A Peek into Our Past - Exploring Our Ancestral Roots in Eastern Europe

It is a natural human drive to be curious about the lands of our forebears. The places where our grandparents once walked hold a certain fascination for us. For Jews of Ashkenazic origin, this quest generally leads back to the countries of eastern and central Europe. The search for information is made all that more difficult by the massive disruption caused by the Holocaust, and the subsequent Communist takeover of the former large centers of Jewish population. It is only in recent decades, with the fall of the Communist empire and the increase in connectivity due to the rise of the internet era, that the quest for our eastern European roots has become more feasible.

This quest can be carried out by three primary methods: discussions with those who lived the reality in person, visits to ancestral homelands, and the study of written history. Each has its pros and cons. It is often through a combination of methods that one can build a picture of the life of one’s ancestors. Let us deal with each of these methods in turn.

Of course, it would be nice to conduct personal interview and discussions with those who recall the days of pre-Holocaust Europe. Time marches on, however. The youngest survivors are now in their 70s, and their recollections would stem from their early childhood. When I was a child during the 1960s and 1970s, I recall from my hometown of Ottawa a Jewish community heavily populated by eastern European immigrants. Some were Holocaust survivors, and many others, like my grandparents, had arrived in Canada during the early decades of the 20th century. As a precocious child with an early interest in history, I did on occasion ask my grandparents for some information on their childhood memories. Alas, my questions were basic, and the information I received was perfunctory. How I would love to have my grandparents back, if only for a few hours, to ask all my questions as a mature adult. Sadly, such is not the reality of life...

About the author:
For the past two decades, Jerrold Landau has been a translator of Yizkor Books, encyclopedia articles, and other material of Jewish historical and genealogical interest from Hebrew and Yiddish into English.  Landau’s translations are published on the JewishGen website as well as his own personal website at http://jerroldlandau.com.  Several of the translated Yizkor Books now appear in print as well.  Through this work, Jerrold has gained considerable expertise in the history of pre-war Eastern European Jewish Life as well as a unique perspective on the source of Yizkor Books as Holocaust testimony. In addition, Jerrold is an avid amateur genealogist, and has amassed a considerable archive of documents from his own family.  Jerrold’s full-time day job is with IBM Canada. Jerrold lives in Toronto with his wife and four children, where he is involved with several small synagogues and serves on the boards of the Canadian Zionist Federation and COR.