For quite some time the thought of writing down the journey that took my parents and me through war-torn Europe to safety in the United States was in the back of my mind. My children often told me to do so. The history classes that I taught over the years of my teaching career also encouraged me in this. They always found my story fascinating and I often had students coming to my class having heard about my story ask me to tell the class. In June of 2012 having retired from teaching and with some more time on my hands, I began the task of cleaning and sorting. The plan was to create some things in plastic containers for storage in the attic. However, before that took place my son brought down some boxes to look through. In one of the boxes I found an old, dearly loved toy - my teddy bear with his 64 year old fur worn threadbare and his mismatched button eyes that my mother had sown on. He was a present from my parents within a year after we arrived in the United States on November 11, 1947.
INFINITY PUBLISHING PROOF Journey 6 In those boxes from my parents house I found other items. Especially interesting were my mother’s diaries and photographs from the years 1940-1947. These items got me to consider seriously the possibility of writing a book. My interest here is not a deeply researched scholarly book about war experiences but rather a memoir based on the stories my parents told me, my mother’s diaries and my own memories of the years from my birth in Vilnius, Lithuania on January 4, 1942 to our arrival in New York on November 1, 1947. My purpose in writing is to leave for my children and grand children a tangible record of their past. It is my hope that other people will enjoy reading it also.
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