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Age 54 / From Cambodia
Arrived here in 1976
The Communist Khmer Rouge, under the leadership of Pol Pot, seized control of Cambodia's government from 1975 to 1979. Approximately 1.5 million Cambodians were killed during the reign of one of history's most brutal regimes.
When the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia, we were told to leave the city immediately. I relocated to the countryside, but a month later, Communist soldiers showed up at my home and took me away. I was being taken to the killing fields, along with 70 other families who were either well-educated like me or were high-ranking officials under the old government. I was being held in a vacant Buddhist temple, waiting to be executed. A decision had to be made: be killed later or be killed right there on the spot. I knew I had a very slight chance to survive, but that was enough. So I ran. Guards started shooting as I ran toward some bushes nearby. I heard the bullets flying over my head, but I just kept running and running. I hid in the jungle that night. The next morning, I saw a family walking on the road, people like me who had escaped. I joined them. After a few weeks of traveling, we were captured and sent to a work camp. There I recruited 12 people to escape to Thailand with me. But I was captured, and the soldiers herded us together in the jungle to be executed. Again, I knew it was either die now or die later. The night before I made my decision, I dreamed that my father, who had died a few years earlier, was leading me to the refugee camp. That was my sign. I took a chance and joined the others in running away. Only three of us survived.
I got to the refugee camp in Thailand four weeks later. I stayed there for over a year and met my wife, Neang. A priest who worked for Church World Service helped us get to America, and we landed in Jersey City. I went to college and in 1987 opened an Allstate insurance office. We came here with nothing and now have three wonderful kids and a successful business. It's the American Dream.
I will always remember when I was starving and dehydrated in the middle of the Cambodian jungles. All I needed was just a tiny piece of food and a few drops of water so I could move a little bit closer to real freedom. It's a freedom that we as Americans should never take for granted.
Henry L. Fernandez
Age 52 / From Cuba
Arrived here in 1966
In 1959, Fidel Castro and a band of Communist revolutionaries overthrew Cuba's Batista government.
We fled Cuba in 1964. There was repression and a lack of freedom of speech; dissenters were executed and thrown in jail. The government was socializing all businesses and closing the Catholic schools and expelling the nuns and priests. After my father, an attorney, filed the immigration application, all our possessions were confiscated, including photos and diplomas. We could leave with only one set of clothes. Two years later, after a brief stay in Madrid, we moved to New York. I was nine years old.
The six of us lived in Manhattan in a single hotel room with a little kitchenette. My father got a job as an administrative assistant with an import-export firm he had done some business with when we were in Cuba. On nights and weekends, he did odd jobs, such as translation, to earn a little extra money. When he'd saved up enough, we moved to a small two-bedroom apartment, where we lived for ten years. There was a sense of excitement as I explored the city with my family. My siblings and I obviously didn't have the same worries that my father did. He had four kids and a wife to feed. My father went three years without buying a pair of shoes.
Today, between the four kids, we have five bachelor's degrees, eight master's degrees, and two doctorates. I'm now vice president for government affairs for USA Funds, a nonprofit corporation that provides financial support for postsecondary education. I vote regularly and am an elected school board member in the Indianapolis school district where my children attend school.
One of the folks who most influenced my life is Fidel Castro. When we left Cuba, Castro took everything my father owned. But the one thing he could not take was his education. My father was able to start a new life, and he taught us the value of an education. I think my siblings and I realized the dreams that my father had for us.
Steve Reger
Age 69 / From Hungary
Arrived here in 1957
A student demonstration against the Stalinist government of Hungary turned into a nationwide revolt, which was then brutally crushed by the Soviets.
I was off from school when the revolution broke out in October of 1956. The radio announced that we could not go downtown. So everyone went downtown. I met up with some friends and went to the Stalin statue in Budapest. By then, it was already torn down. The whole population was involved with the revolt. We were excited, until the Russians came with tanks. We stood in the road to try to stop them. Of course, they didn't stop. So people threw Molotov cocktails at the tanks. It was mayhem.
