Art of a Jewish Woman (13 page)

She was jealous when he left with Zinna for New Zealand, but he would die tragically a few years later. He had asthma and used to inject himself with epinephrine when he had a bad attack. The last time, the injection gave him a heart attack and killed him. He and Zinna never had children. Felice never knew why.

At age 19, on May 5, 1929, Felice graduated from the Etta Djemkovsky School. She had done better than just getting through, which had been her goal at first. Her senior year the headmaster offered her a faculty position as a Latin teacher if she went to Wilno University and returned to the school after graduating. It was a fine offer for a young woman. Had she accepted, she would have begun teaching in 1935. The school and its faculty and students were liquidated by the Nazis a few years later. In fact between 1941 and 1944 the Gestapo murdered over 200,000 Lithuanian Jews—more than 94 percent of their pre-war population. By fortune or foresight, Felice’s father kept his daughter in flight. When the headmaster made his job offer to her, she had already been accepted by the university in France, and Moses persisted in his plan to send Felice there.

She wanted to stay in Wilno. She argued with her father. She was bewildered by his notion that she should be a dentist. She wanted to teach in the school that she had come to love and where she was so accepted, but her father was a stubborn man, and she had to admit she was more than a little tempted by France.

PART 4. AMERICA

Suddenly a mournful wail rose and fell, rose and fell. The cry was the ship’s horn breaking into Felice’s reverie. She had been daydreaming of her past, alternate futures, and missed destinies—of Leon Golding, of being a Latin teacher in Wilno, of people starving in Szczuczyn, of Samy—when she heard the wail. She thought at first that it was the wolves howling. Then she realized that she was on a deck chair on the
M.S
.
Pilsudsky
. The blanket over her was not the fur blanket that had protected her from the cold on the sleigh coming home for winter break. People were running to the railing yelling, “There she is, there she is!”

At first she had no idea who
she
was and why everybody was running. A moment later she saw the Statue of Liberty looming high over the boat as the
Pilsudsky
glided by it. In a few minutes Ellis Island and the four towers of the massive, glittering reception center appeared out of the mist like a picture postcard Felice had seen of San Marcos Cathedral and the piazza in Venice. Tugs nudged the boat into the pier at Ellis Island, and the immigrants began disembarking. Felice walked down the gangplank, a refugee on three counts. She was a self-exile from Palestine by political choice, a seeker of freedom from her suitors there, and an escapee without choice from the rising anti-Semitism and Nazism in Europe.

There was a checkroom for baggage immediately on entry, but Felice, who had nothing to check, mounted the long, broad stairway her one suitcase in hand. The climb served as the “six-second medical check,” with nurses watching the immigrants climb to see if they were fit enough to enter America. A limp, a cough, a stumble on the stairs, and the nurses would shunt the person aside. If that happened, the next stop was a consulting room where a doctor pressed his stethoscope to the immigrant’s lungs and heart, which could lead to a detour to the island’s hospital, a lung X-ray, and blood and urine samples. Those in turn could lead to a quick rebooking on a return boat to Europe.

But Felice’s gait was sure. In the arrival hall—the Great Hall, with rows of benches the length of a football field, three levels of windows, the top row in arches, and two huge American flags suspended in the center—loudspeakers boomed out the names of passengers all day long. The list of names slowly grew shorter as people left the benches for cubicles where officers began processing their papers for entry to America.

One name kept being repeated again and again as the hall slowly emptied: “Doctor Steinberg, Doctor Feegah Steenberg … Steinberg, Feegah.” Families, individuals—everyone eventually rose from the wooden benches in the huge hall. At the end of the day as the sun was setting through the large windows of Ellis Island’s Grand Hall, a petite woman, tanned dark from days in the sun on the ship’s deck, sat alone on a bench.

Finally a uniformed, dignified immigration officer approached, clipboard in hand. “Are you Dr. Feegah Steenburg?” The small young woman looked at him. She understood nothing. She responded to him in French. He did not speak French. She tried Polish. She knew Hebrew and Arabic were probably of no use. So she tried German—at last a language of mutual comprehension. Felice could use it fluently from hearing her father’s business conversations with his German clients and from reading German literature in Wilno. The officer knew a little.

