-
The Liberal Union Behind the IRS
May 16, 2013 | 140 comments
-
Cumulus Media: Suicide of a Company?
May 14, 2013 | 64 comments
-
From Bimbos to Benghazi
May 9, 2013 | 150 comments
-
The Plantation President
May 7, 2013 | 116 comments
-
Liberal Group Cited in Terrorism Case
May 2, 2013 | 80 comments
Special Report
Walking to America
A Fourth of July remembrance of one boy’s journey to the land of his dreams.
Schmuel knew.
Schmuel was Schmuel Gelbfisz, born in Warsaw, Poland, in July 1879.
He was the eldest child of Hannah and Aaron Gelbfisz, who were Hasidic Jews. The family had lived in Poland for generations. Schmuel was the oldest of six children.
Two years after Schmuel was born, the Russian Czar Alexander II was assassinated and the blame was laid — falsely — to Jews. The Russian pogroms began. Tens of thousands of Jews fled to Warsaw, then an outpost of the Russian Empire. While this provided a safe haven of sorts, pretty soon the wave of anti-Semitism that had so murderously swamped Russia itself spread to the Russian-ruled Poland. Polish Jews were subjected to violence, to restrictive laws and higher taxes specifically targeted at Jews.
The impoverished Gelbfisz family of eight lived in two rooms in the Jewish sector of Warsaw, survived on a diet of potatoes, frequently eating nothing but potatoes for an entire week. Schmuel would later remember his Polish childhood as both constantly fearful — of anti-Jewish violence — and “poor, poor, poor.”
Aaron, the father, died at 43 when Schmuel was 15. Realizing his mother would survive with the support of his brothers and sisters, Schmuel began to nurse what he called a “fantasy.”
“When I was a kid,” Schmuel said much later in life, “the only place I wanted to go was to America. I had heard them talking about America, about how people were free in America…. Even then America, actually only the name of a faraway country, was a vision of paradise.”
And so, at the age of 16, with his mother’s blessing and nothing but the clothes on his back and a small amount of coins in his pocket, Schmuel left for America the only way he knew how.
He walked.
First he walked 300 miles to the Oder River. There he used some of his coins to get someone to ferry him across. Schmuel then walked another 200 miles to Hamburg, Germany. There he stayed for a bit, cried off and on, found a meager job through a Warsaw family that had long ago emigrated to Hamburg. Schmuel learned the trade of glove making — and the head of the Jewish family who employed him canvassed the Jewish community to help raise the eighteen schillings Schmuel needed to afford passage on a boat train to London.
In London, still poor, Schmuel existed by stealing food and eating scraps, sleeping in the bushes of Hyde Park. Finally, he started walking again, this time 120 miles from London to the English Midlands. Finally, exhausted, he walked into Birmingham where he located his mother’s sister and her husband. He was welcomed with open arms — but they had no money to support a boy in his late teens. Scrawny, underweight, Schmuel was hired as a blacksmith’s apprentice. He was fired, too weak to do the job. He tried again — and again and again and again — at jobs that, in industrial Birmingham, inevitably required backbreaking physical labor. Schmuel was fired from all of them. At night, in his aunt’s home, he sobbed at his continued failures.
Not knowing what else to do, the aunt handed him over to another set of relatives, one of whom told him it would be necessary to Anglicize his name if he were to distance himself from his thoroughly Jewish heritage. Schmuel Gelbfisz was now known as Samuel Goldfish, and his relatives began calling him “Sam.”
During this period, Great Britain was celebrating Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee — marking the monarch’s 60th year on throne. Just as Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee would be celebrated in June of 2012, Britain was awash in pomp and splendor. The impoverished Sam Goldfish, now selling sponges and not doing well with his sales, quietly took note of it all — the displays of wealth and comfort, of fine clothes, perfect speech, the careful attention to physical appearance and the air of self-confidence from those associated with the British upper classes. He was so close to it all — yet so far.
While Sam spoke some Polish and could read and write Hebrew, his mother tongue was Yiddish. That had to change, he decided, so he began to study English. He came across one particular quote in his English reader that would stick with him. The quote was from Benjamin Franklin, who had written it in an essay Franklin titled “Information for Those Who Would Remove to America.” The quote?
