Tracking Jack Granoff: A Quick Follow-Up

Tags

eugenics, family history, fresh air, immigration, immigration quotas, NPR

By an odd coincidence, today’s episode of Fresh Air is particularly relevant to my grandfather’s immigration story.

 

Tracking Jack Granoff: Introduction

Tags

Canada, family history, Genealogy, immigration, jack granoff, Mexico, Nansen Passport, Naturalization

Meet Jack Granoff. I’m tracking and untangling his life story, to the best of my ability.

He was born Yakov Israelovich Granov in January, 1905, to Israel and Anna Granov, nee Kurzmann. He was the second child and second son in a comfortably well-off Jewish family living in the cosmopolitan city of Odessa, in the Ukrainian region of the Russian Empire.

Israel was the manager of a chocolate factory in Odessa, and Anna had once been his secretary. Their first son was Avram, and the two boys were eventually followed by a brother, Alexander, and two sisters, Yevgenia and Alexandra, though the third boy did not survive an early childhood illness. The youngest child, born in late 1917, was likely named for that lost child.

Israel had come up in the world. His father was a cord and tassel-maker in a city then called Yelisavetgrad. Anna’s father was a grain dealer, or possibly a dry goods merchant. They were consciously not shtetl Jews. When the Granov grandparents came to visit, the children couldn’t communicate much with them, because the old folks spoke Yiddish and the children spoke Russian.

Israel was interested in health fads, testing out vegetarianism and different exercise regimes at times. Family legend has him swimming in the Black Sea every day, even in winter. They were urban and comfortable. They had a nice apartment, with electricity, and a few servants. The children went to private schools and had clothes made to order by a seamstress who came to live with them while making the garments.

Jack Granoff was my grandfather. Though born in Ukraine, he identified himself as Russian. After the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 and the overthrow of the Tsar, the family struggled. Oral histories with Jack and his sister Jeanne (Yevgenia) indicate stretches of insufficient food, battles over the strategic city of Odessa between the White and Red forces, and growing tension within the family as Anna started to look toward immigration to join her brothers in the United States. Family stories when I was a child told me that Israel thought the situation would stabilize, that he was in denial about what we, with hindsight, know was coming in the newborn USSR. Now that I’m an adult, my older relatives are willing to admit that it seems likely that Israel had a mistress he was unwilling to leave.

As far as I’ve been able to tell so far, the way they all left Odessa – for they did all leave, eventually – was as follows. Anna and the two girls, known for most of their lives by the American names of Jeanne and Alice, left with a smuggler who would sneak them across the frozen landscape of Russian winter and into the safe region of Poland. That story, related briefly by Jeanne in an hourlong 1980 tape recording, is upsetting in many ways. Anna got typhus on the way out of Russia, and the group they traveled with abandoned her and the girls in a small village on the Zbruch River called Husiatyn, where Anna raved with fever and twelve-year-old-Jeanne tried to take care of her mother and her toddler sister in a boarding house full of soldiers and only blankets for doors. Pictures of Anna afterwards show her once voluptuous figure gaunt and haggard with illness and privation, and there is a solemn sadness in the eyes of the girls.

Eventually they got to Germany, where they received aid from the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, HIAS – which still exists, by the way – and spent a little time recuperating and meeting with relatives while waiting for visas to the United States. It’s around this point, it seems, that Anna, Jeanne, and Alice were reunited with Arthur (Avram, the eldest child) who had fled army service in the USSR to join his mother and sisters. From Hamburg they supposedly took ship to the United States, entered through Ellis Island, and joined some of Anna’s brothers in Detroit. The only complication here is that Arthur is not on the Ellis Island documents. Neither is he in the portion of the ship’s manifest that contains his female relatives.

Jack’s story is more complicated. He was supposed to leave with his mother and sisters, but at the time had a job as some kind of courier or chauffeur. He was not at home when the smuggler said it was time to go. He was in another town and missed it by a few days or less.

