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Walking to the site of a Holocaust mass grave in Romanow, Ukraine

On #FirstSurvivor and the Russian-Jewish Holocaust experience

Personal Essay, Soviet-Jewish History /

Today is Holocaust Memorial Day—sharing some thoughts on the Russian-Jewish Holocaust experience. There’s a thread making its way around Twitter about #FirstSurvivors, asking people about the first survivor they ever met. This was my response, which I’m posting here too, with some tweaks, before it disappears into the abyss of updates. Like many Russian-Jews, there is no “First Survivor” in my family, because the Holocaust […]

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Lost in Immigration: People I Will Never Know

Immigrant Experience, Personal Essay /

This photo was taken a few nights before we left the Soviet Union forever. To my knowledge, it is the only photo that exists of me with all my (at that time living) grandparents. That’s them, in the front row. My paternal grandmother, then my maternal grandfather (holding me), and my maternal grandmother next to him with my cousin. My parents are the two people

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Vintage Russian phone found in Moscow illustrating how immigrants keep in touch

With so many ways to keep in touch, let’s never talk again

Immigrant Experience, Tech Meets History & Totalitarianism /

I spend a lot of time downloading Facebook photos, uploading them to an email and sending them to my parents, where, I suspect, they will sit for all eternity in their inboxes. We, like most families, used to have albums, but now we have attachments we will never find again. As usual, we have an extra layer of “how immigrants keep in touch” on top

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