Jumping through a train window, scared that it was going to leave without his brother making it through, Arthur Abezgauz was a teenage immigrant fleeing Russia in the 1980’s with his family due to religious persecution. Their plan to make it to New York wasn’t so simple. He explained, my grandmother had met ... Read More »
Panayotis Kalogerakos lived in Langadia, a mountainside village in Arkadia, in Peloponnesos, Greece. While it was beautiful there, Panayotis wanted to leave Greece as a young man in order to escape the fighting that was going on in the Balkans at that time. In addition, there were attractive job opportunities in the industrialized ... Read More »
Jungha Kim immigrated from Busan, South Korea in 1995. After many years in New York City she lives in Palo Alto with her husband and daughter. 1) How was your life in South Korea? When I was three years old, my family moved to Japan because of my father’s business. During that time, I went to pre-school in Japan and ... Read More »
The ensuing stories will follow the trajectories of two different families who immigrated to New York from Eastern Europe at different point in history. They are ultimately connected by marriage, and their legacies live on. The Weill Family Teddy Roosevelt’s doppelgänger, Nathan Glickman (née approx. 1866; Moscow, Russia) and the ever ... Read More »
Vita was a young Italian woman who was born in 1934 and grew up in a small village outside Palermo, Sicily during the second world war. As a young child, she did not understand the severity of the war as the children of the neighborhood joked around with the German soldiers. One time, three Italian ... Read More »
The flashing lights from every direction . Different languages spoken. I hear something but cannot make it out . The smell of leather and fresh food. The nice clean bathroom. White and with simple tiles on the wall. People rushing back and forth, not caring in the world who is in ... Read More »
William Gottlieb Schauffler’s journey to the U.S. was a long one. Born in 1798 in Stuttgart, in the Kingdom of Wurttemberg, in the southeastern corner of what is now Germany. He wrote that “My parents were not at all wealthy and when, in consequence of the constant wars which had shaken Europe ever since the great French Revolution in 1789, ... Read More »
David Weber immigrated from the Pale of Settlement, Russia (now an area in Ukraine) in the late 1800s, at around 20 years old. The Pale of Settlement was an area in the Eastern section of Russia where Jews were required to live by the Russian Czars at that time. Living in the area limited opportunities and freedoms for Jews that ... Read More »
Rissa Rasnovsky was born in the late 1800s in Borzna, Russia (now Ukraine) in the Pale of Settlement. The Pale was an eastern section of Russia where the Russian Czars and government ordered Jewish people to live in. Places other than the Pale of Settlement were mostly forbidden for Jewish people to reside in, limiting the opportunities and freedom Jews ... Read More »
Life could have been worse for me. I was thirteen when I got my first job, selling bread and vegetables for about two years. Because of the Vietnam war, there were few jobs, meaning, this was the only way I could support my family. I was the youngest of eight siblings; four brothers, four sisters. ... Read More »