Strangers in the Land

Nathan Berzok, son of Joseph and Mollie, was born in Odessa on October 7, 1905. A multicultural metropolis on the Black Sea, Odessa was home to some 138,000 Jews--and the site, eleven days after Nathan's birth, of a four-day pogrom that took at least 400 of their lives. The Berzoks survived; Mollie

hid Nathan in a stove. But like many of Odessa's Jews, they took the pogrom as a sign that it was time to pack their bags. On March 1, 1908, Nathan, his two older brothers and Mollie arrived at Ellis Island. Joseph was there waiting for them, having already left Odessa to scout out New York. When he spied his wife and three sons inside the immigration center, Joseph rolled them oranges under the railing--the sweetest of signs that they had permanently left Odessa and its pogroms behind.

Nathan Berzok was my grandfather. But it wasn't until I had nearly finished Human Cargo, Caroline Moorehead's book about contemporary refugees and migrants, that I even thought of these stories, which he told me while I was growing up. I hadn't forgotten them. They just didn't register as I read Moorehead's harrowing tales of people fleeing persecution, warfare and destitution, traveling thousands of miles in search of a new and better life.

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