We would like to greet all our newly discovered relatives and readers of this message board. We have never dreamed of getting reconnected with the descendants of our relatives, who left Russia about a hundred years ago. We are very thankful to Chaim Freedman (the author of "Eliyahu's Branches"), Micheline Gutmann (who passed the info about us to the French branch of the family), Regine Kallish and her family, Sonia Hadjipanteleev, Renee Braverman, and Melissa Lamp and others.
This is to share some background info with all of you. We are Tanya and Sasha Rodnyansky. Tanya is the daughter of Irena and Albert Fine, who is a grandson of Berko Fine. We have two teenage children, Seva (16) and Maria (12).
Note, that the spelling of the surname Fine was anglicized to represent the way it sounded in Russian and originally in Yiddish. The closest transliteration of the Russian spelling would be Fain (the way the French relatives spell it) or Fayn.
All six of us came to the USA in 1993 to join Albert's older brother David, who along with his wife Bronya moved to America five years earlier. The three children of David Fine and the two children of Esther Shneyder (the sister of David and Albert) with their spouses, kids, and grandkids have also moved to this country from Russia in the period from 1978 to 1995. This huge mishpakha is settled in two main hubs, Minneapolis, MN, and NYC and nearby NJ. In a few weeks, you'll be able to see all these people's names in the addition to the Leib Kohen family tree on the wonderful Bravercards website.
A few words on our professional backgrounds and occupations in America: Tanya earned her degree in meteorological science in Russia, but retrained to be a software engineer in the USA. Sasha worked as a physicist in the field of Solid State and Surface Science in Russia and does the same in this country. Seva and Maria were children back then, and they still are. But of course, they have grown quite a bit.
We would also like to give a brief answer to the question many people have already asked, "How did you get here?" According to the Lautenberg Amendment, Jews and some other persecuted minorities from Soviet Union and later Russia and other post-Soviet republics were given a Political Refugee status by the US government allowing them to come to the United States. First immigrants of this kind came in the late seventies when the Soviet government "opened the doors" for a short period of time. These people settled in cities, which Jewish communities offered to admit them. Later, after 1985, new immigrants had to have close relatives in the communities to admit them. This was probably set to limit and order the inflow, but despite that the immigration peaked between 1989 and 1993. Additionally, there are annual quotas for immigration from different countries.
Again, we are very excited to join this big family and would be happy to chat, meet, exchange photographs, etc. Please don't hesitate to ask more questions.
