Yetta died at the age of 74 years old.

Yetta grew up in Springfield, Missouri and is the daughter of Israel Mitchell Lotven and Jenny Graysach Lotven. Yetta's siblings are: Fannie Lotven Orenstein, Jacob, Isadore, Morris, and Hyman Lotven
____________________

From the genealogy book of stories titled DRINKING THE DIPPER DRY - NINE PLAIN-SPOKEN LIVES
by Jerred Metz
Publisher: St. Louis, K.M. Gentile 1980
(reproduced with permission of the author)

YETTA SCHNEIDER

(Content dictated by Yetta Lotven Schneider)

"I'm going to tell you a story, a true story.

My father knew right away when he came for military maneuvers, Russia was going to have a war, so he left Russia and came to the United States and then the 1918 war broke out.

Than, America was closed to Europe. My father and my sister were here in the United States. My father didn't hear from the rest of us. He didn't know if we were living or dead....my mother, my four brothers and me.

I was in the 1918 war. A bunch of soldiers used to come in the house. We had to give them beds and we had to lay on the floor.

My mother had to make a living. So she used to have to take pins and needles and go in the little bitsy towns to sell. Once it was late at night. I was tired; I was only ten years old. I locked the door. She came home and she couldn't get in. So she said, " Yettela, Yettela, open up dolly, open up honey." then she started to curse me. The end of it was she had to go next door and to sleep over night. I didn't let her in. I was a sound sleeper. I was ten years old. Who cares who comes in?

We had a very good landlord during the war. The government wouldn't let nobody out from Russia. Then one night the landlord took the hay from his wagon and took the hay out and put my mother down, my four brothers and me and put the hay on us. He was smuggling us out. The soldiers stopped him. They said, "What have you got there?" He said, " I got hay for the stable for my horses." One soldier took out a spear and wanted to put it in the hay to see it it's true. But another soldier said (our luck with God's help), "Oh, let him go."

That's the way we struggled. Then we came to the border. My mother and my three oldest brothers ran in the water. It was in March. The ice was melting. They went in water up to their chests. Me and my little brother was on the Russian side until they smuggled us out. We was in a little house that was always like a synagogue. There was always chanting. But that little house was not a synagogue...it was a hiding place. We slept on a big bench. To turn over we had to get off the bench and lay down again.

Finally from Warsaw my aunt was there. She thought my father left money which he did. She went to a man, an agent. He came to us to take us to Warsaw.

There is an organization over one hundred years old. It's still working. It's called HIAS. The HIAS took care of refugees. For seven years my father didn't know if his family was alive or dead.

This organization found out where people belonged. All the money my father sent for seven years to Russia had been confiscated. The family never got the money. This charitable organization--all over the world, no matter what religion or what nationality--found out where my father lived. They wired my father a telegram telling him that his family is alive, and if he'll send the money. Finally we had to wait eight months to get passports and get on a ship.

This organization that I'm talking about not only brought the families but it also provided jobs in the United States. There were listings of jobs in every town. My father landed in Galveston, Texas. They found out there was someone in Springfield, Missouri who needed shoemakers so that's where my father went.

The ship we came on had second class and first class. Well, we were on the deck. From the first class they used to throw chocolate and pennies. We kids used to rush over to get it. It was really funny. You start to think of it, think back, it's really funny and so odd. It was really something. It wasn't wonderful then, but, thank God, to think of it and see how silly we were and how inexperienced we were, it is wonderful.

We came to Ellis Island. When you get on the ship they examine you if there is no boils, no nothing. Well, we went through. We got off the ship and went to Ellis Island. They examine you again. They find a boil by my mother under the arm. I'm ten and the other kids are all younger than I am. We're screaming and hollering and it's terrible. They took my mother away to the hospital. I was afraid they should send me to America without my mother.

Now my mother was a smart woman. She went to the bathroom and she took hot water and squeezed out the pus. the doctor comes the next day and says, "You're OK. You can go out."

She came out. We were there about seven days. Then we're ready to go. The gates is open to go to America. I was a child; I wanted everything. So my mother saw the chewing gum, five pieces. We ate it and ate it up, all of us. Everything I saw I wanted. I wanted bananas. So like a monkey I ate it with the peeling. I didn't have sense enough to take the peeling off. Then they put us on a train to Springfield, Missouri. they put on tickets with our names.

Some fella, an American boy, came up to me and says, "Now, I see you don't know English. But I'm interested when you'll get to learn English. I'll give you my address. I just want to see the progress what you're going to make."

He bought me chocolates and everything on the train. He got to liking to me.

My mother kept the address in a bundle that we had when we came to America. We forgot all about it. We didn't know what the bundle is. I look for the address after I understood English and had learned English. I looked for the address and I looked but couldn't find it. To this day I'm sorry that I didn't get to correspond with that fellow.

When we saw my father and sister it felt like somebody was born all over again.

We came to Springfield, Missouri. In a big city you can get away with speaking Yiddish but in Springfield there was no Jewish grocery store or anything. Everybody spoke English. My mother had to learn in order to go to the market. She went to night school. Her head was at home with four kids and the house and everything. She said the heck with school.

She learned a few words. She took out citizen papers. The first papers you took out when you were here five years; the second papers when you were here three more years. My mother said, "I'll tell you one thing, Judge, that's all I know who the president is." The judge says, "That's enough. Here is the papers."

We came to Springfield in September right before school. I was green. I spoke Yiddish. There was a Jewish girl in the school. She was American. The teachers thought because she was Jewish she can speak the language. So they brought her in the class. The teacher asked her to translate. She said, "I can't understand Jewish."

The children used to each us English. One girl picked up a handkerchief and she said, "Yetta, you see this? This is called a handkerchief." I learned fast.

We had spelling. I learned spelling by heart. I didn't know what the words mean.

In arithmetic the teacher writes 100. I though she's showing me how to make 100, so I make 1000 and show her that I know how to do it.

The boys at school learned my brothers bad language, bad words and told them to go tell the teacher. And they did. The teacher was smart. She knew that there was something wrong. My sister came to America many years before us. So the teacher wrote her a letter, she should come to school. The teacher explained to her what's going on.

I got to be eighteen years old. My father was very religious. He wouldn't let me go with gentiles and he didn't let me go with girls, because if I'll go with girls, I'll go with boys. So I stayed home all the time. Well, I got sick of it. I said, " Dad, you'll either let me go or send me to St. Louis to my sister." So he sent me here to my sister." END