Tag #134664 - Interview #93010 (Riva Belfor)

In the 1910s the large Soifer family moved to Bessarabia [2] – either they were looking for a better living or trying to find shelter for their sons not to be drafted into the army. The peak of the drafting campaign was achieved in 1913, before World War I. All my grandfather’s sons were very religious and the army service was a kind of moral ordeal for them. Three sons – David, Monya and Isaac – found a solution: immigration to the USA. All of them were approximately of the same age – as they were born in the mid-1880s. Their first attempt was unsuccessful - they were arrested at the border and forced to return to Medzhibozh. But they didn’t change their minds and in 1913 they took another attempt and managed to leave for the USA via Hamburg [Germany], where they had to stay for a couple of months. Grandfather gave a bribe, which cost him a lot of money, to get a new passport for the name of Stiepelman so that the Soifers would vanish into thin air.