I started thumbing through this little book to see who on the Heritage staff might be interested in reviewing it. Before I knew it, I had read through it completely— so interesting was this reminscence by San Diego resident Ruth L. Hohberg.

As anyone who reads the travel pages of Heritage knows, we hold to the theory that "there is a Jewish story everywhere." Hohberg¹s book certainly helps sustain the thesis.

The story of her childhood as a refugee takes us from her hometown of Bielsko to Lvov, both in Poland, and then to the Soviet Union. An early stop was a Soviet work settlement in the Yatusk region of Siberia, and from there she and her family were moved to several venues in Uzbekistan before returning after the war to an unwelcoming Bielsko. So on the family went to Stockholm, Sweden and, eventually, New York.

We learn from Hohberg how adaptable children are to new environments. While her father cleared forests and her mother fertilized potato fields in Siberia, she remembers taking delight in receiving two sets of hair ribbons for her fifth birthday. "I wore the red ones plaited into my pigtails on special occasion days like Saturdays and my birthday for the next five years. The maroon ones were for 'every day,'" she wrote.

She went to first grade in Uzbekistan, where she and the rest of the class would rise when her teacher, Clavida Ivanovna, entered, and would respond in unison to her greetings. "She was fairly tall, very neat in her dress and grooming, and dignified in her bearing," the author remembers. "She wore a beret pulled to the side and flattened on top like a plate. I would say she was elegant. She had only a few textbooks, which she lent us by turns."

After World War II, the family returned by train to Poland.  "At the Russo-Polish frontier, Polish soldiers boarded the train to check the documents. They were very clear and insistent in their instruction to us not to speak Russian on Polish soil. This was particularly directed to the
children, because many of us spoke only Russian.

"At that moment a strange phenomenon took over in my brain. In spite of having mastered Russian to the extent that I dreamed in it, I suddenly spoke fluent Polish. It must have been dormant, waiting to be recalled to duty."

Onward her narrative takes us, to the ice skating rinks of Stockholm, where with her first buckle-on skates she soon was "off and gliding, absolutely thrilled with my new skill. It was complete joy! I didn't mind the falls, and tried again and again until I was able to do it smoothly. Then I began to imitate pretty turns by watching other skaters. Each day I was better at
it..."

In New York City, there was another delight — one which, alas, many children today have never experienced: "the Horn and Hardart Automat ... where one could get a sandwich, a hot dish, or something to drink after depositing nickels in a slot on a wall lined with little windows. ... You made your selection, and pushed the number of nickels into the slot. The latch on the little door released, and the food was yours. No need to speak to anyone and perhaps risk misunderstanding. It was kind of exciting ... for a while."

Via such anecdotes, and before you know it, Hohberg¹s readers have traveled
almost entirely around the world.