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Stories and Memories
Many of you have stories to share: stories told by your elders and relatives about living in the "old country"; about getting away from the "old country", about starting a new life in their "new country".
Many of you also have your own stories about trips to the lands of your elders, to learn a sense of what their lives might have been like.
Here are stories by your fellow SIG members or their relatives. They're funny, heart-warming, suspenseful, and all worth reading. We hope you enjoy them. And if you want to submit a story of your own, contact us.
Marche-Route from Chergassy
Submitted by Florence Nerenberg Elman
It was 1905 in Imperial Russia, and the warnings were everywhere. There was upheaval in the Duma, and ominous grumbling among the citizenry. The war with Japan was going badly, and rumours of impending pogroms were rife. Since “the crowned peasant”, Alexander III, had inherited the Russian throne from his assassinated father, Alexander II, his autocratic, reactionary policies found vulnerable victims in the Jews of the Pale.
Read the rest of the story here.
Esther's Story about Chergassy
I heard about Cherkassy when I was a little girl, for my Maternal Grandmother came from there. My Grandmother's youngest brother, Louis Golding, was a famous English Jewish author.
Cherkassy was mentioned in some of his books. I was always interested in Cherkassy, and a few times when I was quite young, thought of trying to find people who came from there and remembered the family. After reasoning with myself that I would not really discover anything new, I decided not to do anything about it. However, upon visits to Yad VeShem (Holocaust Remembrance Museum, Jerusalem) or The Diaspora Museum (Ramat Gan), I did look up Cherkassy and read whatever information I could.
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"Zhvanets to Prague" - a trip into history
by Barbara Taylor Freedman
In May of 2004 I decided to go on a guided tour of Eastern Europe that began in Warsaw, continued on to Krakow, Budapest, Vienna and Prague. I visited the Jewish quarters in all of these exciting and amazing cities and also spent a day at Auschwitz and Birkenau. In the initial stages of planning I realized just how close I was to the Ukraine and arranged a private tour to visit ‘my’ shtetl of Zhvanets. I want to share with you, my dear family and friends, my journey to my past.
Read this story at Zhvanets to Prague
Journey to Chudnov
By Mel Chudnof
Growing up, I heard a lot of stories about the heroic and horrific childhood my father spent in “Russia”, and for me, an avid traveler, I'd always wanted to “return” to that mystical place. The year 2005 became the time that I could finally make that journey.
Read this story at Journey to Chudnov
A story of Edel RABINOWITZ ZABARSKA of Ostropol
by Deborah Glassman
Edel lived to be a very old woman (1804-1895) and she held her oldest grandson's oldest grandson on her lap and then was that little boy's favorite Bubby for four more years. She was a powerful figure in her family's lives when she was an old woman, but I was always moved by the strength of the woman the year she turned forty.
Read the rest of this story at "Bubbe Edel Starts a Business"
Tale of Two Sisters, or… Finding and Losing Stara Ushitsa
By Erol Oktay
I made a trip to Ukraine, to locate the village where my family lived before coming to the US. I knew that my father, Harry Shaberman, had been born in a town that bordered on Romania, at least when he left in 1906. He passed away, and a year later seemed to be a fitting time to be thinking about his life and to how honor his memory. This is how it all started.
Read this story at "Tale of Two Sisters"
Hard Memory: A WWII Memoir of Nova Ushitsa
By Mikhael Borisov Eisen © 1997
Our family (there were four of us, together with grandfather Benya, and grandmother Brukha with her sick daughter Khanna) hid in the cellar in our courtyard. At that time I was a very inquisitive, thirteen year old guy, and could hardly sit there, and all the time I was dying to get outside, up there where the fights were on. Finally, at some moment, I managed to do so.
Read this story at "Hard Memory".
Yanoff, Vinitska, to the Golden Land
Ben Pennock's story, submitted by Judy Dennen
Time passes, from birth to death. Saying it so, means life is short. But - there is more to a person's life span than being born and dying.
My life on the earth began on December 10th, 1908. Born when only a woman known as a midwife, and the mother, were present at the birth of the child.
Read the rest of this story here.
"Twelve Tribes from Kirovograd"
By Arlene Gorewitz Boumel
"Even then, I was distrustful about the validity of that letter... until I opened the photographs that she had attached, to find my great-grandparents staring back at me from my computer screen. I sat for many moments in stunned silence. It was an indescribable feeling."
You can read the rest of Arlene's story here.
Stavishtshe Story
Submitted by Submitted by Ida Schwarcz
"Esther Malka Spector was born on Purim in 1890, so she was named for Queen Esther rather than for a female ancestor. She was born in a shtetl in Ukraine called, by Jews, Stavisht, and by Russians, Stavishtshe."
Ida Schwarcz has preserved many of her memories about her mother and her mother's family, growing up in Stavishtshe, then immigrating to the U.S.
You can read the story here.
Bella Nussbaum from Uman
My mother, aleha hashalom, Bella Yapha Teplitzky Nussbaum, was born in Ukrainia in the early part of the last century. After living through the Russian revolution in Ukrainia, which was considered the worst thing to ever happen to the Jewish people until the Holocaust, she escaped with her parents and sisters by walking across the Dniester River on the ice.
To read the rest of the story, click here.
Stories from Volhynia Gubernia
More stories, from Volhynia Gubernia are here.
