Reading about the alienation of the Tsarnaev brothers from their American surroundings made me reflect on my experience as a 9-year old refugee, arriving in the United States in 1940. My family arrived from Germany, via England, where we had waited for a year until our quota number came up, allowing us to obtain a visa to the U.S.
Our experience was so welcoming that the chances of alienation were minimized. Some of my own experience may have been unique, but by and large our cohort of refugees thrived. (Systematic studies, including those of Harvard professors Gerald Holton and Gerhard Sonnert, have documented this.)
An important part of the explanation was in the climate and the circumstances that pushed us to assimilation. There was no reason to have any attitude toward our adopted nation other than profound gratitude for providing us a haven as we were escaping Hitler. Thus, when my parents were told that my brother’s name, Klaus, might not be the easiest name for a 13-year old to go by in 1940, they told him he could change his first name to whatever he wanted, and he decided to become Franklin Delano Bamberger.
While I remember the thrill of seeing the Statue of Liberty as our ship approached the New York dock, I also remember what it was like to be a fourth grader with a foreign accent, strange manners, and wearing my older brother’s lace-up shoes. I learned what it was like to be an outsider.
But I also learned soon what it was like to belong. I believe the most critical part of my own Americanization happened at the generous hands of the Society of Friends. Like a large number of other refugee families, we had ended up in Southern California. A small group of Whittier, California, Quakers had the ingenuity and generosity to figure out that the Jewish refugee families who had come from Europe at the beginning of the war were isolated. We were classified as enemy aliens, and few of our families had the connections that would allow them to find summer activities for their children. And so Quaker Meadow was born, deep in California’s Sequoia National Park, embracing these lonely refugee children in a magnificent natural setting, and in the warm arms of a diverse array of caring adults. Quaker Meadow expanded in later summers to include children of Japanese-American families from the wartime relocation centers and children who for reasons of race or poverty were not part of the mainstream summer camp experience. Many of our counselors were Quakers, and some were on leave from their service as conscientious objectors. Ultimately, Quaker Meadow became an inter-racial, inter-religious camp that was, for five summers, the perfect setting to make idealistic Americans out of children like me.
As I look back, the experience of being an outsider made it easier for me, as an adult, to connect with others who are marginalized – because of color, class or their convictions. And the belonging I experienced at Quaker Meadow allowed me to envision the America I wanted to be part of and to help build.
I wonder if there are lessons here for how we can act together, as a nation, but also in our local communities, to expand the many activities designed to support children and youth growing up in tough neighborhoods, specifically to make the American experience more welcoming to the new arrivals who come here from far and wide as impressionable youngsters.
