{"id":3538,"date":"2024-06-07T09:15:14","date_gmt":"2024-06-07T13:15:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/refugeestories\/?p=3538"},"modified":"2024-06-07T09:15:14","modified_gmt":"2024-06-07T13:15:14","slug":"my-great-grandmother-from-austria-to-the-u-s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/refugeestories\/2024\/06\/07\/my-great-grandmother-from-austria-to-the-u-s\/","title":{"rendered":"My Great-grandmother – From Austria to the U.S."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Could you begin by sharing your immigration journey to the United States?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was a young girl, only 8, when I left Vienna, Austria, and came to the United States. What prompted me to come here was to see the World Fair in New York. I came over with my aunt and the goal, at least when I signed up for this adventure, was to come to this country for two months and live at my aunt\u2019s house. However, World War II broke out and I wound up not being able to get back to my native Austria and stuck in the United States. I only spoke German, so I tried to learn English as quickly as I could. Later when I was older, I was able to get a job in Union City as a hairdresser.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Did you face any challenges due to discrimination as an immigrant?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, anyone with a German accent was viewed with suspicion. It was very hard for me to assimilate because I felt discriminated against since people saw the Germans as the enemy. While I was Austrian, I had a German accent, so I had to keep explaining to people that I wasn\u2019t German, I was Austrian, and that I wasn\u2019t in favor of Hitler. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What was the most important thing to you that you had to leave behind in your home country?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because I was an only child, it was my relationship with my mother. I had no siblings and I didn\u2019t know my father, so I became very close to my mother. In the United States, it was very hard to send letters over because of the war. I also didn’t receive the letters that my mother wrote me for many many months. They got held up, as there wasn\u2019t a reliable communication system like today. There were no phone calls, no cell phones. They observed everyone’s mail to ensure that no one was giving away information. It was heartbreaking that I couldn’t communicate with my mother and that I was stuck in a different country without her. My mother died during the war before I could ever see her again afterward.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What would you say was an important part of keeping your culture alive after immigrating to the United States?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vienna is known for pastries. There\u2019s a cafe on every corner. I\u2019ve always had a passion for baking, it is part of my culture. So in the United States, I made many Austrian pastries. When I eventually got married I found ways to make the dishes that I loved growing up. I also wanted to keep my language alive in the family by having my children speak German.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What was your childhood like in Austria?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

My mother was a single mom. She put me into a boarding school while she worked. I saw her only in the summer, besides weekends, since she was a teacher. I didn\u2019t have any siblings so I was very attached to my mother but at the same time I respected the fact that she couldn\u2019t really give me as much attention as I wanted because she was a working single mom.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The featured picture is from https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/place\/Austria <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Could you begin by sharing your immigration journey to the United States? I was a young girl, only 8, when I left Vienna, Austria, and came to the United States. What prompted me to come here was to see the World Fair in New York. I came over with my aunt and the goal, at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111,"featured_media":3539,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories24"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/refugeestories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/refugeestories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/refugeestories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/refugeestories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/refugeestories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3538"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/refugeestories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3538\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3555,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/refugeestories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3538\/revisions\/3555"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/refugeestories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/refugeestories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/refugeestories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/refugeestories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}