Going to America

Abstract

The world in 1920 was not good for the Jews of Ukraine, particularly in the western provinces, where my father and his two brothers and sister still lived. The country was caught in a brutal civil war, with the old czarist factions, the Whites, pitted against the Red army. Poland was fighting to regain a hold in the west, and the Ukrainian nationalists were fighting to establish their own state. The international interventions in support of anti-Bolshevik forces intensified the conflicts. You didn’t know from day to day in the borderlands of Podolia who was in charge. There were many days that the towns were left with no civil authority at all. Bandits and robbers roamed freely in many parts.