Hungary was the last country that was taken over by the Germans on March 19, 1944. What they had done in Poland in 5 years they accomplished in Hungary in less than 2 months. The large doll is my mother’s from 1912; the crack is from a bomb. I gave her to a non-Jewish friend for safekeeping and when a bomb came down she was hit. The small doll I received when I was five or six. It was my doll and I was attached to her and I played with her and she stayed intact. We were on the visa from 1936 to 1950. Even after the Holocaust our number wasn’t even close. By 1948 when things were getting bad, my father found out the Cuban government was selling Visas, so we went to Cuba in 1948 before we came to the United States in 1950. Before we went to Cuba we received a three-week transit to visit family in Cleveland and we were able to bring cases over then. It was a fortunate situation that we were able to do that. One of the reasons we brought the dolls is that the hair is removable, and the head is hollow, so we put our jewelry in them when we came to the United States. We could only take out whatever we had on. 

– Erika

Relationship:  Im/migrant Im/migrant