ABSTRACT
My parents and I are Russian immigrants from a small city called Munkacs in the Carpathian Mountains. Munkacs has one of those convoluted and confusing European histories, particularly over the past century. It's been, in turn, part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, democratic Czechoslovakia, Nazi Hungary, communist Soviet Union, and, currently, the Ukraine. Through my grandparents' childhoods, the Carpathian Mountains region was filled with an ethnic mix of Hungarians, Ukrainians, Germans, Slovaks, Czechs, gypsies, and Jews. After World War II, the Russians took over and were added to the Carpathian ethnic fabric, taking the place of most of the Jews who had been exterminated in Auschwitz and other death camps.
