Where did we come from?

One of these people is Cynthia Gensheimer. She has a Ph.D. in economics. Her husband is an attorney. Cynthia's oldest son is now a freshman at Harvard. Her daughter, a senior in high school, was just named a National Merit Semifinalist.

She was born in Bloomington, Indiana. Her father, Norman Francis, has a Ph.D. in physics and for many years, almost all of his life, worked for General Electric. For several years he has been retired, but he is still teaching physics at a university because he loves it. He is 78 now. Cynthia's mother, Beverly Cohen, now 78, was a teacher. It is natural that Cynthia graduated from college with Ph.D. degree.

Her father, Norman Francis, came from a family where nobody had a higher education. His father, Morris Francis (Cynthia's grandfather), was a tailor. He came from Belarus, a republic of the former Soviet Union. While he made a decent income with his profession, he could not afford send his children to college. His son Norman started on his own. For the first two years of college he worked at a parking lot to be able to pay for his education. World War II interrupted his education, and he served in the Navy. After the war, Norman continued his education and earned a Ph.D. in physics. The G.I. bill paid for his education.

While Cynthia's father was born in America, all her grandparents from the father's side were immigrants from Belarus, Poland, and England.

Cynthia's grandparents from the mother's side, Albert Cohen and Pauline Brightman, were born in America, but all her great grandparents were immigrants from Russia. Now their birthplaces are located in Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine. All of them, as well Cynthia's ancestors from father's side, came to America around 1900.

In an interesting episode, Cynthia's grandfather, Aaron Zolitnitsky, had his name changed to Cohen at Ellis Island.

Cynthia could investigate her family tree not farther than to the 5th generation. Millions of Americans who were born here have ancestors who came from Eastern Europe. It is no surprise that many immigrants from the former Soviet Union have direct or indirect relatives among Americans who were born here.

The word "immigrants" usually brings to mind the image of poor illiterate people who hardly speak English, perform low-paid jobs, and struggle to give their children better lives than they have. Immigrants from the former Soviet Union who came here in last 25 years were different. The majority of them have higher education. Perhaps at least 80% of their immediate families have at least one spouse with a college degree. The majority of them have Master's degree. This phenomenon does not mean that everybody in the Soviet Union has college degree. This just means that only people with higher education can make a decent life in America in the first generation, and the presence of a college degree was a decisive factor to immigrate to America.

While a family income of $50-60,000 is not rare in families of immigrants from the former Soviet Union, majority of them occupies positions much below their education and experience. It is not unusual if you would ask immigrants of ages of 50+ who work as salesclerks at department or food stores what their profession was back in the country of origin that their answer would be an engineer, a doctor, or a teacher.