It wasn’t easy to immigrate from Poland to the United States in the 1930s. My maternal great grandfather, after whom I am named, was one of the lucky few. He made it out less than a year before the Nazis invaded Poland and exterminated most of Polish Jewry, including his own family.

He was born in 1878 in Kolno, a town in the northeast corner of Poland, then part of the Russian Empire. His name was Chone (pronounced Cho-ne) Wierzbowicz (pronounced Verzbovitch). (His Hebrew name was Elchanan. Here’s the earliest photo I have of him:

He and my great grandmother, Sheindl Kon, married on January 3, 1898. She was from Zambrow, about 50 miles (65 km) southeast of Kolno, where he moved after their wedding.

Their union produced six children, including my grandfather, their eldest child, born a year after their marriage. To provide for his growing family, he took over his father-in-law’s oil press business, buying flax seeds from which he made oil for use in industry. (For that story, click here.) The family enjoyed a comfortable living for the standards of that time.

But his sense of security was shaken by the increasing vulnerability of Polish society in general, as well as Jewish life in particular. During the 1920s, Poland experienced a period of hyperinflation and a banking crisis. The economy was hit especially hard by the Great Depression. The years between 1929-1935 were known in Poland as the “Great Crisis.”

At the same time, anti-Semitism was growing. Jews were accused of identifying with communism and of having collaborated with the Soviets during the Poland-Soviet war of 1919-1921. The growing Polish nationalist movement viewed the state as Catholic and ethnically pure. Nationalists tended to view Jews as actively opposed the Polish national project and “inherently hostile to Christian Poles.” An openly anti-Semitic political party, the National Democratic Party, or Endecja, promoted boycotts of Jewish run businesses. The boycotts were accompanied by vandalism and violence targeting Jewish businesses and families.

These factors contributed to the fragmenting of Chone’s family. My grandfather was the first to leave. He was drafted into the Polish army to fight for the new Polish state against the Soviet Union. Given the anti-Semitism of the Polish army and the risk of losing his life for a cause in which he felt no allegiance, when the opportunity to escape presented itself, he slipped across the German border. A year later, he emigrated to Palestine, where he met his wife. In 1927, he immigrated to the United States and began the hardscrabble life of an immigrant on the Lower East Side. (Click here to read that story.)

Two years after my grandfather’s escape, Chone’s eldest daughter, Chanche, married and moved to a town in Western Poland. (Click here to read that story.) A few years later, his other son, Shmulke, left Poland by immigrating to Cuba and then smuggling himself into the United States. (Click here to read that story.) Another daughter, Chaya Sara, immigrated to the United States in 1936 after marrying a Polish Jew living in New York who came back to Poland to find a wife.

Meanwhile, in 1926, Chone and Sheindl were blessed with their last child, Hinde, when Chone was 50 years old and his wife 47. (Click here to read the story.) And so, by the mid 1930s, half of Chone’s six children lived in the United States, one lived on the other side of Poland, while only two daughters remained in Zambrow.

Chone faced a painful dilemma. He wanted to get himself and his family out of Poland and into the United States. However, getting his entire family out would be nearly impossible, for, in the 1930s, the doors of immigration had been mostly shut. He thus faced a difficult choice: to remain in Poland with his family or try to leave by himself in the hopes that, at some future time, the family could be reunited.

The cause of Chone’s dilemma was the 1924 U.S. immigration law known as the Johnson Reed Act. This law marked the end of the era of large-scale immigration to the United States. The purpose of the law, as its supporters claimed, was to protect the American way of life threatened by the “pollution of America’s racial stock” brought about by immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, in particular Jews and Catholics. The law imposed national quotas based on the percentage of people from nations as of the 1890 census. (In 1929, the quotas were adjusted to one-sixth of 1% of the 1920 census figures, and the overall immigration limit reduced to 150,000.) Since few people from Southern and Eastern Europe had immigrated to the U.S. before 1890, the law effectively precluded mass migration from these areas. (It also completely barred immigration from Asia.)

The law’s effect was felt immediately. While, for instance, an average of 210,000 Italians immigrated per year from 1901 to 1914, under the 1924 quota, only about 4,000 Italians per year were allowable. The annual quota of Polish nationals was about 6,500.

