How the daughter of Holocaust survivors helped 10 U.S. immigrants

Diana Portnoy was three and a half years old when she came to Ellis Island with her parents in 1949. Her parents Sylvia and Simon Katz are Polish Jewish Holocaust survivors. They fled from city to city and at one point ended up in Siberia, he says Boston Globe.

Фото: Depositphotos

Of the entire Katz family, only they survived, so they applied for travel to the United States in accordance with President Truman's 1948 Displaced Persons Act. They went to a new country on a converted American battleship.

The couple settled in Malden, Massachusetts, surrounded by fellow Holocaust survivors, mostly Yiddish speakers. They found work at a local sweater factory, learned English and started their own business. The couple became American citizens.

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Now their 73-year-old daughter is a leader in immigrant education. Diana Portnoy is an Ellis Island Medal of Honor recipient, author of Immigrants' Struggles, Immigrants' Gifts (which chronicles the contributions of 11 immigrant groups to American culture), and founder and CEO of the Immigrant Learning Center (ILC). Maldene.

A woman opened the center in November 1992 with a small staff of three teachers and 60 students. Already then there were 80 people on the waiting list who wanted to study at the center.

“I realized that there is a lot of misinformation about immigrants and refugees, a lot of stereotypes. ILC’s mission is to give immigrants a voice, an opportunity to speak out,” says Portnoy.

The center seeks to convey the voice of immigrants to US residents through three main initiatives:

1. English Language Learning Programs providing free year-round English courses for immigrants and adult refugees
2. Institute for Public Education, informing Americans about the economic and social contribution of immigrants
3. The Institute for Immigration Studies, working with George Mason University of Virginia to study this contribution.

Once immigrants come to America, “they need to learn the language, learn to navigate our economic systems, our education systems, our health care systems,” Diana notes. The center is working to close this knowledge gap.

Along with English lessons, students acquire leadership skills, problem solving, work organization, etc. On the ILC website it is noted that students "achieve greater self-confidence, self-sufficiency and the ability to contribute and participate in society."

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The tailor received a bachelor's degree in primary education from Boston University and a master's degree in curriculum development from Cornell University. Before opening the center, she taught part-time at an adult education center, worked on setting up training centers in private business, and trained teachers for the state. When her children went to college, she decided to fulfill her dream and open her own training center.

In 2017, she was given the opportunity to open a center in the city of Malden, where her parents transported a Yiddish-speaking baby.

The tailor was inspired by help from other immigrants, as she witnessed a rise in immigration to the United States in the late 1980s after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and then the collapse of the USSR.

In order not to sit idly by and not look indifferently at the ineffective, in her opinion, government programs, she began to act and a year later opened the Immigrant Education Center.

Currently, about 450 students study at this center, 33 employees work. The waiting list for those wishing to study in it is on average from 500 to 900 people. Students adhere to a strict attendance policy and spend from 10 to 15 hours of intensive training per week.

“If you come to this country to live here and make a living, we will help you learn English, we will teach you the culture of this country,” Portnoy said.

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Classes include: a technological program that teaches students basic computer skills; free citizenship lessons to help students go through the process of obtaining US citizenship; a lesson for seniors, ensuring that students 60+ are not isolated in their new communities. There are also family literacy workshops that help immigrant parents interact with their children's teachers and understand how to guide them in the learning process.

The Next Steps class was created in 2017 to help students achieve their educational and career goals. This class helps students focus on vocational training, higher education, professional recertification, and job search skills.

To date, the center has assisted about 10 people from 500 countries living in 122 districts of the state of Massachusetts. He holds several webinars annually for educators and the public.

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, and Tailor said it’s crucial to remember the Holocaust.

She believes that those who survived or were affected by the Holocaust have a responsibility to share their experiences and schools to educate future generations.

“I believe that the United States is the best country in the world. They treated me well here, and they treated my parents very well. In what other country can a little girl, an immigrant with nothing, end up successful? In my opinion, this is only possible in the United States,” Portnoy said.

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