March 8, 2020

Ivonne Dickter

Ivonne Dickter was born in Costa Rica and remembers a close, loving family life there. Her mother came from a large family of ten siblings, and five of her mother's sisters and brothers, along with her grandmother, were killed in the Holocaust. Her father's family were pioneers who lived in Israel before the 1948 war. Her father had lived in France and Belgium before a good friend encouraged him to come to Costa Rica, where he settled and ran dry goods and small businesses, first in a smaller town and later in San Jose. She recalls Costa Rica as a warm place free of anti-Semitism, and she stayed close with relatives in Israel and Costa Rica throughout her life.

At seventeen, Ivonne left Costa Rica to attend university in Mexico, where in her very first week she met her future husband. She described a vibrant Jewish community there, with synagogues and many gatherings where young Jewish people met in parks and other places. She and her husband married and started their family in Mexico. When economic devaluation and growing insecurity made many Jewish families uneasy, her husband decided it was time to leave, and in 1978 they moved to Dallas, a smaller, booming city where her brother already lived and where she had family connections.

The move to the United States brought a harrowing five-year struggle with immigration papers, during which the family could not travel and even faced the threat of deportation. Neighbors wrote letters on their behalf, noting that her husband provided jobs through his hardware store and that the family was doing nothing wrong. The papers finally came through after a chance encounter, when a man connected to the government befriended her husband in his store and made a direct call on their behalf. Her children, fifteen and thirteen at the time, adjusted well and learned English quickly. Ivonne and her children remained active in Dallas Jewish life, and she treasured warm friendships in her welcoming new community. She has three granddaughters, one of whom lives in Miami.

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