Chone and his son, my grandfather, worked together to plan his migration from Poland. The first step required my grandfather to get American citizenship. Once that was accomplished, he could petition to get his father get out based on family reunification.

So the plan unfolded. My grandfather immigrated from Palestine to the United States in 1927. Shortly after the five-year residency period expired, my grandfather applied for citizenship. (He timed the five-year period from when his wife arrived in the United States in late 1928, apparently so that they could apply for citizenship simultaneously.) On April 9, 1934, he officially became an American citizen.

The next step required a two-prong strategy; Chone would apply for a preference visa with the American consulate in Warsaw while my grandfather would file a petition to support the visa application with the State Department.

The preference visa was based on section (6)(a) of the 1924 Act, which stated that, in allocating the 6,500 visas available annually to Polish nationals, preference was to be given “to a quota immigrant who is the unmarried child under 21 years of age, the father, the mother, the husband, or the wife, of a citizen of the United States who is 21 years of age or over; . . .” (Wives and minor children of U.S. citizens could be admitted as non-quota immigrants.) Up to 50 percent of the yearly visas available to quota immigrants could be allocated to qualifying family members. (See section (6)(2)(b))

Of course, many more than 6,500 Polish nationals were applying annually to emigrate to the United States. Visas were generally granted to qualified applicants based on a first-come, first-serve basis. Thus, the sooner Chone applied to emigrate, the greater his chances of eventually obtaining a visa. There was no time to lose.

And so, soon after his son became an American citizen, Chone sprung into action. The era of just boarding a ship bound for the United States had passed. Consulate officials in foreign capitals had broad discretion to grant or deny a visa. And even if a potential immigrant fell within the annual quota, visas could be denied on a myriad of grounds: medical, moral turpitude such as criminal history or character, lack of proper identification, and failure to establish employability in the United States. Chone did his best to obtain the documents needed to support his visa application.

He began collecting these documents in June, 1934. (I obtained these documents from the Department of Homeland Security’s Genealogy Program.) On the 21st day of June, he took his identify papers to the city hall in Zambrow. There he received a “certificate or residence,” confirming his identity, date and place of birth, address and occupation.

The following day he received a certificate, which, translated from the Polish, reads:

I hereby certify that Chona Weirzbowicz, residing in the city of Zambrów at 7 Jatkowa Street, is by profession an oil maker. Issued to Chona Wierzbowicz for the purpose of presenting it
to the General American Consulate in Warsaw. Government Commissioner Secretary.”

Next, he travelled to the regional capital city of Łomża, about 15 km from Zambrow. There he received yet another certificate, one attesting to his good character regarding time he spent in the nearby city of Ostrow Mazowiecka:

“I hereby certify that Mr. Wierzbowicz, residing in Ostrow Mazowiecka, in the district of Lomza, during the entire period of his stay did not give the local authorities any cause for negative observations regarding his person. This certificate is issued for the purpose of submitting an application
to the American Consulate in Warsaw in connection with a departure to the United States of America. A stamp duty in the amount of 5 złoty has been paid with revenue stamps attached to the application.”

In August, 1934, he obtained a birth record attesting to the registration of his birth in Kolno. The document states–in Polish and Russian–that his father, Abram Itzhak Wierzbowicz, age 32, and his mother, Chana née Skarżyńska, age 27, in the presence of two witnesses, presented a male child born on November 13th 1878, who, at a religious ceremony, was given the name Chone.

At the same time, my grandfather filed documents with the U.S. State Department to support his father’s visa application. Under the 1924 Act, section 9(b), a U.S. citizen could file a sworn petition stating that his relative was entitled to a preference visa. In so doing, he had to establish that Chone Wierzbowicz was the father of Joseph Waxman, as my grandfather had changed his last name from Weirzbowicz to Waxman when he became a citizen. The following letter, unfortunately of poor quality, addressed from the Deputy Commission of Immigration to the Secretary of State, makes reference to “the approved petition for issuance of Immigrant visa under Section 6(a)(1) of the Immigration Act of 1924 filed by Joseph Waxman on behalf of his father, Chonek Wierzbowicz, which was forwarded to your Department on May 1, 1934.” The letter, dated November 1, 1934, establishes that his name was changed, and that Chone Wierzbowicz was indeed the father of Joseph Waxman.

