My grandparents were Eastern European Jews, and I am the grandchild of immigrants. They came here with nothing. The civilization from which they came was destroyed by the Nazis, so, growing up in the 1950s, there were virtually no physical artifacts of my family's long European existence. Most of the houses of my contemporaries (all Ashkenazi - that is, Eastern, Russian or Polish Jews) held a menorah, a Chanukah candelabra; the two Sabbath candlesticks; and/or a samovar. Over the years our samovar was turned into a lamp and then disposed of in a move or a redecoration. In my college years, meeting contemporaries of different backgrounds, I was stunned by their references to family histories.
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