Ben Moche - April 24, 2009
Choosing a New Land
And we were given choices once we were in the hands of the Americans, you know.
Yeah.
Uh, we were given choices.
Mm-hm.
We didn't have to go to Israel.
Uh-huh.
We could have gone to Canada
Ahh.
We could have gone to, to U.S.
Yeah.
You know. They were looking for skilled people.
Mm-hm.
And my grandfather was a tailor.
Mm-hm.
You know. And they were looking for tailors, show makers, you know uh, things like that.
So towards the end of the war who is, your mother, your father, you, your brother...
When we went to Israel, which I didn't tell you...
Yeah.
When we went to Israel we got separated from my grandparents. And then later on we met them, they came after us. And we met them in Wegscheid, in, in uh, you know.
Mm-hm.
In there.
Mm-hm.
Um, the nice thing that I remember about Wegscheid, again, is uh, there uh, Jewish-American soldiers came to the campus every Saturday and we went to shul.
Mm-hm.
To make a minyan for them.
Mm-hm.
I don't know, we walk I don't know how many kilometers, but we walk and they used to give the kids chocolates and things like that, you know.
Mm-hm, mm-hm. The American soldiers, the Jewish-American soldiers?
Right, right.
Very nice. ??? Now what, what made your uh, parents, your family decide to want to go to Israel?
Where else...
Where else.
Would we go, right, I mean, you know uh, the history of my family started from Russia and Bessarabia and then they had problems, you know, not used to it I guess with the Czar everything else. So they moved to Romania, you know.
Mm-hm.
Then uh, part of the family went back to Russia.
Mm-hm.
You know, like uh, I had an aunt and an uncle who went back to Russia that we didn't see them until about, I don't know, 20 years later.
Hm. And you...
We didn't know that they're existing.
But you had choices, you could have gone to America, Canada, what made you pick Israel, your family, what made them decide?
© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn