Even though it is our closest neighbor to the south, many Americans know little about life in Mexico besides the existence of sombreros and siestas.
That lack of information has made it easy for those living north of the border to get caught up in images of Mexican life that overlook that nation’s dynamic culture and its history as a land that has graciously accepted immigrants from around the world.
Part of that immigrant story includes the fate of thousands of Russian Jews who left their native land in the face of a government crackdown led by Lenin in the 1920s. Finding that the United States had virtually closed its door to all European immigrants in 1925, many of those fleeing religious oppres-sion found that Mexico still had its welcome mat out.
The little-known story of how Jews made a way for themselves in their new home is the theme of a presentation set for Sunday afternoon, Jan. 14, at the Schenectady Jewish Community Center. Leading off with the documentary film Tijuana Jews about the impact a community of Jews has had on a major Mexican border city, the presentation will highlight the lives of the largely unknown immigrant group. After the film, Max Lifchitz, a professor at the University of Albany, will recount his boyhood as a Jew growing up in Mexico City and offer his own insights on life in what was once called `The City of the Eternal Spring.`
`A lot of people have never heard anything about Jews in Mexico, but there are Jews everywhere,` said Lifchitz. `For us, my father was a soldier in the Russian army, and one day they handed him his papers. They told him that he was no longer a soldier, and he asked why. They said Lenin was afraid of a counter-revolution and all Jews were being kicked out of the army.
`My father had been a soldier for years and he didn’t have anything else, so it was time to move,` Lifchitz said. `The United States was closed to anyone coming from Europe so there were really two choices for us, Mexico or Argentina. We ended up settling in Mexico City, and my father lived the rest of his life there.
`He even came up to visit me once in New York ` it was in 1980, and I remember he didn’t like the snow,` said Lifchitz. `Here was a man who had spent much of his life in Russia with the cold winters, but he had been in Mexico so long that he didn’t like the cold anymore.`
This weekend’s presentation will start at 2 p.m. on Sunday. The Schenectady Jewish Community Center is located at 2565 Balltown Road, and there is a $2 admission. The center can be contacted at 377-8803 for more information. “
