You Never Leave Brooklyn: A Memoir by Victor Bardack

My story is the story of countless first generation and immigrant Americans. It is also the story of the American Dream as told through the eyes of a child without pretense or calculation.

You Never Leave Brooklyn is about hope and opportunity and about America. It is also about a family's personal tragedy and what it took to move beyond it.

It is about finding your own place in this great society and working hard utilizing whatever skill you have to build your future.
Each of our stories, each of our families.

a little different - but so many share the same experiences.

For some, it started in a crowded ghetto or on a hard scrapple farm or of coming to America from lands that oppressed, ridiculed and pre-judged. So many of us started with so little, some traveled long voyages on dangerous seas in old, crowded ships and took that chance on their dreams.

My story started in a tenement in Brooklyn. Maybe not exactly yours, but you might have been there, your parents or grandparents could have been there or someplace like it. Ours started near the bottom of the economic ladder. But in this Country, our County you could look up and climb up to the top. "Brooklyn" is about the people, the experiences and the learning that happens from childhood to adolescence. Simple and honest, it is viewed through a child's eyes, and then reflected back by that same child as an adult.

America was more than a gift; it was an opportunity. A large palette on which to paint your future. Not with oils and brushes, but with hard work and personal risk. Some of us realized all our dreams, some were content with less, but all were given an opportunity to succeed like in no other place in the world.