10 | JULY 2 • 2020 

Palais Albert Rothschild, Vienna, Austria. It was 
occupied by Adolf Eichmann during the annexation of 
Austria, and the contents were looted by the Nazis. The 
heavily war-damaged building was demolished in 1954. 
Some of the items from the palace were eventually 
recovered by the Rothschild family, who then donated 
them to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

Views

A

s the date of the 70th 
anniversary of my 
parents’
 arrival in New 
York approached, and after 
so many trips to New York, I 
thought it was 
finally time to 
visit Ellis Island 
and the Statue of 
Liberty. 
On the ferry 
to the islands 
and during 
the visit, I was 
struck by the multitudes of 
foreign tourists — catching bits 
of Chinese, French, German, 
Hebrew, Italian and Spanish. 
It was heartening to see these 
visitors from around the world 
witnessing the best of the spirit 
and history of America as a 
nation of immigrants. This 
was the America taking in the 
bereft and the broken to build 
new lives in a young and free 
country. 
After the war, my parents, 
Manya (Maria) Waskobujnik 
Balaj and Boruch (Ben) Balaj, 
made their way west from 
Chelyabinsk, USSR, through 
Russia, Ukraine, Poland, 
Czechoslovakia and Austria, 
eventually arriving in Germany. 
When traveling through 
Vienna, they spent several 
days in the Rothschild 
Palace, which had been 
opened to refugees. They 
slept on the floors, gazing 

at the splendorous remnants 
of a once magnificent home. 
They then spent several years 
in Displaced Persons’
 (DP) 
camps in Wasseralfingen and 
Wetzlar, Germany. 
An exhibit at the Ellis Island 
Museum reminded me of the 
reason they were finally issued 
a visa to the United States. The 
U.S. Congress had passed a 
special Displaced Persons Act 
in 1948, authorizing the admit-
tance of 200,000 DPs. They 
then sailed from Bremerhaven, 
Germany on the US military 
ship, the General Harry Taylor, 
landing in New York on Nov. 
7, 1949.
The exhibits and photos 
highlighted the many waves of 
immigrants throughout U.S. 
history, documenting their 
lives and struggles. There were 
photos of Southern and Eastern 
European immigrants living in 
squalor and poverty, huddled 
together in small, dark, run-
down New York tenements. 
The photos show the haunted 
and frightened faces of immi-
grants working 10-12 hours a 
day, six-seven days a week. The 
exhibits showed that immi-
grants were often employed in 
the most physically demanding, 
difficult, dirty and low-paying 

jobs — working as carpenters 
(“$3.75/day”), miners (“$2.50/
day”), and farmhands (“$5/
week with room & board”). 
And to think that this was bet-
ter than what they left behind! 
My parents bought a used 
Singer sewing machine in 
Germany and loaded it with 
them on the ship to America, 
thinking that my father could 
work as a designer and shoe-
maker, as he had in Poland. 
He eventually established his 
own business in Detroit, toiling 
those long, hard immigrant 
hours. Born in 1915 in a one-
room, clay-floor house in the 
kleyn shtetl (small town) of 
Koretz, Poland, my father even-
tually moved his own family to 
a beautiful four-bedroom home 
in suburban Michigan. 
Ellis Island displays many 
documents about the struggles 
of new immigrants to learn 
English and assimilate into 
American life, building their 
families and pushing their 
children to take full advantage 
of unimaginable opportunities 
in the places from which they 
originated.

Barbara S. 
Balaj

ing cause — fighting for justice 
and the lives of Black people 
— includes a point of personal 
tension — it is time to make 
more dialogue and not the time 
to burn bridges you didn’
t help 
build, nor the time to dismiss the 
reality that within this movement 
there are family and friends. It is 
because we are a moral people 
that we must stand up for Black 
lives, like we and our ancestors 
have in the past.
Anti-racism is the practice 
of identifying, challenging and 
changing the values, structures 
and behaviors that perpetu-
ate systemic racism. I believe 
becoming a nation of anti-racists 
is our Sinai moment (God calling 
us to action) of today. Practicing 
anti-racism can be done Jewishly 
— in accumulative acts of hes-
hbon hanefesh (taking personal 
inventory — or checking your 
own and your loved ones’
 bias-
es), gimmulut chassadim (the 
giving of loving-kindness) and 
in tzedek, tzedek tirdof (justice, 
justice, you shall pursue). 
When the work becomes 
uncomfortable, remember it will 
pale in comparison to the dis-
comfort that Black, Indigenous 
and people of color feel in 
America under the shadow of 
white supremacy. Root your 
anti-racism work with guiding 
values that are inherently Jewish 
but intensely universal as well. It 
is in the ability to balance both 
our internal work — matters of 
the Jewish people and the Jewish 
faith — and in doing external 
work for those who will see 
us as we see them, children of 
Abraham. With this balance we 
can thoroughly heed our God-
given call to do our part in creat-
ing a moral and just society. 

Peruse this list for some anti-rac-
ist resources: https://tinyurl.com/
yaka99u8. Ariana Mentzel is the 
managing director of the Detroit 
Center for Civil Discourse, a nonprofit 
organization with the goal of creating 
a space for meaningful and effective 
conversation between peoples of dif-
fering ideas and experiences.

ANTI-RACIST from page 6

Manya Waskobujnik Balaj
and Boruch Balaj, April 20, 
1946, Chelyabinsk, USSR.

guest column
The 70th Anniversary

PHOTOS COURTESY OF BARBARA BALAJ

continued on page 12

The caption reads: “M.S. 
General Harry Taylor in 
Bremerhaven [Germany] 
before departing for 
America.” The ship now lies 
at the bottom of the Atlantic 
Ocean near Key West, 
Florida, where it functions 
as the world’
s second 
largest artificial reef.

