European Nations


Girls work at an Irish bakery in Woodside.

In the early days of this country the majority of immigrants came from Europe. The Dutch settled New Amsterdam, the British took it over, the Irish found a home here as did the Germans, Italians and people from Eastern Europe..



Though within the last 50 years the doors of immigration have swung toward Asia and South America, Europeans are still working their way across the Atlantic seeking better lives on our side of the pond. Here are some of their stories.


Armenia


Anush Ricci

Name: Anush Harutyunyan Ricci
Age: 24
Years in America: 5

When Anush (Harut-yunyan) Ricci first set foot in the United States, she didn’t really see a whole lot. After all, she was in Iowa.

The 24-year-old native of the small, mountainous town of Gyumri, Armenia, came to America at age 19 on a one-year scholarship to Wartburg College in rural Waverly, Iowa and, admittedly, she wasn’t impressed. Citing homesickness, she left Iowa after a year and returned to Armenia only to find she missed the U.S. Four years later, she’s living in Jamaica Estates, completing her MBA at St. John’s University and adapting well to life as a New Yorker.

Leaving the Homeland
For someone as intelligent as Ricci, who married American Curtis Ricci last year, leaving Armenia was a no-brainer.

“You can be a genius in Armenia but you have no future,” she said. “There’s so little opportunity over there. You can want, and you can work hard, but there’s nothing for you. I was able to get a scholarship to go to [the U.S.], but who would imagine I would come to New York?”

Like many immigrants, the hardest part of adapting to life in America was learning English - even though she’d studied the language in her native country.

“We studied British English,” she said. “When I came here, no one was speaking Russian or Armenian. They spoke English, but it wasn’t an English that I really understood. It was ‘American’ English. It took me a year or so before I really started to feel comfortable.”

In Queens
Ricci has adapted well to life as a New Yorker. Though she hopes to eventually start her own non-profit organization to help her homeland, she doesn’t have any intentions of leaving the U.S. or New York.

“It’s wonderful being in Queens because you can still be in New York City but you don’t have to be in the middle of everything all the time like you’d be in Midtown Manhattan,” she said. “I definitely miss home. My family is there, there’s a sense of community there. But when I’m there, I miss it here too much. Ideally, I’ll be able to work in a way that I can travel to Armenia. But my life is here now.”

Though she’s very much Americanized herself, Ricci still makes sure she stays in contact with her family via telephone and Internet. And her Americanization stopped at her marriage. She and her husband traveled all the way back to her country for a traditional, Armenian wedding.
“Have you ever seen “My Big Fat Greek Wedding?” she asked. “It was exactly like that!”
- By Jack Buehrer

Bosnia


Izeta Pobric

Name: Izeta Pobric
Age: 48
Years in America: 10

Izeta Pobric’s husband is shoveling the snow outside their semi-attached home in Oakland Gardens with thick gloves and a red nose. He calls the weather good, and after another tossing another shovel-full, he smiles and says, “It could be worse.”

Inside, Mrs. Probric was freshening up. She just described how she taught elementary school students in a basement of a building, without heat, water, electricity or food, because snipers and bomb-throwers and terrorist mostly targeted pedestrians, or those who dared so much as to walk outside.

Leaving the Homeland
“First of all,” said Pobric, “I heard on the radio ‘Be careful! Don’t go outside!’ We were at the weekend house with our kids. ‘Don’t go outside, the sniper.’ My husband said don’t go near the window. I thought it was a joke.”

Porbric’s three daughters were all in grade school and were asking “Why someone wants to kill us in the city?” Pobric said. “It was hard to explain, because it was stupid, idiotic, but it’s not just one person.”

“From one side of the street, to cross to the other, [in order] to get food, or to get to my school in the basement, to get to my kids in my basement, it took me 2 hours to wait for the sniper to get tired of shooting,” said Pobric.

After some time, the woman who taught children to write their first sentences in an impromptu bunker, composes herself from what she admits is a flashback. It happens, she says. Even 10 years, and a college degree in Psychology later, the snipers, grenades and the entire war, return to her. “You know it always hits me. Sometimes I don’t want to talk about it. My mind is turning back, and yesterday it happened. And now today, I went outside, I just remember how many times I saw blood on the snow and my husband said somebody was killed there.”

