Dustin Hoffman — actor with roots in the Russian Empire
Dustin Lee Hoffman was born in Los Angeles on 8 August 1937, into a Jewish family descended from immigrants from Kiev, in the Russian Empire, and from Iasi, in Romania. In Russia the family name had been written Goikhman.
Much of what is known about the Russian side came to light only in 2016, when Hoffman appeared on the PBS genealogy programme Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates Jr. He did not know the names of his paternal grandparents. The research identified them as Frank and Esther Hoffman, who emigrated to Chicago from the area of Belaya Tserkov, now Bila Tserkva, in the Kiev Governorate.
It also traced the generation before. His great-grandfather Sam Hoffman was imprisoned and died soon afterwards. His great-grandmother Libba spent five years in a camp, went to Argentina, and later reached the United States; her Ellis Island record shows her arriving at the age of sixty-two. She lived with family in Chicago until her death in 1944, aged seventy-six. Shown the record, Hoffman said: "They all survived for me to be here."
He studied at the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music before turning to acting, trained at the Pasadena Playhouse, and won a Drama Desk Award and a Theatre World Award for the off-Broadway play Eh? in 1966. His film breakthrough came as Benjamin Braddock in Mike Nichols's The Graduate (1967), the first of seven Academy Award nominations. He followed it as Ratso Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy (1969), and was nominated again for Lenny, Tootsie and Wag the Dog.
He won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice: for Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), as a divorced father, and for Rain Man (1988), as the autistic savant Raymond Babbitt. In 1984 he played Willy Loman in the Broadway revival of Death of a Salesman, winning a Drama Desk Award, and the television version the following year brought him a Primetime Emmy.
He received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1999. In 2012, at seventy-five, he made his debut as a film director with Quartet, and the same year he was named a Kennedy Center honoree.
"Paternal grandparents Frank and Esther Hoffman emigrated from the Bila Tserkva (Belaya Tserkov) area of the Kiev Governorate to Chicago; great-grandmother Libba later followed by way of Argentina."
Migration storyTracing the roots — Bila Tserkva area, Kiev Governorate (now Ukraine)
His paternal grandparents, Frank and Esther Hoffman, emigrated to Chicago from the Bila Tserkva area of the Kiev Governorate; the family name had been written Goikhman. Another branch of the family came from Iasi, in Romania. Hoffman learned their names only in 2016, on the PBS programme Finding Your Roots.
Family of Jewish immigrants from Kiev (Russian Empire) and Iasi (Romania); the surname was written Goikhman in Russia. Grandparents Frank and Esther Hoffman came from the Bila Tserkva area; great-grandparents Sam and Libba Hoffman (documented in 2016 on Finding Your Roots).
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Bila Tserkva area, Kiev Governorate (now Ukraine). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.