Trip to Ukraine

https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/5876643409774065528/8641803661322871702>LVIV July 1. 2009 Finally made it to Lviv after a couple of mishaps. My flight was delayed out of Seattle and I wound up getting to Frankfurt too late to make any connections. Luckily Bruce had me upgraded so I got to hang out in the 1st class lounge. The Lufthansa ground staff were great and they rerouted me to Munich for an overnight stay. It was a pain in the ass but a terrific flight. I landed in Lviv this noon and it was immediately apparent that this place was from another age. The airport reminded me of China in the 80's. If any of us arriving passengers neglected to complete the departure information or made a mistake on their form, the female customs officer barked at us to get out of line and fix the problem. The building must have been built in the Hapsburg empire, run-down and antiquated. I don’t know what it was in its past life but it had a looong way to go as an airline terminal. Anyway everything else has been pretty smooth. The people I am meeting up with are absolutely delightful. They are all Polish Jews who grew up in Warsaw and surroundings. One is a fascinating woman named Genia. Genia’s mother threw her and her sister over the ghetto wall in wicker baskets to save them when Genia was two and her sister Esther was 6 months. She doesn't know what happened to her sister who, if alive, may not know her identity. Genia herself was raised by a kindly Christian couple who treated her as a daughter. She knew she was Jewish though because she has vivid memories of having to hide until she was over four years old lest anyone discover her existence. She learned that her father died in Warsaw and her mother was burned to death in a small work camp at 23 years old. She remains haunted by her past. She became a lawyer, a painter and an author and has lived all over the world. Presently she divides her time between Israel and the Pyrenees in France. She told me she was often teased for her obsession with the war and her heritage. I told her I could empathize. The others are related to one another. Marek and his sister Alicja and their cousin Joanna all grew up in Warsaw. Marek and Alicja’s parents and Joanna’s father were from Sambor and survived in hiding. Their parents didn't want to leave Poland after the war. “Why”? I asked Alicja. Her reply was “they had simply had had enough”. So they moved to Warsaw where the children grew up. Marek and his wife live now in Israel. His wife, Ruth is a pediatrician and grew up in Silesia. Her parents were sent to Siberia during the war but returned to Poland after liberation. Jews were exiled in 1968 after the six day war when Poland was aligned with the Soviet Union. Ruth's parents took her to Israel in 1968 but Marek and Alicja's parents went to Sweden instead. Joanna's father had died and her mother wasn't Jewish so she stayed in Warsaw. She moved to the U.S. and lives in rural Massachusetts. She is an artist. Alicja married a Swede and raised her two children in Gothenberg where she and her husband keep a home but now reside in Brussels. They lived in the U.S. for three years and Alicja said the experience changed her life. Prior to living in Oregon and North Carolina, she kept her Jewish heritage to herself. But she found communities who were proud and open All of them speak Polish fluently along with several other languages. I'm the only one who doesn't speak Polish but they speak English and have been most kind to include me in everything. LVIV Today we went to an art gallery in Lviv and just walked around the city. The city's architecture is breathtaking. This is one of the most beautiful cities at least from an architectural standpoint. Most of the buildings were built under the Hapsburg reign and they are ornate and intricately adorned. Still though it feels a little third world (or at least second). Tomorrow we are again touring around and I am trying to get hold of a local Rabbi to meet with us who is somewhat a historian of the Jewish Lviv community. We are visiting other towns but will go to Sambor on the week-end which is really the whole basis for our trip. None of us has been there and are all as obsessed with our family histories as I am. Ah Kindred spirits. I will write more tomorrow. Carol Sage-Silverstein "When I was young I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people". --- Abraham Joshua Heschel What a day. We went to the Jewish quarters of Lviv-both the upper and lower classes. There were distinct quarters here in the city for each ethnic group and up to the 19th century they would be enclosed by gates that were locked in the night (so they couldn't get out and mix