Way Way Back Thursday...Russia

 

The Schwartz Family, Russia, early 1900's

This is the earliest picture that I have, passed on to me from Mom's old pics, probably from her Mom, my Gram. This is a photo of my Grandmother's brother's wife (with Maury in her lap), and, at the time their 3 children, Maury, Sophie, Esther, and the nurse. That beautiful little girl had 2 daughters and a son. Ann, the eldest of the 3, just passed away a few short weeks ago at the age of 92. Had this family, and so many many others not left Russia when they did in the early 1900's, many of us would not be here, we would never have even been born; as within the 6 million murdered in the concentration camps were their parents and their parents parents. We would have to physically go back to Russia to find records. I know they exist. However, this is the story of a vast number of Jewish families who left Russia, Europe and Eastern Europe before WWII. Even so, there were 'Pogroms' already in place wiping out entire towns in Russia. The famous 'Fiddler on the Roof', written originally as a story in 1894, about the poverty stricken Tevye, a dairyman and his family, by Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich or better known by his pen name, Sholem Aleichem, depicts the beginning of the anhilalation of Jewish families in Russia. The history, the ancestry is rich, and most thankfully, still living on....

Cousins, Ann (daughter of Sophie in top pic), Mom and Ellie, Ann's baby sister, NYC, around 2008