Extracts from Márta’s Diary, translated from the original
Hungarian:
1923 March 10.
We don’t know the date yet, but it is sure now that we will go
some time this summer. It is terribly hard to get visas and we
can’t go without them. Even you take it naturally that we will
go, and talk about what you will do when you are in America.
You love to hear stories, you don’t care what it is as long as I
talk, and start “once upon a time.” You can hardly wait till
summer’s here and every once in awhile you ask me, “Please
Daddy, tell me when the flowers will be in bloom and will you
tell me when I will be able to play in the park?” Best of all
you love to walk barefoot in the sand, and want to know when
will it be warm enough for that too.
I feel so sorry for your Uncle Jani, he feels terribly lonely
already when he thinks you will leave him to go to America. He
is even thinking of following you there. He loves you so much.
I am afraid he’ll really be heartbroken after you are gone from
him. But you also love him a lot and will miss him too. You
are a generous and good-hearted little girl.
[József]
In April the Ehrlichs got their passport, which was in both
Romanian and the
“language of diplomacy,” French:
Au nom de sa Majesté
FERDINAND I-er
ROI DE ROUMANIE
Délivré ŕ M. Josif Ehrlich
Né ŕ Győr
Domicilié ŕ Cluj
De profession ouvrier
Voyageant Amerique
Délivré ŕ Bucarest
Ie 12 Avril 1923
par Minister de L’Interieur
et valable pour une annee
1923 June 20.
All we are thinking about lately is our coming trip to America.
Thank God we can really go this year. We will leave Kolozsvár
on August 27th to go to Bucharest where the American Consulate
is, and there’s where we will get the visa to enter the U.S.A.
From there we take a train to Constanţa where we board our boat
on the Black Sea on September 4th. You too talk about it all
the time and when you want something and we say we can’t or we
haven’t, your answer is, “OK, I’ll get it when I am in America,”
and I am hoping you’ll be right.
Today your Aunt Margit and her little daughter Bébi left for
Paris, France, where their husband and father’s waiting for them
with a ready furnished apartment. Hopefully to have a better
life there, just as we hope for ourselves in America. You and Bébi both cried so hard at the depot, you didn’t want to leave
each other. I asked you, “Why do you cry, Mártuka?” You said,
“I am crying because we are never going to see one another as
long as we live.”
…You love to play, but with one playmate at a time or all by
yourself; don’t like crowds. When there’s several children in
the yard you let them play, and you stand away and just watch
them. I feel very sorry already when I think you will have to
adjust to a whole new way of life and language too in America.
Especially the nursery schools where you will have to go while
Mommy and Daddy go to work at first. You seem to grow up to be
a good little housekeeper; we were without a maid for a spell,
and you said you wanted to help, and started to wash up the
breakfast dishes, and did it really beautifully, every piece. I
think you will be very handy around the house, more probably
than in book learning, which I will be sorry for, but it won’t
make any difference with me. One day you asked me, “Daddy does
it mean work when we eat?” When I said yes, you were happy and
told me, “Then I am working too.” I am glad you can draw
conclusions already, it means you are using your
brain to figure things out for yourself. I wish we were in
America already. [József]
Matild too wanted to write once more in Márta’s Diary while the
Ehrlichs were still in Kolozsvár, although she was very busy
preparing for the journey to “our new country America.” For the
past few weeks she had stayed home to make Márta new clothes for
the
trip—several dresses, underwear, “and even a coat because you
outgrow them too fast.”
[undated] Your Dad still goes to the shop to finish off
things he has, and to see all’s taken care of. But you my
darling and I are at home with your Aunt Fáni, and very happy
together, as I had very little time before to spend with you.
