INTERVIEW WITH LILIAN CLARK
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Riya: Hi, could you tell me your name and your date of birth?
Lilian: Hi, my name is Lilian Clark and I was born in November of 2003.
Riya: Where are you from? And where are you living currently?
Lilian: So, my family is from New York and Poland, and I am currently living in Seattle, Washington.
Riya: What religion do you follow? If any.
Lilian: I grew up as conservative and reformed Jewish.
Riya: Why are you living in the United States?
Lilian: So, it’s because of my grandfather. He was born in 1911 and he was the oldest of about six children. But this was when the tensions began to rise especially in Warsaw with the rise of the Nazi regime and it was becoming a dangerous place to live…It was really complicated because throughout World War I Germany had built up a large empire around Poland and it continued to oppress, especially Warsaw. [They] would segregate a lot of Jews and it was just a very dangerous place to live. So, my family luckily was able to recognize that it was becoming dangerous and so they sent my grandfather, Sidney to the United States. Only a little while after that Poland was invaded by Hitler starting World War II, obviously. He came to the United States for a hope of…surviving and the idea was that he would make a name for himself in the States, and he would then have the rest of his family come over and join him. He was able to establish himself in New York and he ended up becoming very successful and having my mom and then my mom moved to Seattle and had me. So I am, I guess the second generation of immigrants [from] Poland. And…yeah, so that’s why I am here.
Riya: How did your grandfather come to the United States? What was his transportation?
Lilian: So, he took a cargo ship from one of the ports from Poland and he travelled for about two weeks in really bad conditions…to come to Ellis Island in the United States. [Ellis Island] was really the hub for immigrants who came to the United States.[1] He was seventeen, alone, and spoke no English.
I think it cost him 35 dollars to travel anywhere. The conditions were not great…You may have heard stories about horrors of…diseases such as cholera, plague, smallpox, yellow fever and everything like that was common, because people were so tightly packed.
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But he survived and he went through the checking process in Ellis Island, which is located in the Upper Bay off the New Jersey Coast. So, something kind of interesting is that all the ships had something called a ship manifest and the reason why so many families are unable to find their ancestors’ names on there, it’s because to protect their Jewish identities they would change their names on the paper. So, my grandfather changed his name from...which is a pretty recognizable Jewish-Polish name to Forman which is just a name that was really just a translation into English.
So, he was able to get through the process of Ellis Island, [which included] a talk with an employee to determine if you were fit for America or not. There would be a check-up checking for about 60 different diseases or disabilities that might not let the person enter in the United States. If you had like a limp or if you were walking funny or anything like that you’d be asked to step aside to kind of be “looked at later”, but in reality, you wouldn’t be - you would just kind of be sent back home. So, the story that I’d tell is that there is an eye infection called trachoma…they would use something called a button hook to turn the immigrants’ eyelids inside out and if you had anything remotely resembling it you would be sent home on the next boat. Because they would not let anyone through. But, Sidney…he came to America through that, which was conveniently right in the middle of the Great Depression. Yeah, that’s how he travelled here.
Riya: Do you think that because your grandparents were from Poland and when you moved here it kind of built a gap between how your family generation was before and how it is now? Like how you feel and what their childhoods might have looked like?
Lilian: Absolutely, there are so many things. The anxiety…that is surrounding being openly Jewish is something…My mom or my grandfather would never imagine like walking to synagogue. Right? My synagogue is a couple blocks away from me in Seattle and walking there Sunday morning or me working there - it can never be imagined, right? Because there is a lot of risk for them and anxiety surrounding religion.
Another big thing is…maybe kind of stereotypical. My grandfather worked incredibly hard for what he did. He became a fashion designer and worked with even like Coco Channel and a lot of prominent names from that era. He worked really hard for his money, because he had nothing to start with. That create[d] this huge divide, because when my mom was growing up she wanted to go to the mall with her friends, she wanted to go out to eat, she wanted to do all this stuff, but my grandfather saw no need for that. ‘You have food at home, right?’ So, he was very conscious of how he spent his money…Sometimes, you know, when you grow up without knowing that it’s like come on, ‘I just want to buy some new clothes’ or anything like that. So, that created some tensions.