What saved Pobric and her family amidst the carnage was, ironically, her husband’s illness. Severe chest pains which incapacitated the only man in the house, and after 2 1/2 years as living targets inside the Bosnian civil war, Pobric and her family were escorted by United Nations peacekeepers to Croatia, and reunited with her husband’s sister, who at this point, was married and living in Bayside.

In Queens
Today, with two of her three daughters on full scholarships to four-year colleges, Pobric said she takes them back to their first home, to learn something.

Like her new home, Pobric says of her Sarajevo, “Step by step my city is building again, rising again. It’s going to be nice. Whenever we go there to visit, I feel, that’s my home. The city is my home. I feel something inside, but also when I go from there [back to Oakland Gardens], now I have my home here.”
- By Azi Paybarah

Bulgaria

Name: Lubomir Kanov, PhD.
Age: 60
Years in America: 18

"To be a physician under the circumstances was a curse,” said Dr. Lubomir Kanov of his native Bulgaria while it was under Communist rule. “You work for practically nothing: [you] work for very low. You do this only for the love of the people and respect of the profession. Your existence is rather poor, but you have the books, the friends, and the freedom of thinking, and they try to suppress that, too.” After his father, a surgeon, died while doing his mandatory manual labor for the state, Kanov vowed to become a doctor, and escape.

Leaving the Homeland
“I always wanted to escape the communist dictatorship and way of life,” said Kanov. “But I couldn’t. It was punishable with prison and what not. You remember the Berlin Wall?” After his older brother defected to Canada, “they somehow detected my intentions,” which led Kanov to be “imprisoned for my beliefs. I believe in individual liberty and freedom, which is the opposite of what we were taught.”

After a kangaroo court found Kanov guilty of disseminating “counter revolutionary propaganda against the state,” the trained physician who previously worked in underserved areas of Bulgaria was sentenced to “political prison. It was horrible. Much, much worse than prison for criminals. Luckily, I only spent 1 1/2 years there. Usually they give 15 to 20 years.”

Once released from prison, “my brother was able to arrange a woman to pretend to marry me, in Canada.” Although Kanov was an accomplished doctor with over a decade of experience at this point, “I had only 50 German marks. My friend put them in a toothpaste case, because it was illegal to get out of the country with Western currency.”

Things did not get easier for the defecting doctor, who was to discover that along with his freedom, came a hefty price tag on his profession. “The same day I arrived in Canada, they changed the equivalency exam in medicine, which were relatively easy to pass, to something that was much more comprehensive and almost impossible to pass. I had to study the entire medicine all over again, after 13 years of practicing. And study English.” Kanov, undeterred, said he was, “speaking Bulgarian with my brother [at home] and French with the people on the street, and I studied English by myself.”

In Queens
“After I passed my exams, I applied to different programs. In the summer of 1986, I came to the United States, and went to Texas of all places.” There, “I started, again, my residency training, which is a requirement to become a psychiatrist, which was a bit redundant. I wasn’t an entry level psychiatrist, but it was the law.” Kanov, who now has his own practice, said, “For my next big project, I created in Bulgaria, a vineyard, with a beautiful view.” That means “Wine [from Bulgaria] could be arriving soon here in Queens.”
- By Azi Paybarah

Finland


Liisa Breton

Name: Liisa Breton5
Age: 39
Years in America: 14

Liisa Breton was swept off her feet in Finland and into a marriage in Queens 12 years ago. Now she is a mother of three, a secretary at her local church and happy to call this borough home.

Leaving the Homeland
Breton met her husband-to-be in Finland while he was consulting there for a few weeks. His few weeks turned into a few months and into a blossoming courtship with Breton. The two had a long-distance relationship for many years before Breton finished her college in Finland and join her Haitian-American husband in New York.

