On My Ancestry

In January of 2024, I had a conversation with my mom (Cheryl Marsha Greenfield) and my aunt (Louise Greenfield) to learn about where my name, Robin Julian Greenfield, came from.

Below is a transcription of the conversation I recorded, trimmed in areas for flow.

This transcription is not perfectly flowing, but is the best I could make at the time.

I also have the ancestry report from my brother Levi, which should be the equivalent of my own ancestry and my aunt Louise, which should be the same as my mom’s.
 

The Story of My Name

Robin is the name that I was given at birth. The full name I was given at birth was Robin Julian Greenfield.

I was named after the robin bird. While my mom was pregnant with me there was a robin nesting next to our small house in the countryside near Lake Superior. As this mother robin was nurturing her babies, so, too, was my mom nurturing a Robin of her own. She was about six months’ pregnant with me in May of 1986 when she first noticed this nesting robin bird and soon after decided to call me Robin. My dad also felt a love for Christopher Robin, from “Winnie-the-Pooh”, so when my mom proposed this name, he was pleased for me to be carry on his love for Christopher Robin.

My middle name, Julian, was passed down to me by mother in honor of my great, great uncle Jules, who died just a couple years before I was born at the age of 72. My mom had a deep love for her great uncle Jules and his wife Ruth and felt comforted by them during her childhood.

I was given my mother’s last name, Greenfield. My parents were never married and my dad was not very present in our life, so all four of us children –- Joe, Levi, Rebecca and I -– were given the last name Greenfield. The first Greenfield that we know of is Joseph Greenfield, who came over from Vinnytsia, Ukraine in the 1890’s. His last name was likely Gruber, Grover (when anglicized) or something along those lines upon arriving in the US. 
 

My Ancestry (from my brother Levi, which should be equivalent)

99.7% European
49.6% Northwestern European
-27.7% British and Irish
20.4% French and German
0% Scandinavian
1.5% Northwestern European
44.1% Ashkenazi Jewish
5.8% Eastern European
0.2% Broadly European
0.3% Sub-Saharan African
0% Central and South Asian
 

My Mom’s Ancestry

(from my aunt Louise, which should be equivalent to my mother)
99.8% European
87.9% Ashkenazi Jewish
Eastern Polish and Western Ukrainian Jews (highly likely)
Lithuanian Jews (highly likely)
West Central Ukrainian Jews (highly likely)
Central European and Western Ukrainian Jews (likely)
11% Eastern European
-Poland (highly likely) Podkarpackie Voivodeship, Poland
-Ukraine (possible) Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine
-Russia (possible)

Transcription of Conversation

On Robin

Robin: “Want to tell me how I got the name Robin, mom?”
Mom: “At the house on Wannebo Road there was a lilac bush by the house. And there was a robin’s nest in it. Robin was a name I liked. Mark liked Robin, too. Because he always wanted the name ‘Christopher Robin.’ So we both liked ‘Robin’ for different reasons.”
Robin: “So, there was a robin bird in the lilac bush at the house on Wannebo Road,
and, at that time, was I in your womb?”
Mom: “Yes.”
Robin: “So, when did you first see that robin bird?” “Was it in the Spring?”
Mom: “Oh, it was a nest.”
Robin: “So, when did you first get that idea, do you think?” If I was born on August 28th, did you get that idea in the Spring?”
Mom: “Well, we came back to Wisconsin from Oregon in May … And you were born in August. So when did I first get the idea?”
Robin: “Yeah.”
Mom: “Well, robins would be back in May. They’d be coming back. And I guess that’s when you’d see them in a nest, so it must have been pretty much the whole time I thought about it.”
“But, we never knew if it was a boy or a girl.”
Robin: “Did you have the idea of ‘Robin’ before you saw that bird?”
Mom: “No.”
Robin: “So, it was really that bird.”
Mom: “Yeah.”
Robin: “So, you got the idea no more than four months before I was born. So you would have been about five months’ pregnant.”
Mom: “I guess.”
Robin: “And, so, did you say to Mark, “What do you think of the name Robin?”
“Or did you propose the idea?”
Mom: “Well, when a child is born, they want the name. Because they’re going to do a birth certificate. So, I think, you don’t have to give it at the hospital, but it didn’t take very long to decide. Like I said, I don’t know if we talked about it ‘cause we didn’t know if it would be a boy or a girl.”
Louise: “But that’s a name you could use for a boy or a girl.”
Mom: “But I never thought about that. I never thought of Robin as a girl’s name.”
Robin: “So, you might not have fully decided it was going to be Robin until after I was born.”
Mom: “Yes.”
Robin: “Did you have a girl’s name in mind?”
Mom: “No.”
Robin: “Was Robin the only name you had in mind?”
Mom: “It was pretty … umm … we came to a pretty quick consensus.”
Like I said, to me it was the bird. To Mark it was Christopher Robin.”
Robin. “So the robin had its nest in a lilac bush. Where was the lilac bush on the property?”
Mom: “On the back side. Would it have been the kitchen?”
Robin: “Okay. Could you see it from the window?”
Mom: “Yeah. It was really close to the house.”
Robin: “So, you got to watch it?”
Mom: “Kinda, yeah.”
Robin: “Did you ever see it have babies?”
Mom: “No, not really. I guess … I don’t know why I didn’t watch it more. You know, I wasn’t very happy.”
Robin: “Yeah.”
Mom: “And I was there by myself for a while. Mark left. I think he went back to Oregon.”
 

