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I wonder how many of them survived WW1, the civil war, the purges, and WW2?
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“Fiddler on the Roof” makes me feel the same way. Although I’m a gentile, I have many Jewish friend and wonder about the horrors their ancestors must have gone through.

I’m Jewish, and I can tell you that it was no fun. My paternal grandfather grew up in Ekaterinaslav (today, Dnipropetrovsk), a steel-city. Though urban and “more sophisticated” than the countryside, there was still a lot of anti-Semitism. He wrote in his (very short) autobiography of being able to “take care of two guys” but not being able to handle three, when attacked on the way to or from school.

Those who made it out, who got to the US, Canada, Mexico, Cuba, Argentina, etc. did OK or very well; their relatives and friends left behind in Russia didn’t fair well at all. My grandfather visited what was left of his family in 1969, and told of the Hellish existence that they had in the nearly 50 years since he had left. Cousins of my father who got out in the ‘90s told much the same stories, but the Hellishness wasn’t reserved just for the Jews - anyone not a part of the power structure lived in Turd World conditions much of the time.

Now, you want to contemplate a REALLY lousy existence? Think about what all of our ancestors went through living during the Middle Ages. No running or clean water, no electricity, no medicine or medical care worthy of the name, brutality like we can barely conceive of...and those were the good times, when there was no war, plague or both going on around you. I am glad for sites like this one, they give us some perspective when we start to complain about how badly off we are...we live better than kings did 100 years ago, and not by a little.