But being far away from her homeland has not been easy and adjusting to American culture has been an adjustment. “It’s much more commercial here,” she said. Breton is still homesick after all these years and always looks forward to returning to her native land to live in once again. “I would love to move back to Finland,” she said. “But New York City is the place to be. There are all kinds of people.”

In Queens
Not long after the Bretons were married came three children into their lives - one son, now 9, and twin girls, now 7. They are all multilingual children speaking French, English and Finnish, and Mr. Breton is even taking Finnish lessons.

Between taking care of her family and working as the secretary at the Finnish Church in Queens, Breton has her hands full. And Breton has become a lot more open about her feelings and point of view. “I have changed a lot,” she said. “In Finland, they are a lot more private, quiet.”
With such a multicultural background, the Bretons make time for each heritage and culture. The children attend the Finnish church with their mother every Sunday, speak to her in Finnish and join her on vacations back to Finland. During the holidays they bake traditional ginger breads, hams, and rye breads.

The children their mother also celebrate Santa Lucia, a traditionally Swedish and coastal-Finland holiday. They also celebrate Midsummer by attending some Scandinavian festivals around town or going hiking. She has even turned her husband on to mushroom picking, a traditional pastime. “People think we’re going to kill ourselves,” she said. “You just have to know what you are doing.”
- By Lisa Spinelli

France


David Andersson

Name: David Andersson
Years in America: 10

Despite the American name, immigrant David Andersson is every bit a Parisian as one could imagine.

He moved here after falling in love with a woman who called New York home. Once they broke up, Andersson, standing alone on Riverside Drive, had what fellow French native Jean-Paul Sartre would call an existential moment. “I am by myself in this country. That’s when I made a decision to stay. I registered it as a turning point,” he said. “It was part of the challenge: facing the difficulty, instead of saying it is difficult, I’m leaving.”

Leaving the Homeland
Sitting inside his favorite Indian restaurant near his Jackson Heights home, Andersson sipped a small cup of sweet, milky tea like he would in a Parisian café, and said that his decision to move to New York for a woman was one that surprised even him. “I’m not a traveler: somewhere else didn’t even exist. I was very comfortable in Paris, with my friends, family and work. So I surprised myself somewhat. It was not my plan really.”

Calmly, without leaning forward or uncrossing his legs, Andersson added, “Sometimes you make a decision in life and you don’t’ know what it means but you have to deal with it.”

In Queens
As a computer assistant, Andersson found work in various private elementary and secondary schools, mostly in Manhattan. His English, although textbook-taught when he arrived, was perfected in the melting pot of Jackson Heights.

Andersson, who also founded the Humanist Center of Cultures, learned English by conversing with fellow immigrants. “I stopped speaking French at home. After that, I got involved in the Center. It became easier. We even did an English club [at the Center].” Andersson jumped into the role of English tutor when “a woman who was supposed to teach did not show up. So I had to do something.”

Coming from one large city to another provided few obstacles, Andersson said. One though, he is still adjusting to. “French immigrants are very welcoming. I don’t think you have any problems, but the French like to smoke everywhere.”

Andersson said he moved to Jackson Heights and founded the Center in that neighborhood because of its diversity and cohesion among so many different cultures.
- By Azi Paybarah

Germany


Lory Diez

Name: Lory Diez
Age: 70
Years in America: 58

A holocaust survivor, Lory Diez, literally came over on a boat at the end of World War II with her mother. Her amazing tale of survival and perseverance in the face of hardship is extraordinary even among so many immigrants in Queens.

Leaving the Homeland
Near the end of World War II, Diez and her mother were taken away by the Nazis from her father’s home in Berlin for being Jewish. Interred in a Berlin concentration camp, she was freed in the same year – 1945. “All I knew was that Berliners revolted against the Nazis and we were free again,” said Diez. Her father, legally blind, rode his bike to pick her and her mother up all the way from Frankfurt, over 430 miles. “We never figured out how he made it,” she said.

A year later, Diez and her mother left Germany on an American transport headed for New York City. With only three bundles of belongings, including a violin her father had given her, they landed at Ellis Island and stayed there for about a week. She remembers a man telling her right before she left for America that she had better marry a rich man, but Diez remains single today. “You could say I am married to my violin,” she said.

