AR Admin struggles in Moscow

Many matters had to be tended to in Moscow, including customs inspections and other documentation to enable us to emigrate from the Soviet Union. As a twelve-year-old boy, all these arrangements were, of course, done for me by my elders. Uncle Aron was now my legal guardian with whose official travel documents mine were combined. One little detail I do recall is the question on the part of a customs official about my bird egg collection, whether I wanted to have these eggs hatched in America!

But, the really haunting question in Moscow was whether my brothers Herman and Dietrich would be able to leave the U.S.S.R. By this time, they were clearly absent without leave from their military drill unit in the Molochnaya. It became clear in Moscow that no exit permit would be obtained for them in the capital city. 

During our stay in Moscow, the Duma, the parliament of the Soviet Union, was closing its session, and representatives from all parts of the U.S.S.R. were leaving for their various and widely separated home districts.  During this early, post-revolutionary period in the history of the Soviet Union, many of the political representatives were very young men in their early twenties, or even in their late teens. In this context, it occurred to the Neufelds to entrain my brothers on the way to the then semi-autonomous Republic of Georgia in the Caucasus. There the port city of Batum, burdened with a flood of aspiring emigrants, was known to provide an easier escape route than most other border cities. And so, outfitted in new suits, my brothers left Moscow for the Republic of Georgia. With their departure our ways separated, and whereas I have been told some of the harrowing experiences that my brothers lived through in their escape from the U.S.S.R., their story is not my own. And my brother Herman has already written a fascinating report on their journey from Russia to the United States.

Before our family departed Moscow on that December day of 1922, we all did have an opportunity to see some of the more noteworthy landmarks of the Russian capital, including the Kremlin, Christ the Savior Church, some of the many Russian Orthodox churches with their gold-plated domes, the unique Saint Basil’s Cathedral with its most ornate interior, the enormous department store with its interior mezzanines and interconnecting bridges and arcades, now known by the acronym GUM, then as Novye Ryadey, and more.