The Old Country: A Harrowing Tale of Escape from the Russian Empire

College Commons

Author Lisa Brahin shares her family’s riveting story of escape from the pogroms. Lisa Brahin is an accomplished Jewish genealogist, researcher and writer. Inspired as a young girl by Alex Haley’s ROOTS, she spent many summers audio taping the stories of her grandmother’s traumatic childhood during the 1917-1921 anti-Jewish pogroms in Ukraine. Those tapes were the primary source for her historical family saga, TEARS OVER RUSSIA: A Search for Family and the Legacy of Ukraine’s Pogroms (Pegasus Books, 2022). With a lack of previously published sources to turn to, Lisa used her genealogical skills to locate and interview former residents of her grandmother’s shtetl, Stavishche, Russia (which soon became Ukraine). Curators in four countries assisted her in finding unpublished documents, written in five languages, that would help to validate her grandmother’s tales. In 2003, she assisted in finding the lost location of the original manuscript Megilat HaTevah, which she considers to be one of the most important primary sources on the Ukrainian pogroms. On Jewishgen.org, the premier website for Jewish genealogy, she is a two-town project coordinator for the Yizkor Book Project (Holocaust Memorial Book Project). She has a special interest in using her skills in genetic genealogy to assist hidden child Holocaust survivors who are in search of their true identities and families. Lisa hopes that TEARS OVER RUSSIA will inspire continued interest in family history research. She also hopes her book will shine a light on a forgotten and underrepresented period of Jewish history – between the years described in FIDDLER ON THE ROOF and SCHINDLER’S LIST – that prefigured the horror that was to come. Ms. Brahin is a 2022-2023 Jewish Book Council author. Photo Credit: Diana P. Lang Photography