Like my father, my mother’s parents, Samuel and Sara Schwartz, immigrated to the United States to escape religious persecution. They arrived in 1905, fleeing Jewish pogroms in Ukraine, which was then part of the Russian Empire.
My father married into a family of powerful, strong-willed women. My grandmother was a stern, no-nonsense matriarch who didn’t suffer fools gladly. “She was tough as nails. Dominant,” recalled my cousin Jean Adnopoz.