Went with Jack Z. to arrange with a lawyer about the camp credit union.
I am alarmed not having received any call yet about my naturalization.
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Matt's Notes
"Jack Z." is, as we've noted before, the august Jack Zichlinsky, one of Papa's best friends and a brother in the Zionist fraternal organization Order Sons of Zion (B'nai Zion). Immigrants like Papa were used to getting a number of financial, medical and legal services through private, dues-supported organizations like B'nai Zion, which was already a burial society and a reseller of life insurance for its members. As an officer of his local chapter Papa was obviously responsible for organizing its credit union as well.
Though he's discussed B'nai Zion many times before, this entry has the first mention of Papa's naturalization status. According to The National Archives and Ancestry.com Web sites, naturalization would have been a two-step process for Papa: after living in the U.S. for at least two years, he would have filed a Declaration of Intention to naturalize (a.k.a. "First Papers") and after a waiting period of another three to five years he would have filed a Petition for Naturalization.
Ancestry.com's New York County Supreme Court Naturalization Petition Index shows that Papa probably filed his petition in June of 1920. He'd been waiting a while for his naturalization, but I wonder why he picked July 15th, 1924 to feel especially worried about it. Maybe Jack Z.'s own naturalization has just come through and he'd discussed it with Papa while they were out and about, or maybe naturalization chatter had increased in the local community, in the newspapers, or on the radio for some reason. The Johnson-Reed Act of 1924, a bill that imposed heavy immigration restrictions on Eastern Europeans (among other groups) had also become law couple of months earlier -- maybe Papa had just gotten around to worrying about it now since it happened around the time of his father's death. In any event, I have to look into this more.
Received another bad letter form home, eternal strife among the children at home
I am so worried, what can I do? My aim to bring my mother & Fule here seems hopeless, unless I can manage to get naturalized early, but the hopes are very slim, however I'm hopeful.
In the meantime the constant worrying is having its effect on me, it weakens me I think I have super- strength when I can stand all these worries.
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Matt's Notes
I speculated on why Papa's naturalization status might be on his mind when he first mentioned in a couple of weeks ago, but I didn't realize its practical effect on his efforts to bring his family over from the old country. I'm sure he would have encountered many other obstacles even if he was naturalized (Would he have enough money? Could his mother handle the trip?) but the opaque bureaucracy holding up his Petition for Naturalization obviously felt the most impenetrable. Was Papa so focused on it because there was some sort of loophole for relatives of naturalized immigrants in the recently-strengthened immigration quota laws?
Papa never would get his mother, sister Fule or any of his other siblings out of Sniatyn, though Fule eventually made her way into the world at large through a series of marriages and adventures. (She went to Palestine after her Viennese husband just before World War II. Upon her arrival, she married a near stranger on a boat just outside Palestinian waters so she could enter as the wife of a citizen. My mother tells me the family knew this second husband only as "Mr. Abramowitz." He was, it seems, somehow related to David Sarnoff, the Russian-born broadcast innovator and RCA founder who I've read about while researching early radio history for this site.)
I'm sure the worrisome letter Papa refers to contained details of his family's financial struggles and desperate requests for more money. As we've discussed before, he felt compelled to provide for them all after his father died -- note how he refers to his siblings as "the children" here, as if he's really taken on a patriarchal role. Papa was naturally generous and responsible, but I think he also took on his father's role (and worries) in part because it helped keep his memory alive. Whatever the reasons, though, his concerns as an immigrant were personal, painful, typical and timeless.
This is the second day in a row without an entry. Perhaps Papa was too busy staying warm or just trying to get from place to place: Temperatures were around 20 degrees for most of the day and New York got over three inches of snow. What did this do to trolley and subway service back then? What was it like to walk on the streets?
The New York Times featured an editorial that day about the departure of Navy Secretary Denby, who resigned under pressure from Congress over his role in the Teapot Dome Scandal. Other stories of interest to Papa might have been: a tenement fire on the Lower East Side that killed 13 (was Papa out watching it the previous night? Is that why he didn't write in his diary?); the Jewish boxer Abe Goldstein's upcoming bout; an appeal from Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation of Labor, to help German labor organizations; and the Federal Government's takeover of the naturalization process.
[Note: To see full-sized scans of this letter, click the thumbnail images on the right of this page.]
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Please pardon my abrupt script and corrections
June 27, 1926. 1:55 a.m.
My dear Jeanie:
This is the third time that I am writing to you today1, and believe me this certainly was an adventurous day for me.
I shall try to describe to you in my way of today's events.
The day was very fair when a group of us started out in a big car from the hotel for the falls, which are twenty-five miles from here.
After an hour ride we reached the stormy Niagara river, and soon afterward the beginning of the American rapids and a few minutes later we've reached our destination. We came to a spot where the most bewitching most enchanting (believe me I haven't got enough words to describe it) spectacle presented itself before my eyes.
If I were a poet perhaps I'd be able to give
./.
2
you a fair description of the view, however I will make an attempt to do it in my meagre way.
The American part of the falls were before my eyes, a picture of unsurpassing beauty and splendor, On a stretch of about 5 city blocks streams from the Niagara river falling into a depth of about 200 feet and the suns reflection makes it look like an endless stream of pearls, the reaction on the bottom of the falls makes it look like a huge white cloud.
