Daniel Estrin discovered while reporting from Ukraine that the current geopolitical drama touches his family's history in unexpected ways.

Transcript

KELSEY SNELL, HOST:

History can surprise us. A conflict that can seem very, very far away can have ripples that reach close to home. This next story is about a family that finds itself on different sides of geopolitical conflict involving Russia, Ukraine and the U.S. It's our own Daniel Estrin's story, and here he is from Kyiv.

DANIEL ESTRIN, BYLINE: Jacob Estrin said goodbye to his family in Ukraine, landed at Ellis Island in 1912, and eight days later, the Titanic sank. The family legend is that his mother heard the news, thought her son had been on board and died of heartbreak before his first letter from Minneapolis could reach home. Now an interpreter and I are going up a rickety elevator in Kyiv to visit the family my father's father's father had left behind.

Hello.

LUSIA KUZNETSOV: (Non-English language spoken).

ESTRIN: How are you?

SERGEY KUZNETSOV: Come in. Come in.

ESTRIN: OK.

My cousin Sergey Kuznetsov is a photo editor at a Ukrainian magazine. His mom is 81-year-old Lusia. Her mom, Fanya Estrin, was my great-grandfather Jacob's youngest sister. Lusia made us sauerkraut and cherry dumplings.

Wow.

KUZNETSOV: Please take your place.

ESTRIN: Wow.

Her modest apartment was built in the 1970s. The Soviet wallpaper is still on the wall. An old Soviet fridge now stores her shoes.

KUZNETSOV: (Non-English language spoken).

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: She asks, is your grandfather still alive?

ESTRIN: Yes, he's still alive, and he's 101 years old.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Non-English language spoken).

KUZNETSOV: (Non-English language spoken).

ESTRIN: She goes to a cabinet and brings out an old Soviet photo ID.

KUZNETSOV: This is our...

KUZNETSOV: (Non-English language spoken).

KUZNETSOV: ...Oldest ancestor.

KUZNETSOV: (Non-English language spoken).

ESTRIN: In my hands is my father's father's father's father's passport. This is amazing.

Lusia and my family share a particular gene - we throw away nothing.

KUZNETSOV: (Non-English language spoken).

ESTRIN: Her mom, Fanya, knew that acknowledging her relatives in America would get her in trouble with the Soviet state.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: It was dangerous. You could be considered as enemy of the state.

ESTRIN: And so she cut off contact with our family. Then, as the Cold War was ending in 1989, my grandmother opened a Minneapolis newspaper and saw a notice - a Soviet immigrant in Brooklyn was looking for the Estrin family. She was a relative we didn't know about, another one of my grandfather's cousins. She presented our family with copies of the photos my great-grandfather Jacob had mailed them decades ago. Our long-lost family was reunited.

KUZNETSOV: More tea?

ESTRIN: Sergey pours tea, and I turn to a newer chapter of our family history.

I remember all of a sudden - you know, we're friends on Facebook - and I was very surprised. One day I saw you put a picture of yourself inside a tank.

KUZNETSOV: (Laughter) Facebook had reminded me that today is seven years I had army call.

ESTRIN: Exactly seven years today?

KUZNETSOV: Yes. Exactly seven years today, yes.

ESTRIN: Russia launched a war in East Ukraine, and Sergey was sent there with an elite paratrooper brigade. He was 38.

KUZNETSOV: What is the most important? I didn't fight. I didn't - was in action.

ESTRIN: Did you enjoy your service?

KUZNETSOV: (Laughter) Well, I didn't enjoy. It was sometimes rather hard.

ESTRIN: Now was Sergey's turn to ask me questions about my reporting on the current crisis.

KUZNETSOV: Tell us please, Daniel, what is coming to us?

ESTRIN: His mother reads from an emergency checklist in case of war with Russia.

KUZNETSOV: (Non-English language spoken).

ESTRIN: Documents, medicine, cash, flashlight, cellphone, charger, notebook, pen, warm clothes, blankets, water, food.

KUZNETSOV: (Non-English language spoken).

KUZNETSOV: (Non-English language spoken).

KUZNETSOV: (Non-English language spoken).

KUZNETSOV: (Non-English language spoken).

ESTRIN: Sergey says, you're going to carry all of that? She says, it's not that much. He says, where will you run? And then he recalls the last time his mom was on the run - from the Germans in World War II. The past feels very present now. Should they run away again? Should they have left for America like my great-grandfather did a century ago?

Sometimes I think about this with my family. What if I would have been born here? What if I would have been Ukrainian?

KUZNETSOV: You would be Ukrainian. People live here - all of us, we are people. We are humans.

ESTRIN: We also have mutual cousins in Russia. Over the years, our Ukrainian and Russian sides of the family have fallen out of touch with each other. I tell them, I'm going to call our Russian cousin, Eugene.

When I speak to our cousin in Moscow, what would you want to know - what would you want to ask him?

KUZNETSOV: (Laughter) If you ask me to tell him something, well, here live humans. We are people. We are human humans. Well, if propaganda shows us like...

ESTRIN: Devils.

KUZNETSOV: ...Devils, yes. But we are humans.

ESTRIN: I sent Eugene in Moscow a picture of our mutual great-great-grandfather's Soviet ID. He wrote back, wow. And he sent some voice memos.

EUGENE: I believe it would be insane to start a war. No one would support it. I'm really keeping fingers crossed that the war won't commence, and it will become obvious that we can live as good neighbors.

ESTRIN: And then he wished my family in America and our family in Ukraine to stay healthy and positive.

Daniel Estrin, NPR News, Kyiv.

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