In honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day, I’m posting for the first time in a while a link to my grandmother’s memoir of youth in Poland from 1905-1921, giving the relatively rare perspective of a poor Jewish girl from a religious but relatively worldly family (e.g., contrary to stereotype, my great-grandmother was educated, and my grandmother went to Polish public school as well as religious school).
And while we’re on the subject of my ancestry, in building a family tree I’ve been frustrated by my inability to find any record of my great-grandfather’s family from Kėdainiai [Keidan] Lithuania. Their name back in Lithuania was the very unusual (for Jews at least) Stravinsky or Strawinsky, but in the U.S. this became “Stein.” He apparently had eight siblings, all or most of whom also came to the U.S. I don’t know whether they all also became “Steins”. But given the rarity of the surname, perhaps by posting this some distant cousin will get in touch.