Freiburger historische Bestände - digital

66

RolfLevy und Christina Ceballos-Levy

from this enormous collection. I now realize that she was preparing us for
our journey and our new home. At the time, I believed this to be a new
family activity for the evening hours.

The little Spanish my mother learned from this dictionary was enough
to enable my parents to purchase airplane tickets for our family's flight
from Barranquilla, Colombia, to Cali, Colombia, where we lived for a few
more months and where I eventually would return as an adult to raise my
own family. The only thing I can remember of my family's voyage to Cali
was that our flight, which had no more than ten passengers, made a stop in
the city of Medellin. The passengers were asked to disembark the plane,
but my brother, Helmuth, would not wake up. We yelled his name and tried
to shake him from his slumber, but nothing we did could wake him up. My
mother let him sleep aboard the plane and went to get him one and one-
half hours later, when we were ready to board the plane that was headed to
Cali.

After several hours, our flight landed in Cali, the city where we spent
our first months as Jewish immigrants. My parents immediately enrolled
me in the Jorge Isaacs Hebrew Academy. Although Cali was a relatively
small city, there were some Jewish families living there, so a Hebrew
school was in existence when we arrived. The Jorge Isaacs Hebrew Academy
, which still exists today, was located on the top of a hill. Because of my
heart condition, it was very difficult for me to walk to school in the morn-
ings, and I was always short of breath by the time I arrived to the school.

My parents could not find work in Cali, so, after a few months, we
moved to Palmira, a smaller city near Cali. Unlike Cali, which had a Jewish
population large enough to support a Hebrew Academy, there were
very few Jewish families in Palmira. As a result, my formal Hebrew educa-
tion ended when I was seven years old. In Palmira, my father met another
German Jewish immigrant who had started a bakery. He hired my parents
to seil and deliver bread aboard bicycles they would ride around the town.
Over time, my parents became known for their hard work and good busi-
ness ethic and gained their own clients.

When my father arrived at Palmira, he was an agriculturer by trade and
had hoped to establish an agricultural business. For nearly one year, he
saved the money he earned working for the baker and attempted to invest it
in land for farming. To my parents' dismay, the Jewish immigrant to which
my father had entrusted the money for the land purchase ran off with my
father's money, and we never saw him again.

My family suffered a second blow while living in Palmira. Prior to leav-
ing Germany, my parents had arranged to ship our family's belongings to
Buenaventura, Colombia. After several months, my parents received a
telegram informing them that their belongings had arrived. When my parents
arrived at Buenaventura, they learned that everything was gone. No-