So here’s what happened.

Another series of “accidents”?

After my flight from Bangkok to Helsinki, I take the bus to the downtown station and walk towards my hotel.  I finally arrive at the proper street but do I turn right or left?  I stop a man and ask directions and he points to the right.  I notice he is wearing a Star of David so we chat a bit and he points out that the Helsinki Synagogue stands just down the street to the left. **

Helsinki

Finland

August 12, 2014

Hei,

Many years ago I had an American-Hungarian friend.  She insisted that Hungarian was “different” and resembled no other language in Europe.  Since I was a young man who thought he already knew everything, I doubted my friend’s characterization of her language.

Hungary lies in the middle of Central Europe.  Certainly the language is in some way similar to her neighbors’.   Surely Hungarian is related to Slovakian Slavic, or Romanian Romance, or Austrian Germanic?

Well I was dead wrong!

Grodno (Hrodna, Гродно, גראדנ)

Grodno Region

The Republic of Belarus (Белару́сь)

September 10, 2014

The Family Lifschitz: “Ich Baink Noch Grodno”

In 1902, Jehoshua Lifschitz bought a one-way ticket.  All the Lifschitz Family purchased travel tickets.  “One-way!”  Jehoshua’s brother Schmuel bought a one-way ticket as did his brother Yitzchak, his sister Lena and Jehoshua’s wife Pesha Tziril. Lifschitz nee Lubitsch.  I think she was a relative of Ernst Lubitsch, the German motion picure director who was born in Grodno.

They left Grodno, their home town, traveled overland   across the Russian Empire (horseback? cart? train?) to the Baltic Sea where they boarded a ship (more than one?) bound for the dangerous, often disease-ridden “steerage” crossing of the Atlantic Ocean to the New World.   The Atlantic crossing took at least eleven days.

The Lifschitz Family was not alone.  Between 1900 and 1914, eleven million immigrants from Europe made the crossing, 85 percent of them in steerage.  Steerage was the lowest fare and passengers sometimes were housed below the main decks of the ship.

Immigrants landed in New York, or Boston.  If they were sick, they may have been refused entry.  So some stayed aboard the ship and traveled to Galveston, Texas.

They arrived.  Most stayed.  They never looked back.