On Love and Tyranny by Dr. Ann Heberlein

Author:Dr. Ann Heberlein
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: House of Anansi Press Inc
Published: 2020-11-11T14:56:01+00:00

Fourteen

“Without a Place to

Call My Own”

Hannah and Heinrich arrived in the United States on May 22, 1941, each with a suitcase and twenty-five dollars in their pocket. They were granted a monthly allowance of seventy dollars by an American Zionist organization, and found a small, partly furnished apartment to rent on West 95th Street in New York, where they settled to wait for Hannah’s mother to arrive. The SS Muzinho docked in New York on June 21, and the family of three tried to find a way to coexist in their tiny, sparse flat.

Hannah was in her thirty-fifth year and Heinrich his forty-third when they arrived in New York. They had been living in exile in France for many years, getting to know a new country, moving between apartments and cities; they had been interned and on the run, hiding, losing good friends and family members, leaving others behind. But finally, finally, they had found safety. How must it feel to arrive in a country you have never visited before, with a language you do not speak and a culture you do not understand? I am sure it must be quite frustrating, though also a relief of sorts. Hannah and Heinrich had started over before, in France — learning the language and creating a life for themselves, with friends and work. Now it was time to do the same again.

In “We Refugees,” published in the Menorah Journal in January 1943, Hannah wrote about her experience of being a refugee roughly a year and a half after arriving in the United States. The tone is blunt, honest, rebellious, and frustrated. She does not want to be thought of as a victim, does not want to be given charity, does not want to be called a refugee. Hannah describes the anxiety, the fear, and the struggle to exist — the struggle for the right to be seen as an individual rather than part of an anonymous mass of “refugees.” She fights for dignity and for the ability to create an independent life of her own, and she also describes the sense of alienation she feels with respect to both her new country, America, and her new identity as a refugee. The text begins with something of a manifesto:

In the first place, we don’t like to be called “refugees.” We ourselves call each other “newcomers” or “immigrants” … A refugee used to be a person driven to seek refuge because of some act committed or some political opinion held. Well, it is true we have had to seek refuge; but we committed no acts and most of us never dreamt of having any radical political opinion. With us the meaning of the term “refugee” has changed. Now “refugees” are those of us who have been so unfortunate as to arrive in a new country without means and have to be helped by refugee committees.

There is no mistaking Hannah’s frustration at the helplessness inherent in being a refugee. She resists being defined as a

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