In 1912, my dad's father’s family lived in Ukraine. Before hints of WWII, they took a family photo. It included the whole family, but not the father, as he was already living in America working so the rest of the family could  come. This artifact connects to history because it shows a Ukrainian Jewish family living in eastern Europe before ww11 and Hitler. In 1921, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic established when the Russian Red Army conquers two-thirds of Ukraine. That same year my ancestors left to start life in America.
My great-grandpa, Sender Palatnic, immigrated to the U.S. from Ukraine when he was 17 with his mom and siblings. Their trip began on the back of a hay wagon to Romania where they got fake papers and were able to get a train to France. From France, they took a boat to Liverpool, England. Their final boat took them to Ellis Island where then after, they settled in New York.

My dad has told me stories about his “poppy”. One story is that when my great grandfather was a teenager,  his mother had a tea house in their home. The Cossacks would come and raid the homes of the Jewish population there to intimidate them, and he says Sydney stood up to them and he put his hand out against a cossack’s sword. It slashed his hand and he got a scar. Another story is that his mother sent him to the neighbor’s house who wasn’t home to “ransack” that house himself so it would have looked as if the Cossacks had already been there to trick the real cossacks who will have come to rob the family's home. 

– Sophie

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