On Julian

Robin: “How about ‘Julian’?”
Mom: “I just wanted to honor a family member.”
Robin: “And that was your Uncle Julian, or your great-uncle Julian?”
Mom: “Our great-uncle Julian.”
Mom: “Harold’s mother’s brother.”
Robin: “And Harold’s mother was … Freeda?”
Mom: “Yeah.”
Robin: “Okay. And Freeda’s brother was …?”
Louise: “Jules”
Robin: “Oh, okay.”
Robin: “So, Grandpa Harold’s mom, Freeda … her brother is Jules.”
Mom: “Yeah.”
Robin: “So Jules was your great-uncle? And it was grandpa’s uncle?”
Mom: “Yeah.”
Robin: “Okay. And you just really liked Jules.”
Mom: “Well, that family meant a lot to me. Because my mom was really … disturbed quite often. Especially when we had a family gathering. She was very worried about having people over. If she got everything right. And they would come over. And Ruth really seemed to know that my mother was very difficult, and struggling. And she always gave some extra attention … “
Robin: “To?”
Mom: “To us.”
Robin: “The kids?”
Mom: “Yeah.” To sister, in background: “Did you feel that way?”
Louise: “Well, I felt that she was always attentive to us. I didn’t feel that she thought our mother was struggling, and that she was nice to us because of that. I just thought maybe she had a warmth.”
Mom: “Okay. Maybe I told her I was unhappy.”
Louise: “Yeah.”
Robin: “So, this would have been at what age?”
Louise: “Well, pretty young, I guess.”
Mom: “We saw them. Did you get the year that Jules died?”
Louise: “He died in either 1983 or 1984.”
Robin: “Oh, just before I was born.”
Mom: “Are you sure?”
Louise: “Yeah. Because I was living in Washington, DC and they were going to be coming and I was going to meet up with them ….
Mom or Louise: “He went to the doctor and died at the doctor’s office.”
Robin: “1983 or 1984?”
Mom: “Yeah.”
Robin: “At what age?”
Louise: “I can figure it out. Because I have them on the census. And I can see what age he was on a particular year. Let’s see, he was 18 in 1930.”
Louise: “Well, if he was 18 in 1930 … oh, he would have been born in 1912.”
Robin: “1912 to 1984 is … 72 years old?”
Robin: “So, Jules’ wife was Ruth, and that would have been your great-aunt?”
Louise: “By marriage.”
Mom: “Okay. So I moved out of our parents’ house when I was 17. So, when we were seeing them, and visiting the family, Ruth, they were visiting. You know, and some time before that. I never really visited them much once I left my parents’ house. So, over a period of me growing up, we would just see them a couple times a year. Freeda still had that house. And we’d get together for Passover.”
Robin: “So, then why did you change it to Julian instead of Jules?”
Mom: “Because I figured Jules was a nickname.”
Robin: “Oh, you figured his name wasn’t actually Jules. You thought his name was Julian?
Mom: “Yeah.”
Louise: “The census showed it was Julian.”
Robin: “So you were naming me after him and you thought his name was Julian. So it’s not that you preferred Julian over Jules?”
Mom: “Well, I kinda did though. Robin Jules Greenfield was not the same as Robin Julian Greenfield. I kinda liked how it went.”
Robin: “So when you had me, did you have to have any kind of discussion with Mark about a middle name or did you have control over that?”
Mom: “He didn’t seem to really care much. I suggested it. But we didn’t really talk about it. He was happy because it was Robin.”
 

