Immigration Experience


This brochure from the 1950s reads, in German, “Refugee Program of the United States."	My parents, brothers and I were among 1,600 German and Eastern European refugees and displaced persons to sail out of Bremerhaven on March 26, 1957 aboard this former troop transporter, the MS General W.C.Langfitt.	The quarters in Bremen for departing refugees. My father is the man in the dark Fedora hat. To his right is his brother, my Uncle Rudy. The young man directly behind is my cousin Michel, and the small boy is my younger brother Rüdiger.	My father looks healthy in this photo. In actuality, the brain abscess he had suffered in late 1952 left him permanently impaired.
Onboard the ship, my father displays his stiff identifying tag and my mother relaxes with one of her Haus Bergman cigarettes. A few days later, my father would ask my mother, “What have we come to, Gila?”	A rare sunny moment on deck. The couple sandwiched between my mother, brother, and me became onboard friends and took all the photographs we have of the voyage.	My brother Gunther and I standing behind my mother (on the left) and a couple she made friends with onboard.	Another sunny but blustery day on deck with my mother and her friend. Passengers could choose to keep to the day room below decks or brave the raw elements aboveboard.
My mother, brothers and me shortly after we boarded. Not understanding English, and being surrounded by people speaking a variety of different languages was unnerving.	Two and a half years after immigrating, my parents still owed the Lutheran Refugee Service a substantial amount of money.	It took them five years to pay the Service back, in increments of $15.00 or $25.00 dollars a month.	If the ocean voyage stretched out dreary, cold, and stormy, the second leg of our journey was a sun-filled ride across the vast stretches of America aboard the amazing Super Chief.
A couple of months after our arrival in Arizona, the Arizona Republic found my family newsworthy.	Unfortunately exiting the doldrums proved difficult for my father when he failed to find suitable work.	Eight years after immigrating, I applied for American citizenship. The following year, 1966, I was proud to recite the Pledge of Allegiance for the first time.