After recording things on my camera2 we boarded the car again headed for the international bridge, after paying a toll to the American officers of for leaving the country we reached the Canadian side where I had to produce my citizen papers (I took it along as I've been told that I'd need them)3 in order to be let through, Well in Canada the falls presented themselves in their full beauty and the Canadian horseshoe falls are yet more beautiful than the American.4
./.
3
There I stood as in a haze I could hardly believe my eyes, I saw Gods wonder which no artist can paint, I would travel to the end of the world to see another such sight, I shall relate to you in person about this sight.
Now while I Canada I thought it was the proper time to quench my thirst (Canada is not a dry country) and revenge myself on old Volstead,
Yes I drank three glasses of honest to goodness beer, enough to last me until the prohibition act is repelled.5
I also brought a little bit of Canadian candy for you,
Of course by the time you receive this you will have received the card that I mailed in Canada.
Well after speeding through some Canadian Villages we returned late in the afternoon to the dear old U.S.A.
Here at the hotel we are busy all evening with receptions tendered in our honor.
./.
I hope that the pictures of the falls that I've snapped come out O.K. especially the one of myself with the falls as a background.
I believe that I have faithfully described to you my experiences, and now I will call it a day.
You may read this letter to your folks to whom I'm sending my kindest regards I expect to be very busy the next 3 days6 however if I should have time I shall write you more.
Hoping that this finds you in best of health I am as ever
Papa wrote this letter at 1:55 AM on Hotel Statler stationery, presumably in his room. (Little amenities like stationery and pens usually associated with higher-priced hotels helped cement the Statler hotel chain's reputation among travelers of modest means.) His excitement and exhaustion are evident in the "abrupt script and corrections" for which he apologizes at the top of the letter:
2 - As mentioned previously, I have had Papa's No. 3A Autographic Kodak (Model C) camera in my possession since I was a kid, and it may be the camera he refers to in this letter. However, the few amateur photo prints I have from this period of Papa's life are too small to have come from a 3A Autographic, so he may have had a different camera at the time. Alas, I'll probably never know for sure unless photos from his Buffalo trip turn up somehow.
3 - In July of 1924, Papa wrote in his diary of his frustration with the glacial pace of the naturalization process, so he couldn't have been a citizen for that long when he visited Canada in June of 1926. Did he feel a little rush of pride when asked to prove his citizenship, or was the commotion at the border (surely all the Zionist companions with whom he rode to the Falls were immigrants and had to produce their papers as well) too distracting?
4 - I've seen the Horseshoe falls from the Canadian side and, though the cynic in me wants to say the whole thing is a cheesy tourist trap, I cannot help but agree with Papa. They Falls really are spectacular and I remember them fondly. Alas, not everybody has the same experience:
5 - I love this passage because it comes so unexpectedly and places Papa so squarely in the 1920's. Alcoholic beverages would have been a real attraction for American tourists who visited the Canadian side of Niagara Falls during Prohibition, and here we have Papa, who wasn't a big drinker, hitting a bar and downing three beers out of pure excitement. (In later years, according to my mother, he liked to stroll on hot days from his Brighton Beach apartment to a Boardwalk bar and enjoy a glass of bock. I wonder if, having experienced Prohibition firsthand, he had a little more fun than other people did when he ordered a beer legally.)
I had a similar, though less satisfying, experience at the Canadian Falls a few years ago when I bought and smoked a dry, disgusting Cuban cigar just because it was legally available. I suppose, if American-Cuban relations ever normalize, the only harmful vice worth traveling to Canada for will be poutine.
6 - The Zionist Organization of America's conference in Buffalo had 1000 attendees that year, and Papa was one of 200 from New York. The agenda set forth by Chairman Lewis Lipsky in his opening remarks (delivered, most likely, at one of the "ceremonies" Papa refers to in this letter) included the need to address Britain's recent lackluster support of the Zionist cause in Palestine and the condemnation of a Joint Distribution Committee effort to designate a region of the Ukraine for Jewish settlement, which the Z.O.A. saw as an attempt to distract Jews from the Zionist cause.
Most absorbing for Papa would have been the the Z.O.A.'s rejeection of a resolution adopted by his own fraternal organization, Order Sons of Zion (a.k.a. B'nai Zion) to push the Zionist movement toward the aggressive, nationalistic, "revisionist" Zionism advocated by Vladimir Jabotinsky. Interestingly, though B'nai Zion had adopted this stance at a conference attended by Papa a few weeks earlier, several prominent B'nai Zion leaders, including the writer Maurice Samuel, objected to it and said so at the Z.O.A. convention. I'm not sure where Papa would have stood, but we know he admired Samuel and may even have been friendly with him (he mentions Samuel several times in his 1924 diary and refers to him as "Maurie" at one point) so I would imagine he joined Samuel among the dissenters.
A final note: In this letter, Papa starts using this symbol at the bottom of every page except the last: I assume it means "turn the page" or "more to come". From now on I'll include it in my transcriptions and write it out as "./."
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References:
ZIONIST CONVENTION OPENS IN BUFFALO; Lipsky Criticizes the British Mandate in Palestine and Russian Project There. The New York Times, June 27, 1926.
ZIONISTS OPPOSE STRIFE IN PALESTINE; Repudiate Endorsement of Anti-Arab, Anti-British Plan by Order Sons of Zion. The New York Times, June 29, 1926.
ZIONISTS PROPOSE COOPERATION OF ALL; Buffalo Convention Votes to Push Negotiation for Accord on Palestine. The New York Times, June 30, 1926.
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