Stories tagged "Refugees": 35
Stories
Crossing the Atlantic
"On August 7, 1951, we boarded a very small former troop ship, which used to bring troops from the United States to Europe, the S.S. General Sturgis. When we boarded the ship, at eleven years old I was a pretty big kid, and they decided that I…
Crossing the Austrian Border
"We went to the Hungarian-Austrian border. Again there were people there to guide us. We crossed over and we were getting ready to board a bus to go into Vienna, and we were arrested by the Austrian police... We were with a group of other…
Displaced Persons Camp
"We left Vienna and went to Bremerhaven, Germany, where the ships sailed from. They only sailed once a week and we wound up in what was called a Displaced Persons Camp. It was an old German Army camp. I don’t know if they didn’t want us to…
Preparing to Flee
"In 1947, Romania became a communist dictatorship. They came to my father one morning and said, the factories he owned have now been nationalized, that he will still run them but he will no longer own them. As I said, my mother was stubborn;…
Crossing into Hungary
"When my mother and I got to the Romanian-Hungarian border and these people saw that I was an eight-year-old boy they panicked. They were afraid that I would make a noise and give them away. In addition to what my father had paid them-- there…