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Emerich Grinbaum - January 8, 2001

Um, that was very resourceful to do all, all this. Were youthinking at the time that this would be your, your, your chosen place, thatyou wanted to come to the United States?

No.

You didn't think about that.

First of all until the '60s there was no question about leaving,uh.

Ah, they weren't letting.

We couldn't visit even Hungary. In Hungary we started visitingHungary in the mid-sixties. Before that there was isolation totally. In theseventies, end of sixties-seventies they started letting out. We applied in'73, but we applied, we applied to Israel because that's uh, no, sorry, Israellater. I had an uncle here and usually people applied mostly to Israel orto America but those who had close relatives-brothers, sisters, parents. Somegot permission to go to uncle, to the uncle. But not much, not many. So weapplied to go to the uncle, uncle. And that was denied for many years. I uh,I again, again, every two months I, I a...applied again and again and theydidn't let me go. So uh, you know, I wanted to go to Israel. I wanted to goto Israel. But my wife didn't want to go. If you would have applied to Israel,maybe we'd have, get uh, permission earlier. So finally we applied to Israeland uh, we got the permission to Israel. And then we went, we arrived to Viennaand then we stayed in Vienna and then become because, you know. Uh-we, I didn'twant to come to the United States first of all for two reasons. Because Iwas brought up very much in very Zionist you know, in the Hebrew school whichI was ???, my, my dreams were always to go to Israel. My wife was not youknow, she's Jewish but she doesn't-didn't have any Zionist up...upbringingor something. Secondly, I was afraid to come to America because I knew thatin Israel I can work immediately. In America I have to go through the tortureof all the exams and residency, I have some idea. And I was at that time lateforties. So that was not the right, right age.

Now when did you get married?

Uh, in 1960. So at, at that, so at that time, at the time-butyou know, finally we decided to go to America. My uncle told me that uh, youknow, of course, we are going to help you until you learn, studying and Ihave cousins here. Uh, so, so we decided to come here.

And did you have children at that point?

Sure, two children. It was not a very, very difficult time to,to go through the studies and we were ready. We were the poorest doctors in,in the United States at that time.