In Queens
Diez studied hard on the violin her father gave her and excelled far beyond her expectations. The hardest transition was getting used to the education system here and how they taught math. “The approach was very different here,” she said.

In high school, she received the New York Philharmonic scholarship, including two years of free lessons with a Philharmonic orchestra musician while she was in high school. By age 16, she had been accepted into the New York College of Music, before it became part of NYU. Since then she has taught music at numerous schools and has played in such notable orchestras as the Queens Symphony Orchestra and the Greenwich Village Orchestra. “I am now retired,” she said. “But happily, I will always play orchestra and chamber music.”

Diez was only 17 when she became an American citizen so she grew up first and foremost as an American. She kept her language, however, and returned regularly to Germany to visit her father. She also made marzipan (when her hands permitted her) with blackberry brandy. She takes long walks to follow in the tradition of her mother and father’s walk back to Frankfurt from Berlin after World War II was over. “I am living a charmed life,” she said. “I am 100 percent sure my life would have been different in Germany.”
— By Lisa Spinelli

Greece


Fr. John Antonopoulos

Name: Fr. John Antonopoulos
Age: 70
Years in America: 44

Once a budding and carefree student in Greece, Father John Antonopoulos is now a stable figure in his Astoria, Queens neighborhood.

Leaving the Homeland
As a young man in his 20s, Father John had already finished some schooling in Greece – but he was set on coming to America to obtain a business degree. He came to New York and attended the New York School for Business, graduating in just four years. But Antonopoulos was very homesick for the first few years. He had a hard time getting over the loss of family and friends, but he “slowly got away from the sickness” and became a pillar in his Astoria community. John also became Father John in the process and became ordained in the Orthodox Greek church and has “adapted fully to the United States.”

In Queens
Father John has been a resident priest and teacher at the St. Demetrios School in Astoria for nearly 48 years. “They love me and I love them,” he said. “Even if I am retired now, I still service them.” He still helps out around the school and with celebrations from the school and St. Demetrios Cathedral. Father John is also writing a book about the St. Demetrios community in Astoria. The book is not due out for at least a year.

Being surrounded by other Greek immigrant and Greek heritage community members definitely helps Father John remember where he came from, but he does have an active role in keeping his Greek culture alive as well.

He brings his family and many other families together to celebrate St. Demetrios Day on Oct. 26 for a big celebration. “We cannot fit them all in the churches,” he said. “There are so many of them.” Father John also celebrates with others in his community Oct. 28, the day Greece declared war in World War II, and many religious holidays.

Father John does still have Greece in his heart, though. He even bought a house recently in Naupaktos, Greece, which he visits every year. “You can jump from the balcony to the beach,” he said. But Father John is not jumping ship any time soon, he will remain in Astoria with his beloved community for many years to come.
— By Lisa Spinelli

Hungary


Steve Usztoke

Name: Steve Usztoke
Age: 75
Years in America: 48

At a turbulent time in Hungary’s history, a man behind the scenes had a big impact. Steven Usztoke printed fliers and petitions for the Hungarian revolution in the 1950s. Today he is still servicing the Hungarian community, but in different ways.

Leaving the Homeland
On his way to work at a local print shop in Budapest, Usztoke was walking along the street when he wound up walking into a workers’ union protest. He walked with the crowd, asking questions and determining what the protest was all about. Agreeing with many of their gripes about the communist government, Usztoke agreed to print up their demands to the government and later their call-to-strike fliers.

With the rebellion crushed and Hungarians killed and imprisoned at the hands of the Soviets, Usztoke fled to America under fear of death. “Even the smallest thing in the press had to be approved by the government,” he said. “I knew what was waiting for me if I stayed.”

