Where are you from? European Ashkenazi version

shosh

Sun, Dec 06 2009, 5:48 pm

Let me see:

Dad's side: Kovno and Bialystok.
Mum's side: Trisik and Rochane, which I used to think were Trisk and Ruzhin but are apparently not and I'm really confused. They may have been in either Estonia, Lithuania, or Ukraine, depending on which reference you look up, but I really don't know. And then there's the Sephardi side of my family, which traces its ancestry to eighteenth century London (via a couple of generations in Australia), but may have come to England from Holland as Spanish Jews exiled at the time of the Inquisition. But we don't really know ...

nylon

Sun, Dec 06 2009, 6:11 pm

Isramom8 wrote:

Do you realize that a person has 8 biological great-grandparents? (Not more, because at that time you couldn't have, say, the egg of one woman in the uterus of another.)
But I'd guess there could really only be 4 places of origin, because the man and woman would only have met if they lived near each other.
And the only way I can think of for one's grandparents could have met if they came from different countries was if they met in America.

Or our great grandparents could have met in America. On one side, my great-grandparents came to America as children, and met here.

Poland (Kutno, Lodz), Romania, Germany, Ukraine (Ekaterinoslav)--I don't know which cities everyone was from; 2 of my grandparents died before I was born.

manhattanmom

Sun, Dec 06 2009, 10:23 pm

All of my grandparents were born in New York....
Before that:
Father's Side: Kiev
Austria-Hungary--not sure of the exact city

Mother's Side: Bialystock (Russia/Poland border)
Tarnipol (Poland prewar--now it's Russia, I believe)
Duklar (Poland)

My great grandparents are the ones who came to the States--and some of them were not married--so it's a lot of places....

And that's why polls that don't have more than one option are good. I voted Poland although it only covers part of my family.

Temilia

Mon, Dec 07 2009, 12:00 am

Well

two -Polish- I think this side is Polish all the way back as well.
one-Russian-and from that gf-we are russian way way way back-But possibly a bit Ukrainian
one =American but her father was Chassidish from Galicia. Where is that????

jelibean ↓

Mon, Dec 07 2009, 1:09 am

Paternal: German on both sides, for as far back as anyone can trace. If anyone else has German roots, I'd be curious to know where. As for me, Worms, Alsheim and Mannheim.

Maternal: Bobruisk (I think that's Belarus now???) on my grandmother's side (though she was born in NY). On grandfather's side, I think his mother was from Ukraine and his father from Georgia but I need to clarify (he too was born in NY).

So I'm the product of a mixed marriage. Ha ha.

↑ Isramom8 ↓

Mon, Dec 07 2009, 1:12 am

Oh, it was Tcherveen. Sorry.

Seraph wrote:

Isramom8 wrote:

My great grandparents are also from tchernovitz, in Poland, I thought. Maybe there was more than one town with that name? Berekson/Bergson. Are we cousins?

I've got Beizer and Horowitz sides from tchernovitz...
I doubt there was more than one tchernovitz. Can't be that common of a name of a city...

↑ Isramom8 ↓

Mon, Dec 07 2009, 1:15 am

We should realize that Imamothers are of three generations! The great-grandparents of a 60 year old Imamother are a totally different historical factor than those of a 20 year old Imamother.

Marion ↓

Mon, Dec 07 2009, 1:15 am

My great-grandfather, when asked where he was born would give the city name (Simferopol). When asked "what country?" his response was "in what year?".

Simferopol was in the Pale of Settlement; sometimes in Russia and sometimes in Poland. I have 3 other Russian great-grandparents, an English (that's European but not on your list!), two Americans (though one of those is Sephardi) and a Canadian.

↑ Seraph ↓

Mon, Dec 07 2009, 1:17 am

Oh, I just found out something interesting. of my 8 great grandparents, 5 of them lived within 75 miles from each other. I also found out that my great grandmother was from lemberg, poland.

↑ Isramom8

Mon, Dec 07 2009, 3:11 am

Seraph wrote:

Oh, I just found out something interesting. of my 8 great grandparents, 5 of them lived within 75 miles from each other. I also found out that my great grandmother was from lemberg, poland.

How likely was it to meet someone who lived over 75 miles away? Even today, Brooklyn girl meets Brooklyn boy, a lot.

freidasima

Mon, Dec 07 2009, 5:17 am

It's true that we are of different generations here on Imamother and not only that, some of us had older parents and grandparents as we and maybe our parents and maybe their parents were the younger children in a big family. That's how I at 50 have great grandparents born over 165 years ago! Not much chance, even without Hitler, that any of them would be alive for my birth...

My father's side was all from Galicia, I know that his mother's parents and father's parents were both from the same town, that's how they met. I don't knwo much about his mother's parents except the general area they came from. My mother's mother's parents were also from the Bukovina (NOT Czernowitz but not far from there) from the same town and my mother's father's parents lived in Kiev when they got married but I don't know where they were born. So I'm Eastern European all the way in terms of ancestry.

↑ Seraph ↓

Mon, Dec 07 2009, 5:20 am

Isramom8 wrote:

Seraph wrote:

Oh, I just found out something interesting. of my 8 great grandparents, 5 of them lived within 75 miles from each other. I also found out that my great grandmother was from lemberg, poland.

How likely was it to meet someone who lived over 75 miles away? Even today, Brooklyn girl meets Brooklyn boy, a lot.

The interesting part is that they all met in the good ol usa.

↑ Raisin ↓

Mon, Dec 07 2009, 5:33 am

Marion wrote:

most english Jews also came from somewhere else in Europe, since Jews were expelled from England. there was a sefardi community from holland/spain here in the 17/18/1900s (as shosh mentioned) but the bulk of the British Jewish community came at the same time as most Jews came to the US - in around 1900, escaping from Pogroms. And some before and after the Holocaust.

So almost all english Jews are from somewhere else.

↑ Seraph ↓

Mon, Dec 07 2009, 6:04 am

Raisin wrote:

Marion wrote:

Not all jew's ancestors are jewish. my husband's ancestry is lithuanian, turkish/greek (saloniki), french, and english. His mother is a giyoress of british decent.

↑ Marion

Mon, Dec 07 2009, 6:13 am

I know most English Jews are originally from somewhere else, but the question was specifically great-grandparents. My great-grandmother was English. Born just outside London. The others (Americans, actually) who I mentioned were Sephardim (in the other thread?) actually arrived via England as well...after Portugal & Holland when they lost their homes in 1492. But they'd been in America longer than, let's say, the "average".

↑ Raisin ↓

Mon, Dec 07 2009, 6:17 am

Seraph wrote:

Raisin wrote:

Marion wrote:

Not all jew's ancestors are jewish. my husband's ancestry is lithuanian, turkish/greek (saloniki), french, and english. His mother is a giyoress of british decent.

I thought of english gerim, but thats not technically ashkenazi.