America

= **Chapter 4** = = = = **Arrival in the USA** =

//A boyhood dream of America comes true as a new war approaches – a baby is born – securing a visa – the last passenger ship from Genoa – journeying across the sea and arriving in New York – looking for food and work – a first train ride across the vast country – managing a film theatre in Oakland – reflections on family left behind – on to Los Angeles//

I had wanted to move to the States ever since I was twelve. My stepfather had lived and worked there, and I wanted to follow his example. I loved and admired my stepfather and tried to identify with him by imagining following in his footsteps.

My stepfather introduced me to authors such as James Fenimore Cooper whose stories had been translated into Serbo-Croatian. But it was the books about America by the German writer, Karl May, that influenced me most. As a child I had read all his books and had imagined the land of Winnetou and Old Shatterhand to be a paradise for a youngster keen on adventure. At some later stage I read with great interest the stories of Croats who had left for the United States. And we had other examples in our family. My aunt, Teta Ivka, my mother’s older sister, had given up her career as a Lieder singer in Vienna and was now living in America. She sent us a telegram: “What are you doing in Belgrade? Why don’t you come here?”

Soon after our marriage, Roni and I started to talk seriously about moving to America. At first Roni was only mildly interested, but soon she became more determined because she was worried about the development of Nazism in Germany and Fascism in Italy. Both countries were dangerously close. What was happening in Austria and Czechoslovakia was also frightening.

In Yugoslavia the climate was changing too. In some parts of the Balkans, a fascist movement was on the rise, especially in Croatia. The nationalist and extremist, Ante Pavelic, who for a long time had wanted Croatia to break free from a Yugoslavia dominated by the Serbs, had fled to Italy during the rule of King Alexander. He formed the notorious Ustaša movement, which trained terrorists in camps in Italy, Germany and Hungary. In 1934, in Marseilles, his supporters killed the Yugoslavian King Alexander. In the early forties, after the German invasion and the disintegration of Yugoslavia, Ante Pavelic and his Ustaša followers established a brutal, Nazi like regime in Croatia. He mobilised a Croatian unit to fight with the Germans. His extremist supporters persecuted and brutally executed a very large numbers of Serbian Orthodox Christians, Jews and Muslims. These tragic events, traces of which can still be found in my mother country even today, had their roots among the Croatian ultra nationalists, who were supported by the Bishopric of Zagreb.

So in 1939, our future was not looking bright. The threat became a reality when Germany invaded Poland in September.

In the early nineteen thirties, I had applied for a visa for myself to the U.S.A. Because the Croat quota was very small and one had to wait many years for a visa, I also immediately applied for a visa for Roni after our marriage. I was on friendly terms with the new American ambassador in Belgrade, a Mr. Bliss, and he personally saw that my request was granted in 1939. Once you were given a visa, however, you had to use it within a certain time. Otherwise the authorisation to immigrate expired. We however had a problem. Roni was pregnant with our first child and we did not want to start the long journey to the United States during the last months of her pregnancy. I personally had ambivalent feelings: events in Europe were unfolding fast and Milan ‘the journalist’ wanted to stay and cover them. Yet, Milan ‘the-father-to-be’ knew that his family had to come first. The American ambassador was able to give us more time by saying, “I haven’t told you that the visa is here.”

On 24th May 1939 our son Sadja was born. We again asked the Ambassador to extend the validity of the visa until we were ready to leave. He promised to do his best and we decided to delay the journey until Sadja was old enough to travel. But the Ambassador could not wait forever. He encouraged us to leave on a couple of occasions, but finally he called one day with an urgent message -- no further delay was possible. At the same moment another telegram arrived from my aunt in New York saying, “You fools! What are you waiting for?” Roni called me in the office and said “Let’s go, I am packing and if your journalistic career is more important than your family, then you stay here. But I am leaving!!.” That was Friday morning and by Sunday we had liquidated our life in Belgrade and caught a train to Genoa. Before leaving, I went to a town outside Belgrade to visit my only living relative from my father’s side - my father’s brother, Uncle Adi, who was bedridden from a stroke. He tried to give me 4000 dinars – it was a handsome sum for Yugoslavia-- but since I was not permitted to take more than a small specified sum to America, I had to say “No.” I did not want to jeopardize my voyage. I never saw Uncle Adi again.

