>>509618647 (OP)Ashkenazim originated from the Holy Roman Empire; Germany and mostly Western and Southern Europe. However, they were pushed farther and farther eastward as a result of persecution, into Poland, Lithuania, Hungary etc.
As for the most burning question on this thread's mind: How did Jews actually get to Europe? The answer is the Roman Empire.
As the Roman Empire expanded into Judea, some Jews began to leave Israel and go into the Mediterranean, eg. Greece and Italy for many reasons. However the biggest factors in the transport of Jews was:
a) The taking of Jews as slaves and bringing them back to Rome.
b) General Jewish migration from Judea into Rome and more central European lands for commerce and general opportunities.
c) Jewish-Roman wars and slave revolts causing Jews to leave from Judea, many staying in Italy and Greece.
When the Jews, in noticeable numbers by now, close to 100,000, mostly slaves settled in Italy. Over hundreds of years in the Roman Empire they were granted progressively more rights and opportunities, and they began to settle more deeply within Europe. It is with this that mixture with Italians, Greeks, and Slavs began. As the Roman Empire collapsed, Jews generally migrated northward into Germany, and from there they became established communities, and Yiddish began to take form and there was admixture. From there, as a result of fleeing persecution and pogroms, they began to migrate eastward into present Eastern Europe, and along the way further mixed and spoke different languages.
You can be certain that the original Jews in Europe were Semites, brown and everything. Through gradual admixture and migration, they began to look 'whiter' over time.
In the present, real genetic studies put most Ashkenazim as a mixture of Semitic and European DNA.
>>509621747 More or less get's it right. They are not Khazars.