On Greenfield

Robin: “And then Greenfield. Where does Greenfield come from? Do you know?”
Louise: “Nobody knows for sure. I think it was kinda anglicized. I think it was originally something like Gruber. Or Grover.
Mom: So Freeda was married into the Greenfield name. Freeda Roth came over from Russia. And married Joseph Greenfield.”
Robin: “Okay. And Joseph Greenfield… Is there a Greenfield before him, or is he the first person that’s a Greenfield that we know of?”
Mom: “I don’t know what information we have at all about any of their parents. Louise found something on a census, or about a boat. Oh, that’s my mother’s mother who came over on a boat.”
Louise: “They all came here on boats.”
Mom: “Well, they had some paper from her on a boat.”
Louise: “Well, what I have is her Declaration of Intention to be a citizen or something like that”
Robin: “Who’s that?”
Mom: “My mother’s mother.”
Robin: “What’s her name?”
Mom: “Dora Moskowitz.”
Robin: “Dora Moskowitz. What year was that filed?”
Louise: “Well, she signed the Declaration of Intention in 1941. But this says that she emigrated to the United States from Libau, Latvia at New York under the name of Dweire, Lubin on September 14, 1906 on the SS Smolensk.” (from Homele)
Robin: “So that was what year?”
Mom: “She signed it in 1941. She arrived on the boat on September 14, 1906.”
Robin: “Oh, wow. And she was doing this paperwork forty years later?”
Mom: “Yeah.”
Robin: “Wow. Was that normal?”
Mom: “She wasn’t a citizen until ….”
Robin: “She wasn’t a citizen for the first forty years?”
Louise: “Well, you know what? As a lawyer when I see that this is called a Declaration of Intention, I don’t know for sure how this connects to citizenship. Did she become a citizen afterwards? I’m not sure.”
Robin: “So, 1906. Dora came over.”
Mom: “Yep.”
Mom: “Our mother’s mother. Our grandmother.”
Robin: “Your grandma. My great-gramma.
Mom: “Uh huh.”
Robin: “So, I’ve always said that I’m third generation.”
Mom: “You are.”
Robin: “So that’s correct. Your grandma was the first born, you’re the second born and I’m the third born.”
Louise: “Well, our grandmother was an immigrant.”
Louise: “Our father was a first generation American. Born in America.”
Robin: “Your mom and dad were the first, you’re the second, and I’m the third?”
Louise: “Yes.”
Robin: “And so, Dora. Dora came over in …”
Louise: “1906.”
Robin: “1906, from Latvia?”
Louise: Reading paper… “‘I emigrated from Libau, Latvia.’” “But that’s where the boat took off. It says ‘My last place of foreign residence was Homele which is also known as Gomel, Russia. Now in Belarus.'”
Robin: “So she was Russian.”
Louise: “Yeah. Well, at that time. See, a lot of these towns … sometimes they were in one country and sometimes they were in another. But this says Homele, Russia.”
Robin: “So she might have been Russian. She might have been Latvian.”
Louise: “Well, Jews were always the outsider and they were considered Jews. But when they came here, they didn’t look at that, but in Russia, they were looked at that way.”
Robin: “Okay. And then, so Dora, who again is your grandma, married …”
Louise: “Isaac Moskowitz.”
Robin: “Isaac. When did he come over?”
Louise: “I don’t really have that information.”
Robin: “Do we know where he came from?”
Louise: “He was a Litvak. Which means he was from Lithuania.”
Mom: “And they must have met in Chicago. I think he might have been from Gomel.”
Robin: “Gomel? G o m e l?”
Louise: “I think so. These notes are not clear.”
Robin: “So, his name again?”
Robin: “Isaac Moskowitz was your grandpa.”
Louise: “Oh, he wasn’t from Gomel. That’s uh …. Oh wait. Here’s, uh, on this Declaration of Intention they have information about her husband. ‘I separated from Ike. He was from Lithuania.’ So that, yes, he was a Litvak. I can’t think of the name of the town. I think I sort of knew it, so it might come back at some point. He arrived at Philadelphia. His ship arrived in Philadelphia in 1890.”
Robin: “Oh, and you say separated …. They were together but they separated for traveling?”
Louise: “No, they met here. But at the time she signed this in 1941, she was separated from her husband.”
Robin: “Oh. So your grandma and grandpa got divorced?”
Louise: “I don’t know if they ever got divorced.”
Robin: “But they weren’t together?”
Louise: “Right. Yeah.”
Robin: “So Rose, she was their kid? Did she not have a mom and dad?”
