My family, my heritage

My multicultural heritage brought me to this contest. The story behind the picture is sad but it pictures the reality of the time and place. No words could describe the emotion in my mother’s eyes when she talked about her grandparents or when she said that they would be very proud of me as I inherited the love for arts from them.

The story of my great grandfather started in what is today Chernivtsi, a city in Ukraine. He fled from Ukraine, at the end of WWII (1944) as he was politically persecuted by the Russians not only because he had Romanian, Polish and Jewish roots but also openly disagreed the Russian politic of expansion. As he had the opportunity, he ran away from the Soviet regime with my Romanian great grandmother to Brasov where her family was living. When he arrived in Transylvania with a single suitcase, he had to join a labor camp (Bumbesti Jiu) for one year as a refugee and only after a while he received the Romanian nationality even he came from a region that once belonged to Romania. Although the Russians asked the Romanian government to send my great grandfather back, they refused and gave him all the rights as a Romanian citizen. He was supposed to be relocated in Siberia by the new Soviet regime.

As my mother described him, he was a very wise man, he studied music and fluently spoke seven languages. (Ukrainian, Romanian, German, Yiddish, Russian, Polish, Hebrew). During his stay in Chernivtsi, he worked as a translator and an office worker at Chernivtsi city hall. Long after that, he received a distinction and a monthly magazine (“Review of the Mosaic Religion in Romania”) as a reward from Israel’s embassy in Romania because he helped Jewish people with documents. He put it in a frame and proudly kept it on the wall in his room.

His connection with the family members in Ukraine was very difficult during Communist regime. No letters or phone calls were allowed as they were afraid to put him or themselves in danger. As my mother said, by that time people were afraid even to listen to European radios or talk about politics, religion or leadership. Anything could lead you in prison.

My great grandfather visited his family in Ukraine only once in 1980 and brought my mother an amber brooch and few silver coins as a souvenir. He said that the brooch belonged to his mother and wanted to be kept by my mother. Its heart shape with two rubies seems to have a meaning: his heart has two roots; one who adopted and the other brought him to life. The silver coins have written the year when he left his hometown and settled in Brasov and started his new life. Those things and some photographs are the only few memories that keeps the bond with our past and the family.

He shared his knowledge and culture with the new Transylvanian community that helped him to fit in which proves that the only borders are on the maps, not among honest regular people.

I am honored that I had the chance to talk about my great grandfather and I hope he is proud of me, too. This is not only a project for school but it’s also a story of me and my family that I proudly share it with you.

Through his painful experience we could learn the impact of that harsh time on people’s life and teach us not to repeat the mistakes of our ancestors.