Just The Facts Ma'am

I'll be at my parents for a few days over this next week for Passover so I'll be taking some notes and looking through old documents to see what I can find.  For now though, it seems like a good time to fill you in on the basics, the stuff I've always known about my family.

My mother's side, the Buchanan side, were refugees from Nazi Germany.  My grandfather, Leo, grew up in Frankfurt and was one of nine children.  His grandfather had come to Germany from Russia.  They were desperately poor.  Both of his parents and one of his sister's, my great aunt Berta, were killed during the Holocaust.  My grandfather and seven of his siblings were lucky enough to get out.  He went to England and fought in the British Army before coming to Brooklyn.  Some of his sister's and one of his brothers, Henry, came to New York too, but by the time I was born only Henry was still living in New York.  My grandfather outlived all but one of his siblings and now, of the nine children, only my Aunt Eva, who I have never met, is still living in California.

My great grandparents, Hanna and Alfred Bendit, and my grandmother, Ruth, lived in Berlin.  My great grandfather worked for a Jewish organization and my great grandmother was a stay at home mom.  My grandmother was an only child.  They lived a more middle class existence.  They escaped to America on the last refugee boat that got out of Nazi Germany and came to Brooklyn when my grandmother was 13.  They joined family who had come here around the same time; my great grandmother's mother, her three sisters and their children.  Most of my grandmother's cousin stayed in the New York area so I've met most of them.  I also have very vague knowledge of meeting two of my great-great aunts, or tante's as we call them using their native German, but they all passed away long before my great-grandmother and they weren't close so I have no real memories of my tantes.

I know story after story about my mother's side of the family, that I'm planning to tell here, detailing where they came from and how they got here.  Off the top of my head can name family from six generations back.

My father's side, the Lander side, is the mystery.  Both of my grandparents on that side were first generation American.  My father is named George, for his paternal grandmother, and my uncle was named Lewis, for their maternal grandfather.  If my dad was ever told the names of his grandmothers, he had long since forgotten them by the time I started this project.  My grandfather, Harry, had three sisters.  He passed away long before I was born as did his sister Leah, but I knew his two other sisters, my great aunts.  I knew that they all grew up in Detroit, that their mother died young and that their father, unable to take care of four children during the depression, had to put the children in an orphanage for a time.

My grandmother, Belle, had a few brothers I knew, but I couldn't remember how many and only vaguely had an idea of their names.  I knew she had two sisters; one who was much older than she who died during the great flu epidemic and another, also older named Rae who lived with my dad's family while he was growing up.  Rae was also long dead by the time I was born.  I knew that my grandmother's father was from Russia and that my grandmother had lived in New York her whole life between Manhattan's Lower East Side, Brooklyn's Williamsburg and finally Midwood, the neighborhood in Brooklyn where my dad grew up.

I don't have many stories about my father's side of the family, but I'm hoping that through this project I can find some.

So, there it is, all the facts I have.  Now, you're all caught up too.