Pauline Kleinberg - October 28, 1982
Life in New Orleans
That's how it was. I cried everyday. I just couldn't get no people. So my little boy said "Mom"-- he was talking about--"why are you crying?" I said, "A headache." Next day I said I had a headache. "You had a headache again?" I said, "I get a headache here everyday." We had--in the meantime I was in contact with some of my--with one of my cousins which came to New York, to uh, right where Central is. And he had one of my friends which went to Chicago and I had one of my friends here. And we were writing letters and I said, "I don't know why--I, I feel I going back to Germany to DP camp, even I haven't left anything there. I, I feel like I'm not going to make it here. I--I'm too lonely and, and it's too strange." You know, you don't know the language, strange face, strange language, strange food. I was afraid to go in the supermarket actually bring home dog food, I did not stand it here. So--and he was writing to his uh, uh, you know, to his boyfriend. So this boyfriend said--he said, "There's a lot of us here, everyone is finding jobs. But I suggest that you should come, find out for yourself. If you like it, then you send for your wife and child." My cousin wrote me back uh, all over, we're giving--it's is hard all over. My sister said, all of a few things that she brought and she also had a, a child the same age had the measles, she's rotting somewhere away, she can't even see her. They took her away because they said, "You belong to Richmond, Virginia where your affidavit is." They had their room and all this. And she said she wouldn't part because she's waiting for me. She said, "You know what, I'm, I'm rotting here somewhere in a hotel, you come and we'll rot together." And my--and thi...this was the letters. And my cousin said, "In the beginning it's all over hard." And this one friend from here, she, she said, "If Avrum is willing to work here"--I, I knew it's, it's an industrial uh, state--"if he wants to work it's a lack of uh, workers." It was the war in Korea, if you--the war, yeah. Where was the war? In, in, in...
Husband: In '51 was the war.
...in '51 uh, in Viet...in Korea, yeah. The war in Korea. And, and it was a shortage of labor.
© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn