Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Fred Kendal - May 25, 1983

Uh, illegal ships that were leaving from Italy uh, to Israel and they were taking the people of more--the qualified military age or even people of--um, I guess they wanted those people first. People that were--would be able to work and develop at least. That's the impression that we got. ??? really--people with young kids uh, and with youngster kids--they were the last ones to get on. Uh, they did use um, our kibbutz as a decoy a number of times uh, to--they were through--load us up on trucks and we would be going in one direction then we heard--and we really didn't know but they found out later it was--then we heard that, you know, that that ship was loaded and went off from another direction--that they were using that a lot. My Uncle David and his wife uh, he got on and they went off to Israel on one ship and he wound up in Cyprus. And his ship was caught and it was taken to Cyprus and he was in Cyprus for sometime--he and his wife uh, until they were allowed to get to Israel. Uh, meanwhile, while all of this was going on, we--my mother had found out that we have some--that we had watching you--that we had family in the United States. But, she had contacted some people that knew of uh, ??? Here and to Detroit and some of it, there was correspondence that started flowing back and forth. And what happened at that point was that my mother and grandfather had decided that they're going to apply for-- ??? was going to help, ???. Another family asked if they could--with cousins and someone--and they were going to apply for visas to go to United States and whichever was going to come through first--if we wind up going to Israel first, then we go Israel. And if the papers come through and we wind up going to the United States, we go to United States, however we've got to get out from where we're at--from there. And that's how it came to be and uh, it seems that the papers for the United States came through before we were able to go to Israel. And we weren't--went and came to United States. And then my--after we came to United States--I think it's a couple of months later about, Uncle ??? and his family wind up going to Israel, so we have two uncles in Israel, we wound up here. And that's about where it's at.