My grandfather Sol (top right, in the snazzy pinstripes) left Lithuania in the 1920s, but couldn’t emigrate to the US because of the Jewish quota.

So he went to the next best place: Cuba.

He lived in Havana for five years, working in restaurants and learning Ladino.

According to family lore he had a chance to get smuggled to Miami by hiding on a banana boat, but at the last minute, he got cold feet, leaped overboard and swam back to shore.

He finally made it to Brooklyn, NY in 1929, where he became a furrier. On their honeymoon, he and my grandmother went to Niagra Falls, because he had a beaver pelt deal to make with some Canadians.

He died when my father was a teenager, but my grandmother always said I had his charm and blue eyes.

This photo, taken in Havana around 70 years ago, is one of few links I have to my ancestors and their vanished world. ~shared by @globaldan

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