This is Towfig Arjmand. He is originally from the western part of Iran in the province of Kermanshah and immigrated to the United States in the mid 1950s. His mother was a housewife while his father worked in the British consular. Arjmand had a proper education beginning in grammar school all the way to medical school. Arjmand immigrated to America to fully pursue medicine and become a specialist, something that was difficult to do in Iran. Once being in America, he says it was relatively easy for him to acclimate to American culture, however “getting used to the food, the culture and all that, it takes a little bit of time…”. After moving to the United States, Arjmand “identifies himself purely as American. After all, it is a lifetime that I have been in the United States…”. Since being in America, Arjmand has gotten married, had children and fulfilled his dream in medicine by becoming an anesthesiologist. Towfig Arjmand passed away on Friday, August 23rd of 2019. He lived a happy and successful life in the United States, but will always remember Iran as a second home.

Like many other immigrants, it did not matter the jobs they possessed in their home countries; they would be seen and treated as foreigners, and would need to start afresh. When the family was able to move to the United States, settling in Illinois, Arvid’s parents took any work they could find, usually in factories. America during the 1950s was not the most welcoming place to foreigners, and “people tried to get away from [speaking a foreign language].” However, the inequality suffered by Arvid and similar refugees did not prevent him from becoming successful. After struggling through language differences, Arvid received a university degree in political science and worked as a research associate and public affairs consultant. Coming to America brought him several new opportunities, and Arvid raised his family American. 

She was too young to make much of a decision on her and her family immigrating, but her parents seemed to have decided to move because her stepfather had heard that farmers lived very well under Hitler in Prussia, and since her stepfather was a farmer they moved there.After immigrating, she remembers not liking it in West Germany(Prussia), because people would get mad and treat them badly for being “refugees and taking our stuff”.There were no jobs there, and they were very poor. She was also not allowed to complete high school, since apparently her intelligence level was too far below everyone else's.

During his immigration process he didn’t experience too many hardships. Besides the fact that he had to get used to the culture. No organization that helped him adjust to American life, in fact he said “No. No, it was purely on my own”, not even to find a job at St. John’s Hospital. Arjmand considers himself to be fully American.  He says his favorite part about living in the US is that “you don’t have to be concerned about any organization watching you”, he appreciates the fact that freedom of speech and freedom of expression are guaranteed.   

After  high school Thien Khoc Pham registered for college, but that was cut short because Vietnam started a draft for their next war. He served from 1967 to 1975, he then went to a reeducation camp to work. When he was no longer able to work in the camps he was released back to his family. Many failed attempts to flee Vietnam were unsuccessful until he came to America in 1998.

Veronica was 28 when she migrated to the United States in January of 1999. She applied for a Rotary International Scholarship in the United States, and ended up getting it. She then completed a Master’ Degree in Community Arts Management at the University of Illinois and began working in the Illinois Department of Human Services. She had planned to live with Mauricio when she arrived, but they weren’t really together anymore by the time she had received the scholarship. Mauricio left for Chicago a few months later to play music there and stayed for a few years. He didn’t like living there, and he missed Alemendera too much. He ended up moving back to Chile, and Alemendra started taking the plane from the United States to Chile by herself starting at 7 years old. According to Veronica, the schools here in the United States discriminated against people. She said that she was once asked, “why aren’t you cleaning bathrooms?” It was very hard for Alemendera to attend school in the United States because she was bullied and subjected to racist comments. She felt very out of place and experienced severe anxiety because of her experiences at school. Veronica says that she “can bet that the kids of immigrants go through very similar experiences regardless of social class or economic status…they are always reminded of how they don’t belong, instead of how wonderful being bilingual is.” Veronica says that her biggest regret was putting Alemendera in the position to be bullied so much by migrating to the United States. 

“One, he could have set her up outside the home somewhere, a separate household, and paid her expenses. When a child was born, especially if it was a boy, he could have just brought the boy in the house and given the boy to my mother”

“I am in the United States, and I want to live my life in the present and future.”

She also said “It makes so much sense to me because he explained, in the United States, for example—he lived here in the United States—people reform”, where she gives a little of her insight on the idea that the US was a place for reform. She had to migrate in order to see that she wanted to teach, and that was a part of her identity. She was also a feminists, and it was okay to be a feminist in the United States, whereas it is the opposite under a dictatorship. She left because she was being persecuted. After immigration, she faced racism as a Latina in the US, and her daughter was also bullied in school. Veronica continued her studies in the US, got a degree, and a stable job. Although she experienced racism, there were also many opportunities after immigration.

In a town where he lived, Vilkaviskis, they had a prisoner of war camp full with Russian soldiers who died of starvation in the German camps. The Germans were exterminating the Lithuanian Jewish population. 

In the summer of 1944, when the eastern front was collapsing, his family moved westward, towards the German border to get away from the front, where it was already in a battle zone. 

There were thousands and thousands of people moving west. In some of the families, younger men were taken off the wagons and told by the troops to put them to forced labor, to dig the positions. The people in East Prussia and Germany fed them and shared their food and shelter with them. Then later on, Germans planned refugee camps, where they were fed and provided with shelter in Germany. 

His family got permission to go to Bavaria, to a city called Würzburg. Close to the end of the war, in March of 1945, Würzburg got wiped out in an air raid at one night by British bombers.

Everything caught on fire. He and his family stayed in the air raid shelter and survived.  

After that, the Germans provided trains for the refugees to channel them out into the smaller towns alongside in Bavaria. They went on a train to a small village. They found a farmer who had some room in a barn who took them in. 

After the war, his parents found out about the Lithuanian refugee camp with a Lithuanian high school. He moved on to that refugee camp and went to Lithuanian high school in Eichstätt, Bavaria.

He stayed in the refugee camp until August 15, 1949. He boarded a troop transport ship, USS General Heintzelman, and sailed to America. He and his family got off the ship to Ellis Island and then took a train to a Lithuanian community in Chicago. 

After he arrived, his cousin and his family let his family stay in their two bedroom apartment. He got a job in a plating factory, working with the metals and making eighty cents an hour. Then, he returned to high-school and graduated.