Interview with Ms. Nadia Tongour
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Library of Congress Interview with Ms. Nadia Tongour The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project NADIA TONGOUR Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial interview date: November 15, 2007 Copyright 2009 ADST Q: Today is the 15th of November, 2007, the Ides of November. This is an interview with Nadia Tongour. This is being done on the behalf of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training and I am Charles Stuart Kenney. And you go by Nadia? TONGOUR: Yes. Q: Alright. Nadia means hope. No- TONGOUR: It does. It is the shortened version of the Russian word “Nadezhda.” n the first place, when and where were you born? TONGOUR: I was born in Istanbul, Turkey, in 1947, and my family and I emigrated to the United States when I was three and a half years old. Q: Well, let me see. Your family name is Tongour? TONGOUR: That is right. Interview with Ms. Nadia Tongour http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001653 Library of Congress Q: Tell me, what do you know about the family, the Turkish and the other roots that you know about the family. TONGOUR: On the father's side, the Tongours came from the Crimean Peninsula. They were ethnically mixed but may have had some Tartar or Central Asian elements in their background. Q: Well, that is the Tartar Republic then. TONGOUR: Yes, but they were not actually Tartar ethnically speaking but the name itself may have originated in Central Asia. And the family, or at least my father's side, somewhat resembled characters out of Chekhov's “Cherry Orchard”. They were not terribly affluent but they had a little bit of land and even an orchard and the grandfather had studied to be a lawyer prior to the Russian Revolution. Once the revolution started, he joined the equivalent of the judge adjutant corps for the White Russian army, led by General Wrangel. Subsequently, in 1920, my grandfather was evacuated with Wrangel's forces, the remaining White Russian troops in Southern Russia, to Istanbul — leaving his wife and my father behind in Crimea. My father was born in 1917 right around the time of the outbreak of the revolution. He and his mother stayed behind for a few years because my grandfather firmly believed the revolution would be short-lived and he himself would quickly return. That obviously didn't happen, and in the early 1920s my grandmother and my father managed, albeit with some difficulty, to get out of the country and find their way to Istanbul. where my father grew up. Q: What did your father do in Istanbul? TONGOUR: Well, he arrived there as a young boy and remained in Istanbul until he immigrated to the United States. As a youngster in Turkey, he was one of the fortunate people that had the equivalent of a CARE sponsor in America, who would send money and occasional gifts which enabled him to attend a good school. Later, he was drafted Interview with Ms. Nadia Tongour http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001653 Library of Congress into the Turkish army. Before coming to America, ; he briefly worked in an import/export business. During that period he met a gentleman from New York who owned several factories in a textile-related industry, specifically making zippers, in the South and overseas. He often hired capable foreigners to work in his business, and at some point he offered my father a job. This happened apparently around the time I was born, and my father applied for immigration visas for the family. Under the prior immigration system, it took our family approximately three years to obtain the necessary visas and come to America. Q: Before we leave there, on you mother's side-? TONGOUR: That is a very interesting story. My parents probably never would have met in the old country as they came from very different backgrounds. My mother's family came from Moscow; they were very assimilated and secular Jews. In fact, I did not even know about that aspect of the family history until much later. My mother's grandfather, had been a doctor, who own a small medical clinic, and in 1905 he apparently saved the life of someone who later became prominent in the Russian Revolution. This story is not unlike a segment in Dr. Zhivago. And the reason I mention this is that the world my mother's family inhabited was that of the Muscovite intelligentsia. Her relatives hung out, if you will, with artists, with writers. They knew the Pasternak family. I don't mean to imply that they were bosom buddies but they were in the same social set. And they were friendly with some fairly well-known poets. It turns out that my grandmother, when she was a very young woman, even acted in some silent films. She was a very colorful person, my maternal grandmother, and in some ways her experiences were larger than life. But she ran off quite young from an unhappy home situation and married the first of a number of husbands, each of whom was of a different nationality. Sometime around 1929 or 1930, she met and married a Turkish businessman, with whom she was able to leave the country. My mother was already born (the child of the first marriage) and she was able to accompany them to Turkey. But mother and daughter did not stay there long, moving to France shortly thereafter, where they lived among Russian #migr#s in Paris. It Interview with Ms. Nadia Tongour http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001653 Library of Congress was not exactly a jet set existence, but they did move around Europe somewhat. After a number of years in France, they moved to Romania, where my mother attended a French High School. Eventually, they found themselves back in Turkey just after World War II broke out. Although my mother knew some Turkish , she did not know it well enough to go to college there (having done all her schooling in France and Romania). So after high school, she found a job with an allied military office based in Istanbul (then a hot bed of information gathering in that period) doing some translations and interpreting since she knew several languages including a little English. Q: Well then, how did your mother and father meet? TONGOUR: In Istanbul. Essentially, my father had grown up in Istanbul, with his family having moved there from Russia in the early 1920s. My mother happened to wind up there during World War II, thanks to her, somewhat peripatetic mother My parents met through friends there. Q: Do you recall much of Turkey at all? TONGOUR: I have been back subsequently but from my early years, I only remember some fleeting scenes. I knew that I had a Turkish nanny, which we called Hanum. I knew that at the time we left Turkey we spoke French and Russian at home.. That was very common since and both my parents had gone to French speaking schools. They also spoke Turkish; but both parents know several other languages as well. For example, growing up in Istanbul, my father, had many Greek friends, so he learned Greek. Similarly, having lived in Romania, my mother she spoke Romanian. But at home they spoke French and Russian plus enough Turkish for me to learn a few words, mostly baby talk. Perhaps, a more interesting aspect of our arrival in America was that my parents were under the impression we would go to a small town in the South for eight or so months while my father learned the ropes of this business and be trained an then supposedly we Interview with Ms. Nadia Tongour http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001653 Library of Congress would move to New York City, where he would work for this company, (a zipper business) at its headquarters. But one thing led to another, and my parents are still there. Q: Where? TONGOUR: In Barnwell, South Carolina, which in those days was a very small town. : Until then, neither of my parents had ever spent any time as adults in a small town. When they first arrived by train in Barnwell, it was quite a shock, especially since we came on a Sunday at a time when “blue Laws” were alive and well. In other words, nothing was open, and they really did not know how to make their way. Ultimately, they have done quite well, but it was initially a culture shock. Remember this was the early'50s And they have done quite well but it was quite a culture shock and this was the early '50s, and the McCarthy era was in full flower, and a number of other things were going on. Both the Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow laws were alive and well. One of the first episodes I recall (though it has actually become family lore) was the visit of the “preachers” as they are known in those parts. As my parents tell it, the Baptist minister was the first to “call”. And my father, not knowing the local mores, offered the minister a drink, an alcoholic drink. And the minister was not amused; he was polite but after he left, I guess he told other people that this foreigner had offered him a drink. Well, shortly thereafter the Episcopalian minister came to call. I think my father had learned a lesson by then and offered the Episcopalian coffee. Anyway, that was our introduction. Q: Well, what religion had your family come out with and where did they end up? TONGOUR: When my parents married they had, as I mentioned, a very mixed background which could make a book of its own.