A Fresh Start

When I moved out to East Hampton in 1972, I retired my black litigation briefcase from Hermes, which had been handed down to me by my brother. In it, I had stuffed the few items left by my father upon his death in 1989: a black and white photo of presumably his father dressed in black garb of the early 1900s and an immigration “green card” allowing him to work in the US. Also, folded up, almost indiscernible, was his passport from the Russian consulate in Buenos Aires and an Alien Registration document from the American consulate, both dated 1923, the year he emigrated to the United States from Argentina. These items sat in the tattered briefcase behind my desk in my East Hampton office until a couple of years ago when I decided to start researching my father’s solo journey from Ukraine to America as a 12-year-old youngster. I have nearly finished writing a book about him, with the working title, Leibisch’s Journey. Leibisch was his given name, later anglicized to Louis.

I sometimes refer to this project as “origin” writing since I have learned, in doing research into my father’s past, that his personality and strong character must have been formed during that period of his life. Spending the formative years from age 12 to 17 in a situation where he was forced to survive on his own without family or friends, in a foreign country with a language he didn’t understand, were circumstances that created the adult he became — a person with a deep-seated and explosive anger. It has given me a fresh understanding of my father’s behavior towards my mother, as well as to me and my siblings. I did not start out intending to analyze my father but to better understand his journey to America. I thought about traveling the same route my father took across eastern and central Europe by rail to Hamburg, Germany, where he boarded a ship to Argentina. I found the old railroad maps online and charted the course. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 put an end to that plan. I was assisted in my research by a graduate student in history at the University of Rochester, who provided me with the political background to explain why Leibisch’s family would have sent him out alone to follow in the footsteps of his older brother Syndey, who left for America four years earlier.

The toughest part of his story to write is filling in the gap between the years 1918 and 1923 when he lived in Buenos Aires. I only learned about that part of his life shortly before his death, during a visit with my parents in Miami, where they had retired. In conversation with a local shopkeeper, my father spoke fluent Spanish — a surprise to me. I asked him questions then about his years in Argentina, and he told me what he could remember. I understood then why he kept that difficult part of his life from us. His immigration documents were found among his personal items after he died.

Of late, I have read about and spoken with undocumented immigrants whose experiences fleeing dangerous conditions in their own countries parallel my father’s own escape from Ukraine, particularly those cases of children who are orphaned at the border. For my father, Argentina provided a safe harbor for five years. Unlike my father, who was sponsored by his brother, the undocumented immigrants coming over the border illegally into the US do not have such a place.