Louise: “I’m not sure exactly when the father got split up. It was in 1941 they were split up and my mother (Rose) was born in 1917. So that’s considerably after … this postdates …
Robin: “So that would be when she was 24.”
Robin: “Okay. So your mom probably …”
Mom: “But he was gone a lot. My mother said he worked on a ship.
Louise: Well, he stowed away to South Africa for one thing. I’m not sure exactly when in his life he did that.”
Robin: “Huh. Wow. Okay. So that’s Isaac or Ike?”
Louise: “Yeah. Ike was a nickname for Isaac.”
Robin: “So Isaac came over, probably around 1900?”
Louise: “This says 1890.”
Louise: “Oh, and it says ‘separated 1938’.”
Louise: “And when were they married? I’m not sure. But Rose was born in 1917, so presumably, they were married by then.”
Robin: “So he was over here 27 years before Rose was born.”
Louise: “Yeah.”
Robin: “So he came over in 1890, and Dora came over in 1906, so 16 years apart. He came from, potentially, Lithuania, she came from Latvia. But she lived in Russia.”
Louise: “See, Russia … the USSR had, like, thirteen republics in it. One of them was Russia and one of them was Latvia.
Mom: “But that wasn’t the USSR then.”
Louise: “I think they were. But Americans called it all Russia.”
Robin: “So then. This whole time I’ve been telling people that I had Ukrainian heritage.”
Louise: “On our father’s side. My father’s parents both came … were Ukrainian. But again, Jews were outsiders, so they were considered more as Jews. We were Ukrainian Jews.”
Robin: “Wait. That’s right. That’s your …”
Louise: …
Robin: “So that’s your gramma and grandpa on your mom’s side.”
Louise: “Yes. Greenfields.”
Robin: “Okay, so then, going back to your dad … Harold’s side, when did they move to the United States?”
Louise: “Well, Harold’s people came from Ukraine and actually Freeda was born in Russia.”
Robin: “So Freeda is his mom? So same thing where on that side, he’s first generation.”
Louise: “Yes.”
Robin: “Okay. When did Freeda come to the United States?”
Louise: “I guess that would show. But I think she would have shown up in the 1910 census.”
Robin: “So she was here before 1910.”
Louise: “Yeah. I think she came before 1900.”
Louise: “I definitely want to fill in some of these blanks.”
Robin: “So that’s Freeda. Freeda married …”
Louise: “Joseph.”
Louise: “Freeda Roth. Joseph Greenfield.”
Robin: “Okay. And Joseph came from Ukraine as well?”
Louise: “Yes. From the same town.”
Robin: “Okay. And what town was that?”
Louise: “Venitza.”
Robin: “And, when did he come over?”
Louise: “I don’t have that information.”
Robin: “Okay. There’s nothing you found at all for that?”
Louise: “I have not … what I have is kind of haphazard. It’s what I stumbled upon online or happened to have.”
Robin: “So is it just oral that he came from Vinnytsia?”
Louise: “I don’t have paper, but it was always …. When people came as immigrants, they used to like … in the spirit of ‘birds of a feather flock together’ … there was the Vinnytsia society. So people mingled with their own. So I imagine they met through family, people being involved in Vinnytsia stuff.”
Robin: “And when would they have met?”
Louise: “Well, my father was born in 1918, so I think Jack was born in 1913. So, they probably got married not much …. Oh. I haven’t printed it, but I recently found the 1910 census.”
Mom: “Do we have any marriage certificates?”
Louise: “I don’t. I recently found information that says the year of some things. So it will make it easier for me to order stuff.”
Robin: “So that was Joseph Greenfield, who is where Joe got his name from.”
Louise: “1910 Census: Freeda Rutt, r u t t which is what the census taker did, so she was here by 1910. Is she in the 1900? I’m not sure if I have that.”
Robin: “So did she go by Roth not Rutt?”
Louise: “Yeah.”
Robin: “So, it’s Moskowitz, Roth, Greenfield are the three names that make up us?”
Louise: “Well, Moskowitz … Dora Moskowitz, our maternal grandmother … her maiden name was Lubin.”
Robin: “Okay. So our heritage is Lubin?”
Louise: “Lubin-Moskowitz and Roth-Greenfield.”
Robin: “Okay. When you say Roth-Greenfield … that’s the marriage …”
Louise: “Yeah.”
Mom: “Didn’t Roth come from something else?”
Louise: “Probably. Well, there was a different alphabet there, so it has to be anglicized by then …”
Mom: “Something Hebrew became Roth.”
Robin: “So, and then, as far as, your idea is that Greenfield came from Gruber?”