We also stopped at Zagreb for a few hours and handed the keys to our Belgrade apartment to our respective mothers with the instructions to sell our belongings. We managed to get tickets on a ship leaving for New York, the //Conte di Savoia//, which was also called the “Queen Mary of Italy”. As it turned out it was the last peace time ship to sail from Italy for the United States. The ship was the pride of the Italian passenger fleet, a masterpiece of Italian shipbuilding. Unfortunately its admirers did not enjoy its beauty for too much longer. The English torpedoed this beautiful ship off the coast of Crete later during the Second World War.

When we boarded on the 11th of April. 1940, we had no clue that this would be the last passenger ship sailing from Genoa to New York before Italy entered the war. The Italian crew were very unkind to the 1900 immigrants wanting to leave Europe. I acted as an interpreter for the many refugees who did not speak Italian, thus relieving their discomfort a little. There were many sad scenes at the time of boarding, because people were fleeing their homes. As we boarded, we met a woman with a 12-year old daughter. The woman was German and crying inconsolably. Roni offered to guide her to her cabin. It was her daughter, Emma, who told us the whole sad story. We found out that her father had been pulled off the train as they were travelling from Germany to Genoa. Her father was Jewish, but her mother was Christian. So they took him away, leaving his desperate wife and crying daughter behind in a state of shock. The mother told us that she had promised her husband that she would take the girl to America. During the crossing, Roni and I took care of them. We made sure the woman got as much rest as possible, while her daughter helped look after our baby.

We stayed in touch with the family after arriving in the States. They found temporary accommodation with some relatives in Connecticut. Months later, while I was working in Oakland, I received a wire from Ernst Edelman, the father who had been held back. He had managed to bribe a German officer and escaped via the Black Sea through the USSR, China and Hawaii, and had arrived in San Francisco. He didn’t know anyone on the West Coast, but his wife had given him my address. He asked for my help in getting him to Connecticut where eventually he was reunited with his family.

The trip from Genoa to New York was longer than we expected. We booked our crossing in such a hurry that we didn’t ask about travel plans. Only after sailing did we find out that the Conte di Savoia was on an excursion route to America and would be stopping in Naples, Gibraltar and the Azores. For us this was a bonus. Nobody was waiting for us on the other side.

During our voyage, we learned that Italy had declared war against the Allies. With America now our next stop, the excitement on the ship was palpable. Many more telegrams were written to friends and relatives, which kept me busy. The next three days passed quickly, and the last evening we celebrated nervously, not knowing what might await us.

On the morning of April 25th, just as the first rays of the sun hit the ocean, there was an announcement on the public address system that land was in sight. I grabbed Sadja and ran up to the highest deck to see for myself. Soon the pilot boat arrived and various port officials came aboard. Someone yelled and pointed to the Statue of Liberty in New York harbour, and we watched it become bigger and bigger, moment by moment.

Like all refugees arriving in New York by boat, we were full of hope and expectations as we gazed out at the Statue of Liberty, beckoning with its torch. The Conte di Savoia moored at 8 a.m. at quay number 45. While we were queuing up in order to complete immigration formalities, a man in a uniform came up to me and asked me to help interpret for the Italian, German, Croatian, Serb and other fellow passengers who did not speak English. I asked him how he knew me, and he replied that the ship’s purser had told him to look for a young man with a pretty baby in his arms. Of course I told him that I would gladly help. It made sense that I helped since I had come to know most of the passengers.

I settled down to translating while Roni took care of our packing. We had lunch at noon, but my translating continued till mid-afternoon. It took several hours for me to help the immigration authorities to process all the passengers, but meanwhile they took good care of my wife, Sadja and our luggage.

We were among the last to be processed. When our turn came, the immigration officer told me that I had the right to change my name. I wanted to take advantage of this possibility. I wanted to adopt my stepfather’s family name, Iskra, and call myself that from now on. He said “Iskra” was not a common name in America and no one would be able to pronounce it.

“As a matter of fact,” he added “what was wrong with Herzog?”

“Herzog,” he said, “was a decent name, easy to remember. Herzog was also well known in the America because the coach of the Milwaukee baseball team was Whitey Herzog, and everybody knew his name.” This passionate plea convinced me and I decided to continue through life as Milan Herzog.

It is interesting how my family acquired the name Herzog. According to the family story, the name was given to my ancestor sometime around 1780 by the census takers of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. At that time it was not common to have a family name. Everyone was known by their first names and their occupation. However, when the census came to his village there were too many people with the same name and occupation, so they started to ask questions and in my ancestor’s case, they decided to give him the name HERZOG, because he told them that his family came from Herzegovina.

