Fifty Years Ago on July 4

04 Jul Fifty Years Ago on July 4

Posted at 07:00h in Blog, Immigration by Bena 1 Comment

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Bena, Polina, and Emily Shklyanoy. Rome, Italy. Year 1976.

200 Years

The age of the United States = the number of years since my family emigrated + 200.
My age = the number of years since I emigrated.

On July 4, 1976, we were in Ostia Lido, a beachfront suburb of Rome, Italy. We did not know where in America we would end up, but it did not matter because as long as the Iron Curtain was behind us, any destination was ideal. As a joke said, “we are not going ‘to’, we are going ‘out of’.”

Caseworkers had told us weeks before about the coming holiday. They explained that America did not have military parades. Instead, residents of every town came out, voluntarily, to celebrate; placed American flags on their houses; served hamburgers (what are hamburgers?) in their backyards; watched sports and fireworks. A bewildering scenario.

Meanwhile, a rumor swept through our two-thousand-people-strong community, aka the Russians, that the 4th of July would stop emigration and that those not yet assigned a destination would be deported. Many stormed their caseworkers’ offices demanding to know the bitter truth. They heard: “Don’t worry. A holiday cannot change a law.” “And why not?” argued the Russians, quoting the proverb “the law is like a wagon shaft: it goes whichever way you turn it.” The caseworkers and their clients were baffled by each other’s logic.

At night, anxious immigrants-in-waiting flocked to the Ostia post office to share information and fear.

Post office in Ostia Lido, near Rome. Soviet immigrants congregated in front of it in the late 1970s. Photo from: http://www.cartellopoli.net/2011/09/le-poste-di-ostia-sono-un-capolavoro.html

July 4 fell on a Sunday. It passed uneventfully, the dark rumor forgotten, replaced with the happy news of the Entebbe hostage-rescue operation carried out by Israel.

By the end of the month, we learned that we were going to Chicago, a city known in the Soviet Union as the capital of gangs and slaughterhouses. Our caseworker, a Chicagoan, described the city quite differently. We wanted to believe her.

247 Years

In 2023, I returned to Ostia Lido with my daughter and granddaughter.

The post office has not changed, only the security gate was new.

47 years later. Post office in Ostia Lido, near Rome, Italy. Every evening Soviet immigrants congregated in front of it in the late 1970s to exchange information. April, 2023.

The building where we rented an apartment and the balcony where we took family photos have not changed.

47 years later. Zoe, Bena and Emily in Ostia Lido (Lido di Ostia), a town near Rome, where Soviet immigrants of the 1970s waited for entry visas to their final destinations. The long second-floor balcony on the right belonged to the apartment where we stayed for 3,5 months in 1976. April, 2023

The Shklyanoys in Rome, Italy. Year 1976.

The corner grocery store that sold ice cream through a large opening to the street is no more. We used to splurge on a scoop for the kids often. Share and share alike: the big sister picked the flavor and devoured the treat quickly before her little sister asked for more licks.