with one another, I guess). The Jewish quarter is not where the ghetto was. I took a number of photos of buildings that must have had mezuzahs on the doorways before the war. We saw a empty lots where synagogues once were but had been either bombed or burned by the Germans. In the poorer quarter there was a Rynek (square) where housewives gathered water at the ancient well and collected gossip. Our guide Olga is a historian and she explained all the sites and their significance. Who lived where, what their livelihoods might have been, where the intelligentsia prayed. Then we went to the ghetto. Or what is left of it. There is in actuality, only one building, a former maternity hospital where Ukranians and Germans threw Jewish newborns out the windows for sport. It was in a suburb of Lviv, (called Lvov under the Soviets but Lemberg prior to World War II). Jews didn’t live in this section before the War; it was a very poor area and inhabited by peasants. When the Nazis invaded they sent all the poor peasants that lived there to move into the Jews' houses and sent the Jews to live in theirs, tripling the population size in the same few blocks. Olga took us to the Janowska work camp and told us some pretty horrific stories. Joanna was pretty shaken afterward when she recalled that her father had been in Janowska and escaped. It was raining pretty hard so we were unable to get out and walk about and that was just as well. It was not what I have come for. We also went to the railroad yards where thousands, maybe millions of Jews, Gypsies and others were put into cattle cars and sent to Belzec and Treblinka. They came from all over from Moldova, Ukraine Roumania, Eastern Poland and Hungary. It was sickening to think that these same tracks held such terrible secrets. In the evening we visited a synagogue run by an orthodox rabbi and his wife from New York. ULTRA ULTRA orthodox I might add. It is the only actual working synagogue in Lviv and probably all of Western Ukraine. The service was (naturally) separated by the sexes with the women in the balcony behind a lace curtains (so we old dames wouldn't distract the praying men downstairs). Nice to know we are still considered a distraction. The Rebbitzin is pregnant with her 10th child. They have been in Lviv for 16 years gathering in what is left of Jews in western Ukraine. There was a group of New York college age kids who had all been born in the former Soviet Union and were exploring their roots. Everyone was invited to a kiddush dinner that was out of this world. Gefilte fish, chicken soup, salads, tzimmes and kugel were served. I will be back at the gym when I get home. I thought the rabbi was a bit much, kind of a blow-hard but everyone seemed to enjoy his amusing questions, pronouncements and interpretations. He was funny but I must admit but I had enough after a couple of hours. Nonetheless it was a chance to see an amazing miracle of a community coming back to life after 60 years of loss. Tomorrow I will send photos and I will send you the link. Internet is really slow. love Carol ZHUKIEW Today we went to the small town Zhukiew (pronounced Jew-kee-ev). This is a very old town with historical influence (mostly Polish history that I’d never known of). We visited a wooden church built in 1720 that was pretty amazing. The priest was a sweetheart and interrupted his lunch to open the doors and show us around. I think he is as gay as the ace of spades, just entre-nous and that can’t be easy in this conservative society. He sang for us and explained the church history. He couldn’t have been nicer and when Marek told him we were Jewish he blessed us twice. We visited an ancient synagogue destroyed during the war but slowly being renovated. Funding has dried up recently so reconstruction is on hold. I believe it is from the 14th or 15th century. It was truly awe inspiring. We had to step down to get into the main sanctuary because synagogues had to be lower in height than churches. The Jews got around that requirement by simply lowering the floor. When the Germans invaded they burned the synagogue, locking the parishioners inside. As I walked around snapping pictures I stumbled upon the burnt wood still lying there untouched. We visited an outdoor market too, Lots of old ladies in babushkas. I bought some sour cherries that were delicious. This is a really poor country. There is virtually nothing here to buy. But the architecture is incredible. Everywhere you look the buildings are adorned with carvings on the facades. Talk about curb appeal. I've learned a lot more than I expected about the circumstances leading up to the holocaust and while it doesn't justify any of the monstrous behavior of the Ukrainians it does explain