EDITOR’S NOTE: Bob Farkas’ guest column was originally published in the Eastern New Mexico News, in Clovis, New Mexico, and is reprinted here with the author’s permission.

I NEVER MET MY GRANDFATHER on my mother’s side. I never met any of the male members of her family. They were crushed by Soviet tanks during a round of Russian adventurism.

My mother, her sister and her mom endured Russian assaults…