Nursing Home Evacuee Pens Touching Letter From the Park Slope Armory

www.achildgrows.com

When Hurricane Sandy hit, Miriam Eisenstein-Drachler was evacuated from the Belle Harbor Manor nursing home in Far Rockaway and taken to the Park Slope Armory. During her second week stay at the Armory, she penned a letter about her experience during the hurricane, and how it took her back to a time in 1935 when she emigrated with her parents to America from Poland.

Here's her touching letter, in part:

The night storm Sandy was raging forcefully – and ­­ wrathfully, I found myself standing at the window in my room ad the Belle Harbor Manor observing, both faithfully as well as fearfully, the unstoppable rise of the  waters. “Mother nature is out of control,” I murmured to myself. “May the  Almighty, the Creator of mother nature, help us in this hour of need!”

By association my psyche took me back to January 1935, the time we were  heading on a Polish boat to the shores of the United States of America, ‘the  golden land,’ to rejoin our father, Rabbi Simon Eisenstein of blessed  memory, who emigrated from the Polish shtetl Jasionowka, near the better­ known city of Bialystok – several years before us. I relive the contradicting  emotions of that day – joy, hope and promise on the one hand; fear of the  unknown, on the other hand…And the Atlantic Ocean is raging on….

Read the rest at The New York Times.