As a third generation American, I no longer have any living relatives who have immigrated here from abroad. Furthermore, I never knew any of my great grandparents, six out of eight of whom were immigrants. Fortunately for me, my mother is an amateur genealogist of sorts and is very knowledgeable on her side of the family, particularly my grandfather’s side.
My great grandmother (grandfather’s mother), Fannie Nudelman, was born in Chaschevata, (which is now in the Ukraine) in 1896. In 1914, she was sent to America to escape the pogroms. Fannie arrived at Ellis Island on March 27, 1914 on the SS Czar. She soon found work as a sewing machine operator, though she made very money. Fannie did not attend school and finally became a US citizen in 1954, forty years after her immigration. My mother remembers that she was a fantastic cook
My great grandfather (grandfather’s father), Jacob Stanaslofsky, smuggled himself out of the U.S.S.R in a pickle barrel to avoid conscription in the Russian army. He arrived in the port of Baltimore on March 13, 1914 on the SS Rhein. He initially lived with his aunt and worked as a painter in Grand Rapids, Michigan, before moving to Brooklyn in 1917,where he opened a business with his brother; Washington Auto Body Works. Despite owning his own business, a massive accomplishment for an immigrant, Jacob and his family were still very poor. Eventually, his brother took over the business and Jacob became a taxi cab driver. Jacob became a citizen in 1929
Fannie and Jacob met as neighbors and eventually married in 1924. They, along with many other Russian immigrants, were very poor and lived in rat infested tenements in Brooklyn. In the 1940’s they bought a grocery store on Tapscott St. and moved into an apartment on the same block. They sold the store in the late 1960’s and moved because the neighborhood became unsafe.
My great grandmother (grandmother’s mother), Ethel Dalinka, was brought from Pinsk, Russia, to New Jersey in 1911 when Ethel was six months old. Her family moved to Brooklyn in the 1920’s, where her father already worked as a drywall installer. Ethel had four siblings, a sister who died in a fire just before the family departed to the US, a sister Fay and a Brother Joe, who journeyed with Ethel to America, and a sister Sidney, who was born in New Jersey. In the 1930’s, Ethel’s newly married sister Fay collapsed. While running for the doctor, Ethel was hit by a car, but got up and kept on going. Unfortunately, Fay died and Ethel never got over it.
My great grandfather (grandmother’s father), George Levy was born in New York City. His father (my great-great grandfather), Sam Levy, was born in England in about 1872. The only thing my mother knows about his parents (my great-great-great grandparents), Isak Levy & Annie Tetulsky Levy, is that they were born in Russia. They immigrated to the U.S. from England about 1875. George Levy’s mother, Annie Rephan Levy (my great-great grandmother), was born in Austria about 1875. She arrived in the US about 1890. Sam and Annie had four children, Sadie, Irving, George & another child who died in infancy.
Unfortunately, my father never knew his grandparents and does not have a well of information on his ancestry like my mother does, but he told me as much as he could.
My great grandmother, Caroline Cappozzola (my grandmother’s mother), was born in an Italian family that lived in Bangor Pennsylvania. At the age of thirteen, Caroline was married off (my father’s exact words were “sold”) to an Italian immigrant ten years her senior, because her family could not afford to feed her. Her husband (my great grandfather) worked in the slate mines before eventually owning over a dozen houses, a hotel and a car dealership. Caroline and her husband had seven children, but lost one to the influenza epidemic. To this day, the Cappozzola’s (sometimes spelled Cappozzolo) still live in the Bangor area.
My grandfather’s family, came to an Italian enclave in the Bronx from Bari Italy. My great grandfather, Philip Laudo (I come from a long line of Phil’s), owned a shoe store, but lost it in the depression and my great grandmother died when my grandfather, also Philip Laudo, was very young. Unfortunately, this is all my father (yet another Philip Laudo) knows about my grandfather’s side of the family.
In light of everything my parents have told me, I am not only lucky to escape the hardship of my ancestors, but I am lucky to be alive at all. My family had to live in crime-ridden neighborhoods, battle poverty, racism and famine; struggles that I will never know. But like my ancestors, I have a migration journey of my own and although it was nowhere near as difficult a journey, it played a crucial role in making me who I am today.
I was born and raised in New York City. Even though I moved to Merrick when I was seven, the city had left an impact on my impressionable young self. I immediately noticed the lack of cultural diversity in Merrick. When I lived in Manhattan, I would see people of all kinds of ethnicities speaking all kinds of languages in the streets. In Merrick, I was lucky to see people on the streets at all. This was reflected in my high school, where the lack of ethnic and cultural diversity parallels the lack of ideological diversity. I believe that my exposure to culture at an early age is what prompted me to return to New York City for college, instead of going to Binghamton, the Long Island of upstate New York, like so many of my classmates. The reason many of my former friends and classmates congregated at Binghamton, or local colleges, is because change is scary. Part of the reason I wanted to go to college in Manhattan is because it was familiar to me. If people are scared to go to school in a different state, where they speak the same language and share a similar culture, I can only imagine journeying to a different country, halfway across the world, carrying only what few possessions I have and a hope for a better life.
