Dispatches from the Abyss: European Diaspora in America

I started writing this a couple weeks ago, but this topic has been on my mind as I have been working on my ancestral and genealogy research, but also healing, trauma, and integration. I came back to it today as it marks the 4th year of the War in Ukraine.

I've seen a lot of debate online between those of us of the European diaspora in the United States, who are either revitalizing or reconnecting with our ancestral heritage and cultures or just starting the journey of exploration versus what is perceived as gatekeeping by Europeans that “Americans” don’t have the rights to the ancestral cultures or that they weren’t raised with the direct connection to the culture and land nor speaking the language — those are valid critiques. What I want to talk about in this piece is the tale of two European diasporas in the United States.

The general assumption is that all European Americans are just white assimilated homogenized mush —and to be fair -- a lot of them are a lot of them are just that and are what you see when you think of “White American Culture” and that too is a valid criticism as well — even though it’s very different from the many of us more recent diaspora folks like myself. 

While we may be a smaller population a lot of us kept our cultural heritages and traditions, and we grew up within them and now are reconnecting further and passing down traditions. Pennsylvania has a lot of Eastern/Central European diaspora folks as opposed to when I lived in Georgia.

I turned 50 last June and as my parents are getting older, my brother and I have been taking the reins of the transfer of family knowledge, history, tradition, and the archive of family recipes, etc. We are now the torch bearers of a preserving our cultural heritage within our family and that’s something we want to impress upon the generations that come after us like my nieces and nephews. We are passing on our cultural legacy.

I have a lot of friends and colleagues abroad and to be honest they’ve always been shocked at just how much of our European cultures have been kept alive here. Maybe the assumption is that those things don’t exist here when we have had existent social structures beyond what may be a lot of people realize? However, this may be dependent on ethnic population densities by state. I feel privileged being from Pennsylvania in an area that has a rather large ethnic Eastern/Central European population.

I do the work in this reconnection process. I’m joining an organization for Ukrainian women in the American diaspora to connect with the broader community. I’m learning my ancestral languages as well. I grew up with Ukrainian speaking grandparents and elders. I have had monthly donations going to medical supply funds in Ukraine because I remember my grandmother telling me about how they would send stuff back to relatives in the old country. 

I had an amazing experience recently over the winter a younger man approached me and asked me if I was Ukrainian. My internal process was “huh do I look do I look Ukrainian?”… well you know I’ve got my grandmother‘s head scarf covering my hair with my Tryzub pendant and my Saint Olga of Kyiv pendant on, so yeah maybe I do look a little bit Ukrainian. We started talking he’s here from Ukraine and new to the area. We were chatting about that stuff and I was telling about how much Ukrainian culture is in the area and an Eastern/Central European and I gave him a list of things and including the local Polish market in town, the Polish market that’s in the farmers market, the Hungarian restaurant in town, local Byzantine/Ukrainian churches, Ukrainian social clubs, more restaurants and all the different places and he was writing all of them down and he and his partner they were both so grateful.  I was happy to help, but that was just off the top of my head. I gave him a list of all these different places that he could connect here with his culture and it was such a beautiful exchange and that you have someone who is from Ukraine now and me who is a third generation Ukrainian that my great great grandparents came from Ukraine, amongst a bunch of other places. It was a really beautiful moment of connection. 

As I mentioned, I am from Pennsylvania and we have a historical privilege of having a lot of Germanic settlers so there’s a lot of inherent Germanic culture in the region. We also have the Pennsylvania Dutch or the Amish, but growing up in Pennsylvania not only do we have a large German population or PA Dutch and otherwise where I grew up on in the Lehigh Valley on the you know in the eastern part of Pennsylvania we have a very very high population of Eastern and Central European diaspora folks here — I am part of that so I grew up with Ukrainians, Poles, Slovaks, Czechs, Hungarians, Romanians, etc. so it’s not outside of my cultural experience to reconnect with those parts of my heritage and ancestry. I do not feel like I am cosplaying and putting on a Viking helmet and I’m a Viking now. I do have some “Viking” heritage via Denmark and Sweden and just to add a little side note here cause I’ve seen a lot of people quibbling over the term Viking as being a profession. The reason a lot of times people claim Viking in their ancestry is because that’s how it shows up on my DNA ancestry reports because it comes from DNA matches from Viking shipwrecks and battles. 

