THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, June 28, 1996 TAG: 9606280040
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MICHELLE MIZAL, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 96 lines
THIS MUCH Alina Brodsky remembers.
It was April 23, six years ago, when she and her family arrived at the Norfolk airport from a place near the Black Sea now known as the Ukraine.
They stepped out into the humid Virginia weather wearing fur coats, sweaters and boots. They didn't know.
Their odyssey from the city of Odessa had begun four months before they arrived at their new home an ocean and a continent away. It started like this.
It was 11 p.m. when a bus arrived at their small Odessa apartment to pick up Alina, then 7, her sister, Irina, 3, and their parents, Michael and Inna.
The Brodsky family is Jewish and was severely persecuted in Russia. Often they would wait in line for hours just to buy a loaf of bread and sometimes, because they were Jewish, they would be denied goods. Alina remembers her mom telling her that the government threatened to throw Jews out of the country.
For this reason Alina would not know she was a Jew until she came to the United States.
``They didn't want me telling anyone because something bad might happen to us,'' said Alina, now 13.
That cold December night in Odessa, the Brodsky family, Alina's uncle and his family, and another family took the bus to the Czechoslovakian border. For 12 hours, customs officials went through everything the family had with them, including pockets and coat linings.
One female official started yelling at Alina's cousin for sleeping on a suitcase. Another found a World War II medal in Irina's coat pocket. It belonged to Alina and Irina's grandfather.
``They took it and never gave it back,'' said Alina, whose green eyes narrow with anger.
Finally, the family was allowed out of Czechoslovakia. They boarded a train to Vienna, Austria. For two months Alina and her family lived there in a three-bedroom apartment along with her uncle's family and two other families.
In February, the Brodsky family moved to Italy where they awaited word from the American Embassy about whether they could come to the United States. It was there that Alina and her cousin, Sabina, cleaned dirty tables for candy in the cafeteria of a hotel in Rome.
The hotel was Alina's home until she and her family moved into a house by the sea. Alina and her family made the first floor their home and an Italian family lived upstairs.
Every day her father and uncle would go to a place near the market, a meeting spot where older immigrants would go to hear word of whether they will be next to go to America.
One cold and rainy day in April, Alina's father received word that his family was next. Alina was happy to hear the news.
``I looked forward to freedom the most in America,'' Alina said.
Being in American was what Alina looked forward to. The plane ride was not.
``I remember on the plane getting here I started throwing up. It was those peanuts they give you on the plane,'' Alina said. Her sister, sitting beside her, laughs.
After a quick stop in New York, the Brodsky family finally arrived in Norfolk - coats and all. They picked Norfolk because an uncle in Chicago had some friends in the area who helped with the paperwork.
Life in a new country did not start easily for Alina.
With the help of Jewish Family Service, a local resettlement program, Alina and her family found their first American home, a Norfolk apartment.
Alina said she was told by her Italian friends that America had no violence and poverty, so when she came to America she was surprised to see crime and poor people.
One afternoon Alina and her sister took out the trash. A group of ``bigger'' kids beat up both girls. Alina and Irina ran to a neighbor for help.
``I think they beat us up because they knew we were Russian. I was really scared and afraid. I thought America was a really good place and nothing bad would happen. . . . It wasn't good for my self-esteem,'' she said
Although Alina fears the increasing violence in this country, there is one thing that scares her more - forgetting her Russian heritage.
``Here, it's harder to speak in Russian because everybody is American,'' Alina says with just a whisper of an accent in her voice. She also said that the high schools do not teach enough Russian history, so she plans to take Russian language classes in college. She wants to be a teacher, although she is not yet sure what she wants to teach.
But for now Alina does her best as a rising eighth-grader at Hebrew Academy of Tidewater where she was the first in her class to graduate from an English as a Second Language class. Alina said learning English was the biggest challenge she faced when she came to America.
On this particular humid summer evening, Alina is dressed for the season. Instead of a fur coat she wears a frog-green tank top and a denim miniskirt. Her left hand sports green glitter nail polish and the nails on her right hand alternate between black and blue polish.
``In Russia, they (teachers) would never allow this,'' said Inna pointing to her daughter's fingers. But the smile on her face and pride in her eyes are proof that she does not mind Alina's American fashion.
Alina doesn't either. In fact, she loves it. MEMO: Related story on page E11. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by L. TODD SPENCER, The Virginian-Pilot
Alina Brodsky and her family came to Norfolk from the Soviet Union
six years ago. Her parents didn't tell her they were Jewish until
after they arrived. by CNB