A Little Kanell History: From Russia, With Love

I spent a while working on my husband Dave's side of the family tree today. It's almost five years now since Dave's death, and I'm rusty on details, so it took half an hour of document diving to confirm what I thought I remembered: that Dave's grandfather Joe Kanell had been a grocer in New Haven, Connecticut, in the 1930s. I didn't want to accidentally pass along a mistaken detail ... and I had a poem in mind.

This photo of Joe Kanell, at age 47, shows him on board a ship in 1935, circling the globe, going to see his relatives in Vilna, also called Vilnius. The city was part of Lithuania, which at the time was governed by Russia -- when Joe immigrated to the United States in 1905 he declared himself "Russian," and later Census documents show that both Joe and his wife Yetta considered themselves to have been Russian before they became American. They described their parents as Russian, too.

In addition to being Russian, they were Jews, and knew the risk of pogroms, organized massacres that targeted people who identified with this religion. Yet in 1935, when Joe came from America to visit the rest of the family, they must have felt "safe enough," because none of them kept Joe company on his return to New Haven. The photo here shows Joe on his way to Vilna, Dave wrote.

In 1941, German forces occupied Vilna and liquidated -- that is, murdered -- its Jewish population. Imagine murdering a quarter of a city ... despite fierce resistance from the Jews of Vilna, that's what took place. (Read more here.)

When I met Dave in 2001, his grandfather was long gone -- died in 1969 -- and in Dave's mind, just a few Kanells were slaughtered in Vilna during the Second World War. A few years after we married, one of his cousins from outside New Haven, someone he hadn't known well, showed him a photo taken in Vilna of grandfather Joe and the Kanell family there: more than 30 people. Dave's concept of what had happened needed to be completely shifted, and I'm not sure he ever stopped reeling at the new knowledge of how many of his family had been killed.

So here is a poem for Joe and his family. I hope I have most of the pertinent details right. And I hope this wondering is of use to others along the way.

 

Unasked Questions

 

He leans on the ship railing, white collar buttoned,

tie and a cardigan, gives a wide smile—

no clue now to who took the picture, and Joe,

forty-seven then, gone such a while.

 

Nine decades later, wondering who

watched his grocery— wife Yetta, still well?

What did it cost to sail around the world?

The ship fare, the store losses—no way to tell.

 

But this is the story passed down for years:

His family lived in a Russian city

and he tried to persuade them to leave, to come

to America’s freedoms—alas, what a pity

 

that nobody wanted to follow him back.

For decades we thought there were two or three lost

then saw an old photo of Joe and the crowd

who vanished soon after, and found out the cost:

 

Two dozen or more of the Russian Kanells

were gone in a decade of war and disaster.

How did he bear it? How did he go on?

Yet we know he delighted in grandchildren after—

 

tossing a baseball, applauding their skills,

launching them upward, helping them grow.

We who are wondering how we’ll survive

try to live with our losses, like grandfather Joe.

[What Dave wrote when he posted the photo on his Facebook feed:

This post is in honor of my Grandfather Joseph Kanell (July 4, 1888 to Oct 18, 1969) who chose his birthday to be on July 4th because the United States was a land of opportunity & freedoms. From Vilna, Lithuania to New York City & then New Haven, Ct area. Have a great 4th today. I should also note that my grandmother Kanell also chose the 4th of July for her birthday. My grandparents always had the American Flag flying at every holiday.
This is a photograph of my grandfather aboard a ship on the way to visit his relatives in Vilna, Lithuania in 1935. This was the last time that he had any contact with his family from the Vilna area and in all probability they all perished in the Holocaust.]