Sergey Brin gave $1 million to the charity that aided him

Person: Sergey Brin
Lived: b. 1973
Field: Technology
From: Russian-American

The story

Sergey Brin was born in Moscow in 1973 into a Russian-Jewish family. In 1977 his father, Mikhail, a mathematician, concluded that antisemitism in the Soviet Union meant the family had to leave. When they applied for exit visas in September 1978, Mikhail was fired, and Sergey's mother, Eugenia, also lost her job. For eight months they survived on temporary work, fearing that their request would be refused, as it had been for many refuseniks. In May 1979 the visas came through.

The family then spent time in Vienna and Paris while Mikhail secured a teaching post at the University of Maryland with help from the mathematician Anatole Katok. Throughout that uncertain period they received support from the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, known as HIAS. Founded by American Jews to help Jews fleeing pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe, HIAS was helping a great wave of Soviet Jewish emigrants, a movement that peaked in 1979. The Brins arrived in the United States on October 25, 1979, when Sergey was six.

Thirty years later, Brin had co-founded Google and become one of the wealthiest people in the world. In October 2009, on the 30th anniversary of his family's arrival, he gave $1 million to HIAS. The New York Times reported the gift under the headline "Billionaire Aids Charity That Aided Him". Brin told the paper that he would not have had the same opportunities in the Soviet Union or in present-day Russia, and that he wanted anyone to be able to achieve their dreams, which he saw as the society's mission. HIAS chairman Michael Rukin noted that, as a refugee himself, Brin understood the value of living in a country that lets people pursue their dreams.

The gift went to an organisation whose work had widened far beyond its origins. HIAS describes itself as the world's oldest refugee agency and estimates that the families of more than half of today's American Jewish community were helped by it at some point. It now serves refugees and displaced people of every religion, nationality and ethnicity.

Brin and his then wife Anne Wojcicki also gave extensively through their family foundation, including major support for Parkinson's research. The HIAS donation closed a circle: a child refugee once helped by strangers was now helping others making the same journey.