According to the tax records available online, my father's family, the Lithuanian Mizroch's, were quite prosperous (even wealthy) in the late 1800's/early 1900's. Based on photos, listed professions, correspondence and stories told by my father, our Lithuanian ancestors were educated and tri-lingual (Lithuanian, Russian and Yiddish). We weren't a "Fiddler on the Roof" family, oy, oy. We had a presence, a grounding and a culture in the old country, and our family had likely been there, in Lithuania, for hundreds of years. I also think, especially based on the oldest family portrait of our family, that we were a proud family with a sense of ourselves. In spite of the dislocations and distances and different cultures me and my second cousins, descendants of this family, have grown up in, I still think there's some sort of pride, or maybe just a sense of trying to accomplish things, to contribute to our society somehow. We Mizroch's don't seem to be mine owners, nor layabouts, none of us.
In this exploration, I'm trying to get a sense of the culture we lost when our Lithuanian family members who stayed behind, who didn't immigrate, were killed in a flash, sometime between June and December 1941. We lost a dentist, my grandfather's sister Celia, her husband Lev, a doctor, their daughter Sarah, age 16. We lost the matriarch, mother of 11 children, my grandfather's mother Feiga Rivka. We lost my grandmother's brother Peisach Meltz, a prominent, well known eye doctor in my father's historic hometown of Keidan (Kedainiai). We lost my grandmother's 2 sisters and another brother, shopkeepers with stores in the center of town. These were prominent grounded people who apparently loved their town, their country, their lifestyle.
My grandfather Moses and his brother Ben came to the US for political and economic reasons. They weren't fleeing poverty, nor were they fleeing pogroms. Their brothers Abe and Ellie came to South Africa, also likely for economic reasons. Their sister Sonia married Louis Benjamin and moved to Parys, South Africa. Louis Benjamin was an immigrant from Lithuania who started a milling company in Parys with his brother Max in 1919. Max's grandson Colin has a business to this day on the site of the old mill.
I am trying to piece together a timeline of the immigration and movements of my grandfather's generation, and I'm trying to develop a sense of the cultural history of my family in Lithuania. I don't think this story has been told, except in the most simplistic fashion. We all lost a long-term, complex and great culture when all of our Lithuanian family members were killed in a 5 month period in 1941. I am mourning the 2nd cousins I'll never have a chance to meet and visit, because my grandfather's generation who remained behind in their home country was exterminated.
