One day, someone set their store—and only means of livelihood—on fire. (Not sure whether this was the family branch in Moldavia or in Odessa, Ukraine.)
They managed to contact the local firemen, who arrived...
...and set about to burning down the rest of the store.
My progenitors were left with nothing.
Forced to anyway start over and hoping for a life without such blatant and socially acceptable Jew-hatred, they came to America.
Because of this, they completely missed both World War I & the Nazi-driven genocide.
I can't imagine how distressing & frightening that whole situation was at that time of the arson.
But had they stayed, they & their children would've suffered terribly from the coming wars, and then Communism.
And they may not have survived.
So what must have seemed like the end of the world actually ended up being the salvation of themselves and their future descendants.