How he obtained the services of another smuggler to follow his mother and sisters is unknown, but he did. This fellow was less honorable than the individual paid by the women of the Granoff family (who may have been in it for the money but at least got his group safely over the border), and he turned his entire party over to the authorities as soon as they crossed into Poland, presumably for a fee. Jack, with this group, was arrested and imprisoned for some time, moved from place to place under terrible conditions. It wasn’t a gulag, but it sounds like what you’d expect from an early Soviet prison to punish people trying to run for the border. When the authorities needed more room in the prisons, some people, including Jack, were released on a promise to sin no more and the payment of a big ol’ fee.

I’m not exactly sure how Jack found out about the Nansen Passports, which aided stateless and refugees to find entry to any of a set of nations between 1921 and about 1938, but his oral history indicates that he obtained one and thus left Russia legally. By accepting a Nansen Passport, Jack became stateless. Whether he renounced his citizenship before or after obtaining the document is as yet unknown. We do not have any documents from this period for him, because his papers were stolen from him in Rotterdam.

Due to the Immigration Quota Acts of 1921 and 1924 in the United States, and in spite of having immediate family already established in the US, Jack could not get a visa to join his mother and siblings. He had by this time fallen in with a group of single Russian men of a similar age to him, and I guess someone had the bright idea to try Mexico instead. Anyway, that’s where he ended up around 1925, and we have a Mexican passport in his name to prove it. My current area of inquiry is trying to get more information on the significance of the Mexican passport – does it indicate naturalization of some kind or is it part of the Nansen Passport process? I have information feelers out to the Mexican consulate in San Francisco, El Archivo General de la Nación México, and the Mexican Museum in San Francisco. No hits yet, but I’ll keep trying.

It is unfortunately at this point in the story that the oral history cuts off, in the middle of a sentence about his first twenty-four hours in Mexico.

We know that he was in Mexico for a few years, and we have a couple photos from that time. The picture at the start of this post is Jack in 1926 in Mexico City, at about age 21.

We know that Jack left Mexico because Arthur got tuberculosis and their mother sent a plea for her other son to come closer and help to support the family. I can only imagine that for some reason he still could not remain in the United States, because the documentary record picks up around 1928 in Windsor, Ontario, in Canada. Right across the Great Lakes from Detroit, but still divided by an international border.

This is where things get REALLY confusing. We have three short-term visit permits for Jack to come to Detroit from Canada, dating between 1930 and 1933. We know that he was in Detroit for much of the 1930s and possibly early 1940s, in business with his brother Arthur. Yet in 1934, he became a naturalized citizen of Canada, and his records show he entered Canada FROM Detroit. Thanks to a friend in Canada, I have a digital copy of his naturalization forms, and they are a wealth of startling information (he claimed his occupation was farming? He’s already fluent in English, his third vernacular language?). Like most of the documents I’ve unearthed, they raise more questions than they answer.

The next question is tracking down the specifics of his US Citizenship, which seems to have taken place in the later 1940s. Documents list El Paso, Texas, as his official port of entry, and his application to naturalize was processed in Detroit, Michigan. That’s in process, as you may have gathered from my recent grumpy post on the subject.

By circuitous routes and a lot of forks in many roads, he found his way from a privileged childhood in Imperial Russia to an adult life in rural California.

Jack Granoff died in February, 1987. I acknowledge my obsession with his travels may have begun with a desire to know the only grandparent I never knew in person, but given the story I’ve just told you, wouldn’t you want to know more?

He left school after sixth grade, yet learned to function in three very different languages – Russian, Spanish, and English. Many jobs, many attempted careers, and an extraordinary gift for investing in losing propositions, but a passion for food and music that run strong in his descendants. I sometimes look at these documents and listen to the recordings of him and wonder who he would have been if his education hadn’t cut off short at age 12.

So that’s where we are in tracking Jack Granoff.

Currently in process:

1. Get context for Mexican passport.
2. Track US Naturalization file.
3. Keep tabs on request with archives of the League of Nations, which holds records of Nansen Passports.

Stay tuned. There’ll be more.

Adventures in Genealogy

Tags

family history, federal government, frustration, Genealogy, indignant, jack granoff, research

I have made a somewhat irksome discovery tonight – I have an unfortunate tendency to make such discoveries at unreasonable hours of the night – and instead of muttering about it in bed in the dark for a while, I’m going to try writing it out. I’ve been meaning for some time to blog this project, after all.

