Why should Max go to America?
Lisa asks the essential question:
LISA: Lisa, interviewing her grandfather, Max Why was it decided that you should go to America?
MAX: Max, interviewed by Lisa or talking with other family members There was no future for young boys, and then you know that the military service... People went away not to go to the army. I was sixteen and if I would wait another three years I would have to go in the army. Everybody did. Run away from the Tsarist army.
This was the bottom line for many, if not virtually all, Eastern European Jewish families.
NARRATOR: Lisa, backgrounding/commenting. Emigration was indeed most attractive to the Jews of the Pale. Although few had any idea of what awaited them in America, it was certainly a better alternative to staying in Russia. The army required three months of service each year for twenty-five years in addition to the ordinary period of enlistment. It was difficult enough being a Jew in one's own town without the further danger of isolation within an anti-Semitic regiment.
Here Max and Lisa, narrating, underplay the case: it was commonly believed by Eastern European Jews that induction into the Russian army was a virtual death sentence for a young Jewish man. We do not know if that was the prevailing belief in Wysokie.
MAX: And then we had relatives. Mr. Shack was my mother's brother, we used to write letters to each other. So we decided there's no future for boys in our country, so we... Everybody sent away their kids to America... It was the only thing to do.
Would that this correspondence have survived! There are too few systematic collections available, but we know that Eastern European Jews did correspond with their brave friends and relatives who emigrated before them. From available samples, it appears some of the correspondence was inconsequential, but —apparently— there was also a very useful flow of information about what awaited them available to many prospective emigrants.
Would that this correspondence have survived! We know that Eastern European Jews did correspond with their brave friends and relatives who emigrated before them. From regrettably few available samples, it appears some of the correspondence was inconsequential, but —apparently— there was also a very useful flow of information about what awaited them available to many prospective emigrants.
NARRATOR: The movement to America was also facilitated by revolutionary activities and the encroachment of the industrial age. Even small towns like Wysokie Litewskie were exposed to the social and technological fervent brewing in the cities. Seeing that the ways of their fathers had not resulted in better lives for their families, young people really had nothing to lose by emigrating.
At this distance, it is difficult to describe the many and varied societal changes on Wysokie families like Max's. In effect almost everything about their lives was changing actually or prospectively. Did they resist, deny, embrace these changes? We can only judge by their actions in the record. Many sent their young people to America.
NARRATOR: The decision that Max should join the thousands of emigres was of course a practical and logical one, and sufficiently powerful enough to override the devastating uprooting of Max from his family. Although there were relatives already settled in America, Max was the first, as the oldest, of his immediate family to go. He had no reason to expect that he would ever see his parents and siblings again. He held no illusions of his becoming wealthy and bringing them all over; he was sent out in the world so that perhaps a better existence could be found for him. Max was armed with his skill and his youth; these were enough attributes to enable his parents to let him go.
Did Lisa discuss Max's expectations for his life in America with him, interactions unrecorded in her thesis? Or were his lack-of-illusions about his future in America so manifest that no discussion was necessary?