I always thought I was a Russian Jew.

[Grumpy Old Guy]

Last edited Mon Feb 28, 2022, 12:31 AM - Edit history (1)

Growing up in the fifties, my parents always told my brothers and me that we were half Russian and half Hungarian. Our paternal grandparents immigrated from Russia, and our maternal grandparents immigrated from Hungary. Needless to say, we always felt a special connection to "Fiddler On The Roof," as that was probably the circumstances our grandparents experienced. As far as we know, no one from our European family survived the Holocaust.

With adulthood came the birth of services like Ancestry.com and others like it. Several members of my family did genealogy searches, tracing our grandparents and others in the family back as far as they could. One of the things we learned was that our Russian family came from the area around Odessa. It never occurred to me that my dad's side actually came from Ukraine, not Russia. I'm guessing the reason for that is that, at the time of their immigration, Ukraine was probably considered part of Russia or the U.S.S.R, and they considered themselves Russian. In my ignorance of geography, I had no idea that Odessa was in Ukraine, and not Russia as we know it today.

This has definitely affected me as I watch events unfold on the other side of the world. All this time I had no idea that my family was from Ukraine, and not Russia or the U.S.S.R. It's a very strange feeling to learn that there is a connection there that I never knew I had.