Книга еврейской мудрости

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You're a Jew! No way! Yeah you are!! No Possibility!! Oh, Yeah, well......

 My name is Lon Getlin, son of Joe and Thelma Getlin, brother of Joe Jr., Mike, and Steve.  They are all gone now, mom and dad of natural causes, Joe Jr. killed in a hunting accident in 1951, Mike in Vietnam in 1967, Steve of an illnes in 2011.  At 75, I'm all that's left of a wonderful, loving family....and I just found out that I'm solidly and unequivocally 1/2 Jewish.  Woha!  And all this time I thought I was.....well.....I didn't know who I was and didn't give it much thought, but Jewish?  Really?

And now here I am, jumping in with both feet, logged into Jewage.org, and trying to learn more.  I have no idea if anyone will ever even read this, but if someone out there has any information or a connection to my grandfather--Samuel Gitlin, a Russian Jew who imigrated to the US in January 1913 and settled in New Haven, Conn.--I'd like to learn whatever you know.

This is so fascinating! I grew up in the midwest as a "Getlin", not a "Gitlin", and my family story on my dad's side was vague at best.  My mother, Thelma Tyner from St. Louis, MO, met my dad in St. Louis when he was 14 and she 12.  Even though they knew eachother for nearly all their lives, my mother always claimed to know very little about my father's past.  She always said that he simply would not engage with her in conversation about his family.  In deed, as wonderful and honorable as he always was in his personal and professional life, he also would not talk to any of us sons about he early life.  I only met two of his 6 siblings (Lewis and Nate) and knew that he had two sisters whom I never met. (I never knew he had 2 other siblings, although I now know that one of them, 23-year-old Ida, died in 1923 and is buried in a "Jewish cemetery" in New Haven.) I also knew that he had a very poor relationship with Nate, whom he felt was a serious scoundrel.  It was always my understanding that my father was born in New Haven on 4 July 1910, but it seems more likely that he also imigrated from Russia, perhaps in 1917, arriving with his mother, Bessie, some 4 years after his father.

So when and why did "Gitlin" become "Getlin", and who made that decision, a decision that was adopted by my dad and his two brother. And why was their Jewish/Russian heritage cast aside sometime after they arrived in the US?  I know that as late as 1930, my grandfather still used the name "Gitlin". I am certain that neither my father nor mother were racist or anti-semetic, and I was certainly raised with and embrace those values.  But in the first quarter of the 20th century, anti-semitism was a sad reality in this country and certainly rife in the business world.  And my father was a corporate guy of the first order, ultimately becoming the executive VP of the Ralston Purina Company in St. Louis, MO.  Was my father ashamed of his Jewish heritage? Possibly, but I don't believe it for a second.  He just wasn't that sort of man.  Did he deny his heritager out of pragmatism to for his business career and to "spare" his children of the perceived stigmatism of being Jewish? It would appear, unfortuntely, that he did. Oh, how I wish he were alive today so I could engage him in a conversarion based on the new knowledge I now have. It would be so interesting, and I know when confronted, he would have been honest and direct with me. 

But life goes around in mysterious ways, and some 7 years ago my son married into a wonderful--and very Jewis--family with whom we share Jewish and Christian holidays and rituals.  Unlike all previous holidays, however, 2019 will take on an entirely new and different meaning because we are as much GItlins as we are GEtlins.

So if there are only 2 or 3 people out there in the JewAge universe who can shead more ligth on the Gitlin clan from Russia and New Haven, please get in touch with me.

Thanks,

Lon Getlin....or Gitlin...or whatever!


 

      

 






Автор статьи: Lon Getlin
Эта статья про фамилии: Gitlin, Гитлин, גיטלין

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