But, another thing that isn’t, I don’t know, as visible is that my grandfather had to hide a lot of who he was – a lot of his culture [and] his religion once he came to America…He came from an orthodox family with like six siblings and once he came to America, he never really got all the way back to that. So, my family had to, from really only me and my brother we had to find our own Jewish identity and we did not have the family generations that most people do to look down to see what traditions we follow or what branch of Judaism we are even in…It was a process that we kind of felt alone in, so yeah, it creates a huge divide.
Riya: For you what is the idea of home and do you consider the US [to be] your home?
Lilian: I do. I mean, obviously, I was born here and, as much as I say that I don’t really like living here, I am so thankful to be here and for everything that I have. Because I know that only seventy years ago right, my family didn’t have any of this. I do consider the United States my home, but home has kind-of [taken] on a different definition for me. [Home] is more or less the people that I am with and if I am with my family, maybe not even my biological family, I have so many different homes…I know that for me it’s where I’m safe and where I’m comfortable and where I know that I can be myself. So, in that sense, I guess it is my home.
Riya: Do you visit Poland? Have you ever been to Poland?
Lilian: Unfortunately, no. My mom is kind of wary about me going there, because the political situation hasn’t been really great in the past…After talking to some people who are actually from there [I know] it’s not really that true. It’s very safe now, but [there is] false information about how dangerous and like horrible it is, or whatever. My mom has a deep belief about that… I want to go and I am definitely going to [go] to see maybe even where my family lived and everything like that.
Riya: Do you still have any family members living in Poland?
Lilian: Unfortunately, no. All of them…my great grandparents and their kids unfortunately… were sent to concentration camps and were murdered by the Nazis, or they died of starvation, or they were put into ghettos. But we really don’t know what actually happened to them, because in the really early beginnings of the war, the Nazis didn’t keep as good of track of all the records and so, unfortunately, I don’t know.
Riya: Is there anything else you want to add? Or let other people know about your situation?
Lilian: Immigration…will never stop…In America…you will always hear about the “dangerous immigrants”…Our president says that there are “rapists, and drug dealers, and horrible people coming up from Mexico,” but [they are] families who are trying to escape a dangerous situation. I know some people down there and just because of their…sexuality they are forced to try and come up to the United States, but with the new laws they can’t, and they are forced to stay in a horrible situation. I know people who have had to flee war zones in the Middle East and have come to Seattle for security…We are a sanctuary city…That means…if you want to…report a crime or if you are involved in a crime you don’t have to prove that you’re a United States citizen in order to get help, which alleviates a lot of stress and anxiety for a lot of families that don’t necessarily have their papers yet.
But all over the world, it is a never-ending issue, but there are so many misconceptions about immigration - who it affects, and what actually happens, [and] who is trying to seek help.
[Anyone] who hasn’t had family members to experience it, or hasn’t experienced it themselves -
they don’t know what’s actually happening and that creates a stigma surrounding it and it just gets more and more difficult to immigrate to somewhere safe.
So…it’s not just my family right? It’s the hundreds of thousands of other families who fled the Holocaust and fled maybe to different places in Europe or Asia or to South America…It’s fleeing war zones today, it’s the unsafe governments… It’s never gonna end…If you want to actually know more about it you have to do research yourself and you have to find facts about what actually happening, and you can’t trust…everything you hear on the news about all of the “horrible drug dealers” and “gang members” that are coming from “horrible Mexico”. Because in reality, they are just families who need help. There is so much that people can do and if you really want to know more you definitely have to do your own research about it.
Riya: Thank you so much, Lily, it was great!
Lilian: Thank you.
[1] Ellis Island was typically the first port of entry for immigrants who arrived in the United States on the East Coast.
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