Justin Kroll
Staff Writer
On Wednesday, February 9, the National Honors Society held their second lunch lecture, featuring Mr. Pavel Lieb, biology teacher.
Lieb, a Milken alumnus, spoke about his family origins in Russia. He discussed his grandparents, who primarily lived in Moscow, and how he got to Los Angeles.
“Here’s an interesting part… my grandfather’s dad, so my great-grandfather, actually abandoned his two sons and actually escaped to China,” Lieb said. “So some of you sometimes dazzle with ideas of how I’m from China, but I’m not. But my grandfather did run away from the Russian revolution to Shanghai.”
Lieb’s grandfather on the other side of his family moved to the East Coast of the United States during World War I, and later to Los Angeles.
“So, to jump about 80 years down the line, it turns out that there’s this huge family who also has the same last name, L-I-E-B, that has actually lived in Los Angeles since 1920, but they’re actually our relatives,” Lieb said.
He moved to America when he was 16, during the collapse of the Soviet Union.
“In 1992, us – my family: my sister, my dad and my mom – once again repeated the voyage that my great-grandfather did, except that now we didn’t have to take a giant iron steamboat across Europe; we got a Delta flight from Moscow to land at New York City, and 45 minutes later we were on a plane to LA, where we actually reunited with our relatives living in California. And, you know, that’s kind of how it all came to be!”