By the time we got onto the docks, it was afternoon. We found out we could store our heavy luggage in an office on the dock at a cost of $1 a night. It seemed to us exorbitant because we were in New York with only seventy dollars in our pockets. Seventy dollars was the maximum amount we were allowed to take out of Yugoslavia, and we did not know anyone in New York except my aunt, Teta Ivka, who unfortunately was away. Her husband, my Uncle Šandor believed that young people should take care of themselves.

We walked out to Twelfth Avenue and my map guided me eastward towards Sixth Avenue. Sadja was in a stroller, and we placed small packages on and around him. It took long time to find the hotel someone on the ship had recommended. The price was moderate and so was the room. After a short rest, some washing and looking out through the window we realized that we needed something to eat. We had little energy for scouting for a cheap eatery, but from the window we saw a place. It had a marble entrance and that scared me, but I decided to look it over. It had a sign reading Horn and Hardart Automat. Inside it was big, full of marble and all the food was behind small glass windows on large walls. It was early for an evening meal so the place was almost empty.

I was astounded to find bread and butter previous customers had left untouched and which was still fit to eat. I wrapped pieces of bread, untouched butter, half empty milk bottles and forgotten biscuits in a newspaper and returned to our room. That was our first meal in New York.

After ‘dinner’ I looked at the newspaper and an advertisement caught my eye: there were rooms for rent at 135th Street near the subway station. I took the train next morning and met with the owners, an older and very friendly Greek couple. They were charging 20 dollars per month for a simple, tidy and comfortable little room. I went to fetch Roni and Sadja and we moved in without hesitation.

We had made a new start in life in America, but it took us a while to settle. During the next few days I walked from one employment agency to another. I waited among people who were much older than me and I felt completely out of place as a 32-year old. But I had to find a job urgently and was willing to consider anything. I would have worked as a window cleaner on one of the skyscrapers, but nobody needed me. I was not a union member, so it was much more difficult to find a job.

Looking for work was my main occupation. Roni did the shopping at the grocery and bakery. However, I was gradually beginning to loose courage. We only had 70 dollars on our arrival in New York, of which one dollar went toward the storage of our luggage. Now everyday, we had to buy food. What other expenses could we expect? We had been in the States for two weeks when I sat down on a bench at the Rockefeller Center feeling depressed. I looked at the overjoyed children and happy adults on the ice-skating rink and wondered how long it would take before we would be able to enjoy something like that.

I opened the newspaper once more to look at the job ads, and noticed a section entitled Help, which underneath had the address of the Catholic Resettlement Agency which specialised in Transfer of Immigrants. Apparently, this agency had been set up on 14th Street by the Jesuits to take care of newly arrived immigrants. They assisted people in finding their way through the unknown New World, mostly by helping them find a provisional or temporary job. I headed for the office immediately.

I was received by a young Jesuit, who asked me for my curriculum vitae (my background and experience). I took a chair and waited while he attentively studied my CV. He was not in the least impressed by my university degrees and seemingly paid no attention to my academic background, my experience as a lawyer. or my professional activities as a journalist. He did, however, show interest in the Miscellany section. I had mentioned that in the old country, as a student, I had assisted my Uncle Šandor Šhay in selling film projectors and translating subtitles for silent movies. “So you know about movie theatres?” he asked. Could I manage a theatre, he wanted to know. I assured him I could. He said they needed someone to do this in Oakland, California, on the other side of the American continent. Was I interested? Of course I said “Yes.” They organised the whole trip including providing us with train tickets and provisions. Our Greek landlord was kind enough to take us with our hand luggage to the station free of charge. He agreed to send us our two huge trunks with clothes and household goods by boat. They would arrive in Oakland three weeks later.

The train journey was long, right across the continent, and required four days travel. First we took the slow train from New York to Chicago. The Jesuits had chosen the cheapest fare. It took us 16 hours to get there. We were told that someone from the Catholic Resettlement Agency would meet us in Chicago. And sure enough, as soon as the train pulled into the station, we were greeted by another member of the Jesuits. He took us by taxi to the old La Salle hotel, which looked very elegant to us.

We were given 20 dollars to cover our expenses in Chicago. He told us we should try to pay back the money as soon as we could. I asked how he could be certain we would pay the money back. He replied that every single person they had ever helped had paid them back. The whole journey continued like this. The organisation advanced all moneys for the trip, which we paid back in monthly instalments. We did so until we had settled all our debts.

