FAMILY MATTERS

that long). However, my Grandfather served with the Austrian army during WW1 and so did Chaim Ziering - my Father reported Mark Twain on the Jews

that Chaim had plenty of medals for bravery. In 1918 the Austro-Hungarian Empire crumbled and from 1920 to 1922 the Poles and Russians. (Soviet) resumed their centuries old fight for Ukraine. Poles won, pushed the Soviets far back from Warsaw (“Miracle at the Vistula”) and prevented the Soviet Revolution from linking up with the German Red Revolt. Actually, that part was not taught

If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one quarter of one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous puff of

in the Communist Poland and teaching it was forbidden. The West also forgot that favor Poland gave the Western civilization. But

star dust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly, the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been

the Russians remembered. Stalin murdered everybody, who knew about his contribution to the Soviet defeat (by besieging Lvov, he

heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the

left the hole between his forces and the Russians advancing toward Warsaw, which Poles victoriously explored). He also exacted

smallness of his bulk.

revenge against Polish officers he got as POWs after he and Hitler invaded Poland in 1939 (Katyn Forest Massacre - 200,000). If

His contributions to the world’s list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine and abstruse

my Father lived in Dolyna and survived there all his life, by the time of his death he would have held consecutively four citizenships

learning are also very out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in this world in all

(Austrian. Polish, Soviet and Ukrainian).

ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself and be excused for it. The Egyptians, the

Babylonians and the Persians rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the

Greeks and Romans followed and made a vast noise, and they were gone; other people have sprung up and held their torch

high for a time but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, and have vanished.

The Jew saw them all, survived them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmaties, of age,

no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert but aggressive mind. All things are mortal but

the Jews; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?

–Mark Twain, September 1897

Thankfully for my daughters – and for me – my bunch slipped out of the hangman’s noose at the end of the 1800s, and so I am going to change the font used so far – mostly a traditional Times New Roman to a more modern and hopefully more hopeful one – Calibri – by way of celebration.

There is another change that I must make – both out of necessity and as a memorial to all those ancestors who could have been hung on my family tree had they not been shredded like paper and swept out with the garbage: I will pad what little information I have with my commentary about my little band, toss in some personal recollections, and provide some historical perspective.

Lastly, I will title this short history of the remnant shreds and patches of my ancestry – the ones who made it to America –

by the name they called it as they were waiting and praying for their ship to come in to Hamburg or Rotterdan or Liverpool, and steam them West toward a new land of Hope, Prosperity, and Freedom.

MAP OF EASTERN EUROPE/ GALICIA

FILE: GALICIA PHYSICAL1914.JPG - WIKIPEDIA, THE FREE ENCYCLOPEDIA

Just as the Jews were getting their European credentials in order, compliments of Napoleon again, who, after 1000 years of European residence, finally gave them the rights of citizenship, miserable economies, renewed persecution, and finally Adolph Hitler and his gang put a virtual end to the European Jewish experiment — and to any thought of my ever meeting European cousins (except one) – and also to any thought of a nostalgic visits to the “Auld Sod” and the villages they lived in, which are now the graveyards underneath which they are resting – comfortably, finally, I hope – but without gravestones.

Relatively few non-Jews have taken special and sympathetic note of our contributions, with the exception of my favorite American author, Samuel Clemens: Mark Twain – a descendant of one of our Virginia ancestors:

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