Growing up in America, as a more recent descendent of immigrants is a different experience than people who have grown up in America since the Mayflower the majority of my family have only been here like 100ish years - that’s the Ukrainian side. my moms side is PA Dutch (German) and Irish sides and have been a little longer since late 1700s into the 1850s. We do not know much about our Irish ancestry beyond my Great Great Grandmother who died very young.

I have a connection to the Ukrainian/Slavic, cultural diaspora, but I don’t really have a connection to the Irish diaspora, so I’m not looking to connect to my Irish heritage because it’s not something I was raised with and that for me is the differential and I don't feel enough of connection trying to delve into something I don’t feel connected to.

I’m proud and very protective of my Ukrainian heritage, which is not always something I could say growing up because and I am intentionally acknowledging that while we did not grow up under Soviet Communism in Eastern Europe, we still were part of that Eastern European diaspora and growing up as a child during the Cold War and post Red Scare era -- it was never clear to me that - whether or not we were “the enemy” because Ukraine was part of the big bad Soviet Union and I was fairly young — the Berlin wall came down and the Soviet Union collapsed around the time I was 14 or 15 but those were the formative years of my life so it took me a long time to realize that as Ukrainians, we were separate from Russia, and that is something that you see Ukrainians fighting against today — we are not Russia.

I’ve spent a lot of my life being either “not white enough "or the “wrong kind of white,” and that was very evident to me when I lived in the South as a transplanted northerner as a child and was reminded of that every day and I was called very unpleasant things because I deigned to have been born above the Mason Dixon line.

For some of us "decolonizing" as part of the European diaspora means separating ourselves from the assimilated mush that demands homogenous whiteness. I reject that. It is a little different in this context, but when we talk about whiteness, we are different from the assimilated mush American culture whiteness. The assimilated mush knows that we are different and we are not “white enough, we are not "the right kind of white” and treated as such — yes, white people are even racist against other white people. Obviously, it’s not as bad as it is towards others, but it is something that still exists. I’ve experienced racism from other white people for the aforementioned, even though I am practically Translucent in skin tone so it’s something it’s beyond skin tone and comes down to culture and we kept our culture and they did not and therein lies the difference. 

I have seen an uptick in Americans from the European diaspora differentiating themselves from the assimilated mush of white America. I mean, everyone has a right to explore their own cultural heritages and reconnect. I’m always in deep research mode. In my experience I have I have received amazing support from the people I’ve met along the way my friends and colleagues in Poland, Czechia, Germany, and Ukraine. I’ve been encouraged the entire way, but I’m also seeing people on social media being treated unkindly for wanting to reconnect with their ancestry. I understand that from a far why the criticism exists.

In my experience, I’ve never once called myself an "American" because I don’t identify as an American. I was born here. I live here. My parents were born here and live here, but I’ve never considered myself in American - which I hadn't realized until last year. Whenever someone has asked my nationality, I usually say Ukrainian or Eastern European or get really specific about it depending on who I’m talking to if you’re going into Transcarpathian, Ukraine or Subcarpathian Poland.

I know this is a touchy subject, but I am going to explore and discuss in my ancestry research process specific to ancient ancestry, Our DNA and genetics have been so tied to the land whether it be Eastern and Central Europe predominantly thousands of years. For my ancestors to have come to America -  as refugees, not as colonizers, as later settlers — the Pennsylvania Dutch came over due to ethnic persecution at the time. The Ukrainian, Polish, and Slovak side due to Russian bullshit in the early between like 1910 and 1918, World War I, the Russian Revolution, the Russification of Ukraine, and so on and so forth. Adding one note that we have one tiny branch all of ancestry that is direct descendants of Mayflower because my a great great grandfather married a descendent of the Mayflower line, however, she was a servant so it’s not like we had some sort of inherited generational wealth and status. I assure you we did not. This is where a lot of my Irish and English heritage comes from and I don’t culturally connect to it as It doesn’t resonate for me so its not part of my ancestry I am looking to connect with further.

