Henry Roth - Australia
Nov. 16, 2005
If America is made of stories filled with immigration, then ours is an American one.
We have such a rich and proud heritage, very diverse from a social perspective coming from my parents. Ours, like everyone's, is a history of our survival.
As Jewish people.
As human beings
As New Yorkers
My Mother Aneta Baral (maiden name) was born in Krakow Poland. My Mother's family was very established and was one of the wealthiest families pre World War 2. They had the first phone, the first car, the first ice box.
My grandfather (Samek, which is my given middle name in his honor) was a furrier, he traded furs, traveling to London on Commercial Mail Flights before the industry opened to the current commercial passenger business we know today. He would wear British tailored suits and bowler hats. Coming from Poland, with such a different sense of style and at a time when people just were not exposed to such clothing, I now realize he was indeed very individual. A personality.
My Mother's Family was considered upper class. They had two minders at home and they were taught German as their first language. The irony being that this same language would be the one used to give orders for the deaths of so many people in a ruthless genocide.
My father comes from a line of Orthodox Jewish Rabbis. Chatom Sofer Schreiber. It is as pure a lineage of religiosity as if he were to come from the line of the Pope in Rome. They lived in a small village (shtetel), mainly comprised of Jewish people. Forbidden to own land it is how the Jewish people became merchants. Land was everything and so, Merchants as we know them today were not successful or rich. The economy many years later started to shift from agriculture to commerce.
My father told me that Easter was anticipated with such dread and trepidation that he feels that sickly feeling every Easter. The popular and now recognized to be false and discredited notion that Jewish people killed Jesus Christ was not what Jewish people needed to hear. On that holiday, my father and his fellow villagers endured frenzied, violent, drunkard gangs, hoodlums, thieves, professional haters and racists with torches lit as they scavenged through the cobbled streets throwing rocks and hurling lit torches through the glass windows of the homes.
Many Years before the Nazis marched through into fertile Jewish hating territory (The story is long and of course has many bends. Many.) my sisters I were born in Australia....first generation of holocaust survivors. Both sides of our families perished, gassed, starved, shot or went to cruel deaths that ended their existence.
My Mother and her family settled in Sydney, Australia after 6 or so years living in Palestine. They saw Palestine's independence into a Jewish homeland and could not live with the fear of war any more. My father had relatives in Australia who settled pre World War 2.
After a few years and a sponsorship processing that makes getting a US green card look like a walk in the Shade, My father and his mother arrived via boat from Paris. I think it was six weeks. He took care of his Mother like a Solider. Conditions were not safe. They landed and immediately were ostracized by the native Australians, who really were shocked by this first wave of non English speaking, foreign looking, non vegemite and beer drinking aliens. My Father's Australian family, so many years part of the repressed Anglo Saxon Society of Britain that acceptance meant "blending" into the Fabric of society. Shortened names, shortened hair, fluent as non accented as possible accents. My parents told me that they felt that they had landed on mars.
Interestingly enough, I must admit, Australia always feels a little foreign to me. I studied in an incredibly closed environment, an all Jewish day school that shielded me from the outside world. My Parents love Australia with all their hearts now. They bless the freedom, mannered people of British values, open spaces, and an education we all were given.
My sisters and I are all now living in New York. I used to think New York was always going to become part of living, part of our lives. Each year, from as young as 6, either my sisters Lilian and Michelle or I would alternate and fly with my parents to New York. Their bridal business required buying fabrics and accessories.
We flew when engines were jet propelled. The noise and fumes remain with me forever.
Many years past, we all went to University in Australia and Sydney University. My parents dreamt it for us. It was subliminal that we were all to get degrees as insurance. No one can take a degree and knowledge from you. After the war, stripped of all they had ever had, they were stripped of the humanity of knowledge. Their intelligence, however, I draw on daily. Michelle and I operate and run a bridal business in Mid Town Manhattan; we speak often about the strategies and issues their advice can respond to. They are extraordinary people who told me that they would never retire, as there is no future in it.
Michelle came to live in NYC first about 19 years ago. Truth be refreshing, when you have traveled so much, it is almost inevitable to eventually live away from Australia. It has been about 19 years and she is an American and Australian Citizen. She is so incredibly grounded that I am certain I would many a time have given up the dream of the illusive carrot dangled in front of us.... all who live and who have came to America. The lure of tremendous success, the lure of ultimate achievement, the lure to make our parents most proud, if at all possible, so incredibly proud are they of us.
My Sister Lilian, an architect, went through her first years mainly crying. She had to re study and sit for qualification exams for her professional skills of architecture to be recognized. The first two years were heart breaking years. It was so hard to understand the motivations, the pace, the nerves, the gruffness, the roughness, the grandeur, the lure of success.
I arrived 8 years ago. Michelle opened a Bridal salon on 57th street. I was operating my parent's Bridal Wholesale business in Sydney. I did not need to leave. The beach was 15 minutes away by car. Crystal clear water, summers that kissed the country, clients that knew my parents for 40 years or so. Yet I ran. I could not take the claustrophobia, the remoteness. My issues alone. Yet mine nevertheless. If I had had a crystal ball, and would have seen the hardship, soul destroying, heart wrenching, nerve racking insanity that has been part of it all, I admit, knowing willingly that I must be insane, I would never had turned back.
Oh, New York, the teacher of all. New York, our lover and our enemy. You have to live it, breath it, survive it and learn it. The wealth of the experience is one that I can't believe I had to go through and yet has in turn created a Henry I know not. So different, so the same, yet, something is now implanted. I feel New York.
We are now seeing wonderful light at the end of 8 tough as nails, eating glass for breakfast years. We are now wholesale only, in 100+ stores America wide. The pace and demands increase, yet, at least now I can see some fruits, albeit tiny little grapes on a vine.
Only America could allow you the reinvention of business and self. I had a cable Network Show called Style court, and I could indulge in all the personalities an intense Gemini could possibly want. From Hip hop and rap clubs that I am crazy for, to Mid Town Business, to a DJ sound system that is in my apartment, New York is certainly a lady that closes her eyes, shuts her ears and lets you be, do and say whoever you want to be that moment.
The fluidity, the electricity, the dream to really be, the lessons to learn to cope is like no other. Nothing makes sense in so many ways here. I realize it need not. New York will always be the Grande dame and your lover, your worst fears and a thief of hearts, should and hope. The tight rope of life. My city of dreams, desire and damnation. The Mother that births the possibilities of your soul and the warden who locks your confidence away.