Jewish Post, Indianapolis, Marion County, 31 March 1972 — Page 6

THE JEWISH POST AND OPINION

Friday, March 37, 1972

First Seder In America

By PHILIP SOSKIS Last Passover, Mrs. Sofia Tesler locked the doors to their home before the seder began. The door was opened briefly, of course, to allow the Prophet Elijah to enter, but then imme-

diately locked again.

“Not that there was any violent anti-Semitism in our village,” Mrs. Tesler says now, “but we felt it would be better if the people didn’t know what we were doing. It was no secret

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to the gentiles that Jews celebrate Passover, but we didn’t want to call attention to ourselves.” THERE WERE TWO other Jewish families left in the village, Mrs. Tesler said. But for the same reason — for their own protection — each family celebrated its seder by itself. For the Teslers it was a very special seder, and a very hopeful one. They had already applied to join Mr. Tester’s two brothers in America. Yet a month later Baruch Tesler was called to the regional police station, and was told that their application had been rejected. It is a tribute to the determination and courage of the whole Tesler family that they are preparing to celebrate the seder this year in their own apartment in Brooklyn, New York. When Baruch Tesler was called to the police station, he was asked why he wanted to come to America. To see his two brothers, whom he had not seen in forty years, he answered. In that case the police suggested, “we will allow you and your oldest daughter to go to America as visitors; but she must promise not to get married and stay in the United States.” The rest of the family — mother and two younger children — would have to remain in the village; if the oldest daughter didn’t return, the father would be held responsible. THE VILLAGE is now Russian; before World War II, it was Hungarian. Before the war there were seventy Jewish families — more than 400 people — in the village, a community with a synagogue, a rabbi, even a mikvah. Forty people returned after the war; the rest had been exterminated by the Nazis. These included Mr. Tesler’s * first family — wife and five children — who were taken to Auschwitz and never returned. Mrs. Tesler’s parents and four brothers were also destroyed. It was Rozalia, the Teslers’ 22-year-old daughter, who wrote to higher authorities after the Teslers’ application for an exit permit had been rejected. She was frightened, she admits, but they were determined to go somewhere where they could live as Jews, where the people did not mutter “zhid” as they

passed.

It was almost a miracle, she says, that a month later they received notification that the authorities were reviewing their papers. It was three months after that that the whole family received permission to leave; processing took another three months. The Teslers feel that it was a good omen for their future in America that they arrived in New York on December

14,1971, in time for Chanukah. NOW RECEIVING resettlement assistance from NY AN A — The New York Association for New Americans — the Teslers were helped to come to the United States by United Hias Service. Both agencies receive funds from the campaigns of the United Jewish Appeal. Today, a few months later, Mr. and Mrs. Tesler still speaks only a few words of English, but Rozalia is already able to handle simple conversations in her new language. Proudly she displays her progress report from school — NYANA is paying for her language lessons — in which her term grade was A plus. On her student evaluation her teacher wrote about Rozalia: “What can I say about someone whose English is perfect? Rozalia is an exceptional English student, one whoe grasp of structure is faultless. It is the teacher who is blessed

with a student like this.” Rozalia’s sister, Ida, 18, is also studying English; and the two daughters are teaching their mother and father in the evening. AS PLEASED AS Mr. and Mrs. Tesler are about their daughters’ progress in English, they are moved even more by the fact that their son, Arkadej, 11, is attending a full-time yeshiva in Crown Heights with other newly-arrived Russian boys. “All I could teach him in our village,” Mr. Tesler says, were the blessings and the prayers. I taught him as much as I could, but. . .” he shrugs. “Here he is getting a complete Jewish education, the thing I most wanted for him and could never have given him if we had stayed in the village.” In addition to the assistance which NYANA has been giving the Tesler girls for their (Continued on Next Page)

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