Family History Connections

Throughout the many family stories that I read, I found a theme of families who were affected by war. I am doing a comparison of Jasiu, Crystal, and Tiffany's stories.

"My grandma told me what it was like to survive under Russian control. Though not know to be as horrible as the Nazis, they did do some unbelievable cruelty that matches up with the germens. It was not safe for anyone to go out on the streets anymore. Piss a Russian soldier off and pow! Pow!"(Jasiu)."

Throughout Jasiu's story, the cruelty of what Polish people faced from the Russians was told rather than what they faced from the Germans.  This greatly surprised me. I never realized that the Russians were so cruel to the Polish people. In his story, Jasiu described that his grandmother went to church, when some Russian soldiers entered and began killing the people inside. Luckily for his grandmother, she hid, but had to endure the sight of dead bodies and the smell of burning flesh after the Russian soldiers burned the bodies. 

"People in the village were shouting that the Japanese were coming into the village. Many fled but my grandma's grandmother decided to use the extra time to hide the little food that they had left in the house."(Crystal).

Crystal described the invasion of China by the Imperial Army. Apparently, many of the Chinese people faced many horrors from the Japanese. In particular, she described the account of her great grandmother's encounter. When the Japanese invaded her village, her great grandmother and grandmother decided to stay behind to hide the food that they had. This is because during the war, food was hard to come; also the Japanese looted any food or materials they found in Chinese homes. Her grandmother was caught trying to hide the food and was almost killed because of it.

"How would they get to America? It was by helicopter. My grandfather was a general so he ordered planes to head up north, but he saved one just for my family. We had to wait on the roof, but the person riding the helicopter took his own family to America."(Tiffany).

Tiffany's family was affected during the Vietnam war. During the war, her family tried to flee Vietnam, failed, and instead had had to resort to going from country to country until they reached the United States. Luckily, the reached the US eventually. They were forced to flee to the US.

As  you can see, there is a strong theme of war throughout the stories I have found.