Tag #153549 - Interview #78531 (Ida Limonova)

My grandfather on my father’s side, Moshe-Aren Sneiderman, was born in the town of Mitava in Kurlandia province, Latvia, in the 1850s. It was part of the Russian Empire, and Jews had the right to reside there and do their business: commerce, crafts, and so on. They were different Jews in Kurlandia: they were townspeople, wealthy and well educated. Most Jewish families in other parts within the Pale of Settlement 1 in tsarist Russia grew their own vegetables and kept livestock while Jewish families in Kurlandia were drawn towards a European lifestyle. They spoke the so-called Kurlandia Yiddish, which was their own dialect.