(Jewish Group) Passover and the bonds of history, tie our struggles to those of Ukrainian Jews

[Behind the Aegis]

The themes of Passover, and the bonds of history, tie our struggles to those of Ukrainian Jews

Exactly 100 years ago, in April 1922, my great-grandparents emigrated to the United States with their four children, fearing for their lives in Kremenets, a Russian city in present-day western Ukraine.

My great-grandfather, Aaron Shimon Shpall, an educator and journalist, recorded his thoughts about leaving “the city that we were born in and that we spent years of our lives in,” acknowledging how hard it would be “to separate from our native land, and our birthplace and our father’s house.”

But he was clear that the Russia he knew had “embittered our lives and saddened our souls. If not for the 3 million of our brothers who live there, it could be overturned along with Sodom and Gomorrah and the world would have lost nothing.”

Finally, after months of grueling uncertainty, including one arrest and another pending, my great-grandfather was reunited with his family in Colorado before he and his family ultimately settled in New Orleans, where he served as teacher and then as assistant principal of the communal Hebrew school.

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