In Queens
At 28 years old, Usztoke obtained a special permit from the U.S. government, to enter and stay in America. Once in New York City, Usztoke married another Hungarian and built a life and family in Astoria and Long Island. He has retired as a printer from the Big Six Union and has since worked in public broadcasting. “I was too young to do nothing, so I joined TV,” he said.
He worked at a public broadcasting station in Manhattan, creating programs for the local Hungarian community. But he was not willing to switch his broadcasts to Sunday at 6 p.m. to Sunday morning, so he quit. A Hungarian professor at NYU called Usztoke and asked help him run his public broadcast programs on MNN Broadcasting. Now Usztoke works on Hungarian programs for Channel 67 and 25 thru MNN.

A dual citizen now, Usztoke said he will “never forget where I came from.” He has bought an apartment in Budapest and goes back once a year to visit. He continues to observe St. Stephen’s Day, December 26, by bringing his family together in his Astoria home for a special celebration and treats like his homemade poppy seed and walnut cake.
“We like it very much in Queens,” he said.
— By Lisa Spinelli


Ireland


Andrew Breslin

Name: Andrew Breslin
Age: 42
Years in America: 23

Andy Breslin was just one of thousands of Irish immigrants to Queens in the 1980s, but he distinguished himself when he started opening up restaurants all over the city. Now the proud owner of five restaurants and bars, Breslin has achieved more than he had set out to do by coming to America.

Leaving the Homeland
Fresh out of high school at 19 years old, Breslin wanted to escape the economic downturn Ireland was taking and better his financial opportunities. They had a saying in Ireland during the 1980s, “Last one leaving, turn the lights off,” he said. He came here on a visiting visa and was allowed to stay in 1986 after Ronald Regan granted amnesty to illegal aliens like Breslin. He used it to his advantage and started opening restaurants. Breslin also started a trend for his family and soon both of his older brothers had immigrated to Queens to be near their successful sibling.

In Queens
Breslin was always a bartender so he stuck with what he knew best - the service industry. Now Andy loves his life in New York. “New York and America has been very good to me,” he said. His restaurants include Red Wine, a live music venue in Manhattan; Alibi, a lounge on MacDougal Street; The Bank Café, a family style restaurant in Woodhaven; and the one that started them all, Sidetracks, another family restaurant, on Queens Boulevard. “They are all very different,” he said.

“We all change,” Breslin said about immigrants that move to Queens, “but I go back quite often.” Breslin’s mother is still in Ireland, so he travels frequently to his homeland - 10 times in the last year. He also shows his loyalty to his homeland by keeping up with his favorite soccer team, Arsenal. Breslin watches and shows Arsenal’s games at his Red Wine bar.

“I still consider myself a fan,” he said. He even gets up at 6 a.m. sometimes to catch a good rugby match on satellite TV. Of course he has even more of an excuse to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day than most of New Yorkers, so he usually makes it “an event, not just a day.” But he is “here to stay” in New York and “wouldn’t possibly go anywhere else.”
- By Lisa Spinelli

Italy


Anthony Meloni

Name: Anthony Meloni
Age: 48
Years in America: 40

Anthony Meloni traveled by himself to America when he was just 9 years old. He moved in with his childless uncle and fell in love with New York. “Volunteering is one of the greatest things you can do,” said Meloni.

Leaving the Homeland
Living in Sardegna, an island off of the Italian coast, Meloni’s parents wanted to send their youngest son to America to stay with his uncle who had no children of his own. Looking forward to the adventure, Meloni never really thought twice about leaving his own family to stay with his uncle. “I had only met my uncle once before that,” he said. “But it really worked out.” He picked up the language within six months of living in America and excelled at school.

In Queens
Knowing the difficulties of being an immigrant, Meloni has dedicated his life to helping those new and old to his community. He is the executive director of Immigrant Advocacy Services in Astoria that aids immigrants in their citizenship, traveling, obtaining green cards and more. But the New York Anti-Crime Agency he started in 1984 is his true passion. “It’s the love of my life,” he said. The organization helps children who were already in trouble with the law turn their lives around. They also offer other programs like self defense classes for women.

As a community board member, a safety chair and a volunteer, Meloni is dedicated to his community - a true American. “I feel like I was made in the USA,” he said. “A lot of the times I don’t feel like I was born in another country. I feel like a New Yorker.”

