Immigrant Dreams

Barbara Goldowsky

Description

Immigrant Dreams is a memoir -- the story of one immigrant's journey in 1950 from postwar Germany to the United States. Barbara was born in 1936, under Hitler's regime. Her earliest years are shaped by the Second World War and its atrocities. Five postwar years later, she immigrates to the United States as a teenager where her American dream begins to take shape. Believing that education is as necessary as bread, she searches for a way to attend a university. As her skill in her newly adopted language improves, the dream expands to include a writing career as a poet and a creative writer. Like the immigrant relatives who came before her, Barbara is willing to work hard physically and mentally so as to grasp every opportunity that may be offered. Realizing her dream will take ambition, determination, stamina -- and, as the author recounts in this stirring tale -- a good deal of luck.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Germán
• Segunda Guerra Mundial
• World War II
• German
• Adolf Hitler
• History
• Rêve américain
• Seconde Guerre mondiale

Informations

• Publié par: CALEC
• Date de parution: 15 août 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781636070056
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

IMMIGRANT DREAMS
Barbara Goldowsky
TBR Books New York



Copyrigh t © 2020 by Barbara Goldowsky
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.
TBR Books is a program of the Center for the Advancement of Languages , Education, and Communities. We publish researchers and practitioners who seek to engage diverse communities on topics related to education , languages , cultural history , and social initiatives.
CALEC - TBR Books 750 Lexington Avenue, 9 th floor New York , NY 10022 www.calec .org | contact@calec .org
Front Cover Illustration:
Cover Design:
ISBN 978-1-63607-004-9 (hardback)
ISBN 978-1-63607-003-2 (paperback)
ISBN 978-1-63607-005-6 (eBook)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020943260





Dedication
In memory of my mother, Wilfriede Moll, who gave me courage, and of my brother, Roland Pitschel, who lived a life committed to leaving the world a better place. We shared dreams.





Also by Barbara Goldowsky
Ferry to Nirvana - 1983 National Writers’ Press, Boulder, CO
Poems
Ferry to Nirvana and New Poems - 1991 Amereon, Mattituck, NY
Poems
Restless Spirits - Four Stories - 1992 - Amereon., Mattituck, NY
Fiction - Short Stories
The Tuesday Night Ballroom - 2007 - Southampton, NY
Poems. With Photographs by Richard Mizdal
Peace of the Hamptons - 2007 - iUniverse, Lincoln, NE
Fiction - Short Stories





Praises
Immigrant Dreams is vital, memorable, and wise. An accomplished stylist, Barbara Goldowsky explores, in lively and luminous prose, a personal journey that reaches across languages and cultures. Rendering the delightful, sobering, and always compelling particulars of one immigrant’s passage, Goldowsky accesses the deeper core not only of the immigrant experience but also of the human dream: In this account, the realization of immigrant dreams celebrates resolve, and talent, and inspiration; it also celebrates love.
— Becky Kennedy, Ph.D.
What first strikes the reader of Immigrant Dreams is its complexity of perspective -- age-appropriate, phase by phase, yet subtly focalized through the memory, understanding, emotions, and values of the author-narrator. History is pervasive, of course, but backgrounded to emphasize key personal experiences and their impact, both immediate and life-long. The result is exceptionally engaging and enlightening. Highly recommended.
— David Lee Rubin, Guggenheim Fellow Professor Emeritus of French University of Virginia
Barbara Goldowsky’s exquisite, poetic prose is both daring and satisfying. This vibrant, evocative immigrant tale offers poignant insights into love, loss, and remembrance, revealed with a sharp eye for detail. With its deep resonance of the past, Immigrant Dreams is a book of substance.
— Victoria Hartman , Southampton, New York






Acknowledgments
Sincere thanks are extended to my family, whose love, support, and encouragement bring joy to every day of my life. Endless thanks to Becky Kennedy, who has been my mentor, steadfast guide, painstaking editor, and friend throughout the years it took to produce this book. Grateful thanks to David Lee Rubin, who provided thoughtful, enlightening insight as the manuscript developed. I thank Philip Shabecoff, who made helpful com- ments on the early chapters and I am immensely grateful to my fellow residents, the management, and the staff of Lasell Village for maintaining an environment that nurtures lifelong learning and creativity. Sincere thanks to Jane Ross for her friendship and timely advice.






