An Immigrant Family (A True Story and Narrative Essay) by Dara Freiberg Childers*

An Immigrant Family

The year was 1944, Alfred and Minna married.  They had met in Philadelphia at a German-Jewish club where immigrants could go to socialize with people that shared a common religion, background, and language.  At the time they lived in the Jewish ghetto and Al sold cigars on the Pier in Atlantic City to make a living.  Minna worked alongside her mother and sister as a seamstress at Pied Piper making children’s clothes.

Shortly thereafter, Al joined the United States Army and went back to Germany and France to fight against the country that had expelled him. He worked as an interpreter and a medic. While he was away, their first son, Allen, was born. Al didn’t meet him until he was a year old.

After his return, Al finished out his military career on base in Fort Hood, Texas. Then he moved his small family back to Philadelphia.  There is little information about how the rest of the family got out of Germany, but they all ended up together in Pennsylvania.

In 1946, they became partners in a restaurant in Greensboro, North Carolina, called “Ham’s.”  Al and Minna followed by her sister Hannah and brother-in-law Karl moved their families down south.

Hannah and Karl were introduced by Al at the same German-Jewish club. They married in 1943.  Karl worked as a butcher and Hannah worked as a seamstress. Their only child, Glenn, was born in Philadelphia in 1948.

In 1962, their younger daughter, Debbie was born.  Her three older siblings were delighted with their baby sister. Having a child later in life was something of a quandary to Al and Minna, but they adored her nonetheless.

Al and Minna were not just partners with Karl and Hannah in Ham’s, they were best friends and next-door neighbors. Joey and Glenn were raised together and remained more like brothers than cousins.

After twenty years, Al and Karl sold their Ham’s partnership and Al opened AKP Appliances, a television and appliance store. Later he owned a Curb Market which sold used furniture and appliances. All that he accomplished in life, he did without finishing high school.

Minna and her sister often made their famous, secret family recipe cheesecake and worked along with their husbands at Ham’s. Minna was also busy rearing her four children.  She too carved out a satisfying life for herself without completing her formal education.  Besides her sister, her housekeeper, Mildred, was her very best friend. Mildred was more than a helper to Minna, she was part of the family.

Al and Minna were avid Carolina Tarheel fans from the time their older son Allen attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Joey and Barbara followed Allen to Chapel Hill. Carolina became an on-going tradition in their family_extending to the grandchildren.

Now, life was not always so easy for Al and Minna or Hannah and Karl.

Al was born in Kaiserslautern, Germany in 1917, to Benno and Augusta. He had two siblings, Curt and Henny. They had many friends and were fairly well-to-do. They raised show horses for a living.

After Hitler took over Germany in 1933, and before he began to exterminate the Jews, wealthy non-Jews liberated Jewish citizens for money. Before Al and his family had such an opportunity, the SS soldiers came to take his father to Dachau, a work camp.  Al did not want his father to go alone, so he volunteered to join him. Upon arriving in Dachau, Al’s father was deemed too ill to stay, and Al spent the next six weeks in the concentration camp. When he arrived, he was stripped of all his belongings and given only a shirt, pants, and shoes to wear in the November cold_no underwear, no socks.

One night, Al suffered an asthma attack and stuck his head out a window for air. The Nazi soldiers began to shoot at him! He escaped death only because a friend pulled him back in before a bullet could strike him in the head.

Luckily for Al, a family paid off the SS to look the other way so that he could be smuggled out of Germany. He was smuggled into Belgium inside a hearse. Upon arrival, he was again stripped of everything he had, save the clothes on his back. He entered this new country without even a dollar in his pocket.

From Belgium Al emigrated to the United States via Ellis Island. He was assigned to Atlantic City, New Jersey. His first job there was selling stationary and working in a novelty store.

His later decision to join the Army and go back to Europe was rooted in a hatred for the country that he used to call home. He never really regained his love of his homeland. His fellow American soldiers did not truly believe the conditions in Germany he had spoken of until they saw it for themselves.

During his lifetime, Al never really talked about his time in the Army or in Dachau. No one asked. Now they all wish they had.

Minna and Hannah grew up in Frankfurt, Germany. Minna, the younger sister, was born in 1922. Their parents were Efroyim and Tzipora. He was a tailor and she was his assistant in the family shop. Both girls loved to play soccer. They were classmates of Anne Frank in elementary school.

In 1938, the family fled to Liverpool, England, shortly after Kristallnacht.  They were sponsored by a wealthy family, distantly related, who owned the London Fog Company. While housed by the family, they were treated like poor servants and were forced to work very hard. After about a year in England, they too emigrated to America through Ellis Island and were assigned to Philadelphia. They spoke no English when they emigrated to the United States.

The event that led to their decision to leave Germany was a night they would never forget. Someone tipped off their father that the Nazis were coming for him so a neighbor hid him in their oven.  While SS soldiers searched the home, angry at his absence, they destroyed the home, stole the family’s valuables, and threw their pet canary out the window! It was shot while still helpless in its cage.

All Efroyim wanted was to get his family out of Nazi Germany and safely to the United States.  After they arrived, Tzipora, Hannah and Minna all worked as seamstresses while their father worked as a tailor.  Six weeks after securing his family in America, Efroyim passed away in his sleep of a heart attack.

Years later, with Al, Hannah, and Karl all deceased, Minna accepted Germany’s second offer to its expelled citizens and first-generation-Americans to come back and visit her birthplace. She and Al had made a similar trip years earlier. Daughter Barbara accompanied her mother and they were able to visit her former school, synagogue and Al’s home (right before it was to be torn down to build new apartments).  Barbara came to see how her mother’s past experiences shaped her own upbringing and that of her three siblings.

Karl had lived in a small, southern German village and was one of thirteen children (only eight of whom survived). Karl and one of his older, married sisters left the village to come to America via France. The French government caught them. His sister and brother-in-law were sent to Auschwitz where they were killed. Another of his married sisters who already lived in the United States, sponsored him to come live with her and her family in Camden, New Jersey.

There Karl worked as a butcher practicing a skill which he learned growing up on a farm. The only other family that he knew to be safe was a sister. She survived in Germany because she married a Christian man who hid her from the Nazis.

Karl was later drafted into the Army, and he was sent to fight the Japanese for two years.  He was already married to Hannah before he deployed. After his return, they had their son, Glenn.

In 1954, he moved his family to Greensboro and never returned to Germany.  He never saw or knew of any other surviving family.

Remaining family members of Al and Minna, as well as Karl and Hannah, remain closely knit. This was a family who, despite many obstacles and much tragedy, made a better home in America.  These two couples created an exceptional legacy for their descendants. They have left behind a family who is grateful for their tenacity and “will to survive”.