A Story for World Refugee Day

FROM THE ARCHIVE
A Story for World Refugee Day
Mary Brown, Ph.D.

This refugee story begins with a coincidence: the archivist for the Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS) also worked for Marymount Manhattan College’s archives, both documenting twentieth-century New York City Catholicism. Might their holdings, brought together, tell a story? It turns out they do—one especially suitable for June 20, 2024, the 73rd anniversary of the 1951 Convention Related to the Status of Refugees, and thus the UNHCR’s World Refugee Day.

The first episode in the story came from Marymount Manhattan’s October 1950 student newspaper in a paragraph stating that the college had accepted three Displaced Persons from Europe as students: Galina Macelis, Giedre Mary Zaunius, and Eva Nemeth. The Ellis Island Passenger Search website traced their arrival in the United States. Giedre Zaunius sailed into New York Harbor aboard the Marine Flasher on March 3, 1948; Galina Macelis landed in the same harbor aboard the General Taylor on November 7, 1949; Eva Nemeth came to the same place aboard another voyage of the General Taylor on April 7, 1950. The ships’ names are a clue as to these women’s situation. Both ships were leased by the International Refugee Organization to resettle European refugees under the terms of an executive order issued by President Harry S. Truman in December 1945 and the Displaced Persons Act of 1948.

These ships carried special manifests providing data about the Displaced Persons on board to aid the social workers who were meeting them on the dock. These manifests describe the young women at the beginning of their refugee journeys. At this point they had not learned much English; in fact, their whole education had been disrupted. They had fled their homes—Eva Nemeth from Hungary and Galina Macelis and Giedre Zaunius from Lithuania—and had lost any economic advantages they used to have. What did they have going for them?

The Macelis family’s entry on the General Taylor, October -November 1949

One advantage was that they came with family. Galina Macelis traveled with her 52-year-old father Antanas and 50-year-old mother Nina to Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Giedre Zaunius, then aged 15, and her 18-year-old brother Saulkus traveled with their mother, Vinde Leskaitis, her second husband, Stasys Leskaitis, and her stepsister, ten-year-old Danute Leskaitis, to Santa Barbara, California. Eva Nemeth, her father Zsigmond, her mother Margit, and her brother Laszlo all headed for Ronkonkoma, Long Island. Another branch of the Nemeth family—James, Jolan, and their daughter, three-year-old Eva—went to Romeo, Michigan.

Although imperfect, there was a second form of support. There were no specific refugee visas at the time; families had to wait until visas for nationals from their countries of origin became available. The Cold War did not make refugees feel universally welcome: while some Americans thought of refugees as voting for freedom, others suspected that they were Communist spies and saboteurs in disguise. However, in collaboration with the nascent United Nations, allies in Western Europe, and agencies in the private sector, the United States played a big role in helping refugees. Refugees who had been liberated from the Nazis, or who had fled their homes as they came into the line of fire during the last months of World War II, found temporary shelter in Displaced Persons camps. There, they reunited with family members, regained their health, and learned about options for their futures. Those hoping to settle in the United States filled out many forms for visas and for sponsorship to guarantee that they would not become public charges upon arrival in the United States. Some even filled out forms to receive funding for the trip itself. Eva Nemeth’s family waited so long for visas and assistance with travel funds that Eva decided to apply separately for a scholarship from the National Catholic Welfare Conference; then both forms of assistance came through.

Passengers sailing with Eva Nemeth mimeographed sketches of the crew, including Escort Officer Grete Olsen, who, as the caption said, welcomed the passengers and wished them good luck in their new home. Her job was to prepare the passengers for landing.

Documents at the Center for Migration Studies say the refugees seemed destitute; they needed shelter from the war and then a new place to stay, a new job, a new home, even a new language, and a new life. By the time the three young women appeared in Marymount Manhattan’s student newspaper, they were already being treated as, and had begun to see themselves as, college women. The student journalist inquired about their experiences in World War II and as refugees, but then moved on. Like many first-year students, Galina Macelis could not decide which of her many interests to pursue. When Giedre Zaunius mentioned she had a brother she informed this women’s college that he was twenty-one years old and “very handsome.”

Eva Nemeth started her studies before fleeing Hungary and entered Marymount Manhattan College with enough credits to be between her junior and senior year. In May 1952, the student newspaper reported that she had a new identity: college graduate. She turned down an offer to teach Hungarian at the Air Force Academy in favor of pursuing graduate studies. Galina Macelis left Marymount Manhattan before graduation. In June 1954, Giedre Zaunius announced her graduation in the student newspaper with a comment on student life at Marymount Manhattan. She had, she wrote, played the jukebox in the student lounge only once in four years and had never played a single hand of bridge, which she regarded as a major achievement at this highly social school. Although she described herself as “not particularly outstanding,” her tongue-in-cheek essay makes clear her enjoyment of the intellectual world she found at college and her appreciation of the nuns and lay faculty.

Marymount Manhattan was so small in the 1950s that the yearbook gave each graduate both a photograph and a text portrait. Eva Nemeth’s text described her as an “eager and happy student” and said that both “science and medicine are calling her.” Under Giedre Zaunius’ photograph were phrases that confirmed she had an “unfaltering realization of the student’s role” and an “undisturbed depth of mind” and that praised her “scientific flame.”

Both Giedre Zaunius and Eva Nemeth developed other identities over time. Both became valued alumni, staying in touch with and donating to the school. Giedre Zaunius moved to Cranford, New Jersey. From the 1970s to the 1990s she co-authored articles about chemistry in several scholarly journals. Eva Nemeth became a medical doctor, a wife—becoming Eva Taborsky—a mother, and, after a long career and marriage, a widow. As of this writing, both women are still alive.

Galina Macelis, Eva Nemeth, and Giedre Zaunius have taken on a new identity for history students at Marymount Manhattan. When the CMS/ Marymount Manhattan archivist pieced together this story, it was used for a class on writing with primary sources. By the end of their assignment, the students could define who a “Displaced Person” was and describe the process of resettling refugees after World War II. But what they were most interested in writing about was that these were people whom they were pleased to claim as members of their community.

June 20, 2024