Tag Archives: Zionist movement

We are all gripped – feeling both horror at Russian president Vladimir Putin and immense pride in the strength of the Ukrainians – by the ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

Readers of this website are likely aware of my personal connections to the sovereign democratic nation of Ukraine. My mother’s father – the man who became Samuel Joseph Kohn – was born in the central town of Shpola in 1904. This is during the period when the eastern edge of the Russian Empire was a vast Jewish region called The Pale of Settlement.

And while my mother’s mother – born Ida Gurmankin, though she later became Irene Goldman – was born in Philadelphia in 1914, Ida’s mother Rachel Debra Shore was born in Uman in 1895. Her first husband, my maternal great-grandfather Jacob “Jack” Gurmankin, was born in Kherson in 1893. This photograph was taken at the wedding of Jack…