Chone and my grandfather’s efforts proved successful, as the letter indicates that Chone’s application for a visa had been “approved,” meaning, I believe, that he had established he was eligible for a preference visa.

However, by the middle of 1934, all the visas for Polish nationals had presumably already been allotted. All Chone could do was wait. No visa was forthcoming the following year. 1936 passed. So too 1937. All the while, Polish anti-Semitism and the Nazi threat to nearby Poland was growing.

Perhaps by 1938 Chone had given up hope. Then, in late 1938, in what must have seemed like a miracle, he was informed that his turn had arrived.

He travelled back to Lomza on November 14, 1938. There he received an Immigrant Identification card, number 1065596. Then, on December, 6, 1938, he travelled from Zambrow to the American Consulate in Warsaw. He must have felt tremendous tension as the moment of truth approached. He had, according to the documentation, already purchased a ticket for travel from the port city of Gydnia to New York where he intended to rejoin his son, then living on Broome Street. However, consular officials retained broad discretion to approve or deny a visa application.

At the consulate, he filed an “Application for Immigration Visa (Quota)” and would have had to present evidence that his previously submitted documents were still valid. He would also have been required to undergo a final interview and pass a medical exam, not a forgone conclusion for man now 60 years of age.

There was, however, yet another hurdle for Chone to overcome. He had to prove that, even at his age, he would be employed–in the parlance of the law, “unlikely to be a public charge,”–once he reached New York. (I will explore this issue in my next post.) All went well for Chone, and, after paying a fee of $9, he received the document that would ultimately save his life:

“The bearer, Chonek Wierzbowicz, who is of Polish nationality, having been seen and examined, is classified as a quota immigrant and is granted this Immigration Visa pursuant to the Immigration Act of 1924, as amended. The validity of this Immigration Visa expires on April 6, 1939.”

Once again, Chone wasted little time. After returning to Zambrow, visa in hand, he prepared for his final departure, presumably a train ride Zambrow to Warsaw and then from Warsaw to the port city of Gydnia.

In what must have been a farewell filled with hugs and tears, he bid goodbye to his wife Sheindl, his teenage daughter Hinda, his daughter Paicha, her husband Shimon, and his grandson David. Perhaps they travelled with him to Gydnia where, on December 12, 1938, he boarded the S.S. Pilsudsky bound for New York City.

Two emotions must have been foremost in his mind as the ship pulled out of port; joy in being reunited with his eldest son after an absence of 17 years, as well as his other son and daughter also living in New York, yet also trepidation about what would happen to the family he left behind. Surely he carried with him the dream that one day he and his family would be reunited in the United States. That dream, however, was shattered just nine months later by the Nazi invasion of Poland in September, 1939.

A few years ago, the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City held an exhibition called “Paper Walls.” The phrase Paper Walls was meant to symbolize, as the museum put it, “the immense bureaucratic barriers, paperwork, and documents that hindered Jewish escape during the Holocaust. These walls, designed with paper-like textures and displays, represented the impossible choices and endless, often useless, paperwork required for immigration, creating a maze-like, immersive environment.” Here is an image from the exhibition:

Chone and my grandfather did everything they could, timely obtaining every document and filing every petition, to enable him to immigrate from Poland to the United States. Even so, he barely made it out before the war began, and then only by himself. In another reality, he would have been allowed to immigrate in 1934, when he first applied for a visa, and then, after five years, claimed citizenship in 1939, and then gotten his wife and young daughter out as nonquota immigrants.

Chone arrived in New York on December 23, 1938, in the middle of the holiday of Chanukah. At some point afterwards, his Zambrow family sent him a photo to remember them by.

That photo would be all that remained by which to remember his wife, daughters and grandson. In the end, I wonder: did Chone feel fortunate to have overcome all the bureaucratic obstacles and succeeded in immigrating to the United States?