So we are of Tatar heritage and that's of both sides of my
family, my mom and my dad's side.
My mom's parents came from Poland and Russia.
My dad's parents...
Well, my dad's dad was born in Bayonne, but before that his family
came from Belarus and my dad's mom came from Belarus, I believe.
Or what's now Lithuania, these places, I think the borders have
moved a little bit here and there, but that's what they would say.
They would say, "I'm from Russia," pretty much.
So they each independently immigrated in the early
1900s. Yeah. My mom's mom, I know came over in, I think,
1910 there abouts. Yeah, there abouts. And I know that she in particular
came over with her mother and her siblings and one of her cousins.
Like so many people, they sent her
father, my great grandfather came over to America by himself to try and
establish himself and get some money and he would send money home to
his wife and kids, so they could
gather up enough to come join him in America.
And I think that he had to do that for something like
seven, 10 years, something like that; it took a long time to be
able to
bring the rest of the family over.
And
yeah,
I know they had to travel quite a ways. They were quite inland,
so finding a ship
was a long trek. I don't really know much about that journey,
but I know they finally finally found a ship that they were able
to get out on and they came over
around,
I think it was around 1910. I could be wrong, maybe that was
the year she was born. I should probably check these things.
How old was she when she came over?
She was nine, but she had a younger cousin
with her so she wasn't even the youngest one on that journey;
she had two older siblings
and her mom.
And I know that when they did come, they came through Ellis Island,
and there was a bit of a scare there because her sister was
sick, she got sick on the boat. And there was a moment of
like, "Oh God, they're not gonna accept her."
And I don't know
what moved them, but they kind of like either she snuck off the
line or
somebody just smiled on her. But
they were held there for a little while and there was a panic
of whether or not they were all just gonna be sent home on
account of, you know,
but they let them in and
they joined some friends and some family. I think around here in Williamsburg
there was a very small community of Tatars
establishing themselves. It was primarily, I believe, Jewish neighborhood.
It was not a great neighborhood at the time; it was like a
poor Jewish neighborhood, very "Like a Tree Grows in Brooklyn"
kind of a scene.
And that's where this was their touch stone, so they knew when they
came here, they had other people they spoke the language, and
ate the same foods, and they probably knew somebody who knew somebody who
knew them, but this is where they connected to,
and
also found jobs from... Because my great grandfather was a furrier, so he
would work in a fur coat factory, that's what he did back in
the old country. How did they get connected with this religious community?
Well, it's all the same people who came
from those little towns in Eastern Europe;
there's a couple of towns that are major known for their Tatar roots
heritage, and they're not terribly large cities. Iwye and Navahrudak are
like really small places
with tight knit communities because even back then they were minorities,
so they stuck together. So when they came here, be like,
"Oh, I know that last name." There's only two dozen last names that
people recycle, cycle through. And we're like, "Oh yeah, yeah, your aunt
knows my mom." That kind of thing.
So they knew that this was the place to be, and I think...
I believe at the time that they were meeting for religious prayers and
celebrations just in people's houses, in backyards and
basements, wherever they could find space before they were able to save
up as a community to buy this building. There's nowhere on the front,
does it say "Mosque." Nowhere does it say,
"The oldest mosque in America," certainly. Nowhere does it say, "We've been
here
in this building since 1927," or something like that. And have we been
established since 1907? I think there's always been this mentality of
"Keep your head down, and no one will bother you."
Especially for my grandparents' generation, there was a lot of
pressure to assimilate as quickly as possible, to be accepted as American
as quickly as possible,
and I think that they wanted to identify
as American as quickly as possible as a community because
even without
the modern view of the Islamophobia, even before there was even a word
for it, I think they were very cautious of the fact that,
"We're kind of different and people don't like different stuff,
and we should not
necessarily pretend we're not who we are, but not advertise that
we could be a target for something." If someone's in the mood to
be hateful or if someone needs an excuse for something that's an easy
one. You know, pick on the different guy. So I think that
they wanted to showcase
how similar we are. So there's that
similarity, I guess, there's that thing that we have in common with the
people who founded
the organization. But it grew into such a fear, it grew into such
a
inhibiting factor that it really came to our detriment because
when people stopped immigrating, like when the big rush of Eastern European
immigrants kind of slowed down,
and the people who came here were established and started moving away.
Like, okay, they got on their feet, they don't need this crutch of
being in this community anymore. They moved to Massachusetts or Jersey or
wherever.
It really hurt us because we're not reaching out to anybody new;
we're not reaching out to anybody at all, except for those people who
came from the same little towns. And once those same little town stopped
sending people, there's nobody new coming at all. And
the next generation of people are living all across America.
So
that fear
really stuck with them.