Discovering My Grandfather
A 50-year-old interview revealed a man I'd never known
This essay is part of a new collection of work inspired by the anthology On Being Jewish Now: Reflections of Authors and Advocates. Want to contribute? Instructions here. Subscribe here.
In 1975, my grandfather—a man who I mostly remember eating tuna fish sandwiches while listing his grievances—gave a 55-page interview for “The Oral History of Jews,” a series conducted by a professor and a librarian at Union College. I recently stumbled on this document while researching my family’s history online—and, along with it, I discovered a man I never knew.
It used to anger me that Irving Skolnick was not a warm, playful grandpa. He wanted me to be thin and studious, and his way of expressing love was through instruction. When I was eight, he taught me to ice skate. When I was 17, he lectured me on modern European history. He encouraged my doctoral studies—reading my published dissertation and even offering me ten thousand dollars (from his modest savings) to pen scholarly papers in Paris, believing this would lead to a professorship in English Literature. I turned down his generous gift to try my hand at fiction—a decision that displeased him.
Why is he so self-righteous, such a snob? I often wondered.
The interview—revealing his stoicism, endurance, and accomplishments—finally answered that question for me. The first stunning reveal: Irving was raised in Bratislav, Ukraine. I’d always thought Grandpa Irv was a miserable Russian peasant. But no: his family had been middle class, with a thriving business and a house big enough to accommodate eight.
He had been an ambitious intellectual in his youth. Born in 1902, Irving attended secular “gymnasia”—a privilege extended to few Jewish children—and studied French, German and Latin. He ice skated with Christians on “the Bug,” a lake that stretched from “Kyiv to Odessa to the Black Sea.” He described himself as tall, athletic and not “Jewish looking” (“not a nebuch”), but a teenager who could “defend himself.” In old pictures, he appeared handsome, with a broad face, wavy hair, and light eyes. Unlike many Jews, he didn’t feel “cooped up” from the Christians in his town.
While able to pass as a Gentile, by 12, he had joined the Social Democratic party as a left-wing Zionist. He hoped the ghettos would disappear, along with the pogroms and hatred-stoking political system. But in 1917, 650 Jews in Bratislav were murdered in a single night. His dad was among those killed, a fact my grandfather relayed with stoic simplicity: “I buried him.” His mother and sister escaped in “one direction,” while he fled in another; there “was killing everywhere.”
The interview’s next sections read like an adventure novel, Irving the hero escaping “the roughneck” soldiers, “wild and desperate,” who “raped and robbed.” He traveled by lying on top of the Red Army’s trains. At one point, he contracted typhus and was so feverish, he couldn’t respond to the men who invaded his dwelling, shooting randomly, demanding to know if he spoke Russian. Too sick to answer, he resigned himself to die, yet was spared.
He had planned to immigrate to Israel, but he abandoned that idea when his documents got lost on the way to Tel Aviv. Instead, he attended a technical school in Bessarabia, Romania. At night, he worked in a mill, sleeping among rats. His aptitude for languages earned him a “political” position in the Communist Party as the intermediary between foreign and Russian workers. He boasted that he became a companion to the leaders of the party, including Trotsky.
I had always believed that my strong progressive streak came from the other side of my family. My paternal grandmother canvassed for FDR, and taped quotes about injustice by Martin Luther King and Albert Einstein to her refrigerator; my great-aunt raised funds for the poor at the Henry Street Settlement. But here was a man who had once espoused an extreme version of my lefty relatives’ beliefs, all while living through oppression, wars, the slaughter of his neighbors and his father.
After Stalin came to power, Russia “was burning. . . . a massacre all over the country.” With my grandmother, Bracha, he immigrated to New York in 1924, and stayed until 1931. But without contacts or a union card, no well-paying business would consider him, and he wondered: “Why should we go through all this misery, this agony?” They returned to Russia, and were “on top of the world.” Despite the shape-shifting politics, the instability, and prejudice against his people, he didn’t want to leave ever again.
But in 1933, a pregnant Bracha, craving freedom, insisted they return to the United States. Irving capitulated, though the result was a “tragedy” for him. After spending much of his youth traveling, often on behalf of the Russian government, Irving was ashamed to be selling suitcases for a living in the Bronx. My mother absorbed his shame, hiding her father’s job from my dad during their courtship. (She was so secretive that my father half-suspected Irving was in prison.) My grandmother created a career for herself in New York, singing in the Yiddish theater and on the radio. But I now see how America handcuffed my grandfather into working as a merchant, rather than using his brain, to pay rent.
After crossing the centenarian mark, Irving began lecturing my son Noah, then 14, about the importance of social engagement. He badgered him to start a “Youth Movement.”
“I’m in eighth grade,” my son said, laughing. But, with my husband’s help, Noah created a website, LiberalKids.org, which landed him on Air America.
Today, Noah works as a civil rights lawyer. My younger son, Spencer, is fascinated by collectivist cultures and is an editor at The New York Times, Irving’s favorite newspaper. It turned out my grandfather was much more than the disgruntled man who lost much of his identity along with his country. He endured to teach me and my children the principle of Tikkun Olam, “repairing the world.”
Nicole Bokat has written for many publications, including The New York Times, Parents, and The Forward. She has published four novels: Redeeming Eve (The Permanent Press), What Matters Most (Penguin) The Happiness Thief (She Writes Press) and Will End in Fire (She Writes Press), along with an academic book on novelist Margaret Drabble.
Instagram: @nicolebokat
This essay is part of a new collection of work inspired by the anthology On Being Jewish Now: Reflections of Authors and Advocates. Want to contribute? Instructions here. Subscribe here.
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Thanks Nicole for sharing. As you know, I love family ancestry discoveries.