Lisa Hoffman & Charles Atkins, MD

Published June 22, 2006

Charlie writes:

Lisa and I, like many of you, have been following the debate on immigration. It’s a complicated issue that can’t be summed up with pithy political sound bites. So where Lisa is a naturalized citizen and I’m a second generation American, we thought it might be interesting to tell a bit of our own stories. After all, with the exception of Native Americans, we truly are a nation of immigrants.

"I am deluged," Lisa begins,"with forms and questionnaires from different political organizations asking me how I feel about this issue. I have mixed feelings. As a refugee from Nazi oppression I cannot but think back to the time when I tried everything in my power to come to this country. There were so many obstacles. To start, I always wanted to come to America, but couldn’t. During the 1930s you needed somebody to sponsor you, and to guarantee that you wouldn’t become a burden. While I did have some relatives in this country, my mother was unable to find anyone willing to sponsor me. Meanwhile, the Nazi oppression worsened, and the only remaining exit was to go to England as a servant. Even that was a perilous undertaking. I had no prior experience as a domestic and needed a Visa and permits from the British Home Office to be allowed into the country. I had to find people willing to vouch for me, and even to stretch the truth, which if discovered by the Nazis could have been catastrophic. It was the Quakers, who finally came through and wrote a letter stating that I had been a domestic in Germany; it wasn’t true, but it saved my life. I am forever in their debt.

"To give a sense of the timeframe, I arrived in England on the 18^th of August 1939 and two weeks later war was declared between Germany and England. I was cut off from all communication with my parents and younger brother, who were unable to leave Germany. Because England was now at war with my birth country I also had to register with the police as an enemy alien.

"For the seven years I remained in England I never stopped in my efforts to come to the United States. I did everything I could think of. I’d look through U.S. telephone books and pick out every Hoffman I could find and write to them asking if they could help me and serve as my guarantor. Finally, I found a Good Samaritan stranger, who like the Quakers back in Germany, became my sponsor. This was just one step in a process that took years. My name then went onto a waiting list, where there were quotas for how many immigrants from each country would be allowed to enter the United States.

"It wasn’t until after the war had ended that my name came up on the list. I sold everything I had of value to purchase boat fare and on May 1946 I boarded the S.S. Drottningholm. The voyage was bare bones on a ship that had been used to transport repatriated soldiers; I shared a tiny cabin with three other girls, and it seemed that someone was always sea sick. I arrived in America with no money and the same ten suitcases with which I’d left Germany. It would take another five years for me to achieve American Citizenship; that was the proudest day of my life."

"For my family," I say, "It was an earlier generation mostly fleeing religious persecution. My great-grandparents and grandparents came from tiny Jewish villages (shtetel) in what is now Russia. Living conditions were poor and violent attacks (pogroms) were common—think Fiddler on the Roof without the music and the dancing. They came through Ellis Island and settled in Boston.

"My great-grandfather and grandfather arrived first in 1902. It wasn’t until the midst of World War I that enough money had been saved to bring over the rest of the family—my great-grandmother and their five other children. They came with little money and started on the path of the great American dream. My Great Grandfather Jacob, who had been a diamond cutter in Russia, became a wholesale candy peddler. His son Harry became a furrier, their children including my father all went on to college—the men taking advantage of the GI bill following World War II and the Korean War. My Dad became a PhD researcher who married a teacher; their children are doctors, writers and artisans. As I look at the old family pictures—my great grandfather’s horse-drawn cart and the stiffly posed just-off-the-boat portrait that has my blonde-haired grandmother being held in my other great-grandmother’s lap, I choke up when I realize that it wasn’t that long ago that we came to this country."

My family, like Lisa, came looking for a better life, freedom from persecution, and some sense of safety. As I was writing this column I grabbed a couple books on the topic of immigration, and realized that the reasons why people have come to America haven’t changed, whether we’re talking about the first settlers, the Irish, the Italians, the Germans, the Eastern Europeans, or more recently, people from Latin America. The other thing that jumps off the pages is that America does not typically welcome newcomers with open arms. It makes sense that these attitudes exist, after all most immigrants arrive with very little. There’s a genuine concern that the new arrivals will overburden the system and bring everything crashing down. Although the history of our country—and our own very personal histories--would argue that this is not the case.

"I guess that’s the one other thing we have in common," Lisa says. "We all come to this country with a dream and not a whole lot else. Once we’re here, it’s up to us to make it a reality."

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