Tag #148468 - Interview #78035 (marina sineokaya)

My father’s family lived in Moscow. In spite of the Jewish Pale of Settlement [1] in tsarist Russia, and the ban for Jews to live in big cities, my grandfather, Moses Yanov, was granted that right. He was a soldier, a cantonist [2]. I don’t know where he was born, or the family he came from. All I know is that he had served in the tsarist army for 25 years. When the term of the service of cantonists was over, they were permitted to settle in any place they chose.