My Little Life

Not every immigrant who came to America went from rags to riches. Benjamin Vinar’s parents grew up in comfortable circumstances in a town called Ostrog in the Ukraine, but their circumstances quickly changed with the bloody arrival of World War I and the Russian Revolution. They barely made it out alive, escaping to the United States, where they settled in Rock Island, Illinois.

Benjamin’s parents often reminisced at the dinner table about the Ostrog of their youth, a largely Jewish communi...