Table of Contents
Acknowledgments _____________________________________
Introduction __________________________________________
Wise Child ___________________________________________
My Mother and the Nazi Judge ___________________________
The Stork Brings My Brother ____________________________
Good Morning and Heil Hitler ___________________________
Turning Point ________________________________________
Liberation ___________________________________________
Peace _______________________________________________
Confronting the Past, Imagining the Future _________________
Hope _______________________________________________
Departure ____________________________________________
America! ____________________________________________
The Dream: Education _________________________________
The Dream: Independence ______________________________
Love Children ________________________________________
Flying ______________________________________________
My Mother’s Dream ___________________________________
Gaining Altitude ______________________________________
Hullabaloo ___________________________________________
Flight Plan ___________________________________________
Commencement ______________________________________
The Lies of Summer ___________________________________
Horizons ____________________________________________
Beat Poets and Zen Buddhists ____________________________
Adventures __________________________________________
A Degree and a Revolution ______________________________
Another World ________________________________________
High Hopes __________________________________________
Crash _______________________________________________
A Different Course ____________________________________
Into the Sixties _______________________________________
Dreams Come of Age __________________________________
New Life ____________________________________________



House and Home ______________________________________
Changes _____________________________________________
Endings and Beginnings ________________________________
Chamber Music _______________________________________
A Child from Dachau __________________________________
About the Author ______________________________________
About TBR Books _____________________________________
About CALEC _______________________________________




Introduction
I am an immigrant, born in Germany under a dictatorship. As I write this memoir, I hope not to die under another one. When I began writing this book, in 2018, my worst fear was that the United States would let itself slide into autocracy. Sadly, in 2020, this fear still haunts me. But I also hope. I place my hope in the country that made many of my immigrant dreams come true: The United States that allowed me to become a citizen of a free, religiously, and ethnically diverse country. I love and admire the United States that gave me the opportunity to acquire education as the first step toward making a living; a chance to meet people of different ancestry and cul- ture; and, most of all, the joy of knowing my children and grandchildren would never have to live under an evil regime like Adolf Hitler’s.
I place my hope in the strength of the United States Constitution and in the honest civil servants and public officials who have sworn to uphold and defend it. I place my hope in the continued courage of the members of the free press who brave personal danger to report the facts -- the real facts, not the “alternative” ones -- and to expose abuses, hate speech, and complaisance. On a personal level, I place my hopes in my children and grandchildren. To the best of my ability, I want to give them an understanding of what the American Dream means to me and how to carry on as informed citizens who care about ideals: freedom, inclusion, compassion, and government that serves the people instead of trying to dominate and subdue them.
The story of every life is both fairy tale and mystery. “Facts” provided by parents may or may not be verifiable. Even birth certificates can lie; mine did, ascribing “pure Aryan” parentage to a bastard child whose true father remained unnamed. My stories honor the memory of my loving, courageous, often unconventional mother and the memory of my beloved brother who lived a life committed to leaving the world better than he found it.
Some of the anecdotes in these narratives were told to me by my mother in great detail, others in outline. For some, I have invented dialogue consistent with her voice and favorite idioms. The names of a few persons have been altered to protect privacy .
Acknowledgment: Parts of chapters 23, 24, and 25 appeared, in slightly different form, in Chicago Review’s web feature of December 2019 as the memoir Beat Poets and Zen Buddhists on the Midway.







CHAPTER 1 Wise Child
M y mother had four husbands. None of them was my father. I did not learn this intriguing fact until I was a teenager, living in Chicago with Mother and my brother -- my half-brother, another fact of life I hadn’t known.
“It’s a wise child that knows its own father,” says the proverb. Tell me who is endowed with such wisdom.
Born in 1902 in a village near Karlsruhe, Germany, my mother had a conventional, middle-class upbringing. Her father was the Bäckermeister (master baker), whose shop supplied bread to almost every household in town. My mother was the third of four children, two boys and two girls, close together in age and all baptized in the Lutheran faith. When the children got to be six or seven years old, they were required to help with the business, delivering fresh rolls to customers before breakfast. Getting up at dawn in all kinds of weather, climbing dark flights of stairs, wi