Dad's Story

ODE TO DAD - An Immigrant's Story

I always thought that my Dad, Irwin Bressler (Isaak when he first came to the U.S.) had a pretty amazing story. In fact, his coming to America was considered so amazing that it made the newspapers in 1928/29, including the New York Times and the Pittsburgh area papers. He arrived at his father's home in Uniontown, PA, just in time for the Great Depression (Dad thought he was born in 1912 which would make him 16 or 17 when he got here).  His Dad had come to the U.S. before World War I, probably around 1913 with the idea of trying to earn enough money to bring over his wife and two sons. But World War I broke out, and then afterwards the Russian Civil War. Communication was lost and all plans were upended during those war years.  Dad's mother (Sara Bressler) died, probably at the end of the second decade of the 20th century.  Was it exhaustion? famine? a Ukranian pogrom, collateral damage in the midst of war? No one will probably ever know.  What we do know is that my dad and his brother Harry were split up,  *** where did Harry go***   After being homeless for a while, dad was taken to an orphanage, probably at the age of 8 or 9. 

In (year?...) Harry was found by his father in ..... But Dad was not found so quickly - it took several years and even then there were complications. My understanding of what happened is that Harry was the one who kept pushing for his little brother to be found and brought to the U.S., contacting relatives and agencies and following up on leads, doing as much as a kid who was still just a teenager could do. Eventually HIAS? found two kids at orphanages with the same name  . Apparently