some of their hatred of the Jews. Before this trip I wasn't aware of the events prior to that time or how Ukrainians suffered and I have heard some astounding accounts of unimaginable cruelty experienced by them from the Soviets. Millions of them died from Stalin’s failed agricultural experiments that resulted in the holodmor also known as the Terror-Famine or the Great Famine. I didn’t know that. When the war began and the Soviets held this area for two years (1939-1941) the Jews naturally supported them as opposed to the Nazis. Jews were put in positions of authority, like my great uncle. Ukrainians seethed. They were already plenty antisemitic to begin with, so this just made their blood boil. I had always heard that my Uncle Abraham was the Postmaster of Sambor. I never believed the story because Jews were usually not given government jobs at least of any stature. But it appears that the Russians gave this privilege to the Jews in those early war years because they didn’t trust the Poles nor the Ukrainians. When the Russians left and the Germans invaded, they gave the Ukranians free reign to do what ever they wished to the Jews. Unfortunately I can only surmise that my great uncle and his family endured the very worst of holocaust experiences. In my very limited exposure I understand that many Ukrainians have been (and some are still) uneducated, unworldly, and easily led. The religion permeates everything in this society. We went to an opera this evening and the entire cast were crossing themselves on stage and carrying religious flags (without any relevance to the plot). You can't go more than a block without a church, or a religious statue. I saw one Black person today (obviously a foreigner) and there are no visible minorities. It's bizarre. I can see how the Germans and the Nazi ideology would have appealed to them. Tomorrow we are going to Drohobych and then finally Sambor on Monday. The rest of the group are leaving on Tuesday and I will try and find an English speaking guide to take me back there if there is anything more to see. Carol Sage-Silverstein DROHOBYCH This is going to be a short entry tonight because it's been an overwhelming day. We went to Drohobych (pronounced Droh hoe bitch). It is a rather large town (I think about 200,000 people) and there were about 11,000 Jews there before the war. There are 200 now. We visited the Choral Synagogue which was completely destroyed and a graveyard that has been vandalized and overgrown. Most of our tour was given through the lens of the famous writer and artist named Bruno Schulz. I had never heard of him but was very impressed with his drawings and would like to read some of his works (original works were entitled: Cinnamon shops but are called Street of Crocodiles in English. You can google him if you're interested. We walked around and I think what has impressed me the most is how elegant many of the homes are. Most have not been kept up. I had always imagined that the people in the "old country" lived in poverty. Some of the houses were quite lovely. I took some photos of the inside of one of the townhouses and you can see how exquisite they must have been at one time (mosaic floors, grand arched doorways, etc.) Some teenage boys who now live in the house were somewhat suspicious as to why I was in their hallway taking photos but I think it's always better to offer apology than ask for permission. Anyway I can always play the dumb foreigner. We saw a 14th century wood church that is now a museum. There are no shortage of churches here. That's for sure. BRONICA (pronounced Bronitza) After lunch we were supposed to visit some natural springs where people take restorative waters. So when we stopped by the side of the road next to a statue and walked into the woods I thought we were going for some spa treatment. Because everyone was talking in Polish I just kind went along. After we walked for a while down a path we found ourselves deep in the forest. I noticed a large rectangular concrete slab. What was that? Then I saw another. And another. There were, I think 17 of these slabs within a few acres. As I got closer I saw Stars of David on each. We were in the middle of a mass grave. 