The experiences of or about an immigrant to America in 500 words or less…NY Times (1999)

A CHILD OF ZELVA

It was one of the small towns known as shtetls that dotted the landscape in a part of Eastern Europe that had at times been part of Lithuania, Poland and, at the turn of this century, Russia. Zelva was in the Pale of Settlement, the only part of the vast Czarist Empire where Jews were permitted to reside. Here, around 1890, in one of the indistinct single‑story wooden buildings that defined the town, Itzhak was born, the second of three children and first son of Boruch and Genendel Freidin.

At the tender age of four, Itzhak lost his father to illness, plunging the family deeper into the impoverishment that already marked their harsh existence. Now, thrust below the level of basic subsistence, Genendel was tearfully forced to send her two oldest children to live with relatives in the city of Bialystok, where Itzhak remained into his teens. But extreme poverty wasn’t the only threat facing Jews in the land of the Czar. Government sponsored pogroms ravaged the Pale, leaving death, destruction and ever greater destitution in their path. And, further decimating the community, all able bodied sons were taken for impressment into the Czar’s army.

Devised to separate the young men from their Jewish roots, the only means of avoiding the dreaded conscription was mutilation or, for those with enough money, emigration. So a doctor was found who would volunteer his services to mutilate poor Itzhak. But when things looked darkest, fortune smiled upon him. While working in a bookstore in Bialystok to send money to his mother, Itzhak had purchased a lottery ticket. Just before he was to undergo the horrid operation, he learned it was a winner: enough for passage to America! 

In 1907, Itzhak Freidin arrived in New York, where his name became Isadore Freed. Needing to earn a living but not knowing any English, he wandered throughout the region selling dry goods, seeking out his landsmen with whom he could communicate in his native Yiddish. Eventually he was able to open a small shop on Orchard Street and marry. Never forgetting those he left behind, Isadore saved diligently until he had enough to bring them over. In 1923 Genendel arrived in New York, able to live out her life in freedom and comfort as part of the family of the son she had to give up so many years before.

The Zelva of Itzhak Freidin is no more; a victim of the Holocaust. If not for him, the entire family would have been counted among its victims. A true hero, the pioneer who bravely led the way, toiling to bring the rest to freedom, to me he was “grandpa”.

Itzhak Freidin/Isadore Freed never became rich. He never became famous. He became an American. And because of his courage, fortitude and self‑sacrifice, so am I, my brother, my sister and cousins, far too numerous to name.  

   6/99

NOTE: Obviously, first prize was going to an immigrant with others filling in the bulk of entries. With 25 additional awards, I figured that I should be able to nab one. So, I received a couple of theater tickets but, alas, everything was published on the internet and, not yet online, I was never able to see them.