Mr. Bouhe. On July 4, 1939.
Mr. Liebeler. Have you lived in Dallas since that time?
Mr. Bouhe. Yes.
Mr. Liebeler. It's been indicated to me, Mr. Bouhe, that you are regarded as the leader of a so-called Russian group here in Dallas and the Fort Worth area, and I would like to have you tell us briefly the nature of that group and how you came to be the, shall we say, so-called leader or its actual leader? Let's leave it that way. And particularly, Mr. Bouhe, did there come a time when you formed a congregation of a Russian church here in Dallas? Would you tell us about that?
Mr. Bouhe. Yes; you have just mentioned some flattering remarks which I appreciate if it is true from the sources which you obtained it, but I would say that if I am so called, it means simply because of a process of elimination, because when I came in 1939, there were absolutely only three Russian-speaking people in Dallas and they were all married people, married to Americans, and so on.
So I did not, so-to-speak, associate with any Russians that might have come or gone through Dallas from 1939 to about 1950.
In 1950, approximately, a great avalanche of displaced persons came to Dallas from Europe. Among these were probably 30, 40, 50 people, native of what I would say of various parts of the former Russian Empire.
By that I mean to say that they were not all Russian. They might have been Estonians, Lithuanians, Poles, Caucasians, Georgians, Armenians, and such, but we did have one thing in common and not much more, and that was the language.
It was a sort of constant amazement to me that these people, prayed God, for years before coming here while still sitting in various camps in Germany—they wanted to get to America, and if 1 out of 50 made a 10-cent effort to learn the English language, I did not find him.
So the problem was to help those people to be self-sufficient, self-sustaining, and as I earnestly hoped, faithful citizens of their new homeland.