The Price
Honoring Our Oppressed Ancestors
Honor, justice, and humanity forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us.
~Thomas Jefferson
I was watching "Finding Your Roots" and their profile of Viola Davis and her ancestry. Upon learning of the trials one of her enslaved ancestors endured, Davis said, "Somebody paid a price for me to be here." That stayed with me. I heard this as an acknowledgement of the truth: that the survival of one person, despite crushing cruelty and injustice, makes the lives of their descendants--us--possible.
I thought about my own ancestry, and the story of my great grandmother, Genya (Jennie) Prizant. Great-Grandma Jennie was born in Kishinev, which today is the capital of Moldova, but in the 19th century was in Bessarabia, an annex of the Russian Empire. Jews know Kishinev because it was the site of the pogroms of 1903-1905; antisemitic riots in which atrocities were committed against the Jews of Kishinev. Next month marks the 120th anniversary of the pogroms.
My mother related the story Great-Grandma Jennie told, of how she, at 15, was running an errand for her mother when the streets erupted in chaos and violence. Jennie hid in a sewer, terrified, through the night. In the morning, her desperate mother wandered the streets, calling her name. When she pulled Jennie out of the sewer, she told her that her baby sister was gone. Jennie never spoke of her sister's fate, but the history tells of babies being torn to pieces by rioters--one can only imagine the horror.
Following the pogroms, thousands of Jews emigrated to the US to escape further persecution. A match was made for Jennie with the son of a distant cousin, and at fifteen, she came to these shores, married Frank Miller, and gave birth to my grandmother, Minnie.
Great-Grandma Jennie paid a price for me to be here. The complexity of this acknowledgement, for me, means that I must, whilst lamenting and condemning the evil perpetrated against my race, also be with the fact that without the atrocities of the pogroms, I would not be here.
Does this mean I forget the inhumanity and evil perpetrated against my ancestors and my race? Never. Do I seek retribution in the now—over a century later—from the descendants of the antisemitic mob who wreaked this havoc? Why? To what end? If I only focus on my outrage and anger that these things happened, on the injustice, the victimization of my people, I risk denying that which made my existence possible. I would dishonor the sacrifice and survival of those to whom I owe my life.
Am I grateful for the horrors of Kishinev? No—neither should Ms. Davis be grateful for the atrocities of slavery. But I am grateful for Great-Grandma Jennie. Her courage and her strength. The ambivalence, the ineffable mix of empowerment and powerlessness that the truth of history brings—the grief and the gratitude—inspires me to recognize that progress is only possible by accepting the past and learning the lessons we must learn from it. Someone paid a price for me to be here. Thank you, Great-Grandma Jennie. Thank you, "Nima" (my Grandma Minnie). And thank you Mom, for being the keeper of the stories and for entrusting them to me. I am the descendant of survivors and thrivers, not victims. I am not a victim, I am a legatee. And I am myself.
