The sweep of family history across the generations
Sholom and Sophie Tulbowitz left their ancestral town in the 1870s to settle for 20 years in Russia near Rostov-on-Don.
Abe Blokh became Abe Ratner to avoid conscription and get out of Russia. With his young wife and her mother, they voyaged from Bremen to Leeds to New York
If Sholom Tulbowitz had gone to Dvinsk instead of Rostov, as his cousin did, his Ratner descendants might have grown up in Perm instead of Albany.