. I did not have a passport, but in
all these ports of entry there were representatives of Jewish
emigration societies, and they straightened out the difficulties. From
there we went directly to the big city of Rotterdam. I had to lay over
in Rotterdam a whole week until I could book passage on a cheap
freighter to Hull, England. It was the first time I could really see a
foreign country other than a railroad station. Beside the interesting
waterways that cut through every street, a big lake in the center of
Rotterdam was filled with steamers, barges, and fishermen selling fish
from their boats. At every intersection was an elevated wooden
bridge over the canal beneath, on which barges floated toward the
center of the city or were rowed with long poles by a man or
sometimes a man and wife. It was also interesting to those of us who
had never seen any other life but in our own village to see
pushcarts—from which women were peddling fish and other food—
being pulled by big Saint Bernard dogs and Great Danes.
Surrounding the lake were fine buildings with offices and big
stores with all kinds of merchandise. That plaza fascinated us: we
went there three times a day to look at it, and at night it was all lit up.

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