Louise: “I have a vague sense of that. Gruber or Grover.”
Robin: “Okay. And would that be G r u b e r?”
Louise: “Again. That’s anglicized. But Joseph Greenfield, it says: ‘Birth: 1888, Russia.’ Freeda: ‘1892, Russia. January 1st,’ they show it as. She didn’t really know her birthday. She celebrated it in February. But, I guess, on certain official things, it showed as January 1st. You know, in Russia, they changed the calendar at some point. I don’t know exactly when. They leapt forward by about fourteen days. Because they followed a different calendar.”
Robin: “And then, why did … so, this is four separate groups that came together. All four of them left that region within about fifteen years of each other, it seems.”
Louise: “That’s probably pretty close.”
Robin: “1890 – 1906. So, why were they all leaving?”
Louise: “Because Jews were not treated well there and they didn’t feel that was their place and they had an opportunity to go somewhere else to seek a better life.”
Robin: “So they were all leaving because Jews were not treated well?”
Louise: “Discriminated against or treated badly.”
Mom: “Did any of them own land and they got their land taken away? Because they would go around confiscating peasants’ lands.”
Louise: “You know, Cynthia says … and I should interview her … she said something about how someone was going be drafted into the Czar’s army and left to get away from that.”
Robin: “Okay. So that would have been one of those four.”
Louise: “Well, it would have probably been the Roth probably, because she’s not related to the Greenfields or the Moskowitzes or the Lubins. She’s a Roth.”
Louise: “That’s my father’s family. My father’s mother’s ….”
Mom: “Is that the Rutt’s?”
Louise: “Yeah, Rude, Rutt, Roth.”
Robin: “Okay. And then, so, at the time, was there physical violence?”
Louise: “Sometimes there were. They called them pogroms, when … you could call them vigilantes or something. They would just go rough up Jews. I don’t know a super lot about it. But, for example, like what happened to Israel on October 7th. Some people have called it a pogrom because it’s very similar to that.”
Robin: “Okay. So when did Hitler take power? The forties?”
Louise: “I think the mid-thirties. They invaded Poland October 1st, 1939.”
Robin: “So they left about forty years before that.”
Louise: “Yeah, they were the lucky ones. That’s why we exist.”
Robin: “If they hadn’t left ….”
Louise: “If they had dawdled, they probably would have ended up in mass burial pits, either alive or dead. As a matter of fact, when I was in Russia, and I met this couple. His family was from Vinnytsia. And he described it as best he could because we didn’t speak each other’s languages. He had family that had been shot in the pits. Sometimes they shot ‘em and sometimes they pushed them into the pits and they landed on top or someone landed on top of them. They still exhume these pits.”
Robin: “Exhume?”
Louise: “Unbury.”
Robin: “Okay.”
Louise: “I’m going to look up pogroms to see over what period of time they did that. Jews have always been outsiders. But we exist because people left….
Oh. Pogrom: An organized massacre of a particular ethnic group. In particular, that of Jewish people in Russia or Eastern Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.”
Robin: So, it’s most certain that if they hadn’t left, we would probably not … there’s a good chance we wouldn’t exist?”
Louise: “Well, they wouldn’t have met each other, because they all … well, Freeda and Joseph might have met in Vinnytsia, but they did meet here. They could have met in Vinnytsia if they had stayed there.”
Robin: “Oh, which goes back to what I was curious about. So did they all end up in South Chicago?”
Louise: “No. The Jewish area was the west side of Chicago.”
Robin: “Okay, so nobody ever lived on the south side.”
Louise: “Not until later.”
Robin: “Oh. So they started in west Chicago ….”
Louise: “Well actually, they started kind of in central Chicago. My mother’s mother …. Wait a minute. I think I have … is that a marriage license I have here? Yeah. For awhile they lived on Halsted Street, which is pretty central.”
Louise: “But I think the Jewish west side … oh, my mother’s birth certificate: 1106 South Halsted. So when she was a little older is when they moved to the west side.”
Louise: “The Golden Age of the Jewish west side of Chicago started probably in the twenties.”
