My Father: The Story He Didn't Tell Us

Submitted by Bernard Karp, Bckay1@aol.com

 

My father died when I was 11 so all I had were some vague memories and a few documents. One of these documents was his application for citizenship listing his date of arrival to the United States and the name of the ship. I also had his passport. He came from Russia.

I wrote to the National Archives in Washington with the ship's name, date and a variety of spellings of his name. They informed me that he was not listed on the manifest of the SS Grosser Kurfurst for the date of October 16, 1913. I didn't give up but went to the National Archives in New York City and searched the manifest myself. Nothing! I searched the ship that arrived on a previous date and one at a later date. Still nothing.

When Ellis Island went on-line I found a listing for my father. The ship was listed as the Volturno. How come I thought? His citizenship documents listed his arrival on the Grosser Kurfurst.

By searching some more I learned that the Volturno caught fire in mid-Atlantic in the midst of heavy seas and that 10 other ships came to rescue the passengers. One of those ships was the SS Grosser Kurfurst...the one my father declared he was on. By further searching I found the manifest of the SS Grosser Kurfurst which listed my father as a survivor of the Volturno. I had no knowledge of how he got from one ship to the other but the fact that his passport was dry leads me to believe that he was rescued in a lifeboat and not from the sea.

Locating microfilm records of The New York Times for October 12, 1913 and subsequent days I discovered pages and pages of articles telling of the ship's disaster, the bravery of the crews of the ships coming to the rescue, the wonders of the telegraph which brought the rescuers to the burning ship and the stories of many of the eyewitnessess.

Over 100 people died in the disaster. More were saved...among them my father...who never shared the story with me. One of my older brothers only knew "Pops ship had a fire" and never the magnitude of this disaster.

I only wish my father had shared this experience with me. How he came to these shores with only the clothes on his back. What a miracle that enabled more than a generation to descend from this one passenger!

Bernard Karp (Tucson, Arizona)

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