[Cz-L] Personal introduction: Dale Prince

This is my personal introduction: My name is Dale Prince. I was born in
Oregon, and I grew up mostly in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I am 48 years old, and
I am a Foreign Service Officer. Right now I live in the Washington, D.C.
area, but I am about to begin an assignment in Brasilia, Brazil. My wife
and I have four sons.

My connection to Czernowitz and Sadagora is through my motherís parents, who
both emigrated from Sadagora around 1900. My grandfather, Jake Berger, was
part of a large extended family that immigrated over the course of about 25
years and settled mostly in Chicago. The Sadagora families that I know of
were Burger, From, Edelstein and Stark. In America, Burger became Berger
and From became Froom. There were no male Edelstein descendants in America.
   The last ìwaveî of Burgers came over in 1921, including my
greatñgrandparents.

I have been curious about Czernowitz and Sadagora for as long as I can
remember. My interest is both genealogical and cultural. Thanks to a work
assignment I had in Poland in the period 1989-1992, I was able to make the
trip in May 1992. I may have been the first member of my family to make the
return trip since about 1909. I saw some of the sights that are surely well
known to members of the group who grew up there or visited recently, such as
the main square, the Opera, the Synagogue, and of course the Cheremosh
Hotel. I also visited Josef Burg, the Yiddish writer. I visited the
Sadagora cemetery and was very disappointed at its condition. I was able to
locate only one grave marker of an individual who might have been related,
and it was a distant relationship. In 1992 the town of Sadagora was not an
appealing place, and I went away thinking that I had a better understanding
of why they left. It is hard to imagine what Sadagora was really like in
1900. I know that the Burger side of my family was very poor. In contrast,
my great-grandfather Edelstein ran a flour mill.

I should also mention that two sisters and a brother of my grandmother, who
was an Edelstein, did not come to America, and none of my relatives know
what happened to them. On this side of the ocean we have always assumed
they perished in the Holocaust. Eventually I would like to know what
happened.

I enjoy the messages and other contributions from natives of Czernowitz
because it is a constant reminder to me that that there was another
Czernowitz besides the Czernowitz of 1900, which seems to me so remote in
the past, the city on the eastern edge of the Hapsburg Empire that my
grandparents left. Czernowitz did not freeze in time after my ancestors
came to America, and I am seeing it as a more sophisticated place than I
ever imagined. As for Sadagora, that is still less clear to me. I never
had a chance to know my grandparents, so until now I had only heard about
those places from relatives who had never been there.

Best wishes to all.
Received on 2006-07-13 05:24:43