May Day protesters gather before the State House in downtown Concord on May 1. In the front row center, Adolphe Bernotas and his wife Marguerite appear, each wearing a blue jacket and cap marked with the letter B. ZACH LAIRD photo

Adolphe Bernotas is a well-known retired Associated Press reporter and union activist. He and his wife Marguerite divide their time between Florida and Concord, N.H.

By ADOLPHE BERNOTAS

On the 250th anniversary of the United States this past Saturday, memories of my personal voyage toward becoming a citizen resurfaced strongly.

An ABC July 4th television piece on the Statue of Liberty sent my thoughts back to a February morning seventy-five years earlier, when an immigrant vessel carrying my family sailed into New York Harbor and offered our first glimpse of that iconic statue. I was nearing my eleventh birthday.

(I had shared our story as World War II refugees during the statue's restoration in 1985. This version brings the account up to date.)

My family, whose homeland had been overrun by both Nazi and Soviet forces, escaped Lithuania and moved through a series of refugee camps in Germany from 1944 to 1952, before gaining entry to the United States as displaced persons.

We had become the scattered remnants of the conflict, coming close to the Holocaust through a three-week stay at Dachau, spared by fortune from the lethal sections of the camp and instead held in the transit area where Nazis separated Jews, homosexuals, and Roma from other war refugees for destruction. Even now I must turn away from the familiar footage and photos of gaunt figures in bunks like those we once occupied.

Throughout those years I lived first as an outsider, then as a refugee, and finally as an adult shaped equally by American ideals and centuries of Lithuanian heritage.

Becoming an American proved challenging. It started with the hardships of war, an eight-day winter voyage across the North Atlantic aboard a converted Liberty ship, the USS General W.G. Haan, followed by at least five years as green-card holders until we recited the oath of citizenship before a judge in a Waterbury, Conn., courtroom.

(The judge posed standard questions to check applicants' knowledge of their new country: the identity of George Washington, the number of states, and so on. When my turn came, the magistrate said, "Let's see what you have learned at UConn. Which state has a unicameral legislature?"

I was ready for the unexpected query. "Nebraska, your honor," I answered. "Go Huskies!" he replied, prompting laughter throughout the courtroom.)

In Germany, residents referred to us as "Verfluechter Auslaender" - damn foreigners. Before the war concluded, we hid in cellars from Allied aircraft: British raids at night and American strikes by day.

In the United States, a grown man with a foreign last name informed me at age thirteen, "Do you know what DP stands for?" When I replied "displaced person," he corrected me: "No, it means dirty pig. You people came here to steal our jobs!" That moment returns whenever political figures criticize immigrants. It also ignited my commitment to labor unions.

In the winter of 1952, seasickness plagued much of the crossing from Bremerhaven to New York, yet word of our nearing destination lifted the discomfort. We had reached America! My sisters, mother, and father stood transfixed by the Statue of Liberty. "Laisves Statula," I named her in Lithuanian, my English limited to "umbrella," "aerodrome," and the memorized lines of "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean."

While my three sisters and I gazed in wonder at the skyscrapers of our new surroundings, my mother shed tears. What reflections must have filled her mind, departing the Baltic homeland of her ancestors for an unfamiliar land.

Our landing in New York concluded a journey that began as World War II drew to a close, when my father, expectant mother, sister, and I became refugees, ironically fleeing Soviet rule only to enter Nazi-controlled Germany.

After years in displaced persons camps, sustained by United Nations aid and my father's resourcefulness, we reached America.

As we shifted between camps, refugees from across east-central Europe dispersed worldwide, many choosing the United States. Relatives who escaped alongside us settled in the United States, Australia, and Canada. Before the war ended, my father, who had shifted from blacksmithing to welding, supported the family, which grew to four children by 1952. After the conflict we came under the care of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration and the International Relief Organization.

My father gathered funds from relatives and earnings from American gifts such as coffee, nylon stockings, and cigarettes. Those resources eased our departure from Europe. By 1952 we formed part of the final group of Lithuanian refugees from the war to enter the United States. Most had already reached Lithuanian-American communities in North America by 1949.

Our admission was postponed by my oldest sister's ongoing health issues, leading to repeated rejections on medical grounds during our yearly applications. Ironically, that same condition allowed us to pass through Ellis Island, one of the few immigrant groups in the 1950s to do so.

The historic gateway had ceased serving as a primary entry point and by 1952 functioned mainly for medical holds. It closed two years later. Only late on the afternoon of Feb. 8, 1952, did medical officials finish examining my sister and approve our stay in America.

In New York a Lithuanian driver collected us for the hundred-mile trip to relatives and our new residence in Middlebury, Conn., in his 1938 Pontiac. The vehicle seemed remarkable, its dashboard radio continuing to play while in motion. Our driver was the second Lithuanian-American we encountered after leaving Germany. The first, a sailor on our ship, entertained us with tales of Florida, where pink flamingos walked among palm trees. He shared sweet oranges, fruit seldom available in the camps and especially impressive at soccer-ball size. America, it seemed, would be paradise.

It proved less than ideal for my father, who never fully adapted, or for my mother, who left the Connecticut clock and textile mills after thirty years of piecework or minimum-wage labor, or for my late sister, whose illness had delayed our arrival and who later died in a moped accident.

The remainder of the family prospered, with two sisters adding four sons and several grandchildren to the blend of cultures, incorporating Italian, French-Canadian, and Jamaican heritage alongside Lithuanian roots. I am married to an Italian-American woman.

By 1965 I had become a naturalized citizen, residing in what would become the SoHo district of New York and traveling to New Jersey for work as a reporter at the Bayonne Times. I had various routes from Manhattan to Bayonne but often chose the ferry across the Hudson to Jersey City followed by the Jersey Central train.

The ferry and train provided striking sights of Manhattan, the Statue of Liberty, and Ellis Island. By 1966 I reported for the Jersey Journal in Jersey City and wrote pieces about the Statue, noting to readers that its home on Bedloe's Island lies in New Jersey rather than New York.

New Jersey's connection to the Statue gained further notice during the blackouts of 1965 and 1977, when New York remained dark yet the Statue, powered from New Jersey, continued to shine as the symbol it represents.

The draw of the Statue for Americans, particularly immigrants, remains both clear and profound. It is more than a source of souvenirs. Its pull is heartfelt and instinctive. It stands as the American and universal emblem of open welcome.

Perhaps its meaning finds clearest expression in the words of Johnny Johnson, a figure in the 1936 Broadway opera by librettist Paul Green and composer Kurt Weill. From his troop ship departing New York for France in 1917, the southern soldier addresses the Statue:

"There you are standing like a picture in that history book I read, your hand uplifted with a torch, saying goodbye to us, good luck and bless you every one. And God bless you, oh mother of liberty.

That's what you are, a sort of mother to us all and we your sons."