Volgadon is a he, not from Europe, born and bred in Israel, who spent a few years in Russia just recently. His parents are American, one half of the family isn't Jewish, but of very old Anglo-Scottish extraction, sprinkled with a few Norwegians and Danes. The other half, the Jewish half, mainly came from Czernowitz, an Ukrainian town under Austro-Hungarian rule, next door to Bessarabia. Also to fit into the mix are Pomeranians, Rumanians, Poles, Galicianers, and non-Jewish Danes.
He grew up in a town mainly populated by immigrants from North Africa and Iran, with a fair amount of Yemenites, Kurds and Iraqis and Indians, next door to both an old Jewish Rumanian town, a kibbutz of English and Yiddish speakers, and a Bedouin village. His grandparents lived on a farming community mainly consisting of Moroccans. His sister's babysitter was Persian and she spoke Farsi (long since forgotten) just as soon as she spoke in English and Hebrew. His early childhood coincided with the break-up of the Soviet Union and massive immigration from the USSR. He later moved closer to the Sea of Galilee, an area dotted with churches as well as mosques and synagogues. Not too far are several Jewish settlements, a Bedouin village and an Arab town of Muslims, Christians and Druze. In his area council there is also a Circassian village. The Circassians are from the Caucasus and were resettled here by the Ottomans. In his childhood he grew up with people listening to French and Spanish music, as well as American, British and ethnic things like Yemenite, Greek, Turkish, Persian and Arab music. That, as well as Israeli folksongs. The first song he recalls hearing was Old Maid in the Garrett, being played on the radio. Especially vivid is a childhood visit to the Armenian Quarter in Jerusalem. His parents were friends with a lot of people serving in the UN peacekeeping forces, espcially Austrians and Polynesians.
In the army he served with Caucasians, Georgians and Ethiopians.
Not to blow his own trumpet, but he has met and associated with people from nearly every corner in the world.   
There, a potted culturo-ethnical biography.


So, where was the nearest country, culturally, for a German Jew of Polish extraction, in the 1930s? Intersting question, isn't that?

Out of pure curiosity, why the library in Havanah?