immigration | Neal Lemery

November 11, 2018

World War I, the “Great War”, the “War to End All Wars”, ended one hundred years ago today.

That day, my grandfather was a prisoner of war in a Russian prison camp. He was drafted into the German Army and sent to the eastern front, a foot soldier in a war where nerve gas, machine guns, and tanks dominated the battlefields, causing horrific casualties.

Word of the end of the war likely reached the prison camp a week, maybe three weeks later, at the beginning of the harsh winter in what is now eastern Poland. The Russian guards just opened the gates and walked away, forcing the emaciated, sick German prisoners of war to fend for themselves.

My grandfather spoke little of that experience, and only a few times told of taking boots off of dead soldiers, stuffing moss and newspapers into them, and making his way west, back to his home in northern Germany. There was no food on the journey, except for frozen potatoes he could find in snow-covered fields.

I never knew how long that journey took him, or how many of his companions on that journey survived. But, cold weather bothered him. He always made sure he had warm boots and thick socks on when he went to the barn and milked his cows on winter mornings.

Being a curious child, I would ask him a few questions about the war, but he would only say it was “bad, bad times”, and grow silent. He was a quiet, contemplative man anyway, and would rarely share his feelings.

I’d ask my mom about Grandpa and the war, and she would say that he never talked about the war. She had never heard his story about the boots and the frozen potatoes.

We all called him Grandpa Henry, but one day, as we were working alone in the barn, he told me that his first name was really Ausmus. His middle name was Heinrich, the German version of Henry. He was the thirteenth child of dairy farmers, and when he returned from the war, hard times had come to Germany, and there was no work for him on the farm. There was no work anywhere.

He decided to emigrate to America. Somehow, he ended up working on my grandmother’s farm as a hired hand. Once, he told me about being on a ship crossing the Atlantic and he got very seasick, and it was a very long trip. But, again, no details, just a long period of silence after his few, soft words.

I was learning not to pry or ask questions, and I noticed he would tear up when he would tell me his stories.

He was my grandma’s second husband, and took on the role of stepfather for my mom when she was nine. He was the only grandfather I knew.

Years later, I did some research and found his naturalization papers on file. He got his citizenship in the mid 1930s, so he must have had his green card or the 1920s version of that, for at least fifteen years. My grandmother and my mom sponsored him for citizenship.

One time, I asked my mom if Grandpa had any photos or papers about his life in Germany and his family there.

“No,” she said. “Not anymore.”

There was a lot of anti-German sentiment in the US during World War I, and afterwards, too. People stopped using the common names for cottage cheese, and even sauerkraut became “liberty cabbage”, as German culture was in such disfavor. Even street names and the names of towns were changed, to put an end to German influence.

That is probably the reason Grandpa wasn’t called “Ausmus” or even “Heinrich”, but the Americanized “Henry”.

Grandma was afraid of Grandpa’s German roots and feared people would hate him and our family because of his heritage. So, she burned all of his photos and papers, hoping to put an end to that connection.

At holidays dinners, my mom would put on a feast, and she always made something special for Grandpa, something German. He’d have a big smile on his face when she put the dish on the table, and say how grateful he was for her kindness and thoughtfulness.

When I was a teenager, an Indonesian family moved onto a farm a few farms away from my grandparents. They were the first non-European farmers in the entire community, and their presence fired up a lot of racist sentiment. The racists around were the grandchildren of immigrants, yet no one seemed to see the irony in their behavior.

Grandpa was the first to welcome them to the community, helping them set up their barn, and even giving them five or six heifers to supplement their herd. He’d take his tractor down the road to help them out, and he made sure they had enough hay to get them through the first winter.

He even took the farmer down to the creamery and got him signed up to deliver their milk, and get on the roles of the creamery to get a monthly milk check. It was a complicated process, but Grandpa made sure that everything was set up so his friend could sell his milk at the best price.

He never talked about that, or expected any thanks or appreciation. It was just something he did, quietly. It was just something he’d do, for anyone deserving of some help and friendship.

The family became close friends of my grandparents and prosperous farmers in their own right, citizens, and respected members of the community.

My times with Grandpa in the barn and helping him at haying time were special times, passing all too quickly. I was eager to grow up, and move away to college, and I took those quiet times with him for granted.

In the last years of his life, I’d look in on him, taking care of him at times, running errands, and making sure he was comfortable. I’d take care of his feet, cutting his nails, and putting on lotion. He had arthritis, and his feet bothered him a lot.

When I worked on his feet, I could tell that his pain wasn’t just from arthritis or old age, but that, many years earlier, some bones had been broken and hadn’t healed right.

When I asked him about it, he told me, “It was the war, the Russians.”

He didn’t say anything more, and I didn’t pry. The look in his eyes told me so much.

