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love poems & stories ukraine

Touched Hearts

Just got on a plane from Chernivtsi to Kiev as I am starting my return to the states, and I find that a woman that I met in Chervnitsi has woven a very sweet and tender silk around my heart. The first time I was in Chernivtsi, maybe a month ago now, I met a […]

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family Jewish ukraine

Khotyn – Cultural Longing and Identification

I returned again to Khotyn yesterday evening. I’m not exactly certain as to why, but perhaps that will unfold as I am here. The excuse I told myself in planning to come here was that I wanted to photograph more of the remaining Jewish people here in town. I’ve been itching to put together images […]

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family favorites Jewish ukraine

Ancestral Grief

Once again ancestral grief rears it’s pain again through me. If you’ll recall from a recent post about bringing some of my mother’s ashes to rest with her first husband Joe at a military graveyard in France, I discovered then how much grief I can carry for something that I have not personally suffered, but […]

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family Jewish ukraine

Journey to Khotin

So here I am back at the shtetl. Khotyn, Ukraine, home of my grandfather and his family and who knows how many generations before him. We arrived in Khotyn, interpreter, driver and I, and knocked on the door of Srul (Alexander) and Fonya Weinstein, 2 of the remaining 29 jews in Khotin. Srul is the […]

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Jewish ukraine

Roots Research – Archives Ukraine

Today I hired an interpreter and went off in search of some records which I believed to exist in the town I am in now, Kamyanets – Podilsky, records of the people in the town of Khotin back in the mid/late 1800s. We got to the archives, Iryna and I, only to be told that […]