You aren’t used to having me too to talk to and watch your
doings. While I was sewing you were playing ball, hitting it to
the floor several times without letting it fall, and wanting me
to watch too. When I told you how good you were doing and said
I was glad, you told me “I am glad too that I am such a big girl
already.” So my little kitten you feel all grown up. I guess
my sweetheart this will be the last time I will write until we
leave. I have a million things to do, and must gather things we
have to take with us. [Matild]
“As I think back on all the blunders we made with our packing
what to bring to America,” Matild would say, “it’s sad and at
the same time laughable… We packed up the silliest junk to
bring. Besides all the new clothes we made for our little girl
to look elegant, there were feather beds, linens, pillows, and
on top of all that junk we packed cooking pots and pans, instead
of one suitcase and all the cash possible. It was really
pitiful.”
But it took all the cash possible for the Ehrlichs to buy
third-class passage for three to the United States. In the end
József had to sell his Omega pocket watch and “two rings he’d
bought instead of money savings, it was surer than cash at that
time in Europe.” These and Matild’s jewelry brought $450,
sufficient to pay for passage, but “I don’t like to think of the
heartbreak of giving our things away or trying to sell some of
them,” Matild was to say. Among the items sold were diamond
stud earrings József had given her for an anniversary
present; and Matild would refuse to ever wear another pair of
pierced earrings.
1923 August 16.
You could see from your diary when you can read it, that your
countless friends, aunts, uncles, and cousins are saying
farewell
to you, because we will leave very soon now on the 27th of this
month. For you, my dear, it won’t mean too much of a change as
long as we will be with you. But to your Mother and for me it
will be terribly hard to leave our family behind. But even you
feel the hardship of leaving, especially your Uncle Jani. You
look at him so sadly, and pat him and kiss his balding head and
face. We all feel bad that we have to part, but this is for our
future, we must do it. We can’t help it, my dear, and we are
hoping we can do a lot better there [in America], as Europe
still is under the hardship of a world war[‘s aftermath].
Naturally you feel just as good here too, as we did try very
hard to make you happy and give you all the things we think a
little girl of [almost] four years old ought to have to enjoy
life… Now I hope the next recording in your book will be
on the boat when we cross the ocean. Hope it will be soon now.
[József]
1923 August 23.
My little one, this is the saddest time of our life. Going
around to our family, saying our goodbyes to everyone. I took
you out to the cemetery to say goodbye to my dear Mother, who
was your grandmother, and we both cried, it was a sad thing to
do. When I asked you “Why do you cry?” you said “I feel sorry
for poor Grandma.” You are so sweet and very sensitive, which I
hope won’t cause you much heartache later on… We are starting
on our trip in five days. You are counting it by how many times
you have to go to
sleep… [Matild]
On the 27th the Ehrlichs bade farewell to “Kolozsvár, or Cluj as
it is called now”:
I won’t say much of our parting from the relatives; it was
hard. Everyone loved you and was sorry to part with you.
Especially your old Grandfather; who knows if we will ever see
him again? He cried like his heart was broken. And Grandma
[Ehrlich], who is left all by herself now. But the hardest
thing was for you to say goodbye to your Uncle Jani. He loved
you so much, couldn’t have been more if you’d been his own
little girl. He will try to follow us out to the U.S.A., just
to be near to you again. [József]
The Ehrlichs arrived in Bucharest and stayed in a hotel for
“several days that seemed endless until we could get the visa to
freedom that we all hoped for.” Since József had not been born
in Transylvania, “we were worried that might change our luck of
getting the visa if the Consul started asking questions, and we
wondered what we’d do if he said no.”
On August 29th the Ehrlichs’s name was called at the Consulate.
József started walking up the marble stairway “and at the same
time a big husky older Romanian woman started to push ahead of
him.” When the officials discovered she was not supposed to go
in yet, they “got so furious they gave her a push and she
started rolling down those stone steps screaming bloody murder
because she got hurt, poor thing. But that upheaval caused such
commotion…”
In the midst of which the Vice-Consul asked József, “Where were
you born?”
“Győr,” József answered.
“Is that far from here?” asked the Vice-Consul.
And József, who never in his life could tell an outright lie,
replied: “Not so very far.”