He eyed her. She was well dressed, proper looking in her suit, hat and high heels. She handed him her documents: British Mandate passport number 69260, issued October 26, 1935, in Jerusalem. She was a citizen by marriage of the British Mandate of Palestine. American immigration visa issued June 2, 1937 by the American consul in Jerusalem. Her maiden name on the passport was written Ozerowitz, born in Poland, November 27, 1910; height 154 centimeters, eyes dark brown, hair dark brown. Although she did not look the part, the passport said “Profession: Dentist.” That would make her a desirable immigrant, a professional. She did not resemble many of the others who had arrived in steerage class because she was traveling alone, fashionably dressed and possessed of a certain dignity. Her documents were all in order, complete with the official “fitness” health examination in Jerusalem that she needed to obtain her visa, which certified that she was “free of any mental or physical defects … [including] leprosy, syphilis, plague or tuberculosis.”

But there was something wrong. She did not know the name written in her passport when it was called over the loudspeaker: Feiga Steinberg. She said she was Felizia Özerowiczowna; or Felice Ozerovicz as they called her at the university in France. Then, slapping her forehead hard in angry annoyance with herself, she finally remembered who she was on paper. “Yes, Feegah Steinberg,” pronouncing it
Faywa Shtaynber.
“That’s who I am.” She tried to explain to the immigration officer why she hadn’t responded to the name. This was too hard for him to follow, and the Polish translator had already gone off duty after a full day of processing the immigrants from the
M.S. Pilsudsky
. The man left, and she would have to wait for another day. About an hour later a female immigration officer stood before her and gestured for the young woman to follow. She led her through long halls and finally into a dormitory lined with beds.

For three days they kept her there. She had forgotten her married name. She thought that once she had obtained the divorce after six months she didn’t have to remember it. She tried to explain the story, but it was complicated, especially without English. Her uncle from New Haven was supposed to meet her, and she thought he must be frantic. When they interviewed her the next day with a translator, she couldn’t remember the name of the town where he lived in America, let alone his address there. They began to suspect she was a spy who had forgotten her cover story and was making things up.

She was very skinny, ninety pounds, like a starved model because she had been too seasick to eat. She had the cheapest ticket, with a berth looking at the porthole with the waves against it straight in her eyes. It was a very long trip in those days from Gdynia, so she’d spent all the time on the deck where the air was fresh. She was dark, just black. They looked at her, the skinny, small one with French, Polish, German, some Russian, Arabic and Hebrew but no English, and accused her of being in America under false pretenses. Because of her education, the authorities found her different from the others coming from Poland, Romania, and Russia. She had been to so many places that she was in a sense worldly.

Outside the processing station, Felice’s uncle Herman Grezemkovsky and his son Bernie were frustrated and impatient too. They had come daily for three days expecting to warmly welcome their relative, but each day they had been rebuffed. Finally the immigration officials put together the mystery of the lady in the dormitory who didn’t know her own name with Mr. Grezemkovsky’s entreaties that his niece must be there because the name Steinberg cabled to him from Szczuczyn appeared on the
M.S. Pilsudsky
passenger list posted in the greeting area. They agreed that she was Mr. Grezemkovsky’s relative. Her immigration papers were in order as long as one didn’t get too suspicious about her amnesia about the name on them, and Feigah Steinberg was processed through to the last hurdle, the money exchange. Just before disembarking, Abraham Nissenovicz had given her the $20 minimum she needed for entry because she had used up her $10, which wouldn’t have been enough anyway, on the boat. Beyond the money exchange station, relatives waited on a broad canopied terrace called “the kissing post” because of the millions of hugs that reuniting families had exchanged there since Ellis Island’s opening in 1892.

Feegah Steinberg became Felizia Ozerovicz again—for a short time. She had a picture of her uncle, her mother’s oldest brother, and he had a picture of her that her mother had sent him, so they at once recognized each other and began talking rapidly in Polish.

“Were you worried when they didn’t let you through?” Uncle Herman asked. “Were you scared that they would send you back to godforsaken Poland or to Palestine? How bad is it for my parents and your family in Poland?”

