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Rec'd on 👨‍👨‍👧‍👧 Family LOre
this is my favorite ask ever! i love family history
here are 3 of my most exciting pieces of lore: 1) my dad was in the south tower on 9/11 and he made it out, but was still in the building when the plane hit. the plane went through his office window, but he was already evacuating and on around the 40th floor when the plane hit 2) my paternal grandfather (jewish) was born in austria but his family moved to milan in ‘33/34 when hitler came into power. in ‘44 when the nazis occupied northern italy, his family escaped into the mountains northeast of milan near bergamo (he was about 13 or 14 years old at this point). his family helped smuggle guns to the partisans since they could speak german with an austrian accent and bypass nazi checkpoints. my grandfather had to shoot a fascist at one checkpoint going wrong, and so at 14 he joined the partisans full-on and lived with them until the war ended. i have a bunch of photos from his time with the partisans (attached some). apparently the group he was specifically with was led by this kinda crazy guy who threatened the security of the whole partisan operations, so he was actually killed by other communist partisans. a few years ago i found a man who researches this exact group in bergamo, and now i have an 80 yr old italian pen-pal who published some photos of my grandfather in his book. 3) my maternal grandfather was orphaned really young in cuba and was really poor. he met my grandmother when he saw her riding her bike down the street and instantly fell in love with her (yes, just like cinema paradiso). she was really rich and her family hated him, so he would wait outside her window just to see her. eventually they get married and have my eldest uncle (because love always perseveres). this part of the story is fuzzy, but i believe he got into some gambling issues and so my grandmothers family shipped him to the US (probably with hopes of getting rid of him for good). but he began to build a life for his family there. then the revolution happened and he continued to go back and forth, but then castro put in the policy that children born in cuba had to stay, so they moved to nyc permanently. but my grandfather loved castro, as most cubans did. so my family is not part of the typical exile cuban-american demographic, which i always found fascinating.
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@segronich
Feb 19, 2024
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Comments (9)

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@dagny
Wow someone should turn your lore into a movie 🤌
Feb 19, 2024
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@lil_ill
Your grandfather looks homosexual + go back to israel
Feb 19, 2024
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@segronich
lil_ill not sure where this is coming from. jewish resistance to nazis and fascism is triggering for you? regardless of the fact that i am strongly pro-palestine, im not sure where you find the audacity to be so antisemitic and cruel to a random person who you don’t know. i hope you try to be more kind in the future! tyler not sure if this is the kind of stuff you want to see on this app
Feb 19, 2024
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@solomonki
segronich reported the comment, and I encourage everyone else to do so so that this account is immediately banned. no point in engaging with or defending yourself against this obv troll. just report and ignore
Feb 19, 2024
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@lil_ill
segronich You’re not welcome in America. Go live in israel. Christ is King
Feb 19, 2024
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@babyboybrida
Fascinating. I'm really curious about these photos of your grandfather My paternal grandfather and grandmother had a similar dynamic as your maternal grandfather -- she came from a rich family and her parents did not like that he was Italian. Her parents cut them off entirely. I have no photos of my dad growing up.
Feb 19, 2024
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@segronich
babyboybrida i have lots of a bunch of different partisans, but i’ll add the ones specifically of my grandfather to my rec! & i always love hearing about love beating the odds. gives me some hope in these dire times…
Feb 19, 2024
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@babyboybrida
segronich those photos are crazy! So young! Thanks for sharing.
Feb 19, 2024
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@babyboybrida
segronich My grandparents actually kinda hated everything lol
Feb 19, 2024

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@capnhahab
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When my grandma's sister passed away around the time my mom was 10 (this was 1982), her husband decided to not really speak to my grandma's side of the family even though my mom and grandma had a really good relationship with their kids (my mom's cousins) and they didn't really communicate with each other as much, and two of their kids ended up becoming pretty well known (one is a chef and the other does stuff with MSNBC) so now I have famous relatives who I only met once when I was 5. They live far away from me and I'm pretty sure they have no idea who I am, and my grandma's sister's husband lives in my state like 30 mins away from me and runs a doctor's office but I have never seen him in my life for the reasons mentioned above. So yeah I have a whole side of my family I don't really know at all. It's also crazy how my mom just casually told me this. Through that grandparent I'm also related to another bunch of well-known people who came from a town/city in Slovakia according to ancestry.com (back when it was called Austria-Hungary) who likely have no idea of my family's existence but that's a whole different story
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