America, where people do not inquire of a stranger, “What is he?” but “What can he do?”
About the Author
Jeffrey Lord is a former Reagan White House political director and author. He writes from Pennsylvania at jlpa1@aol.com.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (16) | Leave a comment
More Articles by Jeffrey Lord
More Articles From Special Report
http://spectator.org/archives/2012/07/03/walking-to-america
Follow us:
ADVERTISEMENT
SPONSORED LINKS
FLASHBACK TO: 1995
-
Pope Culture
A man of faith in a godless age is hitting Americans where it hurts.
-
Why the GOP Does Not, Like, Totally Suck
Mr. and Mrs. American Spectator Reader, let P.J. O’Rourke talk sense to your kids.
-
Dames at Sea
-
In the Absence of Guns
In Britain, defending your property can get you life.
-
The Metaphysical Martini
-
Counting the Costs of Clintonism
The debacle of this president’s administration is both a cause and a symptom of the decline of American values. Unless Congress impeaches him, that decline will go on unchecked. An eminent jurist surveys the damage and assesses the chances for the recovery of our culture.
-
Chuck McHagel
It won’t take long for conservatives to scratch this presidential wannabe off their 2008 scorecard.
-
The Legacy of Old John and Mother Fresh-Roasted
-
It’s the Best Time of the Year
The American Christmas, like the songs that celebrate it, makes room for everybody under the rainbow. Is that why so many people seem to be hostile to it?
-
The Bush Crack-Up
Was the President done in by the economy, or by the politics of the economy?
Clip of the Day
ADVERTISEMENT
SCMike| 7.3.12 @ 7:09AM
Fitting and timely.
Thank you.
TLP| 7.3.12 @ 8:13AM
Big Deal.
We have Jewish Movie Moguls too, ya know. They're all Liberals, now, and they make lots of Movies about America.
How it Sucks. How it's Racist, and Evil, and Greedy, and Exploiting the rest of the world to pay for all of the Golden Toilet Seats that ONLY Rich Republicans sit on.
They make Movies of America's Armed Forces RAPING little Girls in Vietnam, and Murdering Innocent Civilians in the dead of night, in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Syriana. In the Valley of Eli. Jarhead. Full Metal Jacket. Platoon. The list is ENDLESS.
George Clooney. Mark Wahlberg. William DeVoe. Ben Affleck. Tommy Lee Jones. Not a Veteran in the bunch. There never is.
Everything is a Conspiracy, with the U.S. in the lead.
Ever Businessman is a Thieving, Lying, Crook, who washes his Lamborghini with the Tears from his exploited sweat shop workers. Every Democrat is Captain America, to the Republicans Red Skull, and it's THE MAIN STREAM MEDIA, that we owe all of our Freedoms, and Liberties to, for putting out THE TRUTH. (as they define it)
THE END.
That's why we join the Services.
So these Ccksckrs can tee off on us whenever they get the urge.
What a Country.
Moe Blotz| 7.3.12 @ 8:25AM
Happy Independence Day to you, Mr. Lord, and to all curmudgeons, trolls, Patriots, wingers (left and right); Americans all. We celebrate the birth of this country where we can freely express our opinions and disagree. How boring indeed if everybody thought the same way. Value your Liberty, for Liberty lost is lost forever.
Slacker| 7.3.12 @ 2:46PM
The tyrannical shit bags who rule my city outlawed all fireworks, even sparklers. Square that with your imaginary liberty.
Moe Blotz| 7.3.12 @ 8:10PM
Your moniker, Slacker, says more about you and your mind set than any retort with which I could respond.
Butch| 7.4.12 @ 5:47PM
Your city is late to the Agenda 21 party, Slacker. Probably used "fire safety" as an excuse. So your block party/cookout couldn't shoot off fireworks for your kids, but I'll bet you city provided you with a genuine "public" fireworks show where you could fight for a parking place and rub elbows with all the stoners, drunks, Crips, Bloods, homeless beggers, pickpockets, purse snatchers, wedgie-show-ers, f-word-right-in-front-of-children-sayers, and other assorted "patriots."
People still shoot 'em off in my city, it's hard to police, but its getting harder and harder. Needless to say, the neighbors who don't get invited to the cookout because they are the same types who make sure all the smokers are made to cease have started to call the cops on you using the special 311 number the city established--and uses your tax dollars to promote via media, extensively. After all, someone, somewhere out there just might be celebrating, and having a good time. We can't have that.
