Remembered and Retold - Life Story of the Otto Family
Chapter 38
Our Trip to America
The desire to immigrate became much stronger after my return to -torn Germany, and it led to the decision to try to make this important step as soon as I had finished my medical education. The great luck of finding the letters from Frau Sieg in the cellar in Spandau had opened the way. Before 1950 there was not even a possibility to apply for a visa at the American Consulate especially if one had no sponsor. One was put on the waiting list. American GI's were marrying German girls right and left. The 36,000 yearly immigration quota for Germans was taken up by GI brides, persecuted persons under the Hitler regime and the survivors of the concentration camps.
The letters from Frau Sieg, or now Mrs. Friedel Zschischang and her husband Arthur, turned out to be our key for our immigration to the United states. I was busy getting black market dollars in exchange for D-marks. Luckily there was a chance to make the exchange through my American patients. All planes and passenger ships were booked months in advance. I finally got a cabin on an American freighter for 500 dollars, at that time an outrageous price. We even had to pay half price for Rainer. We sold most of our furniture and gave the rest away. A total of 12 pieces of luggage, weighing over 600 pounds, had to be shipped with us to the harbor of Trieste. A cable from the Lykes Line office in Trieste arrived on September 30th. We had to meet the ship on October 1. I had to make a fast trip to the American Consulate to get a day-visa for Trieste. During the last 24 hours we sold the last pieces of our household goods. An old friend of my sister Gisela, who had visited us from time to time, was eager to take over our apartment. We took our last marks, called up our friends and invited them for an evening at the Oktoberfest. On the afternoon of our departure a dozen friends and relatives were at the train station to send us off with champagne and lots of tears while a heavy rain made the whole affair a sad farewell. Irmgard held Rainer, who was one year and ten months old, halfway out of the train window with a large handkerchief in his hand. He was waving until all of our friends and family had disappeared in the distance.
I placed 10 of the 12 pieces of our luggage in the baggage car. At the Brenner Pass the train stopped for the passport check. During the stop I ran to the rear of the train to check the baggage car to see whether our baggage had come with the train since they had rearranged the train in Innsbruck. There was no baggage in the car. I got hold of the Austrian train conductor and got the information that the baggage would arrive on the train which followed. We would have a two-hour layover in Trento to change trains. In the meantime the next train would bring our luggage and it would be transferred to the Trieste train. I was sitting on hot coals, worrying about our baggage, since our ship was to leave the next day.
The next morning, to my great relief, I saw our trunks and cartons being unloaded at the Trieste train station. We were the last passengers left on the platform with Rainer and Irmgard sitting on one of the trunks, while I got on the phone to get a hold of the agent for the Lykes Line.
"I am sorry," the clerk said, "the boat will not arrive until the seventh of October. I did not know about the late arrival until yesterday, so I could not send you a cable."
"I have only a 24-hour visa. What should I do with all the baggage?" I asked.
"Get a taxi. We can store it for a few days at the harbor." With that he hung up. The American Army still controlled the city of Trieste. Fortunately, the American commandant was only a few blocks from the station. After I explained my situation he gave me a seven-day extension of my Trieste visa. Happily I went back to two lonely travelers waiting for over an hour and told them the news that we had to stay one long week in Trieste. Irmgard saw herself already spending the next few days cooped up inside the dirty railroad station. After I dragged our baggage to a guarded storage area, I got a taxi.
I asked the driver, "What is the cheapest hotel in town? We are immigrants and haven't much money." With that I showed him my empty wallet. "We have to spend one week in Trieste." " There is a rooming-house hotel a few blocks from here," the driver answered. He drove us to a rather somber-looking place not in the best area of town. I had a total of 900 dollars in my money belt, which represented our combined total wealth. Purchasing two Leicas and a 10-power binocular as a safety investment was to be my whole emergency money. I handed him my first five-dollar bill with a shaky hand for the taxi ride. I asked him how much it would cost to get us to the harbor in a few days. He quoted me 15 dollars.
A nice old lady was at the reception desk of the hotel. I asked her for the cheapest room. She looked at my face and my passport and noticed my stated profession. She shook her head in disbelief and slowly climbed the steps to a room underneath the roof on the fourth floor. There was a washbasin one floor down and a toilet on the second floor. It would have to do for a week.
"Is this all right ? It will be four dollars a night."
It looked clean and the price was O.K.
"We have a large amount of luggage at the station. Do you have any place where we can store it? We are about to immigrate to the USA and are waiting for our freighter." She led me to an area behind the staircase where I felt that our luggage would be safe. While Irmgard put Rainier to bed for a nap, I took the baby carriage and made four trips from the station to the hotel until I had our baggage in the storeroom. The weather was mild and sunny, the trees already turning golden. We put Rainier into the baby carriage and took a late afternoon stroll through the city. There was no rationing, no destruction of any part of the town. In the distance one saw the masts of the ships in port and a glimpse of the ocean. A peaceful picture.
The next day I loaded two trunks on the baby carriage and went through downtown Trieste toward the harbor. The narrow streets were congested with heavy traffic and streetcars. A policeman gave me directions to the harbor. It took almost two hours to find the right pier and the agent for the Lykes Line. He looked at the luggage on my baby carriage and asked me how I had found his office. When I told him that I had walked almost two hours through the town, he laughed and told me where I could store it. I warned him that I would be back at least three more times with more baggage. So, for the rest of the day I went back and forth between hotel and harbor.
On the last trip I loaded the 130-pound Persian carpet, wrapped in canvas, on the carriage. Irmgard had insisted that we take the large carpet along. The carpet was an antique, handmade Tabris and we wanted to hang on to it for sentimental reasons. Besides it was the most valuable thing we owned. We did imagine that it might be far too big for any small apartment that we could afford in the beginning. It was 10 years later, when we were building our first home, that we made the initial request to the architect to make sure that our living room would be large enough for the 16-by 24-foot. Tabris. I had to balance it since it was rolled in a six-foot-wide package. The traffic policeman at the busiest intersection spotted the already familiar baby carriage with the wide load. He stopped the traffic so I could make a left-hand turn. The traffic stopped. Every car honked its horn and I heard some Italian curses. Then one wheel slipped into the streetcar tracks. I tried a few times to lift it out, but it would not budge. The policeman made a few steps from his small platform and helped me get the carriage going again. Together we pushed it through the intersection. I had saved the 15 dollars for the taxi!
The following day we spent all day pushing Rainier through the lovely town and along the ocean. He suffered from a bad diarrhea and Irmgard had to change his diapers many times. Every day was wash day. Rainier had to live on dried banana flakes, scraped raw apples and cooked carrots, while we nourished ourselves on cheese, spaghetti, salami and sips of red wine since we did not trust the drinking water. There was not a street, a suburb or a beach we did not visit in those few days.
When, on the morning of the seventh, of October we discovered a smokestack with the name "Lykes" in the harbor, we knew our trip to the U.S. would have no more obstacles.
© Irmgard
& Jürgen Otto 1993 All
rights reserved
Zuletzt geändert: 04.08.2024 14:00:17