We stayed in Chicago for two days, and discovered how small the world really is. I took Sadja - who was now almost one years old - to the park. In the park we saw two beautiful sculptures showing Indians on horseback. The artist turned out to be a Yugoslav called Meštrovic, a close acquaintance of Uncle Isidor Kršnjavi, the man who had cured me in Zagreb at the end of the First World War. I was looking at the sculptures when it suddenly struck me that these were the same statues for which I was once a model. And then, imagine merely a half an hour later in our hotel corridor, we bumped into our Yugoslavian dentist and good friend Laci Hussar, who had earlier emigrated to the US and was attending a dental conference in Chicago. He took a picture of young Sadja, which I have always cherished.

The train called the Challenger took a full 48 hours to go from Chicago to Oakland. To a Yugoslav immigrant, the train seemed very luxurious,- there was a female attendant, who helped us with our child and we could even buy a meal on the train. During our long stopover in Utah, the train conductor volunteered to give us a short tour of Salt Lake City. He thought this would be a pleasant diversion, for he said he knew the worries and fears of immigrants.

It was another example of the friendly welcome we received from strangers, especially during the first months of our stay in America. Our Greek landlord in New York, the Jesuits who helped us find work, the man who took care of us in Chicago, and now the train conductor in Salt Lake City - all had been obliging and helpful. There would be many other occasions such as the one day in Oakland when Roni found a parcel with children's clothes on our doorstep - a gift for Sadja from anonymous neighbours. That is why I will always speak well of Americans (though I would make exceptions politicians, big bosses and occasional bandits).

When we arrived, Oakland was not a pretty sight. It was depressingly misty and rainy. In 1940 the city was only half as big as it now. It was dominated by the publishers of The Oakland Tribune and the unions. The owners of the paper were immensely rich, but liberal. They got on well with the union leaders and the city was run by these two powers. The wealthy lived in the hills surrounding the city; the workers lived in the center. Most people found employment at the harbour, on the railways or in one of the textile factories.

I was taking over temporarily from a Mr. Walker, who owned a film theatre on Main Street. He was a Mormon, and had to go on a mission for his church. He would be gone six months, and I would be in charge of the business for that period. I had to negotiate with the film distributors about getting the pictures, had to make sure copies were picked up and returned to San Francisco in time, and had to organise the screenings. The theatre had 800 seats. The customers were a mixture of black and white residents and included many Irish dock workers. Cinema tickets cost 25, 50 and 70 cents. Roni sold sweets and popcorn from the candy stand.

In those days it was common for advertisers to give away presents. After the customer bought a ticket, they would receive, for example, one plate out of a set of dishes and every time they came back they could get another one. Sometime books were given away. Once a week there was the opportunity to acquire a small set of encyclopaedias which were handed out in twelve weekly instalments. All the gifts were meant to increase customer loyalty. Whoever wanted the whole set, had to make sure they attended the theatre regularly. I still have a set of plates and cups which were given away at the Oakland theatre, and I cherish them as a souvenir of my first job in the U.S.

Between the two of us, Roni and I earned 20 dollars per week. Half of this was spent on paying the rent for a studio flat with a foldable bed and a tiny kitchen. But our landlord was a good-natured Finnish man who looked after Sadja with great devotion, especially if he was asleep during the time that my Roni and I were at work in the theatre across the street.

Many mornings I would take Sadja to the theatre. He couldn’t walk yet and he crawled around the office and the candy stand. Neither Roni nor I had seen him walk until one day when I was working on the accounts. I used to watch him in a mirrored wall, and suddenly I saw him get up and walk very confidently over to the popcorn machine, grab a handful of popcorn and walk back to where he had been playing. Over the next couple days, no matter how much Roni and I coaxed him, he would not walk. Then, a few days on, while I was preparing his stroller, he got up, walked over and started to push it. From then on he began walking regularly.

There was one important thing Mr. Walker failed to tell me -- how to deal with the unions. I did know enough not to argue with them, for they laid down the law and it was better to try to be on good terms with them. The film industry union sent me a qualified technician for a projectionist, and nobody else was allowed to project films. They did not allow me to project films, even though I ran the theatre. In fact, no one was allowed inside the projection room except for the technician. One just had to accept these union regulations.

I did made friends with members of the dockworkers union. Two Irish dock workers frequently visited the theatre. They always had a soda at the bar afterwards. They were giants with arms like sledge-hammers and hands like coal shovels. One time a young hooligan deliberately destroyed some of the theatre’s armchairs. The Irish organised a kind of supervision and the rogue did not come back.

