June 15th is FATHER'S DAY -- My friend, Robert J. Tinsky has written a Father's Day tribute to his Grandfather Tinsky. THE WORDWRIGHT is proud to share this space with Bob Tinsky as he tells us what a Jewish man and his family experienced at the turn of the century as the 19th century became the 20th century. Quite a story!

� � � � I know that Father’s Day is a day to especially honor our immediate father.� I want, however, this year to pay special honor to a man I only met one time, my grandfather.
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� � � � Both of my grandparents on my father’s side were born in Russia in 1874.� They left Russia in 1900, moving first to England and after a few years they came to the United States.� I never had an opportunity to talk to them about why they left but know that since they were both Jewish their leaving had to do with the various pogroms instituted against the Jews during the late 1800’s.�
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� � � � If you have seen the musical “Fiddler on the Roof” you have some idea of what happened to the Jews during that period of time.� This delightful musical, however, does not even begin to portray the horrors that many Jewish persons experienced.�
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� � � � Historians tell us that the pogroms started early in the 19th century but intensified during the latter part of the century.� According to the Jewish Encyclopedia the first pogrom was during the riots in Odessa in 1859. The term pogrom became common after a large-scale wave of anti-Jewish riots swept southern imperial Russia from 1881 to 1884, after Jews were wrongly blamed for the assassination of Tsar Alexander II.
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� � � � In the 1880’s thousands of Jewish homes were destroyed, many Jewish families were reduced to extremes of poverty. Women were sexually assaulted.� Large numbers of men, women and children were injured in some parts of Russia.�
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� � � � In 1881, 19 years before my grandparents left Russia, there was a conspiracy against the Jews in the Russian government.� Efforts were made to get rid of all Jews in St. Petersburg and Moscow.� In 1891, four years before my father was born, Jews were expelled from those cities and their goods were confiscated.� This expulsion began on the first day of the Jewish Passover, March 29, 1891.�
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� � � � S. M. Dubnow has written a three volume history of the Jews in Russia and Poland.� In volume two of his history he gives us this description of what transpired at this time:
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“The police invaded the Jewish homes, aroused the scared inhabitants from their beds, and drove semi-naked men, women, and children to the police station, where they were kept in filthy cells for a day and sometimes longer. Some of the prisoners were released by the police who first wrested from them a written pledge to leave the city immediately. Others were evicted under police convoy and sent out of the city like criminals, through the transportation prison. Many of the families having been forewarned of the impending raid, decided to spend the night outside of their homes to avoid arrest and maltreatment at the hands of the police. They hid themselves in the outlying sections of the city and in the cemeteries; they walked or rode all over the city the whole night. Many an estimable Jew was forced to shelter his wife and children, stiffened from the cold, in houses of ill repute which were open all night. But even these fugitives ultimately fell into the hands of the police inquisition.”

� � � � During this time one high government official made this statement about the Jews: “The Jew is a parasite.� Remove him from the living organism in which and on which he exists and put this parasite on a rock—and he will die.”
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� � � � Is it any wonder that my grandfather decided to take his small family and leave the land of his birth?� On this father’s day I want to salute a man that I never really knew and thank him for making it possible for me to be born in this land of freedom.

THANKS, BOB, for writing this tribute to your Grandfather Tinsky,

THE WORDWRIGHT