Westward. Encounters with Swiss American Women
Rosa Lechner then ran out of money. “I could return home, ask for money from home, or start working.” She did the latter and due to her Green Card obtained a position as secretary for a man who sold second-hand office machines. “The office was located on Broadway and 19th Street. My boss exploited me, the naïve young girl from Switzerland. For lunch he gave me barely twenty minutes. I was thrifty and bought a hamburger for 50 cents and a coffee for 10 cents in a coffee shop. The shop belonged to two Polish men who had escaped from a concentration camp; they still had their numbers burnt into their arms. I think they felt sorry for me and sometimes gave me a piece of meat for my evening meal.”
When Rosa returned to her office after lunch, her typewriter was often already resold. “I lodged a complaint with the senior boss because he was always late with paying my weekly wages. He got mad and shouted ‘you don’t have to come to this country to teach us law!’“
Rosa didn’t last long there although she was making 90 dollars a week. But she stayed long enough to receive a pair of snow boots from her boss at Christmas. “I needed them urgently in order to survive the first snowstorm in New York.”