Online genealogy sites sometimes say they were from Esmin in Russia, which isn’t an actual place. Going back in the family tree, I find their ancestors came from Zembin, which looks like this in Cyrillic: Зембін, almost like Esmin. I suspect that’s where they come from, as it was a largely Jewish village and is about an hour outside of Minsk.
Here’s what would have happened to my family had they not moved to America: In July 1941, the Nazis occupied Zembin, setting up a ghetto for the Jewish community there. Two months later they liquidated the ghetto by executing 927 Jews, which seems to have been the entire Jewish population of the town.
I can do this with almost every branch of my family tree. My maternal great grandfather Isaac came from Warsaw, where somewhere in the area of a quarter of a million Jews were murdered by Nazis. My mother’s maternal grandparents came from Kishinev in Podolia, where there was a pogrom in 1903 and whose remaining Jewish community, numbering about 10,000, were later murdered by the Nazis.
This is why I feel strongly about the question of refugees. I just need to go back a few generations to discover my own family’s refugees, and discover that had they not fled, and been allowed into America, they would have died. Every single family member I have would not exist had it not been for America welcoming refugees.
We have a long history of being a safe shore for those in need. Emma Lazarus, in her poem about the Statue of Liberty, calls her the Mother of Exiles, a name I think we should reclaim for her. It’s foundational to our conception as a country, our sense that America is a place with a moral purpose in the world: That we take in those in need, that it forges our character and our strength. It is literally our motto: e pluribus unum, out of many, one.
Helping refugees is not something we do when convenient, or when we are in the mood to do it, or when the economy is right for it, or when they are refugees we like and we can turn away those we don’t like. It’s what we do because we are America, and that’s who we are, and anyone who walks away from that legacy and that obligation is turning their back on the very thing that makes us America. And, for many of us, most of us I would guess, it is turning your back on your own ancestors, who likewise came to these shores in need, and were let in.
Hello, thank you for composing and posting this. Of the recorded 927 killed on 18 August 1941 were many of my extended family- those left behind without the time or ability to emigrate.
I try to utilise the rather shocking and non-abstract narrative of the day(which we’ve researched) and the proximity of this event to the lives of my American and U.K. based families so people can somehow personalise the event by seeing that it, if not for countries offering refuge, it is likely that our conversation would never take place. As the generation of witnesses to this period will soon have left us it becomes an imperative that the descendents of refugees, who have flourished and hopefully contributed to their new countries, keep the narrative alive.
My mother was Joan shifrin and you and I must be cousins. More importantly , we think of this event as foundational in our perceptions of refuge, asylum and policy. Thanks for writing that piece.
U.K. Shifrins say hello! (Southsea, England)
Was this written by Max (Matthew) Sparber?
Hey
Great read
My great great grandfather left Zhembin in 1913 with once daughter. Two daughters (including my grest grandmother) ABA a son stayed behind. While he made it to New York, the revolution precluded from the rest of the family joining him. We emigrated to the US In 1992.
Hood name seems to have been Nota
Since we have no information on him at all, is it possibleuppit found something in uppit searches?