As the clock ticks forward, the ghosts of our past often remind us when it’s time to start thinking seriously about our future.
Every person of Ashkenazi descent that I’ve met, and that shares my birth surname “Kurtzman,” traces their ancestry either to Ukraine or to the small town of Zuromin, Poland. Whether these two groups are genetically linked, I don’t yet know. My paternal great-grandfather, Joseph Kurtzman, was born in October 1862 in Zuromin — roughly two hours north of Warsaw today. Later, he moved to the larger city of Mlawa, where he married my great-grandmother, Devorsha, from a family of bakers. Joseph eked out a modest living tanning hides for German buyers and selling yeast to local bakers.