Lithuanian Jews

In conversations with my mother, I have come to the conclusion that my mother's father's side of the family were Lithuanian Jews who fled to the United States to escape persecution by the Czar. It is possible that they were just fleeing the Czar, but for certain specific reasons it seems like he was Jewish.

The main points are as follows; my great grand father's best friend, who he played with as a child in Lithuania, lived two towns away and was Jewish. For my great grandfather's best friend to be Jewish, in the early 20th century leads me to the belief he was at least a somewhat progressive person. Massachusetts was no different than most parts of the US during that era, and a close relationship between my dairy farming grandfather and a cow selling Jew is probably not a common type of relationship. My Great Grandfather spoke English (very limited), Lithuanian, German, Polish, YIDDISH, and Russian. Yiddish at that time was a trade language spoken predominantly by the Jewish community, but also by people who did a lot of business with Jews.

Further evidence is the fact my great grandfather moved to G-Vegas, but rarely attended church. He allegedly went to the local Catholic Church, had some kind of disagreement with a priest, and then rarely if ever went back. As a working man with no apparent ideological basis for atheism, it seems like he was not welcomed by the church because he was not Christian. That is what our consensus is.

My great grandfather was from Panemunis, a village in Lithuania. His brother was forcibly taken away by Cossacks or other Russians. It is unclear why, but Lithuania during this period was a vassal to the Russian Crown. The gulag system was first initiated by the czarist a as a method of ideological control. The nazis actually copied the Russian concentration camps.

I kind of believe my great grandfather came here, shed his Judaism and identified as Christian to avoid the types of problems his family had endured in Lithuania.

Any people interested in genealogy or research in this vein, please let me know.