PIC: For the Right to be Atheist, My Grandparents Came to the USA in 1900: Happy 4th of July

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As the 20th Century began, Wadja and Janik Jendrzewski moved from Poland to Indiana and opened a bakery, drawn by the Freedom to NOT be part of a religion in this country. Here is how they looked when they arrived:

They were Intelligentsia, my mother would tell me proudly, a burgeoning movement at the time in what later became the Soviet countries: People who wanted freedom to think, to entertain new ideas. But an oppressive Roman Catholic regime in Eastern Europe made the life they wanted impossible. So they moved into a Polish neighborhood in Gary, Indiana, where my mom Lucille and her sister Celeste were born. The couple in the picture arrived on a ship and immigrated through Ellis Island in New York in 1900, which is around the time this photo was taken.

Posted here today to remind readers of the real reasons we have freedom of religion in this country. So a person can profess any faith, even if it is only in the human mind.

My mom then married a sharp Chicagoan, who in the middle of the Great Depression, had a great job and was going to law school at night. He was also a German-Irish Catholic, and she agreed to go along with the rule, join his religion to marry him. She had no idea what she was getting herself into…

By Kay Ebeling (Who By The Way Loves Bible Studies but Is Not Religious)

Producer, The City of Angels Is Everywhere where this story first appeared here:

PIC: For Religious Freedom, the Right to be Atheist, My Grandparents Came to the USA
In 1900 Wadja and Janik Jendrzewski, pictured at right, moved from Poland to Indiana and opened a bakery. Fleeing the oppression of Roman Catholic Regimes in Eastern Europe, my ancestors came...

Story also posted on AlterNet this Morning:

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