I like hearing other people's family stories, which is almost certainly the genealogy nerd in me coming out. Thank you for sharing yours.

The capacity of several-generations-back happenings to influence my own views and emotional landscape is something that I only started thinking about after some counselling, and then later reading an interesting book called They F*** You Up.

Great point on the distinction between past and present oppression and trauma - while the experiences of my paternal grandparents have had an immense formative influence on my own life (and continue to do so), there's such a difference between carrying the scars of past suffering and experiencing it first-hand.