Page 122 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

Escape to New York
Liverpool, when I saw clams roasting on stoves on the street corners,
and peddlers selling them to people who stood around eating them.
At the port we were fed a poor meal, but everybody was so hungry
that they were fighting for a seat. From Hull we were taken by train
to Liverpool and lodged by the Cunard Line for over a week until a
ship sailed for the United States.
In Liverpool we felt more comfortable, as we could meet Jewish
people and converse with them in our own language. A large group
of emigrants congregated there from all over Europe to ship out
from England. I most enjoyed the museum in that city, a very nice
building with many things to see. To me it was a new world,
something that I had never dreamed of in our little hamlet of
Pelcovizna. It even amazed me that fried potatoes were sold
everywhere. At home, policemen armed with a pistol and a sword in
a scabbard stood on the corner of every block; one look at you made
your heart beat fast. But there in England, the big burly policeman
walks slowly by himself on the sidewalk: no pistol, no sword, and he
says “good morning” to you.
It is very difficult to describe the feelings of an emigrant, when he
finds himself, for the first day of his life, in a free and liberal land like
England. To compare his feelings to those of a prisoner who is
liberated from a long imprisonment would not be justified, as a
prisoner in a free country enjoyed liberty before breaking the laws of
the land and being separated from freedom. For him it is not a new
feeling, only a continuation of his former life. But an emigrant who
never enjoyed liberty in his life, who knew only contempt and
oppression, who feared the Russian whip and the Polish knife—his
first feelings are bewilderment. He doubts the reality of what he sees
and hears on the street: people pass him by and do not stop to look
at what he wears, or care that he speaks in a foreign tongue. The
police officer gives him information without asking him for a
passport, or demanding to know his trade or his religion
And that furtive look one has, from a lifetime of avoiding a
policeman, a drunken soldier, or just some Polish youth who just for
the fun of it will hit a Jew or knock him down, spit on him and call
him a leper—that does not leave one so soon, not before he has
settled down and begun to read in the new language, learned the

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