threescore years ago

[fox]

my grandparents were born in the united states.  their parents were not.

my grandmother's parents came in the early 20's, when it was beginning to be a good time if you were jewish to get out of eastern europe.  they were already married, so in fact my great-grandmother came with her husband's family, the lot of them; her family stayed behind.  her parents, and at least two sisters and i believe one brother.  i don't know if those siblings had families.  (and who knows how many aunts, uncles, cousins.)

the youngest sister's only child is a daughter is a little younger than my father, and they came to new york from israel when that cousin (technically my grandmother's first cousin, of course) was about ten.  her parents are gone now, but i remember the way the tattoos stood out on their arms, nearly illegible with age, not that you looked long enough to be able to read them.

the rest of the family, of course, never got out at all.  alehem ha-sholem.

Comments

[orange852.livejournal.com]

I would have been the seventh generation of my family on my mother's side to grow up in Greenville, TX, if she hadn't fired my dad, packed me up and shoved us both off to California. My great-granfather's grandfather told a census taker he was a farmer from England and went by the Scottish-ish name of Anderson in an area heavily settled in the late 1700's by Scotts and Germans. My grandfather on my father's side was adopted prior to the local courthouse burning down with all records in it, but brought some v. tall Scandanavian looking leaves to the family tree.

There are no "old family stories" about the trip over from the Old Country. No one wanted to remember who they were before being Texans in a town whose motto used to be "The Blackest Earth, The Whitest People."

I'll claim being Texan, but not so much Greenville-ian.

[axiom_of_stripe]

[takes a quiet moment of respect]

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Eleven did not come back on my mother's side, Jewish. Four on my father's side, résistants, not Jewish.

[thalia]

{{hugs}}

[fafou.livejournal.com]

Being as that I am very familiar with my families stories of coming over from the Old Country per se I love to hear about other families stories. I'm still amazed when I hear stories of the the Jews that came over/escaped when they did. I keep wondering to myself, "What was it that made thier decision for them, and what was it that others in the same position didn't see?" Or perhaps they saw it but didn't believe it. Either way I'm glad to know this part of your story.