Randi Kreiss

Honor Labor Day by welcoming new workers

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I don’t know about you, but my ancestors weren’t born here.

In 1910, a 13-year-old boy from Odessa, traveling alone, boarded a ship with a ticket that entitled him to a bunk in steerage, and he set sail for America. Oh, how I wish I knew the story of that journey. What made him brave enough to go? Who did he leave behind? What made life in Russia so awful that fleeing seemed the only good option?

I do know that Grandpa Morris’s older brother, Sam, had preceded him, so when Morris landed at Ellis Island, he had a place to go and a job. He worked as a tailor for his entire life; he married Anna and they had four kids, one of whom is my mother.

On the paternal side, my grandmother Gertrude came here from Austria when she was 2 years old, also on a ship, in steerage. The blank pages of her history, the unknown story of her parents’ flight from Europe, speak to the mindset of the new Jewish immigrants. They didn’t want to talk about life in the old country. They wanted to be Yankees. They were ashamed of their accents and their European ways. They found a new life, but we, their children and grandchildren, lost their history and ours.

Grandma Gertie married Grandpa Willie, and when he got sick in his 20s and couldn’t work, she opened an awning business in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and she supported her husband and their two sons, one of whom is my father.

What they all had in common was an urgent need for a better life and a willingness to work hard for food and education and freedom.

As Labor Day approaches, I’m thinking about my immigrant beginnings and the biggest story of our time: the great migration of people around the world. From the millions who have crossed the Mexican border to find work and safe haven in America to the millions who are fleeing turmoil in the Middle East and Asia, the theme is simple: People who have nothing to lose are willing to risk everything for a new life in a better place.

Migrants setting sail in leaking boats have been washing up by the thousands in recent months on beaches from Greece to Italy to France. In Asia, tens of thousands of refugees from Myanmar have landed in Malaysia, seeking asylum from religious persecution.

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