Now that he’s gone, I’d wished that we had talked a lot more. His life as a soldier was quite an amazing story, yet none of us will really know that tale.

I learned so much from him, in those long times of silence, in the tears welling up, but not usually shed.

Soldiers don’t share much of what they experienced on the battlefield, or in how they had to deal with the insanity, bloodshed and death. In their silence lies the tales that we should never forget.

–Neal Lemery

We all came from somewhere else. Maybe not in this generation, but somewhere in the not too distant past, we came from somewhere else.

This week, my country celebrated its political beginnings, a time of rebellion and war, a time of rising up against an imperial, oppressive power, and going ahead on our own.

America was a different place in 1776, thirteen separate colonies. Slavery was an accepted economic reality, and times were hard. Only white men who owned property could vote, and earning a living meant hard physical labor and going without much of what we would think are necessities.

Back then, we welcomed immigrants: new blood, new energies, new ideas. We needed more farmers, more merchants, more people in the cultural melting pot we have come to know as America. And, the America today is a result of all of those waves of immigrants, and the optimism and challenges that brought our ancestors here for a new beginning.

On our nation’s birthday, just before my neighbors decided to shoot off their fireworks at dusk, a photo showed up on my phone. My friend had landed at an American airport, and he had just passed through immigration and customs.

The photo told the story: his face ablaze with the biggest smile. He held a paper stamped with the date, and the words “inspected”. It was official. He was now a documented resident of the USA, a big step to becoming a citizen.

Becoming a citizen in this country now is a challenging, difficult journey, far different than when my dad made the trip to the local courthouse, filled out a form, and quickly became “legalized”, a citizen.

My friend’s journey is longer, more convoluted. It involves a lot of expensive paperwork, and a flight to another country and back again. And, he’s only halfway done with the process, even though he came here when he was seven years old.

Now, years later, he’s a college student, and has a career, a marriage. He is finding his way, focused on a profession, giving back to his community, showing his younger siblings they, too, can live the American dream.

His story is my family’s story, too. This anniversary day of independence, of throwing off the oppression of an unjust government, the shackles of poverty and hopelessness, of coming to a new land and being able to work hard and make a new, better life for yourself and your family, is the American story.

It is my story, and now, it is my young friend’s story.

Some of my ancestors left the sweatshops of an English woolen mill, becoming farmers in their new land, working as farm laborers on an unforgiving Iowa farm in the Midwestern heat. They became citizens, raising a new generation of farmers, Americans.

They took the Oregon Trail, finding a new land, and their own farm, becoming homesteaders, new Oregonians. As a child, I heard my grandmother tell the stories of carving out a farm in the forest, a winter spent in a leaky shack with a canvas roof. The next summer, they built a cabin and a barn, herding their new cows for a week through the forest to their new farm.

After the barn and the cabin, they built a school, taking their hard earned money to hire a teacher and educate their kids. Those immigrants, those refugees from an English woolen mill, they built a new life in a new world.

My grandfather came here, too, yet another immigrant, fresh from a prisoner of war camp after the First World War. There was nothing for him where he had come from, except poverty and disease. Coming to American offered hope, opportunity, a new beginning. He, too, worked as a farm laborer, learning English after a long day, taking the steps to become a citizen.

On the other side of the family, there are other stories, of pulling up stakes and moving to a new land, the promise of education, the value of hard work and adjusting to challenges, the possibilities that came with America’s promise.

Looking back, I see that all my family were immigrants. Coming to America, making your life better, working hard, it was who we were, and who we are.

Looking around, I see that my town was built by the sweat and commitment of immigrants, newcomers who didn’t take opportunities for granted, but were willing to work and make this community their home.

American immigration isn’t just Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. Not eighty miles away from here, over 100,000 immigrants came to Oregon through the Knappton Quarantine Station on the Columbia River, from the 1880s to the 1920s. We are literally a nation of immigrants, refugees seeking a better life.

They came seeking what my friend wants: opportunity, freedom, a chance to be part of a great freedom-loving nation.

We celebrate the Fourth of July, and in doing so, we also celebrate our history of welcoming others, to make this nation even stronger, even more a land of opportunity.

My family all wanted the same thing: opportunity. They wanted justice, and freedom from violence and a dead-end, oppressive life. They wanted a chance to prove themselves, and make a better life for their kids. They were willing to work hard, and make sacrifices.

They built farms and schools, created communities, and raised their kids. They worked hard, and helped make this country strong and healthy, a place where the rule of law and individual rights are common values.

My friend wants that, too. He sees a bright future for himself and for his family here. He’s working hard, and wants to do his part in making America an even healthier, stronger place, a place where freedom and justice for all is just not a political slogan, but a deeply held belief, and an aspiration for all of us.

–Neal Lemery, July 6, 2016