This is a picture of my grandmother's side of the family that she gave me. It is a copy of the original photo taken in the Ottoman Empire before the 1920s, specifically, present-day Greece. The woman sitting down is my great-great grandmother Miriam and the child on her lap is my great-grandmother, Clara. Her side of the family was from Spain but they were exiled in 1492 because they were Jewish and forced to start a new life in the Ottoman Empire. Unfortunately, they were forced to flee the Ottoman Empire because of antisemitic attacks, in 1920. Miriam fled with her children, Morris, Abraham and Clara. Miriam’s husband and eldest son didn’t go with them, and we don't know their names and just assume they died in the Holocaust. They came with nothing but the clothes on their backs and enough kosher food for the trip because they were Orthodox Jews they couldn't eat the food in steerage. They also didn’t know how to speak English, they spoke Ladino, a dying language that my grandmother knows but was not passed down any further. When they got to America, Miriam’s oldest daughter Joya, was waiting for them and they started their life in the lower east side tenements, just a few blocks away from where I live now. This picture is important to me because it connects me to my ancestors, and reminds me where I come from. 

– Lula Lipman

Relationship:  Great-grandchild of im/migrant or more Great-grandchild of im/migrant or more