Help from the unions could be very useful. One Sunday afternoon, after I had been working in Oakland for only three months, there was a power cut. Some young hooligans had sabotaged the power switch. One of the Irish got up and switched on the emergency circuit. He also caught the offenders.

One Saturday we found a piece of canvas that was cut out of one of the corners of the screen. The ladder, which the offenders had used, was still there. I informed the police. They shrug their shoulders and said there was nothing they could do. I didn’t know what to do, so I went to my friends from the union, who repaired the screen free of charge. It would have otherwise cost me more dollars than I had.

Mr. Walker returned after six months, and my job in Oakland ended. I had in the meantime been looking for another job, and had decided to try my luck in Los Angeles. Little did I know that Los Angeles would only be a brief stop on my way back to New York.

Though Roni and I were now beginning to become established in America, we had left part of our family in Yugoslavia. Roni’s mother was not interested in immigrating; she wanted to stay with her other three children in Zagreb. I really wanted my mother, sister and grandfather to move to America. My grandfather felt he was too old. His wife, my grandmother, had died in 1932. She had been ill for a long time, but was alive to witness my receiving a doctorate. I was the first family member to achieve this distinction. She died peacefully after I graduated.

My sister wanted first to finish her studies at Belgrade University. Unfortunately she survived only one year of the war. She died in 1941 and was buried in the Catholic section of the Belgrade cemetery. I could not attend her funeral, but for years I paid for the upkeep of her grave as a way of remembering her.

After the German bombing of Belgrade, all Croats were ordered to leave the city. My family was forced to march the 400 kilometers from Belgrade to Zagreb. During this forced march, it rained a lot and in the chaos, my mother and grandfather were separated. My grandfather vanished and we never heard from him again.

As a result of my grandfather’s disappearance, my mother was all by herself. She was the only member of the family to survive the difficult forced march to Zagreb. There she tried to make ends meet. She was in contact with Roni’s mother and brothers. Although Roni’s brothers were not overtly active in politics during the war, they did secretly help the Resistance and later worked for the Tito regime. However, they were not Communists. During the war, my mother joined the Resistance against both the Germans and the Ustaše, a Croatian ultra-nationalist group. Roni’s mother also helped by discretely and secretly preparing food for my mother and others.

Even though Roni and I were in America, we followed all developments in Yugoslavia during the war. I have always failed to understand why Hitler wasted his armies to overrun Serbia and Croatia and what the reason was for the needless bombing of Belgrade. The Führer only had to snap his fingers in order to have the two, weak governments at his beck and call. He had all the means to pressure them. As an indication, there was no organised resistance when the Germans invaded Yugoslavia. So why did they have to destroy the parliament building, the police headquarters, the rail station, the editorial office of Pravda and a number of government buildings? It was only after this bombing of Belgrade that General Mihailovic took his troops to the mountains and that Marshal Tito mobilised an army of partisans. Only then did the real massacre start. Roni and I had gotten away just in time.

The plan for my mother to immigrate to America was thwarted when Italy entered the war against the Allies and closed all the exits from Yugoslavia. When the war ended, my mother applied for a visa, but it took a long time for her request to be officially granted. The American consul in Zagreb was inundated with similar requests, and the State Department in Washington seems to have made mistakes which delayed the visa further. In 1949, my mother was finally able to leave for America. She sold off the last of her furniture and jewellery from Vrbovec in order to pay the flight to New York. With my mother’s arrival in America, my last ties with home were severed.

Although my mother moved in with us in Evanston, a suburb of Chicago, she felt out of place in the United States. She did not speak English and had great difficulty adjusting to her new environment. Finally, as a result of a joint decision, we found accommodation for her in a senior care home near Chicago run by German Catholic nuns. This home was on my way to the office and I could visit her every day.

However, she lived for less than a year. She withered like a flower, like a tree not able to survive transplanting. The doctor who looked after her told me she wasn’t suffering any specific illness. She was just fading away.

She remained a quiet, beautiful, kind woman, who never complained.

One morning in May, 1952, as I visited her, she told me she wasn’t feeling too well and asked me for a glass of water. I lifted her up a little so she could drink. She died in my arms without saying anything. I stood there holding her dead body, my heart full of tears. She was buried in All Saints Cemetery in Des Plaines, Illinois. Her portrait is still on the wall of our house at Mt. Beacon Terrace. The quiet, wistfulness of her gentle face seldom fails to move our visitors.