Charles Korim - Immigration from Harriet Korim

HAPPY BIRTHDAY Uncle Sam!
So many memories––many involving his memories ofhard times in Alita, his Lithuanian home-shtetl, and many of my own memories, of Uncle Sam's gifts of food, from his store in Somerville, and later, his garden in Maine.

On the fifth night I once sang the song "O Ir Kleyne Likhtelakh," to Jean and she remembered the song and her tate (our zeyde Ben Tzion Korim) blessing the candles on the fifth night in Dabeik. She was listening and watching, with a very little girl's amazement, the lights reflected on his face. She had never seen him cry. She found out later that he was crying because he was keeping the secret that his oldest son, B'tsalel (aka Tsali, aka Charley) had left Dabeik that day, to escape being drafted into the (Russian or Lithuanian?) Army. (Meanwhile Sam was drafted and DID serve in one of those armies). B'tsalel secretly, without goodbyes even to his sisters and brothers, traveled via sleigh and train to Hamburg, and was crossing the North Sea to England when a great winter storm arose and the ship almost went down (of course no one knew this till long afterward). He survived. He boarded a ship in Liverpool to sail to America, the first of the Korim siblings to emigrate to the US.

The irony was that later Charlie DID become a soldier (for the US army). The only US military vets in our family (that I know of) were Sam, Charlie and Harvey.