The Vice-Consul, still angry about the upsetting incident on the
stairs, “just put a big loud stamp on a paper,” noting 3
(three) in the space marked Persons born in Romania;
and József “was so surprised and dazed that he grabbed it and
hurried out and down those stairs fast as he could before the
Consul could come to and stop him. God, what a relief it was,
not just for us, but for all these new friends we made while we
waited for this unbelievable happy, happy day. It took days to
believe and slowly we realized our dream was coming true.”
On September 2nd, Matild’s twenty-eighth birthday, the Ehrlichs
took an express train to Constanţa “where are the docks of the
Black Sea,” and the next day they boarded the S.S.
Constantinople.
“Wonder what you will think and say when you first see the ocean
and boat we have to board?” Matild had written in Márta’s
Diary. Matild would leave no doubt what she herself thought:
“When we paid for our tickets, third-class, we were promised a
single cabin for three. But when we got on, we all had to take
what they gave us. So we ended up three families in one large
cabin. Could you believe it? The only privacy we had was when
everybody went up on deck.”
On the ship’s manifest, the Ehrlichs are entered as husband
Joseph, height 5’7”, occupation “hater” [sic]; wife
Madted [sic], height 5’4”, occupation “housew”;
and child Mrata [sic] height 3’0”, occupation
“baby.” All three are said to be Romanian citizens, born in “Gyo,”
and of the Hebrew “race or people.” The adults are able to read
the language of “Ungary”; their nearest relative back home is
“his father in law Mooz Ehrlich [sic],” and they are
going to join “his cousin Marcus Tener [sic] of 1024
Irving Park Buler” [sic] in Chicago. All three intend to
seek American citizenship; none is a polygamist, an anarchist,
an advocate of overthrowing the United States government by
force or violence, has been in prison or an almshouse, treated
for insanity or supported by charity. All are in good health,
none deformed or crippled—but a handwritten addendum notes a
medical certificate for “Mrata’s” bilateral strabismus
convergent, i.e. crossed eyes.
Early on the morning of September 4th, the Constantinople
left harbor. “We all were out on deck when we started,” wrote
József, “and I never will forget the feeling when we saw the
shores slowly disappear from our view.” Matild had intended to
keep up Márta’s Diary “and write down every interesting moment
on the way to America,” but she was seasick for nearly the
entire voyage “except when I lay flat on my back on my bed. It
was the most miserable time in my life.”
Márta did not succumb to mal de mer but was very much
afraid of the daily medical examinations. “Such hardships we’ve
gone through already in these few days are too much even for an
adult,” her father wrote, “but your concern is only, ‘Do we have
to go for a checkup again?’”
The Constantinople had two thousand passengers, “mostly
Russian Jews who all were chased out of the Ukraine. They are a
funny lot, and we and a few Hungarian families get the same
rough treatment from the crew because they don’t see we were a
better class of people.”
Always very class-conscious (in the sense of knowing who
conducted themselves as ladies and gentlemen and who did not)
József and Matild could nevertheless sympathize
with the Ukrainians:
They said everything they had was confiscated… We are sorry for
ourselves, but more sorry to watch them fight for everything
they need. People with little money have to suffer for reasons
they can’t help. Seems poor people are treated badly everywhere
and they are used to it by now, but we hate to see the cruelty
and heartlessness of the crew. It cost even more for them, and
they were worse off.
Matild would later write that the Constantinople was “a
Greek boat, and every sailor or worker on it was the same, and
no one as far as I can recall spoke any other language on it
either… We heard later on that if we’d taken any other line but
Greek, this wouldn’t have happened. Well, we just didn’t know.
For another hundred dollars we wouldn’t have had to
suffer at all. We thought we’d saved money.”
