Reply #8: Yes. 1949

[LiberalEsto]

My parents were Estonian citizens who had fled their country -- my father to escape the Nazis and later my mother, to escape Stalin. They and my grandmother arrived by ship from Bremerhaven, Germany to New York City, after spending years in a Displaced Persons refugee camp, where they met. They managed to find an American sponsor to help them immigrate by the sheerest of luck -- Mom found a note from two Canadian sisters in a pair of shoes they had donated to the Red Cross or some other relief organization. My mother wrote to them, and the sisters worked hard to find a sponsor for my family, an Estonian-American couple in Brooklyn, NY.