Push the limits! Leaving Wysokie for the departure port required a lot of improvisation.
Max contrasts the complex travel arrangements of his adulthood with the unstructured process he experienced as a young emigrant.
MAX: Max, interviewed by Lisa or talking with other family members Don't forget, we had to Gonvenen dem grenetz. /14/
LISA: Lisa, interviewing her grandfather, Max You had to what?
MAX: See, I knew I'd get you there! Gonvenen dem grenetz. You know now, we all know that –today– when we go somewheres, a small distance, or a big distance, we make out passports. We go in to the travel bureau, you pay so much and you get a ticket, and this brings you where [you want to go].
In those days wasn't no such thing. Gonvenen dem grenetz. You know gonvenen dem grenetz?
[Traveling inside Europe] In order to go in the neighborhoods, there were no boats, were no oceans. You had to go to Germany. And Hamburg. So how did you get to Germany? You gotta cross the border from Russia to Germany. So this part, of gonvenen dem grenetz, that was the biggest part, the hardest part to get over with. Once you gonvenen dem grenetz, you went over the border, you were no longer in Russia, you were in Germany already. Germany was a different problem, to get to the port, to the city that has the port. It was Bremen, or was Hamburg, there were a few other cities that had ocean ports. Above all, we had to gonvenen dem grenetz.
IMAGE: (Standing) Joe, Jennie, Max (Sitting) Eli with grandchildren: twins Herb and Ben, and Saul
/14/ Yiddish expression, literally, "Stealing the border". Figuratively: Pushing the limits.
Max described in more detail the process of crossing European borders -–actually, being smuggled-– as a strong, resilient teenager:
[9]
MAX: Wagons! Horsedrawn wagons. I don't think they had automobiles, no I don't think they were using automobiles. Sure, it was in the twilight, early in the morning, when the sun didn't go up, they used to take a group, and put them together and bring them to a certain point, and this was the border. And it was agents, the agent took a group, took them over the border, and then told us: "Alright, you're safe! You're safe, sound and safe, safe and sound." So, all this ... you can master it when you're young, when you're fifteen years, sixteen years old.
MAX: When you're getting older, there are other problems, maybe it's easier, maybe nowadays it's different.
Lisa was curious about how Max applied the concept of landsman — denoting a Jewish person from one's town-of-origin — to other Jewish emigrants he encountered.
LISA: Would you call the group of people who went over the border together landsmen?
MAX: Landsman. Well, they used to bring down to the border from my town, and from the town next to mine...
LISA: So they were from all different towns.
MAX: Sure, but they were certainly neighbors! They used to take it together, bring together, and then ship them off!
Max's reply indicated generous inclusivity. And yet, he was isolated.
LISA: Did you know anybody in your group?
MAX: No, never knew.
LISA: So you were really alone... were you scared?
MAX: I suppose so.
What did Max's attitude toward the presumptively scary process of emigrating say about him as the person she was interviewing decades later?
NARRATOR: Lisa, backgrounding/commenting. When weighed against all of the other "normal" events of Eastern European Jewish life, this process of getting to the German port of departure can be seen as being only slightly out of the ordinary. There is really little difference in Max's attitude towards "stealing the border" than towards anything else in his life. His blasé reaction to the suggestion that he might have been frightened reaffirms the probability that fear was an ever-present emotion; subtly situated in the back of his brain, perhaps, but always there nevertheless.
One might propose that the comprehensive strength of his entire Wysokie family network prepared him for the scary, disruptive process. Equipped with the knowledge that he was doing what was logical and necessary, he was secure enough to endure the uncertainties of emigration with equanimity.