Many years ago, my aunt Silvana Olive interviewed my grandparents, Leon and Cypora Olive. That interview provided a brief glimpse into their early life. We learned how they escaped the Holocaust going to Israel and eventually settling in the United States. It is this interview that piqued my interest in our family’s story and inspired me to research our history. The more I learned the more I wanted to share these findings with our extended family. As a result, you are now reading this book.

My goal in writing this book was to connect our personal lineage with the broader historical events that have shaped our ancestors’ journey. My intent is to do so by exploring our family’s history from settling in the Levant, through the diaspora into Europe. I will then look at the Holocaust and the impact on our family. Finally, I will discuss how our extended family moved forward and established themselves in Israel, the United States, and Australia (among other location).

To accomplish this I have, with the help of many others, constructed a detailed family tree as far back in time as possible. You can find it on Ancestry, just write to me and I will get you access.  While some lines of our tree will go back to the mid-1700s, most only go back to the early 1800s. 

Identifying members of our family all the way back to the 1700s is fantastic. However, to understand where we came from, we need to go back even further. I needed to embrace a new technology, DNA. Thanks to advancements in DNA testing, we now have a fairly good idea of our ancient history along a maternal and paternal line. These lines go all the way back to a Y-DNA Adam and a mitochondrial DNA Eve.[1]

However, our story is much more than just names and DNA. Our ancestors were part of establishing one of the richest histories known to man. To better tell this story I have leaned on both the Bible, Historical Studies, and our own family members stories. My goal has been to weave these sources together to create a better understanding of our heritage. By writing this, I know that I feel much closer to my ancestors, I hope you have a similar experience.

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[1] The Y-DNA Adam is in effect the father of all men alive today, just as the mitochondrial Eve is the mother of all living people. If interested in learning more, this is a good article, Genetic Adam and Eve did not live too far apart in time | Nature