ASDKLFJAL;SDKJFA;LKSDF I GIVE UP
Dear Mr H~:
Hi there. It's your great-great-granddaughter, writing from TEH FUTURES. Specifically, about a hundred years or so, give or take, after your arrival in the New World. Given the lack of documentation, I'm starting to wonder if you did in fact arrive in the New World and if someone in the intervening generations didn't make the whole thing up. Also, it appears that your name was a very common one for strapping young Jewish lads in central and eastern Europe at about that time, so as you can imagine I'm having a lot of trouble leafing through Ellis Island records. Jewish GenWeb cheerfully assures me that it is possible to identify and locate you and my great-great-grandmother, despite the fact that you appear to have changed your surname (to H~) upon your arrival on our fair shores. I have severe reservations. When I ran my surname in their database (like a card file, but a lot faster), I got so many results that I just said a lot of bad words and decided to give up.
You might ask why I don't just go to the synagogue and ask to see the records. Well, I'm in the Midwest--I don't know just when you died, so I may be rehashing things you already know--where your grandson, my grandfather, stayed after he was discharged from the Army. There was a girl in it, you see. Also, the thing you feared has come to pass: we're not Jewish anymore. (Please don't scream too hard at my great-grandfather for this. He couldn't help who he loved.) Sometimes I still experience vestigial fury about this, not so much for our being goyim as for having lost our culture. I was brought up in my mother's Irish-German Catholic culture, which I'm glad for, but it would have been nice to have something from you guys too, besides some names that nobody could ever really quite remember and some towns that might be in Hungary/Poland/Croatia/the Crimean Ilkhanate/wherever. Nobody knows better than I that the past is often too painful to rehash, but it's my history too, and if I'm going to die of something that only strikes down Ashkenazim, I'd like to know if I have a fighting chance.
Anyway, I'm writing because I'm hoping you can appear to me in a dream or something and give me some reliable identifying details. I'm not LDS, so I don't believe your eternal salvation hangs upon my being able to identify you, but it's hard for me to see a puzzle and be unable to solve it.
Love,
l33 (your great-great-granddaughter, through your son Joseph)
PS: I know there was great anti-Semitism and pogroms and grinding poverty and repressive authorities and that, but the real reason you left Hungary(?) was because you had a fight with your father amirite?
Unrelated: Speeshul thx to augustuscaesar and samanosukesgirl for the card and the paid time, respectively. I ★ you both! (It's like ♥ but sparklier, also I like stars better than hearts.)
Hi there. It's your great-great-granddaughter, writing from TEH FUTURES. Specifically, about a hundred years or so, give or take, after your arrival in the New World. Given the lack of documentation, I'm starting to wonder if you did in fact arrive in the New World and if someone in the intervening generations didn't make the whole thing up. Also, it appears that your name was a very common one for strapping young Jewish lads in central and eastern Europe at about that time, so as you can imagine I'm having a lot of trouble leafing through Ellis Island records. Jewish GenWeb cheerfully assures me that it is possible to identify and locate you and my great-great-grandmother, despite the fact that you appear to have changed your surname (to H~) upon your arrival on our fair shores. I have severe reservations. When I ran my surname in their database (like a card file, but a lot faster), I got so many results that I just said a lot of bad words and decided to give up.
You might ask why I don't just go to the synagogue and ask to see the records. Well, I'm in the Midwest--I don't know just when you died, so I may be rehashing things you already know--where your grandson, my grandfather, stayed after he was discharged from the Army. There was a girl in it, you see. Also, the thing you feared has come to pass: we're not Jewish anymore. (Please don't scream too hard at my great-grandfather for this. He couldn't help who he loved.) Sometimes I still experience vestigial fury about this, not so much for our being goyim as for having lost our culture. I was brought up in my mother's Irish-German Catholic culture, which I'm glad for, but it would have been nice to have something from you guys too, besides some names that nobody could ever really quite remember and some towns that might be in Hungary/Poland/Croatia/the Crimean Ilkhanate/wherever. Nobody knows better than I that the past is often too painful to rehash, but it's my history too, and if I'm going to die of something that only strikes down Ashkenazim, I'd like to know if I have a fighting chance.
Anyway, I'm writing because I'm hoping you can appear to me in a dream or something and give me some reliable identifying details. I'm not LDS, so I don't believe your eternal salvation hangs upon my being able to identify you, but it's hard for me to see a puzzle and be unable to solve it.
Love,
l33 (your great-great-granddaughter, through your son Joseph)
PS: I know there was great anti-Semitism and pogroms and grinding poverty and repressive authorities and that, but the real reason you left Hungary(?) was because you had a fight with your father amirite?
Unrelated: Speeshul thx to augustuscaesar and samanosukesgirl for the card and the paid time, respectively. I ★ you both! (It's like ♥ but sparklier, also I like stars better than hearts.)