OK....I'm obsessed! I live in Germany by choice, mainly because I wanted to learn HOW TO SPEAK GERMAN and not just "know" the language. Many people take German in school and can decline "der, die, das" (mostly unsuccessfullly), and can say "Ein Bier, bitte". But I wanted to go to the next step. Say what you want about my German with a Brooklyn accent, but I have been able to live here. I've rented an apartment, bought a car, and have fought....ALL IN GERMAN! I can speak fluently....not always accurately, but fluent nonetheless. I'm still on my way in that direction, but like everyone knows "Rome wasn't built in a day".
My mother, Linda Hirsch, whose mother Eva Strom, sweared feverntly, that somewhere down the road that there must have been some German in our family somewhere, although our history declared us to be "Russian Jews". So began my search for these German roots.
For years, I would toil through the Ellis Island database looking for the arrival of my great grandparents to America, but always with no success. I was fully convinced that they had swam the distance from Eastern Europe to America, sneaking onto those golden shores, but of course this is just ridiculous. Obviously, my skills as a genealogist weren't so honed at that point.
Keine Kommentare:
Kommentar veröffentlichen