Felice answered, “It is very bad. I have to get a job and send money home. I was not worried on the island because sooner or later everybody became my friend. I knew you would come to rescue me.”

“They wouldn’t let us rescue you. They kept us waiting for three days, but we knew you were on the boat from the passenger list.”

“I didn’t know what was happening.”

Felice recounted, “It was like so many things in my life. I didn’t feel special, but I felt I had a right to be there. Maybe it was courage, or just going forward and making myself up as I went. Good fortune accounted for most of the good things that happened in my life. My only worry was whether I would have enough to eat.”

Once off the ferry boat, she couldn’t converse with American-born cousin Bernie and was confronted by New York’s strange, gigantic cityscape, with scarcely intelligible English-language billboards and signs everywhere. Quickly she recognized the Latin, French, and German roots and cognates of English words. Felice’s first request was to stop and buy an English-French dictionary to put in her purse. They took a taxi to Grand Central Station, and from there the train to New Haven, Connecticut, two hours to the northeast. She was already looking up every English word she could.

Uncle Herman had started a general supply store in downtown New Haven that sold the same kinds of goods his parents sold in their shop in Kolno, but he had been in America long enough to expand into wholesale groceries and supplied small stores throughout the city.

The Grezemkovskys had a comfortable, modest home with a spare room for Felice. They were kind, loving people, good to her. They even offered her a job. Aunt Mina, who had been born in New Haven, was like a mother to her, more tender even than her mother, and cousin Sidney tried to be nice and introduce her to his friends. But he was a materialist, Felice said, and engaged to be married to the daughter of an industrialist. He liked to talk about expensive cars and other accoutrements of people with money to spare. It was a milieu Felice was not used to. She felt she was special, but not as if she was entitled to costly things, more as if she were destined for something better, as befitted the higher education her father had given her. She had been ingrained with a feeling of some kind of special destiny. She appreciated what her aunt and uncle and cousin offered, but was determined to use her education and languages rather than adjusting to work in their store.

She made the acquaintance of Steffi Harris, a schoolteacher, whose husband did business with Felice’s uncle, and they became good friends. Steffi was sophisticated and a wonderful coach; she suggested that Felice place an advertisement in the
New Haven Register
to obtain work.

“I was ready to parade as a French governess. I couldn’t practice dentistry in the United States because I didn’t have a license, and languages were my life. I also loved the miracle of life, children. I told Steffi I would teach languages and be with children.”

Her friend composed the advertisement in proper English:
Position wanted by young woman able to teach French and Latin and care for children. Contact Miss Felice Ozerovicz.

Felizia had become Felice again. The first response she received to her newspaper ad was a note that arrived in the mail at the Grezemkovsky’s—on a vellum card embossed at the top with a seal in the form of a shield and Gothic hall. It said to appear at 1 pm on the following Monday to interview for the position of governess and Latin and French tutor for Cassandra Woodman Angell. It was signed James Rowland Angell, President, Yale University. Aunt Mina and Steffi helped her plan her outfit. Her French dress from Nancy, though worn, was tailored better than anything they could find in a New Haven department store. They refreshed it with new high-heeled shoes, new hosiery, and a hat. Minna lent her a modest string of pearls. They bought fresh lipstick and eye shadow. They agreed that if looks alone could do the job, it would be Felice’s.

The Angells at Yale

A professor from the French department interviewed her first, chatting with her about her voyage at the president’s office. Then James Roland Angell entered, and the professor pronounced, “Mademoiselle’s French is impeccable. There is the slightest trace of an Eastern European accent, but everyone will think she is from Alsace if they think anything at all.”

Then Angell interviewed her. He didn’t know French, but he and Felice found a common language in German, for he had done graduate studies years before in Philosophy and Psychology in Leipzig. Using the Socratic teaching method of posing a problem rather than just seeking facts, for which he was noted, Angell asked Felice, “How will you make Cassie mind you if she disobeys? She is twelve years old, and—how should I say it?—acts like a princess at times. Your English isn’t good enough yet for you to correct her with words she can understand.”