A friend’s recent inquiry about my origins had me revisiting the family history book that my father commissioned in 1986.
His parents’ last name was shortened upon entry to the U.S. at Ellis Island, in 1923, joining siblings that had already emigrated to escape their tyrannical father.
In Russia, they had lived in the region where the Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia intersect—in other words, on the edge of Chernobyl’s Exclusion Zone, maybe 100 miles from the Nuclear Power Plant disaster of 1986.
They were gone from Russia by then, anyway. Hitler saw to that.
After an arranged marriage in Russia immediately followed by a lengthy journey to Southampton, England – almost 1600 miles – my grandparents emigrated on The Mauritania with my great-grandmother, Tzipa.
My grandmother had no idea that The Mauritania was a luxury liner. To her, it was a grubby, terrible place. They joined her older brother, Max, in Traverse City, Michigan. He had emigrated in 1905, settling first in Toronto and working in a cigar factory. Next, he peddled wares by taking a train to out to small rural towns where he would rent a horse and buggy, buy staples, and then go out into the country and sell to farmers.
Traverse City was important at the time due to the timber industry. Local merchants convinced Max to settle there and open his own small cigar factory. At that time, cigars would stale quickly, so there was a need for countless small, local factories. During WWI, once the cigar industry revolutionized, Max went into the grocery business and did well. New to America, my grandfather first started working for Max, taking care of his grocery’s delivery horse and buggy. Once my grandfather learned enough English, he worked at a cherry canning factory. Sometime in the later 1920’s, he opened his own small grocery store. They lived above the store. Now it is a huge grocery chain!
My grandfather died at only 51. Untreated diabetes.
(I was diagnosed with it a decade ago.
Thanks to modern pharmaceuticals, it is mostly under control)
My grandmother was gone before I was old enough to know what questions to ask and died a few months shy of 70. Tzipa died at age 72, three years after coming to America. Maybe that is why I am so aware of the passage of time and the need to live zestfully.
My mother, ever aloof, doesn’t know too much about her Russian family. She thinks they may have been in the furniture business. They would have left Russia a generation before the Cavitch side.
This emigration story was pretty much the norm for Jewish Russian immigrants. Also pretty much the norm? The discrimination they faced: Anti-Semitism growing up drove my father away from Judaism.
The Panic of 1893 led to a depression in the U.S. Demonstrations, strikes, and protests flared. A massive backlash against immigration and a wave of Nativism hit America. The government passed laws to restrict immigration. One important report stated, “‘New immigrants’ from southeastern areas of Europe, including Russia, were inferior, unskilled, and uneducated workers who failed to integrate with Americans: Immigration from countries in eastern Europe posed a serious threat to American society and should be significantly reduced.”
Sound familiar?
As I questioned: Will we ever learn?
