Here is the irony for all...Like I said, Alexander II was the Reformer Czar, also called Alexander the Liberator and The Great Emancipator. His oldest son was Nicholas Alexanderovich who was well educated, intelligent and had the same reform ideas as his father. Unfortunately, before he could become Czar, he died of spinal meningitis at the age of 21 in 1865. When his father was assassinated, his younger brother, Alexander the "spare" became Czar. He reversed all of his father's policies, we had the May Laws, pogroms ensued, and over 2.5 million people left the Pale of Settlement. I would think that many of our relatives, given freedom to become educated, practice their religion, and live where they wanted to live might have stayed in Russia!

Phil Goldfarb
Tulsa, OK
phil.goldfarb@...