Questions about leaving one country for another
Start with the last address, not the journey. "What was the last place you lived before you left, and how many rooms did it have?" The leaving becomes possible to talk about once the room it started in exists again. MemoriesBox asks it in the person's own language.
Three stories, and families only tell the third
Emigration is the leaving. Immigration is the arriving. Between them there is a crossing, which is usually the part with no photographs of it.
Almost every family that moved country tells the arriving story — the first winter, the first job, the accent, the shop where nobody understood the word for yeast. It gets told because it has a happy ending and because the children were there for it. The leaving and the crossing get told much less often, and they are the parts that disappear entirely in one generation.
53% of Americans cannot name all four of their grandparents (OnePoll for Ancestry, March 2022, n=2,113). In families that crossed a border the loss runs faster than that, because the names themselves change at the crossing: spellings are altered by a clerk, patronymics are dropped, a village is renamed by a government, and the country on the birth certificate no longer exists under that name.
Two things before the questions: ask in the language the memory happened in, and if the leaving was not voluntary, the ordinary version of these questions is wrong. Both are dealt with below.
Start here
The place, before the journey. Nobody has to be brave to answer any of these.
| Ask | Then ask |
|---|---|
| What was the last place you lived before you left? | How many rooms, and who slept where? |
| What could you see from the window? | What time of year is it in your head when you picture it? |
| Which shop did you go to most? | Who was behind the counter, and what were they called? |
| What did the street smell like? | Was that different in winter? |
| Who lived upstairs or next door? | What happened to them afterwards? |
| What was on your family's table on an ordinary day? | Where did it come from — a shop, a garden, or someone's brother? |
The middle of the conversation
Deciding, or not deciding
| Ask | Then ask |
|---|---|
| When did you first hear the idea of leaving said out loud in your house? | Who said it, and who disagreed? |
| Who went first, and who was left waiting? | How long between them? |
| What did you have to get, and from which office? | How many times did you go back to that office? |
| Who told you it was a mistake? | Have you spoken to them since? |
| What was the last day like? | Who came to say goodbye, and who did not? |
The crossing
| Ask | Then ask |
|---|---|
| What did you carry it all in? | Is that bag still anywhere? |
| What did you bring that you did not need? | Why that, out of everything? |
| What did you have to leave behind? | Who has it now, if anybody? |
| How long did the journey take, door to door? | Where did you sleep on the way? |
| What was the first thing you ate on the other side? | What did you think of it? |
| Who checked your papers, and what did they ask you? | What did you understand of what they said? |
The first year
| Ask | Then ask |
|---|---|
| What was the first address? | Who else was living in that flat? |
| What was the first job? | What were you qualified to do at home, and what did you do here? |
| Who was the first person who was kind to you? | What did they do, exactly? |
| What was the first thing you bought that was not necessary? | What did that cost, and what were you earning? |
| What food could you not get? | What did you use instead? |
| When did you stop converting the prices in your head? | What year would that have been? |
Language
| Ask | Then ask |
|---|---|
| What was the first sentence you learned that you actually needed? | Where were you standing when you had to use it? |
| What did people not understand when you said it? | How did you learn to say it their way? |
| What do you still count in? | What do you pray in, or swear in? |
| What did you stop saying in public? | Do you still say it at home? |
| Which of your children's words do you not have in your own language? | Which of yours do they not have? |
Going back
| Ask | Then ask |
|---|---|
| Have you been back? | What was still there, and what was gone? |
| Who did you look for? | Did you find them? |
| What did you take with you when you went back? | Who was it for? |
| If you could see one street again, which one? | What is on it? |
Questions to save for later
These are heavier than they look on the page. They need a session or two behind them, and for some families they need a great deal more than that.
| Ask | Then ask |
|---|---|
| Who did not come with you? | When did you last speak to them? |
| What were you called at work, and was it your name? | Who started that? |
| What did you have to be quiet about here? | For how long? |
| Do you feel you got what you left for? | Would you do it again, knowing all of it? |
| What do you think my generation lost by being born here? | What do you think we gained? |
When the leaving was not a choice
If someone left under threat — war, occupation, expulsion, a border that moved without them — then "when did you decide to leave" is the wrong question. There was no decision, and the question implies there was one.
Ask instead about the moment of knowing. "When did you know you were going?" "What happened the day before?" "What were you carrying when you actually walked out of the door?" Those are answerable without asking somebody to account for a choice they never had.
Everything else on this page still applies, with one change: the save-for-later table is not later, it is only if they raise it. Do not go looking. People who have left that way generally know exactly which subjects they can hold and which they cannot, and the way they signal it is by changing the subject. Let them. Record whatever they will give you and stop when they stop. There is a related page for families of serving and fallen soldiers at questions about war and service.
Ask in the language it happened in
Memory is stored in the language it was made in. A woman who has spoken English for forty years will still count in Ukrainian, still swear in Russian, and will find the kitchen of her childhood much easier to describe in the language that kitchen was in.
So let them answer in their first language even if yours is poor, and record it anyway. Not understanding all of it in the room does not matter, because the recording is not for this afternoon. A grandchild, a translator or a transcript can do the rest later, and what you keep is the sound of somebody speaking easily rather than doing a second language for your benefit.
In practice: ask in whatever mixture works, let them switch mid-sentence, and never correct a word. MemoriesBox runs in English, Russian, Ukrainian and Spanish for this reason, and the recordings stay in the European Union — see where your recordings actually live.
Names
Spend a session on names alone. What the family name was before it was changed, who changed it and at which desk, what the village was called then and what it is called now, which country's paperwork the birth certificate is on, what your grandmother was called at home as against on documents, and what everybody's diminutives were.
Names are the thread that genealogy runs on, and they are the first thing a border eats.
The question that usually works when nothing else does
What did you bring that you didn't need?
Every family that moved has one: a set of good cups, a coat for a climate that never came, a photograph album, a jar of soil, a school certificate for a system that no longer exists, a sewing machine carried by two people onto a train.
It works because it is a question about an object, so it can be answered in four words, and because the answer is always slightly absurd and the person telling it knows that. It gives them permission to be funny about something serious. And it is never really about the object. What comes next is who packed it, what was left behind to make room for it, and what they thought they were going to need on the other side — which is the truest description anybody ever gives of the day they left.
Questions people ask
What should I ask my grandparents about immigrating?
Start with the place they left rather than the journey: the last address, the rooms, the shop, the neighbours. Then ask what they carried, what they left behind, and what the first year was like. The arriving story is usually the one the family already knows.
How do I ask about a war or about leaving under threat?
Do not ask when they decided, because there may have been no decision. Ask when they knew they were going, what happened the day before, and what they were carrying when they walked out. Then follow only where they lead.
Should the interview be in their first language or mine?
Theirs, if there is a choice. Memories come back more completely in the language they were made in, and a recording of someone speaking easily is worth more than a tidier one in your language. Let them switch mid-sentence and do not correct anything.
What if I do not speak their language well enough to follow up?
Record it anyway and get the follow-ups afterwards. Ask short questions, use names and objects, and let long answers run without interrupting. A transcript, a relative or a translator can open the recording later. Nothing is lost except your comfort in the room.
Related: Questions to ask your grandmother · When they say there's nothing to tell · For families split across countries · Where your recordings actually live · All the question pages
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