Once I asked Sonya and Yetta, "What was the most difficult moment on your journey to America?"
Sonya's reply:
At first I thought it must have been in Riga, Latvia. The officials wouldn't let us board the boat because little Harry had ringworm. We had very little money and we used it us as we waited for another boat of the Homeric Line to take us to England and then to America.
But this wasn't the worst part of the trip. That came in England. The government officials and all the dockworkers were prejudiced against Eastern Europeans. In addition to being Eastern Europeans, we were hated Jews.
The worst moments were during the delousing process. I was a young girl, a virgin. My modesty was ignored. They watched me naked like I was a stupid animal in a zoo. It was dehumanizing.
Yetta's reply:
It was the seasickness. I suffered so as we crossed the Atlantic. I thought I would die. I wanted to die, but I was too sick to go up the stairs to the deck and to throw myself into the ocean. Thank God Sonya was not sick and she was able to take acre of my child.