Up until recently, Meloni was not really pressing his children to remind them of their Italian heritage. But a trip back home last year to Sardegna to see his mother and two brothers has changed his perspective on things.

“I would love to bring them back more,” he said. “I think that makes a great first-hand impression. You really have to be there to understand the culture.”

And while Meloni is not a pasta-man himself, he still remembers where he came from and relishes in the fact that he is an Italian-American. “I am very proud of my Italian heritage,” he said. “It is one of the greatest contributors of culture to this city.”
- By Lisa Spinelli

Poland


.Wojciech Oktawie

Name: Wojciech Oktawie
Age: 46
Years in America: 16

Church, for many people, is a place of comfort. For an architect in communist-ruled Poland, church was an escape. Wojciech Oktawie was an architecture student in the Krakow, Poland in the early 1980s, when the archbishop of Krakow, Karol Joseph Wojtyla, became Pope John Paul II.

While the iron curtain kept Oktawie from traveling abroad, at home, the church’s defiance offered the young architect a chance to train, and prepare himself for his move to America.

From end of the 1970s to the mid-1990s, more than 1,500 churches were built in Poland as a result. “It was the biggest movement since middle ages,” said Oktawie, whose first architecture job out of school was to build some of those churches.

Leaving the Homeland
The church’s expansion, according to Oktawie, gave “professionals an opportunity.” With a crumbling, government-controlled economy, where else was an architect to work, he asked?

In 1981, Oktawie’s sister defected to America. In the eyes of Polish officials, Oktawie was likely to follow. He was denied a passport and the right to travel abroad until the “wall started crumbling.” When it did, his aunt in San Francisco invited him to stay with her. As he flew from Eastern Europe to the farthest edge of the American continent, Oktawie recalled, “I was flying [on] this plane, a cloudy day. We went down under the clouds, I had a seat by the window and guess what I saw? The statue of Liberty.” Proudly, like the unwitting heir of a family heirloom, Oktawie added, “It was like a destiny. I will settle in New York.”

That is what he did when he moved from San Francisco to a rented home in Long Island, to a home he recently purchased in Ridgewood.

In Queens
“Coming to New York, I was, in the beginning, I was scared,” said Oktawie. “I was overwhelmed by the sheer scale of New York. What do they say, the beauty of the congestion?” Oktawie eased into that beautiful congestion. “I lived first in Long Island, then Floral Park, then Douglaston, and finally I bought a house in Ridgewood.” With the mind of a revolutionary, now a gray-haired homeowner, Oktawie added, “I believe this is the future of the City: people who escaped the suburbanizatin of New York City are returning, and I want to be part of the movement.”
- By Lisa Spinelli

Romania

Name: Gallina Melnik
Years in America: 22

When Gallina Melnik saw the atrocities that existed in the former communist USSR, which prevented citizens from reading literature about philosophy and psychology, she managed to escape, along with her husband and young son, finding a home in Queens.

Leaving the Homeland
“We prepared, we knew whatever happened to us we’d find a better place,” said Melnik, who left Moldova in 1982 and financially secured plane tickets to Vienna, later making it to U.S. soil.
She said, “We couldn’t read what we wanted. There was no future for us. God forbid my child ended up in prison. A lot of young people died in prison because of books.”

In Queens
Melnik said that she loves that she can shop and read at bookstores and libraries. When she first got here, though, things were not easy at first. The she and her family faced when they arrived were mostly cultural - language language barriers, trying to adopt an American way of life and getting used to the different types of food.

She said she hasn’t returned to Moldova because of bad memories. Moldova is geographically located between Romania and the Ukraine

Although it took her husband Alexander nine months to find work in New York, Melnik said, ”I supported him and that is the American dream.” She added, “Success is when there is mutual understanding.”

Melnik lives with her husband and 15-year-old son, David, in a Kew Gardens apartment. Her other son, Genndy, is 33 and lives nearby. Melnik works at the Jackson Heights Jewish Community Council as a case manger and social worker.
- By Michael Rehak

Spain


Pedro Pacheco

Name: Pedro Pacheco
Age: 65
Years in America: 9

Pedro Pacheco was already a successful artist when he came to America, but it is the freedom and the diversity that keeps him here and his artist instinct alive.

