A friend’s recent inquiry about my origins had me revisiting the family history that my father, Zolman Cavitch, commissioned in 1986.
His parents’ last name was shortened from ‘Kazekevitch-Rabinovitch’ to ‘Cavitch’ upon their entry to the U.S. at Ellis Island, in 1923, joining siblings that had already emigrated to escape their tyrannical, cruel father, Zolman Rabinovitch. 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.
The Kazekevitch-Rabinovitch’s 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—can you imagine? — my grandparents, Bessie and Sol Cavitch, emigrated on The Mauritania with Bessie’s mother, Tzipa.
According to family lore, Bessie had no idea that The Mauritania was a luxury liner. To her, it was just a grubby, terrible place. They joined her much-older brother, Max Rabinovitch, in Traverse City, Michigan. Max 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 more 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, necessitating the 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, Sol first started working for brother-in-law Max, taking care of his grocery’s delivery horse and buggy. Once Sol learned enough English, he worked at Morgan’s cherry canning factory, located where Open Space Park is now. Sometime in the later 1920’s, he opened his own small grocery store. Bessie, Sol, my father and 2 siblings lived above the store.
Bessie 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.
My mother’s grandfather, also named Maurice, was from London, England, complete with clipped English accent and a cane with a gold knob. His son hit him on the head with it once, my mother declared. Her grandmother, Fanny, was from St. Thomas, near London, Ontario. Apparently, scandalously, the very British Maurice had a tobacco shop with a pool table in the back.
The Kazekevitch-Rabinovitch 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. Russia suffered from deadly cholera epidemics during the nineteenth and early twentieth century, before modern treatment systems eliminated cholera’s spread. In 1830-31, riots erupted during the cholera outbreak due to the anti-cholera measures undertaken by the Russian government that included quarantine and cordons of armed guards. The devastating cholera outbreak of 1848 claimed 3 million lives. The epidemics continued into the 20th century and sparked another Russian Cholera Riot in 1909, aggressively suppressed by the Russian government.
The Panic of 1893 led to a four-year depression in the U.S. Demonstrations, strikes, and protests flared and there was a massive backlash against immigration and a wave of Nativism hit America. The U.S. government passed various laws to restrict immigration such as the 1907 Immigration Act, a law that led to the establishment of the 1911 Dillingham Commission, whose highly discriminating report led to further stringent immigration restrictions. The report highlighted the effect of immigration on the cultural, social, economic, and moral welfare of the nation and had a damning effect on Russian immigration to America. The report stated that the “New Immigrants” from southeastern areas of Europe, including Russia, were inferior, unskilled, and uneducated workers who failed to integrate with Americans. The report concluded that immigration from countries in eastern Europe posed a serious threat to American society and should therefore be significantly reduced. Russian immigration to America was blighted by discrimination and prejudice.
Sound familiar?
The Crossed Grenade emblem originated with the infamous Dirlewanger Brigade of World War II, a Waffen SS unit that engaged in a number of atrocities. Sonnenrad or sunwheel is an ancient Indo-European symbol appropriated by Nazi Germany, leading modern day white supremacists to use it as a hate symbol. This version of the Schwarze Sonne (Black Sun) is inlayed into the marble floor of the Castle Wewelsburg, the castle that Himmler made the spiritual and literal home of the SS during the reign of the Third Reich, and has significance within the occult practices of the SS.
Vanguard America, logo on many ball-caps and shirt logos An eagle carrying a ‘fasces’—a symbol of authority in fascist Italy. Vanguard America is a neo-Nazi group, composed primarily of young white men that emerged as a byproduct of the rise of the alt right segment of the white supremacist movement.
As I questioned: Will we ever learn?