Robin: “So they, all four of these people coming from Europe; which is Joseph, Freeda, Isaac and Dora, all started out in central Chicago?”
Louise: “I don’t know for sure. I don’t have my father’s birth certificate with me. Um. But he was born, I think, before the Super Golden Age of the Jewish west side of Chicago. So. They probably were there, because they always owned real estate. Yeah. My father, the Greenfields, the Roths … they were more sophisticated.”
Robin: “Okay. And so, then they moved, most everybody moved from central Chicago to west?”
Louise: “I don’t think the Roths lived in central. I think they were probably on the west side.”
Robin: “From the beginning?”
Louise: “Yeah. It’s my mother’s parents that I see, at the time of her birth, lived, I wouldn’t call it downtown, but a mile west of downtown.”
Robin: “Okay. So did they ever live in any really poor neighborhoods?”
Louise: “My mother’s parents … my understanding is they’d rent an apartment and then they’d leave in the middle of the night when the lease was almost up for some reason. It doesn’t make sense. If they had paid their rent for the final month, you would think … yeah, to somehow save money, they’d, like, leave in the night. They’d move.”
Robin: “Every year?”
Louise: “I think, for a number of years.”
Robin: “So this would have been the nineteen …”
Louise: “Probably in the twenties.”
Robin: “So, when they came over, were they struggling financially? Did they get jobs right away?”
Louise: “That I don’t know.”
Robin: “I mean, because Jews, there were neighborhoods of really poor Jews, right?”
Louise: “Well, I think the Jews who came as immigrants were not wealthy. You know, thirty years earlier, German Jews came. German Jews were wealthier.”
Louise: “The eastern European Jews, including the Russian and Baltic states … USSR Jews … Soviet Jews, I guess, well, I don’t know what the official term would be ….”
Mom: “Didn’t Harold say that his father was a carpenter?”
Louise: “Yes. He definitely was a carpenter.”
Robin: “So Joseph was a carpenter?”
Mom: “Yeah.”
Robin: “And then. It sounds like all of them stayed pretty much within the Jewish community. Like, they didn’t really go outside of the Jewish community too much?”
Louise: “Pretty much not, I guess.”
Robin: “So, now, I’ve heard that Jewish communities and Black communities in cities including Chicago, have lived in proximity to each other, or in the same neighborhoods. Would that have overlapped, or no?”
Louise: “Well, what are the years of the Great Migration? Did it start in the thirties? Did it start in the forties?”
Robin: “From the south to the north?”
Louise: “Yeah.”
Robin: “I can look that up.”
Louise: “Because what was the Jewish west side, over the course of a relatively short period of time evolved into a Black neighborhood.”
Robin: “1910 to 1940.”
Louise: “Okay. Well, I think Blacks were mostly on the south side, but then Jews left the west side and Blacks moved there and because Jews were able to integrate into the … they were not discriminated against as deeply as Black people.”
“So they had an easier opportunity for upward mobility and that’s why there were able to save up money and move to the suburbs.”
Robin: “So it’s unlikely that our … that heritage … ever lived in the same neighborhoods.”
Louise: “Only during the transition time. When Jews were leaving and Blacks were moving in. It was probably over the course of five to ten years.”
Robin: “So that would have been, maybe, in the thirties and forties?”
Louise: “I’d say the forties and fifties.”
Robin: “Okay. So that would have been when Harold and Rose were already mid-twenties to mid-thirties?”
Louise: “I think my grandparents … I think Harold … I think Freeda and Joe moved to Andersonville at the end of 1951. Because my parents still lived on the west side when I was born. So I was born on the west side.”
Robin: “In 1951?”
Louise: “Yeah. 1951. And I think by my first birthday, we had moved up to Andersonville, because that’s where my father’s parents bought a building. They bought a six-flat. And we had one of the apartments.”
Robin: “So it’s possible that in the thirties and forties that Jews and Black folk were living together in the same ….”
Louise: “I don’t think there were many Blacks on the west side when my parents lived there.”
Robin: “Okay. So it was a solid, pretty much Jews.”
Louise: “Pretty much, I think.”

