When Mom arrived in New York, she was met at the port by her aunt Opiela with whom she lived for sometime. Aunt Opiela had two daughters, Mary and Olga. Aunt Opiela located a Jewish family who needed someone as a domestic to live in and also care for and teach their children to speak Ukrainian. When she left that family she was able to speak fluently in Yiddish[1]. In all mother could speak six languages: Ukrainian, Russian, Czech, Polish, Yiddish, and English.
She told about her employer coming home one day, agitated and whispering to his wife and they began looking throughout the home not telling Mom what they sought. They did this for several days. Mom was cleaning the bedroom in which the employer and his wife slept. As she removed the bedding and was turning over the mattress there lay an envelope on the springs with a large sum of money inside. She completed the cleaning and put the envelope in her pocket. When her employer came home from his store, Mom approached him and handed him the envelope and asked him “Is this what you have been looking for the past several days?”.
“Yes it is, but where did you find it?”
Mom explained what she was doing and where she found the envelope. He thanked her for being so honest and said she could have kept it but did not. He took her downstairs and gave her a complete set of new clothes for her honesty. As long as she worked for this family they were completely free to trust her with everything[2].
[1] Both Harry and Eva lived in the Pale of Settlement, a region in present day Poland, Belarus and Ukraine where Jews were allowed to live under Austro-Hungarian and Russian Empires. Her region was as much as 40% Jewish according to Wikipedia, so she had some Yiddish skills from the market and schooling where she was exposed to German and Polish as well.
The quality of her Yiddish was evidenced by a story she would proudly tell about a Sunday morning when she was going to meet a friend in the park and then go together to church services. She arrived early at the park and sat on a bench next to a elderly Jewish man. They exchanged small talk when her friend arrived and greeted her in Ukrainian. She turned to the man, thanked him for the pleasant conversation and said she now had to leave and go to church. He was a bit indignant that a Jewish girl was going to church. She said, “I am not Jewish, I am Ukrainian.” He told her that her Yiddish was perfect and wished her a pleasant day.
[2]Editor’s Note: Mom Zdepski was not alone in New York for very long. The circumstances of her sisters arrival was the following. Eudokia had a boy-friend, a family friend from back in the old country ,whom she had arranged to meet in a Park. When she arrived at the Park she saw this boy kissing another girl, at which point she broke off the relationship. He was rather indignant and insisted that she was to marry him. When she would not relent, he announced that if she wouldn’t marry him, he would go back to the Ukraine and marry her sister. He actually bought passage, and started back to the Ukraine. At the same Eudokia sent a letter home. The main point of the letter was “Send Olga, I am lonely.” While this would-be Don Juan was traveling by foot from Germany to the Ukraine, Olga was traveling in the other direction to New York. As it where, saving Olga was unnecessary, and the boy got a widow in Poland pregnant, and never made it home. Olga was the only other family member to leave the Ukraine before the Russian revolution and subsequent wars made immigration impossible.
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