Google co-founder Sergey Brin says that anti-Semitism forced his family to emigrate to the United States in 1979 when he was a child. In an interview in Israel, where he was “visiting Google’s offices” and attending the conference organized by the President of Israel, Shimon Peres (President Bush attended also), Mr. Brin recounted how antisemitism in the former Soviet Union.
CNet summarized the main points of Mr. Brin’s interview (in Hebrew):
• Without a doubt the great suffering put on my parents in Russia because of anti-Semitism was the primary reason that they left Russia. And that has had a major influence on my life.
• My family had many challenges in Russia. My father wasn’t able to work in his chosen field. Everything we had in Russia, we had to leave behind and start from scratch. This gave me a different perspective on life.
• You know, we learned to make do without anything. To live on nothing. And this certainly influenced me.
• When you’re a Jew, you have a background of hardship, suffering, difficulties – and to turn that into success is part of the Jewish experience.
Both of Google’s founders as well as some of its top brass have been spending significant time in Israel, leading some to ask whether there is not some major deal brewing over there.
Filed under: Google Tagged: | antisemetism, Google, Sergey Brin
