Jakub Dabinski

Guest post by Louis Regan

For the Twitter re-enactment, I have chosen to portray an immigrant to Milwaukee. The character is a fictional, composite character that I have created. His name is Jakub Dabinski and his Twitter handle is @JDabinski. He is Kaszub, from the Pomerania region of Poland, an area which constantly changed hands over the course of the First World War and the preceding decades. The idea was that Jakub had fought for the Allies in the war, and thought that with it over he might have a chance to settle down with his family, but the incursion of the USSR into central Europe disrupted these plans, and he decided to move to the New World with his family and begin a new life. Jakub travelled to Danzig, then by sea to New York, and from there by train to Milwaukee, where his brother had informed him of a growing community of Kaszub immigrants on Mitchell island. Most of my tweets will detail Jakub’s life in the community leading up to the birth of Zero. The community was based in fishing, and was very tightly knit, with whole families taking jobs. My tweets will detail what life was like on the island, Jakub’s interaction with other immigrants in the community, and, of course, his reaction to the birth of Zero. Following this event, the tweets will explore the forced eviction of communities from Mitchell Island in the 1920s and the impact on individuals at this time.