Ken (Old Texican)| 7.3.12 @ 9:36AM
Jeffrey,
thank you.
Nancy in NC| 7.3.12 @ 10:01AM
Thanks for an uplifting story that reminds of all of what we are on the verge of losing.
I have had several occasions of meeting people who have come here from Russia, Cuba, and other despotic places, and they are sick about what is happening here, as they have seen it all before. Too bad that so many Americans are so lazy and complacent they have no idea of what they are about to lose...the opportunity to pursue your dream, regardless of your background. Now only the elite need apply.
Who Knows?| 7.3.12 @ 11:13AM
What a mensch! What a different time.
Further proof that conventional wisdom is usually not just wrong, but egregiously so, is provided by the whole debate about immigration. It seems like this war of ideas, of “reform”, has been going on forever---and, indeed, I posit that it is perhaps a seminal either-or.
With some 300,000,000 Americans, pols must pander to voters to win. Thus, the “America First” types focus on what they perceive to be the good of the country, not the people like Sam Goldwyn, the eager immigrants.
Whereas, in truth, the REAL America needs the immigrants, more than the immigrants need America. But, that is not popular, since the majority of voters like their own “piece of the freedom pie”, and don’t want any competition.
Of course, there are many ways to be an immigrant.
As the world, hopefully, continues to solve the survival equations, so that everyone can at least not starve to death, there will always be those “open fields” that Lincoln wrote about. That means humans CAN have the opportunity to “immigrate” to different “lands”, even when seemingly staying in place.
It’s not as Peggy Lee sang, “Is that all there is?”
No, one is always Truly free to “immigrate” in Consciousness, by freeing attention to observe, understand, and Transcend WHATEVER seems to arise.
Even now.
Albert Constantine Jr.| 7.3.12 @ 12:11PM
Once people walked or otherwise came here to be free and have opportunity. Today, too many come here for “Free benefits” such as food stamps, medical care and public education.
EyeOnFreedom | 7.3.12 @ 2:25PM
Extraordinary piece! Very well done!
Johnimo| 7.3.12 @ 10:56PM
Thank you Jeffrey, for an inspirational story about a great man who was "American" long before his arrival in North America. I recently heard a memorable quote: "Everything you want is just beyond your fear." What a shame that so many choose security rather than their dreams.
Maxwell| 7.4.12 @ 9:03AM
I know today is July 4th and most people will not be reading The Spectator but I will add a few words. This past Monday Princeton held its fireworks celebration. As always it is very well attended. To avoid the crowd and the traffic jam that follows the conclusion of the display Lori & I sat in the parking lot on the tail gate of my pick up truck.
While the fireworks display was a wonderful celebration a few events stick in my mind. First, when the announcement to stand for The National Anthem was made a man about my age got out of his mini van, took off his baseball hat and stood at attention. Second, I think of my father who served in WW1 in a Mounted Artillery battery and our family's only grand daughter who served in Iraq and was killed by an IED.
So, you may ask, Maxwell, why the post? Because what will stand out in my mind the most is a parent letting his kid 'take a dump' in the parking lot. They were not American, from South of the Border, Oriental, or from a poor European country. I hope this is not where we are heading as a great country.
Finzi Holst| 7.4.12 @ 2:39PM
Dear Maxwell-
Place a Constitution on the ground and you would have what the Obama Administration does to this country every day.
Sorry about your granddaughter. But I am grateful for her service -- and her courage.
Best,
FH
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." -- C. S. Lewis
TLP| 7.4.12 @ 4:32PM
You drove your PICKUP TRUCK to the 4th of July Fireworks with your WIFE?
You're from a MILITARY FAMILY?
And, you watched the Fireworks from the TAILGATE OF YOUR TRUCK?
You, my friend, are at the Top of Bull Dyke Napolatano's Terrorist Watch List.
God help you, if you have a Gun Rack, Fly the Flag, and go to CHURCH on Sundays.
God help us all.
Bob K| 7.4.12 @ 6:20PM
Thanks for this inspiring article, Mr. Lord.
I'm e-mailing it to my sons.