My uncle and I decided to leave the country in November by jumping the border into Austria. My father had died in World War II, and my mother had to stay behind to look after my disabled sister. We got on a train, and after a few hours, it stopped suddenly in the middle of an open field. Everybody jumped off and sprinted toward the border.
When Russian soldiers started shooting, we hid in the root cellar of a house. The next day, we crossed a river and made it into Austria. Cold and soaking wet, we were taken to a nearby village, where we had to declare what country we wanted to go to. My uncle and I didn't hesitate: America.
I arrived in the United States on March 6, 1957, at Camp Kilmer in New Jersey. I was 17 and knew two words of English: horse and power.
At Camp Kilmer, my uncle got a job offer in Denver, and I went with him. I started going to night school and got a job as a busboy at a boardinghouse, where I met my wife, Sara. I earned a bachelor's degree in engineering science at the University of Virginia in 1967 and then a PhD in biomedical engineering in 1973.
For the past 23 years, I've worked at the Cleveland Clinic, where I'm the emeritus director of rehabilitation technology. Sara and I have a son and a daughter and three grandkids. My mother and sister never came to the United States, because of my sister's illness. They both passed away nearly 25 years ago. I was able to visit them several times, and I think I was able to help them more from here than if I had stayed in Budapest.
When I first arrived in America, I never could have imagined all the opportunities and possibilities. Everything changed for me, and I feel very lucky.
No matter how many difficulties we may have in this country, rest assured it could never be as bad as it was in Hungary under Communist rule. As long as we maintain freedom of speech, freedom of movement, and the ability to make choices, we can overcome anything.
Charlene Schiff
Age 79 / From Poland
Arrived here in 1948
During World War II, favorite Nazi targets were Jewish enclaves. In Poland, few were spared.
The Germans marched into Horochow in the summer of 1941. They burned all our synagogues and took away hundreds of Jewish leaders, including my father. That was the last I saw of him.
My older sister, mother, and I were marched into the ghetto and were assigned a room with three other families. The next summer, rumors started flying that the ghetto was going to be destroyed, so my mother arranged for my sister to stay with a farmer, who agreed to hide one person. We didn't hear from her and figured she'd made it. Mother then found another farmer, who said he would allow us to hide in his farmhouse. So a few days later, my mother and I snuck out of the ghetto at night. We started toward the river, staying near the banks. The next morning, we saw others from the ghetto trying to cross the river. Everything was so quiet and still.
Then the shots rang out. The soldiers stood on the bank, yelling, "We can see you, Jew!" When the others stood up and raised their hands to surrender, they were shot. If they came up for air, they were shot.
My mother and I spent four days in the river. The water was up to my neck. One morning I woke up and my mother wasn't there-she was gone. I never saw her or my sister again.
I was 11.
When the soldiers left, I ran to the farmhouse, but the farmer had changed his mind and said I could stay only one night, and if I wasn't gone by morning, he'd turn me over to the authorities. That night, I fled into the woods and found six other survivors. Some kids spotted us. They came back with villagers, so we hid from them in a big haystack. But they had pitchforks. I could hear the screaming as they stabbed all the other Jews to death-five adults and a baby boy.
I spent two years in the woods alone. I slept during the day in a little grave I'd dug, and at night I would crawl out and search for something—anything—to eat. I became very ill. In the spring of 1944, a group of Soviet soldiers literally stepped on top of the little camouflaged hole where I was hiding. They picked me up and took me to a hospital, where I was nursed back to health.
After the war, I ended up in a displaced-persons camp in Germany. I wrote my relatives in America and told them I was alive. I arrived in New York in 1948.
I was so grateful. But it was all very overwhelming and confusing. Life was very different. I lived with my aunt in Ohio, where I met my husband, Ed. We were married in 1951 and had a son. My husband spent 29 years in the military, including two tours of duty in Vietnam. He passed away just a few months ago.
For a long time, I didn't talk about the Holocaust and what I had been through. But before he died, my husband convinced me that it was my duty to honor the millions who'd perished. He was right.
I also want to send a message of hope to the young people of today. I'm an optimist, and I feel that younger generations will learn from the mistakes that my generation made and will fight indifference and injustice.
Becoming an American citizen was a gift. This country gives everyone an opportunity to reach for the stars.
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