1923 September 8-9.
…When we got to Constantinople [the city] we all were under
quarantine, and our clothes had to be fumigated before they let
our boat pass through the Turkish harbor. I hope it won’t
happen again, we certainly will get dirtier, not cleaner after
such an ordeal. We also have a hard time keeping ourselves
clean as we travel… In the morning we have to line up for our
baths because there are too many people and not enough
bathrooms, but we want to keep ourselves as clean as we possibly
can… We found out (and we saw them too) that in steerage were
some of the Russian aristocracy, who stood in line with us for
their baths also, which didn’t help either of us… We needed a
little fortune to buy our passage, but this [trip] won’t last
long and after we get to our new home I am very sure everything
will be all right. Today we passed over the Dardanelles and our
boat is heading toward Greece. We will have a couple of days’s
stop in Piraeus for food and water. The sea so far was very
calm, and our food passable, but the extra food we brought from
home comes handy and tastes good for snacks… We only worry that
we don’t get enough milk, except one glass for you at breakfast,
and we must buy some canned milk and they
charge a lot for it. [József]
Having sailed through the Bosporus and the Mediterranean to
reach the Atlantic, “if all went as it should have we [would
have been] in New York in ten days. But in a few days, the
engine broke down somewhere in the nowhere, and nobody knew
where any of us were. As we found out much later, none of our
mail was ever forwarded and the whole bunch of us was out of
touch with the world. We never met or saw another ship on our
voyage.”
The Ehrlichs had figured on their money lasting until arrival in
Chicago, but the trip
took so much longer than scheduled they had to spend much more
than they had planned:
1923 September 18.
Food’s getting less and less. Also quite bad and no milk for
even the children. It’s the third [second?] week we are
drifting and we can’t find out how long we’ll be traveling this
way and your Mother stays in bed, she takes the sea quite hard.
Wish it was
over. [József]
The voyage that was to have taken ten days ultimately went on
for twenty-seven, and Márta’s fourth birthday was noted (if not
celebrated) on the 27th.
At last, early on the morning of Monday, October 1st, the
Constantinople arrived in New York harbor. József would
later write:
“Finally when we could see the Statue of Liberty, we couldn’t
express our feelings. Impressive, it was a very good and happy
sight. [The next day]
we were taken by small boats to Ellis Island and we had a nice
warm meal and were told after we finished to wait. So we did
just that. We had to. As we found out that we were short five
dollars for our tickets to take the train to Chicago, we didn’t
know what to do. I knew I had an aunt in New York, she was the
sister of my father,
and I had her address with me. I asked her to loan me the five
dollars until we got to Chicago, and I would send it back the
very next week. After several hours waiting, no answer came.
We just didn’t know what to do. But all of a sudden a
nice-looking man came over asking if I was Ehrlich? When I said
yes, he gave me the five dollars and his name and address and
said to send the money back when I could. So we started on our
trip home to Chicago.”
The loan had come from a traveler’s aid society in return for
József’s promise to pay it back as soon as possible, which
characteristically he was to do. A dollar from the Ehrlichs’s
meager remaining funds bought a large bag of milk, fruit, “all
sorts of cold cuts… enough of everything to last us until we got
there.” With thirty-two cents left in their pockets, the family
was put on the train for a round-the-clock ride to Chicago;
Matild “was ill on this trip also and lying down half the way
there.”
At seven o’clock on the morning of Sunday, October 7th the
Ehrlichs were taken by taxi to the home of Sam and Jeni Kohn, a
seven-room apartment on Irving Park Boulevard near Sheridan
Road, in the northern Lincoln Park neighborhood.
“The taxi driver rang the bell and we all waited for someone to
come out. An angry maid came and started to holler at the
driver that he’s disturbing the family too early. He tried to
tell her we’d just arrived from Europe, and owed him six
dollars. So she let us come into the living room and we waited
for awhile, the driver too. Our Uncle and family were surprised
a bit, as they hadn’t received our telegram yet, so they did not
expect us, and didn’t know when we’d get to Chicago, or in fact
to the U.S.A. But they welcomed us with open arms and at long
last we were home with them, and they were just beautiful, all
of them.”
Sam Kohn paid off the taxi driver, and the family took the
Ehrlichs in “like their own children.”
Notes
