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Raya Goldenberg and
Avraham Gontovnik:
Living the American Dream

Sonia Pittman: Booster of
the American way of life, but
who remembers her past

HARRY KIRS BAUM

BILL CARROLL
Special to the Jewish News

Staff Writer

A

vraham Gontovnik, born in a Berlin dis-
placed persons' camp in 1947, sits on the
backyard deck of his Huntington Woods
home sipping coffee on a beautiful mid-
summer morning before heading to work.
An explosion of color from the flowerbeds sur-
rounds the neatly trimmed yard. Life is good.
His wife of 23 years, Raya Goldenberg, born in
Israel, already has left for another 10-hour shift as a
psychiatric social worker at Beaumont Hospital in
Royal Oak. She's the one with the green thumb.
It took one part serendipity and one part luck for
Avraham Gontovnik and Raya Goldenberg, immi-
grants from two separate countries — two separate
worlds really — to find each other in Detroit and
grab their piece of the American dream.
Gontovnik's Russian mother worked in slave labor
camps during the war, while his Polish father fought
as a partisan against the Nazis. They met and married
in Vilna after the war, and decided to make aliyah to
Israel, even though Gontovnik's aunt lived in Brazil
and sent them all the papers to emigrate. .
"My father had to declare that they weren't Jews to
get approval," Gontovnik says. "He said, After all I
went through, I'm not doing it.' "
GONTOVNIK on page 16

onia Pittman's first "taste" of America was a
bite into an unpeeled banana when she
arrived here 79 years ago. The teenager had
never seen a banana in her native Russia,
and didn't know it had to be peeled. But she quickly
learned American customs as well as English as she
became acquainted with her adopted country.
Now 94, Pittman of Oak Park is spry and ener-
getic, and an articulate booster of the American way
of life. She is "proud to be an American because no
one stops you from doing anything you want to." In
her case, she became an amateur writer in recent years
and has received recognition and praise for her work.
Born in Minsk as Sonia Ukofsky, she came to the
United States in 1923 with her parents, sister and
two brothers. Relatives who already had made the
trek to the land of freedom provided financial assis-
tance. The Ukofskys traveled through Poland,
Germany, France and England before taking their
ocean voyage of almost six days to the U.S. Pittman
still keeps an antique kiddush cup set in her apart-
ment as a memento of her early years in Russia and
her travels. She feels the set helped guarantee safe pas-
sage on her journeys.
"It took us a long time to go from point to point
PITTMAN on page 17

Ai

7/ 5

2002