I hope my few readers will forgive my starting in the middle of the story and giving only the bare outlines for now.

So here’s the deal: A few years ago, I transcribed a set of audio recordings we have of my late grandfather and one of his sisters, in which they describe their memories of childhood and leaving their homeland in Odessa, Ukraine. While my great-aunt Jeanne’s story is harrowing at many points, it was my grandfather, Jack Granoff, who sticks with me. He died when I was an infant, and this might have been the first time I heard his voice at any length.

I grew up knowing his story. How after the Russian Revolution of 1917, his family – Jews and a factory manager – suffered. How my great-grandmother decided to leave, whether her husband would or no, and contacted a smuggler to get her and her children across the border of the USSR into Poland. How my grandfather was away when the smuggler came, and how he tried to follow, getting arrested in Poland for his pains and sent back to Russia.

Now, the way I remember understanding the story from that point in childhood is that he tried again, and snuck across the border, this time successfully. In school reports on family history and immigration, I confidently told my friends that due to immigration quotas in the 1920s, my grandfather got turned away at Ellis Island and had to get off the boat at its next stop in Mexico, where he lived for a few years before joining his mother and siblings in Detroit, Michigan.

Technically speaking, only a few points of that are actually wrong. The second time, the oral history indicates, he left Russia legally on a Nansen Passport. He never actually went to Ellis Island, but got a visa for Mexico while in Rotterdam, as visas for the US were not to be had. Between Mexico and the US, he lived in Canada for a while.

I’m going to go back and flesh this all out in later posts, partly because it’s fascinating, and partly because I want a record of the discovery process, both what I’ve done so far and what’s coming, because he’s been dead since 1987 and he’s driving me batty – every time I unearth a new document, it muddies the waters and confuses the hell out of everyone in the family. I want to go back in time and make him fill out a timeline of his life.

Anyway, tonight. Back in December, I discovered that the US Citizenship and Immigration Services has a Genealogy section that can turn up old naturalization documents and alien registration documents for family history researchers. Naturally, I requested them. First you pay $65 for them to look up whether the files exist and to tell you what the file numbers are. THEN you pay another $65 for EACH FILE, which in this case is two. I get that they’re funded entirely by these fees, but good grief.

I submitted the request for copies of the files on January 12. When I didn’t hear back within the 30-day window, I assumed it was due to the extended government shutdown earlier this year, and that there would be a backlog. Tonight it occurred to me that it’s been nearly four months, so I checked on the status of the request.

USCIS claims it was requested and paid for on January 12 (correct) and closed on January 29 (excuse me?).

Closed they may say it is, but I have received no communication from them since they acknowledged my payment of $130 on January 12. I have, naturally, sent a polite inquiry to their general email, asking for clarification on what exactly is going on, because I have received no files.

It’s times like this that I’m very grateful that being annoyed brings out my SAT vocabulary in writing. In person it usually brings out tears, so it’s much better to be annoyed at a distance.

Etsy Donation 2017

Tags

crafting, donation, etsy, society, thanks

Thanks to all of you who have supported my crafting and Etsy presence in any way, from picture likes and kind words to purchasing pieces from me.

Earlier this year, I announced my intention of donating 10% of sales from Etsy to the Trevor Project.

Thanks to all of you, I just donated $54 to this much-needed service.

Niece No. 2 and a Cow

Tags

family, imaginative play, small children

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Dear #OkCupid Guys: Come to the Dork Side

Tags

dork, friends, funny, okcupid, puns, star wars, twitter, yoda

So this happened on Twitter the other day…

Me: Dear #okcupid guys, structuring your creepy message as if Yoda said it does not cancel out the creepy.

Friend 1: adds to the creepy, imho.

Friend 2: depends on if it’s intentional….ha

Friend 2: Hot, you are. Message me, you should.

Friend 1: I’M IN

Me: dorks. 🙂

Friend 2: these are not the dorks you are looking for…*waves Jedi hand*

Friend 1: Powerful we have become. The dork side I sense in us.

