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By the time I was over 20, in a short while I was supposed to declare my willingness to go to the Army; that I did not want to do. Russia was losing the war, Poland was not doing well, and Jews again became the scapegoats. The only thing left for me was to run fast, as far as possible, to America. I had a brother who went first to London with his family. After a while he went to America and settled in Philadelphia. He was a good baker, so he had no trouble getting a job. My brother David, that ran away to America [to avoid being shot as a Russian Army deserter], landed in St. Louis where his wife had an uncle. Mother started very conscientiously to proceed with plans to of sending me to America. The first thing was making a perina -- a mattress, a cover -- and two pillows out of down. My mother and two women worked on it the whole winter. She also had bought clothes for me from top to bottom, as if I would be getting married. She did this for all the children regardless of daughter or son. I had some black fur skins; the tailor made a coat, also a car coat out of them. All this was packed in trunks and immediately after Pesach I was taken to the border. I was not alone. I was accompanied by a sister-in-law -- my brother David was already in St. Louis for a year, and a cousin with a little girl two years old, whose husband was also in St. Louis for two years. As we reached the Russian border, they started to search everyone. When it came to me, they found a post card that was addressed to me in Lomzatze. Upon asking how come my passport was from Yedibone and the card addressed to me in Lomzatze, I told them that I was a butcher and that I worked for a while there [in Lomzatze]. Luckily they let me go, but then we had to cross the German border. They were nice to us, but while we were crossing the river, the wagon with out things turned over and all our things got wet. When we got to the town where we stayed overnight, we unpacked. There was a fence -- we hung everything out and by morning it was all dry and we packed it up the way it was before. That same morning we had to leave for Hamburg. As we arrived, they took us to a camp where we stayed for two weeks. It was just like a prison, with a real high fence. We had to stand in line to get the food, like soldiers, and we slept on the floor. No one was allowed out of the camp. There was a boy from Bialastok. We got acquainted and the two of us climbed over the fence -- it wasn't easy-- and went to town. After [buying a great big wurst -- salami -- and a pair of pants] we went back, climbed over the fence again. Finally, the time came to get on the boat, named "Fateritzia." We traveled on it for 14 days until we arrived at Ellis Island in the year of 1904, where we saw the Statue of Liberty.
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