Recently, my Cousin Robert, who is the keeper of our family genealogy, reminded me that 2004 was the one-hundredth anniversary of Grandpa Sam Einhorn’s voyage to America from his home in czarist Russia. This summer, while in New York City on business and having a few hours to spare, I decided to pay tribute to that milestone and visit Ellis Island for the first time. Ellis Island was a place I often viewed from afar and had always promised myself to explore, but never had. Now, while waiting for the ferry to take me there, I decided to write this personal remembrance.



Over the years I often wondered about what motivated Grandpa Sam to pack his meager belongings, leave his home and trek by horse, cart, and primitive train all the way to Hamburg, Germany to board the SS Bluecher and sail in steerage to a far off land called America. The simple answer, I decided, was freedom. The complexity lay in its definition for him.



First and foremost, I believe it meant freedom from a world of pogroms and other overt symbols of persecution and hatred. Secondly, it meant an opportunity to provide materially for his growing family, which had been limited both by edict and circumstance. America was that far off place he had only read about in newspapers or an occasional letter from his brother Max, who had emigrated five years earlier. The word filtering back was that America was tolerant. That image imbued Sam with the most important idea his mind had yet imagined: America represented hope. It was opportunity and freedom for sure, but, at bottom, it was hope. He simply had to come to America.



And so he did, in steerage. Conditions on these ships were so deplorable, a report was sent to President Taft describing the experience of steerage passengers. ”…. deck space for steerage passengers is very limited, in the worst part of the ship, and subject to the most violent motion. The unattended vomit of the many seasick, the odors of bodies, the reek of food and awful stench of nearby toilets make the atmosphere of steerage such that it is a marvel that human flesh can endure it…Most immigrants lie in their berths for most of the voyage, in a stupor caused by the foul air. The food often repels them. It is almost impossible to keep personally clean. These conditions are aggravated by the massive crowding…”



After experiencing those conditions for fourteen days at sea, the sight of the Statue of Liberty must have been overwhelming to Grandpa Sam. Most likely he was exhilarated, thankful and apprehensive all at the same time. Exhilarated, for seeing the culmination of his long and desperate journey and finally arriving as one of the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free”; thankful, for being on the receiving end of God’s protective blessing; apprehensive, because he was starting a new life in a strange new land. He spoke no English. He had only the flimsy promise of a job in New London, Connecticut as a woodcutter. And, he had to find a home for his wife Annie and their two small children who were still in Europe waiting to join him.



One vital possession was lost along the way. His name. When the registrar of the ship manifest in Hamburg, Germany asked him his name, he answered (like thousands of others) in Yiddish. In his orthodox world and in the synagogue itself, he was not known as Samuel Einhorn; he was Shmuel Yitzkak, HaKohain, (Samuel Isaac, the Cohen). The term Cohen designated and distinguished those members of the priestly class, considered to be directly descended from Aaron, the brother of Moses. In religious life it was an important element but, in the outside world, it was meaningless. Nevertheless, to the German record-keepers expecting to hear a traditional first and last name, Samuel and Cohen are what they heard and what they wrote. Later, at Ellis Island, immigration officers, merely reading from the ship manifest, perpetuated the error. It would be several years before he had the confidence of citizenship to legally change it back from Cohen to Einhorn, the name my mother was born under. (Interestingly, my paternal grandfather, Louis Fabish, who also arrived in America as Louis Cohen, never bothered to change his name back to Fabish and thus gave me the name I have today.)



After enduring endless immigration procedures, Sam was picked up at Ellis Island by his brother Max and taken to New London. There, he started working as a woodcutter and peddler and, one year later, finally sent for his wife Annie and their two children to join him in America. Tragically, her voyage was less successful, as one child died on the way to Hamburg and the other succumbed to the wretched conditions, dieing on board just as the SS Deutschland was passing the Statue of Liberty! Heartbroken, yet intent on creating a new family and a new life in New London, Sam and Annie settled into their home on 31 Morgan Street. This was the house where my mother Alice and her five siblings, Arthur, Harry, Rose, Morris, and Pearl were born. It’s where my mother and father lived when they got married and it’s also the house where my sister and I lived during our early, formative years. By the time we left that house in 1957, Dorothy was thirteen and I was nine.



In 1947, when I was born, Grandma Annie had already died. All I knew of her were stories my mother would tell me, and a few pictures in an album. Not so for Grandpa Sam. Already a man in his seventies and eighties during my years living with him, he was quite an icon and seemed larger than life. With his thick accent, he was often difficult to decipher but, somehow, always easy to understand. Even now his wisdom resonates as, from time to time, I still hear in my own words, his simple truths.



Fate had made Grandpa Sam both my grandfather and my father figure. In 1951, my father left our house one day, never to return. (Coincidently, this year, 2004, my oldest grandson Jack will be turning three; the age I was when my father deserted our family.) With little in the way of support, my mother turned to her father for help and we continued to live in Grandpa Sam’s house until 1957 when our mother fell ill and my sister and I moved to Aunt Pearl and Uncle Al’s house in Bloomfield. That trip, in a strange way, was to me like the voyage to America was for Grandpa Sam. While Bloomfield held out the promise of hope, security and a chance for a better life, it also meant uncertainty. Aunt Pearl and Uncle Al already had three small boys of their own. We were quite cramped in their house. What would the future hold for me? How long would it last? In the end, just like Grandpa Sam had the Statue of Liberty, that small house on Musket Trail became my beacon and my refuge and, to this day, the comforting voice of Aunt Pearl remains the sweetest sound I ever heard.



But, to a nine year old, those were daunting times, with lots of lingering questions. Interestingly, it was my memory of Grandpa Sam’s stories about his life struggles that helped me get through my own uncertainties. I would recall how my sister and I had played cards with Grandpa Sam as he regaled us, at our urging, about his days in the Russian army; how they mistreated and taunted him because he was Jewish and how they would tease him with strips of pork, but, he would say proudly, even though hungry, he refused them. His stories were always told in an animated way with hands flailing as his voice rose and fell. My favorite was about his escape from an army pogrom by jumping on a white horse and dashing across a bridge at night. I don’t know how true it all was (and I guess if it was he was a deserter!) but I used to visualize and imagine that scene over and over again as I daydreamed about my Grandpa as superhero.



So now, at fifty six, with a wonderful wife, two phenomenal daughters, two great sons in law and four precious grandchildren, I come to Ellis Island, on a sunny summer day, to discover my past and to say thank you to Grandpa Sam, for his love, his wisdom, his guidance, and most of all, his courage in taking that fateful and momentous journey one hundred years ago.