I remember having "potato pancakes" when I was a kid. No jewish ancestry but my Mom's side is from Galicia (a region right on modern border between Poland and Ukraine now) so maybe it's an ethnic food there as well.
Didn't know that, but I asked pointedly about the possibility and was told no. Supposedly the family was land-owning but my grandfather was the 7th son and got money instead of land, and used it to emigrate to America in the late 19th century. Everyone was baptised Orthodox (oddly, Greek orthodox, although they spoke Russian).