Thread by @BRRubin

My paternal grandmother, Anne Aarons Rubin, born c. 1898, was born in what she always called “Chernigova Gubernia [District, later Oblast’]” of the Tsarist Empire in the reign of Nikolai II. Her parents brought her to Philadelphia, PA, USA, around 1900. 1/12

Chernigov [Chernihiv in Ukrainian] was the second largest state in Kievan Rus and part of geographical Ukraine, but my grandmother’s family never identified as Ukrainian, but as Jewish. 2/12

She called Ukraine “Malo Rossiya” [little Russia] a pre-revolutionary term for the territory dating to the 14th century that contemporary Ukrainians reject. For a short history of the Jews of Chernigov/Chernihiv see jewishvirtuallibrary.org/chernigov. 3/12

Tsarist pogroms took place in Chernigov in 1905. The Nazis killed most of the 12,000 Jews of the town in 1941. I can’t imagine what my grandmother would think of an independent Ukraine with an elected Jewish president. 4/12

Chernihiv was sacked by Mongols on October 18, 1239. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sack_of_C… This explains why Ukrainians call the Russian Army the “horde” (Urdu in Mongolian). Chernihiv is about one hour south of where Belarus and Russia meet and astride the road to Kyiv, 89 miles away. 5/12

The Russians attacked Chernihiv on February 24, 2022, starting what is already called the Battle or Siege of Chernihiv. Failing to capture the city, they have laid siege to it while bypassing it in the advance on Kyiv. The battle and siege are ongoing. 6/12

Jewish community life was re-established in Chernihiv in 1993 through a school with about 60 students. In the 1897 census, around the time my grandmother was born, the population of Chernigov was 27% Jewish. Today it is less than 2%. 7/12

One of my teachers at the University of Chicago, Ira Katznelson, is descended from a famous intellectual and political family of Chernihiv. I am trying to follow what is happening there now. 8/12

My mother’s paternal grandfather, Adolf Cooperman, was born in Odessa is the 1970s, during the reign of Alexander II. This was so long ago that Jewish boys could be named “Adolf.” 9/12

After the tsar’s assassination by anarchists including some Jews in March 1881, his son/successor Alexander III imposed punitive conscription measures against Jews, which my great-grandfather escaped by being smuggled across the Romanian border and then to the U.S. 10/12

I don’t need to recount the history of Odessa, where my wife, Susan Blum’s maternal grandparents came from. Her grandmother was a child during the 1905 pogroms. Their non-Jewish neighbors saved the family, swearing on a cross to the pogromists that there were no Jews there. 11/12

I hope to visit these places in a Free Ukraine before I die. 12/12