Friend 2: Never underestimate the power of the DORK SIDE!

Friend 1: FEEL THE DORKS!

Me: I have so much love for you guys right now.

Friend 1: Last one, I promise: When you look at the dork side, careful you must be. For the dork side looks back!

Friend 2: Once you start down the dork path, forever it will dominate your destiny….

Friend 3: Come to the dork side.. we have cookies 😉

Family Photos

Tags

archives, family, family history, germany, history, imagination, label your photos, photos, spangenberg, thinking

Today my dad came home from a trip to his hometown. He brought something back – a few dozen photographs, some loose and some in an album. Going by the clothing of the subjects and the style of the prints, I feel comfortable saying that none of the photographs are less than a century old.

At first I felt nothing but excitement as I examined each image, admiring the details of clothing and landscape. In a lot of ways I think these older photographs in their shades of black and white and sepia were more consistently flattering to their subjects than our color, high-resolution images. I laughed over the image of two teenage girls sitting on a lawn, noticing how one had her hand splayed over her face so the photographer wouldn’t see it – some things don’t change! I chuckled and smiled at the one of a solid little fellow not more than three or four, wearing a big hat, tiny feet poking out from under baggy denim overalls, and carrying a book under his arm.

Then I started to lay the loose images out on the table one by one. I started to hunt for physical resemblances to the family members I know on my dad’s side. I found myself looking each image in the eyes and studying their faces one by one.

I will be the first to admit that I have an active imagination. I know I romanticize.

As I sat and looked at the photographs laid out on the table, I suddenly felt like some of them were looking at me. Not in a creepy the-eyes-of-the-portrait-follow-me kind of way. I felt a combined sense of anticipation and resigned patience coming from those faces of unknown, long-gone relatives.

You see, most of the photographs are unlabeled.

A few have first names and what might be a partial date, but that’s it, and figuring that out depends on deciphering generations-old handwriting in German.

There is a spirited-looking young woman with dark hair named Luisa. There is a slightly sullen-looking young man named Willy in an army uniform with close-cropped hair. There is a teenage boy named Franz with severely parted and combed-down hair giving the distinct impression of a youth in between boy and man, wearing a proper grown-up suit for the first time. There is a middle-aged man in a mid-19th-century military uniform that is definitely European, and on the back is written in clear, beautiful script, “Karl Spangenberg.”

But most are unlabeled. There are older couples, young families, children, infants, teenagers, and a picture of a young couple in which the wife looks so young that I want to ease the ring off her finger, put her hair back in plaits, and send her back to high school.

When I look at them there is a feeling like someone holding their breath. I desperately want to give them back their names and place them on the right branches of the family tree, but I don’t know if I can. I don’t know of anyone old enough and present enough to be able to identify them, and I was never good at tracing subtle family resemblances.

So they are there, waiting and watching, half-resigned to an eternity of silent anonymity. And I look back at them, wishing I could at least call them by name.

#alamw15 and the Regularly Scheduled Travel Flip-Out

Tags

ALA, ALA Midwinter, alamw15, chicago, i might be crazy, stress and anxiety, travel

I’m heading to the ALA Midwinter Meeting in Chicago. I’m going for a number of grown-up-sounding reasons, like networking and professional development, but I’m mainly going because it’s fun and it’s invigorating and it reminds me why I’m still fighting for a surprisingly elusive place in this profession.

But that’s not why I’m writing this post. I’m writing this post because I have to get up in six hours and I can’t make my brain shut up enough to let me sleep. I’m hoping that writing will calm it down for a bit.

Being the somewhat literal person I am, I’m always a little puzzled by people who claim to love traveling. I tend to like being in the place I’ve traveled TO, but the process of getting there isn’t one I find fun. There are too many details and things to organize and double check and choose and arrange and double-check again. For instance, in a moment of somewhat irrational insomnia-inducing panic a few days ago, I may have called my Chicago hotel at 1am my time (3am in Chicago) to make sure they had my reservation still.

