I Want To Know So Much But I Cant Find Anything - Tumblr Posts

i’m sorry, i feel this. i can trace my non-jewish family back to the 18th century- across oceans, across continents, before colonialism “annexed” their land.

but my jewish family? there are four records total. three of them are census records. i can’t find anything pre-immigration from ukraine, and i can’t find anything from their time stateside. i don’t know anything about them besides what the census taker reported and what my moms grandmother told her.

one of the things that stings the most is that when i'm trying to do research on my family history, it's painfully easy to find records for just about any non-jewish relative. and it's so much more difficult for my jewish ones: because they immigrated, because they don't have church records, because none of the big genealogy sites have equivalent records from jewish communities for us.

and when i go on jewishgen, and i search my great-grandfather's name, listed as a researcher of my family, his wife's family, is my grandfather, may his memory be a blessing, who last logged into the site in 2004. he died over a decade later. i wonder if he also became discouraged, seeing how difficult it was to find records, even on a site devoted to preserving our history, and gave up.

i wonder how many records were destroyed along with the living people, lost with the burning, pillaging, looting of their homes and synagogues. i wonder if that's why it's so difficult, sometimes.