15 things I learned watching an interview with my grandpa

When my brother was a baby, my mom did a series of interviews with her dad about his life in what is now Ukraine (but while he was there, it was Russia) and his journey to the US. We watched part of it tonight and here are some things I learned.

As a warning, some of these are quite rough to read because of violence, antisemitism, and extreme poverty.

1. There was a different Soviet calendar. In that calendar, my grandpa's birthday was May 1st, but in our calendar it is May 14th.
2. He did not have any formal schooling before coming to the US, but did learn to read and write.
3. His brother, at one point, gave him a translation of Uncle Tom's Cabin.
4. His father left for the US when he was only two, but he has a memory of his father and his friends playing catch with coins over him. One of the coins then got lodged in his throat and his father had to pound hard on his back to keep him from choking on it.
5. There was an army that supposedly killed Jews on site. When his maternal grandfather saw an armored train headed for the station they lived near, he sent the women and children in his house farther into town. My great grandmother gathered with the other Jewish women and children in town at one house. My grandfather remembers that some of the other people in town were shoving a young Jewish man to the ground and then picking him up to do it again. He remembers his mother and the other Jewish women crying at the sight. At one point, the crowd of angry townspeople told the young Jewish man to run and then they started shooting at him. My grandpa remembers the women screaming, but does not remember what happened to the young man.
6. When the armored train reached the station, my great-great-grandfather ran from his house toward the town, but when he arrived he collapsed (likely from a heart attack) and died. A few months later, his maternal grandmother also died.
7. When Germans were first in the area, they were friendly to the Jewish community and used them as translators as Yiddish and German were similar enough to communicate (this is pre-WWII, but likely during WWI).
8. After his maternal grandfather's death, he, his mother, and his brother moved in with his paternal grandparents. This meant that their circumstances worsened considerably. He remembers using newsprint instead of socks.
9. My grandpa had smallpox and typhoid fever as a child.
10. My great grandmother was concerned about my grandpa's short neck and how it leaned. She would take him to doctors and one prescribed having him wear a cast-type thing (my grandpa called it a form) and lie on his back for a year to correct his neck. While he did this, it did nothing to correct his neck.
11. There was an even worse version of cupping that was used as a cure for something his mother had. It did not help, but did put her in a lot of pain.
12. My great grandmother sold goods to try and get money for her family. Since this was post-revolution, this was illegal. She hid the goods under her skirt to avoid detection.
13. My great grandmother was once arrested for speculating with many other people taken from a freight train. She was told that they would all be shot in the morning. She waited until late in the night and then made her way through the very crowded room. She found the door unlocked and made her way out of the building they were kept in. She then ran to a home nearby where she knew there were people who would take her in. She hesitated for a while to knock on the door because soldiers were placed in homes throughout the town, so there could have been one in the home. However, she eventually realized that if she didn't knock she would freeze to death. She knocked on the door and she was taken in. The next day, she got on another train and made it back to my grandfather and great-uncle.
14. One of my grandpa's beloved childhood memories was visiting a cousin and getting to turn off the electric lights.
15. My grandpa seemed to like pretty ladies at a young age. He remembers a girl who came to help around the house that he would follow around as well as a visitor whom he clung to until his mom took him off.

I'm sure more will come later as we still have much to view, but I wanted to get some of these down.

(Prompt by me)

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