Well, soon after that, she left the next day, but I still had a few days, and I also went on a ship called Keln. K-E-L-N, Keln [Judah pronounced it “Kern”] It was a terrible ship. I had my choice to wait another week and to go in a more comfortable boat. But I wanted to get to America as soon as I possible could, and I took that ship.
I made a mistake. It was horrible. That was a cattle ship. They used it for cattle all the time. When the immigration increased, immigration from Russia through Germany, they turned that ship into a passenger ship. It was horrible. People, there were three beds, one on the top of the other. I slept on the very top one, the third, because I was afraid somebody on the top will throw up, and they will throw up on my face, maybe, if they should try to get up, because vomiting was an ordinary thing on the boat. Everybody, practically, was seasick.
Many boats carried cattle from the United States to Europe, then were cleaned and white-washed for the retrun trip carrying immigrants.
There were certain experiences I had in the boat. I got, I met some very nice people. One of them, an elderly man, he must have been about 75 at that time, he travelled first class, but he came down to the deck of the third. He thought he would meet some people. And he compliments me. He told me his effort has paid because he has met me. His name was Mr. Taft. He wrote to me to Cincinnati, and I wrote him a couple of times to New Jersey, and it turned out [?] that way. I mean, nothing has become of it.
But anyway, I carried with me some books. So, every day, people would gather around me, and I would tell them of the Hebrew poets Jewish writers, and the Jewish literature. And they were listening very attentively. When the seasickness started, my audience diminished. It got smaller every day. But then it resumed again.
The management of the ship was horrible. They were anti-Semites practically from next to the next one. I heard one of them saying to a Jew, telling a Jew, “Farfluchte Jude.” he says, “I’ll throw you a board, overboard,” that means he will throw him into the ocean.
I said to him, “Are you attempting to do it?” I said to him, “How dare you talk to a man like that?” I said, “You are employed by him. He is paying his fees, traveling on the ship, and you are making a living at that.” I say, “How dare you talk like that?” I went to the captain and I reported him. So the captain told me it isn’t going to happen again.
I also heard the captain [several words blurred] having the privilege of taking a bath, a shower, because there were no showers, no baths on that floor, and they travelled three weeks from there to New York, Bremen to New York.
“Yes,” he told me I could get one. He talked to one of the sailors, what [?] I was paying half of a Russian ruble, which means a mark. I paid a mark for every bath I took. I took about two baths a week, but I had to have it because I couldn’t suffer the filth and the dirt around me.
The food that they fed them wasn’t good at all. They gave them mamaliga. This is what the Rumanian Jews liked. This is a sort of a corn meal. They make some kind of a, I don’t know what, of it, like a cereal, and they eat it. And I could never suffer it. I tasted it once, in Russia once, and I didn’t like it. But fortunately I had with me dried bread. My aunt Malke, my mother’s sister, she made a lot of toast for me, a whole sackful of toast. So, I used to eat my toast with tea. And this is.. I can’t remember the other food that I ate on the ship.
Well, anyway, the treatment of the passengers was very terrible. I remember arriving in New York [sic], while on the boat yet, I wrote out a paper complaining about the treatment that we got on the boat, and I had 80 people sign it, or 82, 83, and I presented it to the immigration officer at the port in Philadelphia when we arrived there. I don’t know what happened. He told me they’ll take care of it. They are certainly paying close attention, and he thanked me for having done it, and he said that they are going to do something about it.
