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

Passover....

Applying the blood of the lamb on the doorposts and lintel..

'Then Moses called for all the elders of Israel, and said unto them, Draw out and take you a lamb according to your families, and kill the passover. And ye shall take a bunch of hyssop, and dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and strike the lintel and the two side posts with the blood that is in the basin; and none of you shall go out at the door of his house until the morning. For the LORD will pass through to smite the Egyptians; and when he sees the blood upon the lintel, and on the two side posts, the LORD will pass over the door, and will not suffer the destroyer to come in unto your houses to smite you. And ye shall observe this thing for an ordinance to thee and to thy sons for ever.'

Exodus 12:21-24

...and so from generation to generation, we celebrate the epic deliverance from the bondage of slavery to the true freedom our ancestors gained!
Happy Passover!!!