Searching for Butsnevits

This is an encounter with the past, with the history and circumstances of my family in the Ukraine in the early 1900s. My family lived in a shtetl by the name of Butsnevits (they pronounced it Beets- na-vits), which has all but vanished from genealogical records. The first part of this account records my journey to find this tiny village in Ukraine's Podolia province and describe the place and the people who now live there. That is partly a photo story, embellished with snapshots that I took during my search. After I returned from Ukraine, I discovered the transcript of an interview tape my older cousin Sally had made about our family's history. It loops back in time to round out the picture with a description by Sally of the flight by the last remaining members of the family in Ukraine during the war and pogroms that followed the Russian Revolution of 1917. That forms the second part of this account and is based on several interviews Sally gave looking back on her experiences as a young child. In the third part, I seek to tie the narrative together by elaborating on my observations during the trip and by bringing to bear new data I gathered, filling in gaps and updating the picture of the family village in contemporary Ukraine. Finally, I show how much my perspective has altered because of this encounter with the past: I now have a deeper understanding of my immigrant family and a deeper appreciation of their struggles and accomplishments in building a new life on American soil.