(Jewish Group) Ukrainian Jews have thrived under democracy. I pray my ancestral country endures

[Behind the Aegis]

In 1929, my great-grandfather was given two weeks to leave Ukraine. Soviet authorities were intent on seizing his business.

My great-grandfather Avrum owned a house in Uman and a dacha— a summer home — in Crimea. He was a NEPman— one of the successful traders who sprung up under the New Economic Policy of the 1920s. Like the kulaks (peasants rich enough to own considerable land and hire labor), NEPmen like my great-grandfather were soon deported, arrested and sentenced to death all over the USSR.

Avrum took the warnings seriously, taking his wife (my grandmother), along with her three siblings and two nieces, to Cuba, where they waited two years for US visas. They wore fur coats on their exit from the country, knowing that everything else would be stolen at the border.

Avrum’s brother Beryl, who was also his business partner, refused to leave. He was never heard from again.

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