I’ve personally loved seeing so many other people interested in their cultural heritage and breaking free of the assimilation -- and de-assimilation is part of the decolonization process. When our ancestors came here, yes a lot of them were forced to assimilate, but some chose to assimilate in a superficial way for keeping up appearances.

If we’re getting past the colonial mindset to who we really are as people, then by all means, we should explore carefully intentionally and with great respect to our ancestral cultures because while all our ancestors left whenever they did, they have not endured the stuff that the Europeans have endured since then — my ancestors very likely would not have survived the Holocaust or World War II given the geographic location in addition to if they did then they would’ve had to live under Communism and the Holodomor. I am grateful for the privilege of being alive as a result of the choices my ancestors made, but I also do acknowledge that I had ancestors that did not immigrate with the rest and it’s questionable as to whether or not they survived any of those things

Recently, a friend in Poland help me with some ancestral research. They found a Morikan record from the Podkarpackie voivodeship archives. The Morykan  lineage has the most spelling variations: Morykon, Morykin, Morekin, so Morikan would track in relation. From what I can gather, most of that side came over to the US together. 

Ethnically we are Ukrainian, but borders changed a lot over the years, but I remember seeing Dźwiniacz on some documents, but I assumed Dzvyniach, Ukraine (Ternopil), not the Podkarpackie region of Poland, which is right on the border which would explain the Polish and Ukrainian parts of the equation. I just checked the Morykan/Danylo both list as Polish on the citizenship papers though on my great grandmother's death certificate birthplace is Ukraine. Papers aren’t always reliable with border changes. 

I think we are onto something and I connected one dot at least in that I know we have genetic connections to the Piast Dynasty (Masovian and Non-Masovian) who were the first rulers of that Subcarpathian region of Poland where Dźwiniacz is located.

I also discovered that Upper Dźwiniacz was liquidated after the World War II and the remaining residents were relocated to the USSR, and then the Soviets burned everything to the ground. Lower Dźwiniacz seems to be a functioning town still or was rebuilt. I’m still researching the area. 

It’s weird to think that if our ancestral homes and lands on the border of Poland and Ukraine were burnt to the ground by the Soviet Russians after the World War II then it stands to reason that the house that my great grandparents built here still stands this day — a house that I grew up in the house that I lived in is the closest tie to those ancestral lands.

I’ve always felt that home to be a place of power in dreams and liminal spaces of all the places I’ve lived in my life growing up you know with my parents we moved around a bit and my own you, life in college and my adult life, moving around. the only land and only house I feel any connection with is that house and it’s always been that way for me. It always exists in a liminal space. It’s always in dream spaces and ancestor work. I think in a way that kitchen is my grandmother‘s heaven cause I can just see her looking out the window and it’s what Hellertown looked like when I was a kid growing up, but also Hellertown fades out and then like the Carpathian region of Ukraine fades in, so it’s definitely a place of ancestral power that ties the old world to the new world and back again. I do a lot of ancestral healing in tandem with my spirituality and in my meditation thinking about trying to understand  this information — it was like a dream, but it was also felt like a memory of pulling up in a car in front of my grandparents house this was the house built by my great grandparents. I don’t I couldn’t see. I don’t know who was driving. I don’t know what kind of car it was, but it was like it was a nod in that I am correct in the assumption that they did come from or at least some of them did come from Upper the Polish/Ukraine town. The one that was liquidated by the Soviets after World War II. 

I wanted to use that as an example and express so much gratitude towards my European friends and colleagues for helping me in my research efforts. Why am I doing this know? I have been doing it all along, but when the war in Ukraine started in 2022, it activated something in me to go deeper in honoring my ancestors. It really doesn’t have its starting point in the current state of decay in America.

I made the decision that I want to be the one that takes our family line back home not to colonize or appropriate. But to help Ukraine rebuild after the war. Both great grandfathers and my grandfather worked at Bethlehem Steel Company- they helped build America and were critical to the war efforts beyond being in the Allied forces. I want to return to give and reconnect. I could share so much more and will over time. If I live long enough, all I want is a cottage in the Carpathians overlooking the Black Sea.

Dark Blessings,
Jennifer