So yes. I have to be up soon, and the problem right now is that I feel totally prepared. I feel like I’ve got everything organized and packed and planned out.

And that’s worrying. Because it must mean I’ve forgotten something – and the more confident I feel about my preparations, the more I worry that the thing I’ve forgotten is something major.

Here is roughly how the twenty-four hours before traveling goes, when you’re me.

1. Ponder writing down a fifth to-do list.
2. Do something else instead, like watch a DVD or do something crafty.
3. Check in to flight.
4. Print necessary documents, like boarding pass, hotel and conference registration, etc.
5. Ponder getting suitcase up from basement.
6. Do something else instead, like watch a DVD or do something crafty.
7. Write to-do list.
8. Feeling virtuous. Do something to reward myself, like watch a DVD or do something crafty.
9. Surge of productive energy. Do a few things on to-do list.
10. Go in search of food, as it’s 1.30 and I’ve forgotten about lunch so far.
11. Get sidetracked (in this case, by a jigsaw puzzle).
12. Get lunch.
13. Run last-minute errands to library, bank, post office, etc.
14. Come home.
15. Do other productive small things on to-do list, like necessary emails.
16. Work on jigsaw puzzle.
17. Finish jigsaw puzzle.
18. Have dinner.
19. Get suitcase up from basement.
20. Pack suitcase.
21. Go to bed at reasonable hour, considering ridiculous wake-up time.
22. Lie awake, eyes closed, ALMOST relaxing enough to go to sleep.
23. Brain wakes back up. What have I forgotten?
24. Have I set my alarm?
25. What did I forget to pack?
26. What did I forget to put on my packing list?
27. Maybe my boarding pass has vanished. Perhaps I should check.
28. Start doing math on how much time I have left to sleep until I wake up.
29. Boarding pass probably hasn’t vanished. But maybe I should check anyway. Just in case. You never know.
30. Write ridiculous stressed-out late-night blog post.
31. Sleep? Hopefully?
32. What have I forgotten?

I’ll be a much more reasonable human being when I’m done with the actual traveling part.

Dear OkCupid Guys…

Tags

comedy, dating, exasperation, hashtags, men, okcupid, online dating, personal, relationships, twitter, whimsy, women

I’ve been single for an embarrassingly long time. I’m not going to say how long, but I count it in years and I need more than one hand’s worth of fingers.

So about a year and a half ago, I joined OkCupid. I’d join something like Match.com, but I figured it was a good idea to test out this online dating thing for free, and also I’m not desperate enough to make online dating a necessary-expenditure budget line. Yet.

I’ve gone on a handful of first dates, I’ve gone on more than one date with a few people, and ended up dating one person for a few months. To those who would say that this contradicts my opening statement that I’ve been single for years, I’d just like to clarify that I define not-single as having had The Talk with one’s significant other in order to Define The Relationship. Specifically, the words boyfriend and girlfriend (or something along those lines) should enter common usage.

Anyway. Online dating is weird. On the one hand, I like it, because everyone understands the aim of the interactions. I’m kind of dense when it comes to such things – until the last year or so, my instinctive response to “Do you want to get a cup of coffee” would be to tell the guy that I don’t drink coffee. Not the point of the question.

I have a hard time telling when someone is interested in me. Usually I can only tell when the person gets interested to the point of making me uncomfortable, and that sends me running for the hills. I have nobody to blame for my single status other than myself, really.

The thing about online dating that made me nervous, though, is that one hears such horrifying stories of the creeps and pervy comments and all that.

Which leads me to a strange aspect of my experience.

I’ve had interactions that were odd, and a lot that left me distinctly underwhelmed, but none that were actually gross or creepy or pervy. I’m really not sure how to take this. A lot of me is relieved, of course, but it also has me wondering why I’ve been so lucky as to not experience that part of it. I have three theories.

1. Continuation of aforementioned cluelessness. Maybe I’m just not noticing. Though I think I would, based on some of the stories I’ve heard. Sounds pretty difficult to miss.

