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Simon Dubnow was born in 1860 to a poor Jewish family in Belarussian town of Mstsislaw and later became an authority of Jewish history and an activist. Due to his Jewish origin, he had to move to St. Petersburg, Odessa, Vilna (Lithuania), St. Petersburg (2nd time), Kaunas (Lithuania), Berlin and finally Riga (Latvia) after Hitler came to power. When Nazi troops occupied Latvia 1941, he was moved with thousands of other Jews to the Riga ghetto and was eventually killed. His life is a symbol of Jewish suffering in Eastern Europe in the first half of 20 century. Jews have been migrating from Germany and other European countries to Poland since the late middle ages where they were protected by Polish kings mainly for their economic contribution, but frequently persecuted by Christians whenever there was a pretext or the king's power was not strong enough. After Poland was annexed by Russia in the late 18th century, they became the object of systematic persecution by Russian government. This tragedy is parallel to the life of the author culminating in the Nazi Holocaust.