Leaving the Homeland
In Spain, Pacheco was an artist with a passion, but he was a starving artist with a hunger “to develop in the freedom of all of his potential.” He worked hard and never quite felt the variety or freedoms he enjoys now in Queens. “Of course, Europe and Spain there is an old concept,” he said. “Here, everything is new - new visions, new ideas, and here you accept new things easier than in other parts of the world.”

The final decision to move to America came after several exhibits in Jerusalem that were very successful. He was approached by a friend about moving to America and Pacheco jumped on the idea.

In Queens
Today, Pacheco lives and works from his Jackson Heights studio. He loves the economics of Queens, the space he has available to him (including his back yard) and the diversity. “You don’t find this melting pot in any kind of city in the world,” he said. “I believe behind every window in New York exists a novel, a history,” he said.

Pacheco has been featured at a number of spaces in Queens and New York City. One of his latest paintings is now on display by the Flushing Council on Culture and the Arts for their 25th anniversary in Flushing Town Hall thru Feb. 6.

“In my country, I had been an artist for 40 years in contemporary art,” he said. “In the 10 years I have been in the United States, I have received more respect from artists for art - personal and professional - and more consideration. I received 14 awards here.”

Pacheco still considers himself Spanish - “you can not erase just like that” - but his mind is “open and with a lot of respect.” He does retain much of his culture in his everyday life and on special days like Dia de la Hispanidad, the same day as Columbus Day, but this day is dedicated to Spain’s conquests, not Columbus’. He also goes to an Asturias cultural center in Queens frequently as well as to a landmark Spainsh restaurant in Jackson Heights, Meson Asturias.

He is anxiously waiting to become a citizen of the United States, however, and loves his new country. “I came here for professional conquest and I got both personal and professional,” he said.
- By Lisa Spinelli

Ukraine


Mikhail Gubin

Name: Mikhail Gubin
Age: 51
Years in America: 15

In the austere world of the communist Ukraine, freedom of speech and expression were outlawed, including the distorted human-like figures on the canvas of artist Mikhail Gubin. “I was not in mainstream like Soviet, social realistic style. I work in surrealistic style. It was like Bourgeois ideas, and the communists don’t like that. Abstract art, any kind of art that was not social realistic, was not permitted in the country.”

Leaving the Homeland
Unlike the dark, shadowy figures in Gubin’s art, his oppressors were anything but abstract. In fact, sometimes, they were his in-laws.

“We need to go to [my wife’s] parents and ask, “Will you permit to us to leave this country?’” Despite Gubin’s love for their daughter, his in-laws said, “No, because we are old and you have to live together with us. Secondary, we [will] never give you permission because [America] is [a] capitalistic country. You have to be in communist country.”

Gubin’s father in-law was an all-out supporter of Ukraine’s government at the time, which at the time, was a large territory inside the Soviet Union. The law the required Gubin and his wife to get their parents’ permission to emigrate were “not [created] because [our parents] are very old and they have no help from us. It was only to keep us in this country.”

In Queens
Fifteen years after fleeing the tight-fisted rule of the Soviets, Gubin has been busy exhibiting his previously outlawed oil paintings, sketches and photography. In fact, his first solo exhibit was at the Central YMCA in Forest Hills.

Gubin and his family helped organize protests against the Soviets, and openly practiced their Jewish faith, making them obvious targets of his country’s government. “I was arrested because we had some demonstrations and strikes, because we are Jews in Ukraine, and because we wanted to go to the west for freedom.”

Now, based in Kew Gardens, Gubin has exhibited his work 145 times from Jim Thorpe, Penn, to Washington D.C., and San Diego, Calif. With that sense of artistry, Gubin admitted he gets homesick for a place he cannot go and visit.

“I miss not only the Ukraine, but my childhood, the younger times. It was a communist country, but it was a country where I grew up. My first love, many first things happened to me there,” he said. “I was younger, I miss it just for that period, for my time when I was young.”
- By Azi Paybarah