2. A lot of my friends, and my male friends in particular, STILL feel a need to “protect” me from bad language or dirty jokes. And to some extend I appreciate this, as excessive swearing is unappealing to me, but I’m no nun. I enjoy racy humor as much as the next person. But I think somehow I radiate a level of innocence that brings out a protective urge, I guess – I don’t tend to swear, and I don’t tell dirty jokes, so people don’t think I can take it. Maybe I’m doing that online, too.

3. Maybe I’m just not physically attractive enough to attract such attention, which is probably a good thing.

That said, I’m having fun using Twitter to comment on the encounters I do have. I call my intermittent series “Dear #okcupid guys,” and it’s kind of like Jon Stewart’s “come with me to Camera 3” thing.  I amuse myself, at least!

I leave you with a selection (a.k.a. most of) my tweets from that series.

Dear #okcupid guys, the greeting “hi there” is really starting to get on my nerves. Be more creative.

— Elspeth (@lunabrd) January 1, 2015

 

Im sick of #OKCupid… The Cupid that so many lonely people rely upon should at least be a #SlightlyBetterThanAverageCupid.

— bryan green (@GreeBry) December 26, 2014

 

Dear #okcupid guys, here’s something to ponder – until we actually meet, your profile and your messages are your only chance to impress.

— Elspeth (@lunabrd) December 27, 2014

 

dear @okcupid guys, here is an example of what NOT to write as your entire first message. “Hi. We have a good match percentage.”

— Elspeth (@lunabrd) November 7, 2014

 

Dear #okcupid guys, today my 3.5yo niece asked when I’m getting married. So get it together. I’ve got a stubborn toddler expecting results.

— Elspeth (@lunabrd) December 21, 2014

 

Dear #okcupid guys, when you ask a question a) I already answered and b) my answer is the basis for our conversation, I delete your message.

— Elspeth (@lunabrd) December 21, 2014

 

Dear #okcupid guys, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PROOFREAD.

— Elspeth (@lunabrd) December 19, 2014

 

 

Dear #okcupid guys, you are not a 13 year old girl who is texting. Please spell out your words. Srsly.

— Elspeth (@lunabrd) December 16, 2014

 

Dear #okcupid guys, ending a single question with eleven question marks is excessive. I will delete your message.

— Elspeth (@lunabrd) December 14, 2014

 

Dear #okcupid guys, when curiosity is piqued, you’re expressing interest. When you are piqued, you’re annoyed. Proper word usage matters.

— Elspeth (@lunabrd) December 6, 2014

 

Dear #okcupid guys, the crotch shot is bad. the picture of you GRABBING your crotch is worse.

–Elspeth (@lunabrd) November 27, 2014

 

Dear #okcupid guys, if you live in a different country from me and your opening message is “hey there,” I’m not going to answer. Ever.

— Elspeth (@lunabrd) November 15, 2014

 

dear okcupid guys: messages of 10 words or less involving no questions do not make me want you. #onlinedating #thissucks

— Elspeth (@lunabrd) November 4, 2014

 

 

 

Who Do You Think You Are?

Tags

ancestry, ancestry.com, complications, family, family history, history, in brief, nerds, research, so cool, whimsy

When I was little, I went to an elementary school that was pretty diverse. It’s actually MORE diverse now – something like 20 languages represented – but it was pretty diverse when I went there.

Once a year, we had a special day called International Day. There were performances of music and dance from around the world, and parents representing different home cultures gave presentations to the classes on where they came from. I remember the Japanese and Indian parents always looked nicest in their outfits, but the Persian moms had the best treats. Students and staff were encouraged to wear outfits representing their heritage, from traditional ethnic costumes to the librarian’s dress made to look like she was wearing a giant Union Jack.

My brother and I didn’t have traditional outfits on hand, and it would have been hard to choose which of our ancestral branches to represent, so our mother made us t-shirts that looked roughly like this:

It was a cute t-shirt, a creative idea, and it got the point across – we are Northern European mutts.

As it turns out, it’s a bit more complicated.

This year for my birthday, my parents gave me six months’ access to ancestry.com. From what I’ve found so far, the t-shirt should have been modified a little…

Mom’s side should include:

Dad’s side should include:

I think I need a bigger t-shirt.