Robin: “So if you were to go to try to see the land where our ancestors are from, where would you go?”
Louise: “I’d be more likely to see something in Vinnytsia, although I think most of the Jewish stuff was long ago destroyed.”
Robin: “Vinnytsia in Ukraine?”
Louise: “Yeah.”
Robin: “Would you go to Latvia and Lithuania?”
Louise: “I don’t think there’s as much to find there. I think most of it has been obliterated.”
Robin: “Okay. And would you consider us a hundred percent eastern European Jewish?”
Louise: “You know, I did the DNA test. I think I was like 98% or something.”
Robin: “Okay.”
Mom: “Let me see if I can find that genealogy.”

[long silent pause]
Robin: “Would it be accurate to say that our ancestors were fleeing?”
Louise: “Yes.”
Robin: “And would you say, fleeing, like, what? Persecution or …”
Louise: “Persecution.”
Robin: “Fleeing a hostile environment?”
Louise: “Yes.”
Robin: “And who was it that was hostile? The Russians?”
Louise: “The Russians.”
Robin: “Which are whites …? do they identify as something besides Russians?”
Louise: “In Ukraine, they probably think of themselves as Ukrainians.”
Robin: “Okay.”

Louise: “Here’s Arthur’s ancestry report. It says he’s 84.5% Ashkenazi Jewish and 14.6% eastern European.”
Robin: “Okay.”
Louise: “But some of that is from rapes. It says he’s 0.07% southern European, mainly Greek and Balkan. That’s Arthur’s. 99.8% European.”
Robin: “Okay.”

Looking at Louise’s report:
Louise: I’m the same percentage of total European.”
Robin: “You’re more Ashkenazi than him. He was 84.”
Louise: “Okay. But he had this Polish element, too. So, my Polish element doesn’t come from Moskowitz-Lubins. Lithuanian Jews.
Louise: “Oh. So I’m 87.9% Ashkenazi. Again, it’s close, but not identical.”
Robin: “Then, so, this would be non-Jews, eastern Europe?”
Louise: “It’s not necessarily non-Jews, but it’s not specifically Jewish. But there were, like, people travelling, and …

Robin: “So, Ukrainian, Lithuanian and Ukrainian. So it doesn’t mention Latvian. But that could easily be ….”
Louise: “But that might fit into …. Latvia was part of Lithuania, it looks like. It’s in the circle that says Lithuanian Jews, may have Lithuania, Belarus, and Latvia in there.”

Robin: “So, very Jewish.”
Louise: “Yeah. You don’t get much more Jewish than us.”
Robin: “Yeah. Do you think … are there many Jews who are 100%? Is that much of a thing, do you think?”
Louise: “You know what? I think when they do DNA, not many are 100%, because there’ve been enough rapes and intermixing to have a few percentages.”
Robin: “Do you think 88% is more than most Jews, or average?”
Louise: “Well, you know, when they say eastern European, that doesn’t mean we weren’t Jewish.”
Robin: “Yeah. It could be eastern European Jews.”
Louise: “Yeah.”
Robin: “What does it show when you click on eastern European?”
Louise and Robin: “Poland, highly likely. Ukraine.”

END AUDIO.