10,000 people were murdered there over a few days. I wasn't prepared for that. It was surreal. We lit candles and said kaddish. Mosquitoes were swarming all over us and we were bitten from head to toe, but inexplicably when we left the bites disappeared. Genia said, "The mosquitoes probably knew we were Jewish". Then we went to the mineral springs but I just wasn't in the mood. Tomorrow, we go to Sambir and all this has been leading up to that. The focus was on the family. My focus and my family that is. I came here to see where my uncle and his wife and two daughters and all my paternal ancestors lived. And died Yesterday was such an traumatic day that after one glass of wine (well maybe two) I fell into a hard, deep sleep and couldn’t write a thing. On the way to Sambir the driver pulled off the side of the road and we followed another dirt path. We were next to the former shtetl of Rudki. There were gravestones in the woods, different from the slabs we had seen in Bronica the day before. The Germans had forced the Jewish inhabitants of Rudki to pull out the headstones in their cemetery and make a small road paved with them. After the war, some Jews came to remove them from the ground and place them in this small wooded area. Olga pointed out where just behind them in a ravine overgrown with wildflowers rested the murdered Jews of Rudki. I pulled out some of the moss from the stones but what was the point? It would only grow back. I don’t understand. The Jews of Rudki probably had rarely left their village, never knew any Germans, knew zero about international finance or any of the tropes the Nazis accused them of. They must have seen the Nazis as invading Martians pulling them out of their homes, forcing them into slave labor and killing them. For what unearthly reason? SAMBIR (Formerly Sambor) When we arrived in Sambir, we went to the former ghetto location and Jewish cemetery where I believe my uncle was shot in 1941. There was only one synagogue building left in Sambor but it was “sold” to a private enterprise and is now an electronics store. Sold? By whom? It belonged to a Jewish Community that simply doesn’t exist anymore. Surely “they” didn’t sell it. It stands adjacent to the old Jewish cemetery. Let me describe the cemetery. It’s huge, several acres… and empty. There is nothing there except one wall with bullet holes in it. The headstones were buried in a large pit by the Soviets after the war. Nice. Marek had an appointment with the Mayor to negotiate a way to preserve the Jewish sites but we stopped first at the cemetery to light Yizkor candles and say Kaddish. There was a farmer there with his scythe who looked suspiciously at us and asked another peasant who we were and what we wanted. Two young men walked past us with fists and jaws clenched. Olga got a little freaked out. After the memorial prayer I walked to a small hut that was at the back end of the perimeter. It was abandoned and when I entered, it smelled like human feces. It was unbelievably filthy and strewn with garbage. I have seen this garbage all over the place here. The nature is quite beautiful but people throw their refuse all over the place. We left the cemetery; Marek went for his appointment to the Mayor’s office and Alicja, Joanna, Ruth, Olga and I went for coffee. It was weird, people stared at us, and service was cool, at best. Olga was getting all skittish and saying we had to stick together. I wanted no part of this. I had a mission to find my uncle’s house and I didn’t want my plans to be thwarted by anything else. Alicja said, “you need to think of yourself as a Polish Jew in this environment.” “Hell no” I thought. “ I’m not afraid and I don’t feel intimidated”. So after coffee my travel partners accompanied me to the former Sobieskiego Street where I had a pretty clear idea where my uncle and his family lived. Number 21. When we got to the address there was two different buildings that might have been his. One was an apartment building with the number 21 on it. The other was a house next to number 19 that had no number on it. The women told me that after the war the street names and numbers were changed from Polish to Ukrainian. So, what to do? I turned on the charm and spoke with a young couple at the apartment building. Within about 10 minutes they invited me up to their flat for coffee. They told me that the building had been all Jewish before the war but had been bombed so while the first two floors were intact the third had been rebuilt. Could this be the apartment? I didn’t know but they were so sweet, it didn’t really matter. They had a beautiful antique piano that I tried not to stare at because my cousin Sabina played the piano. I had heard stories that she dragged her piano to the ghetto with her. Maybe it was hers? Probably not. In any case the woman, Viktorya told me she was part Jewish and that there was no need to be concerned with our safety. So much for Olga’s warnings. The group had walked on and didn’t even realize I had disappeared. After I left the couple in the apartment building, I asked some old ladies about the building, but they didn’t know anything and finally I found an old woman who spoke French who helped me. She took me to the unnumbered house and knocked on the door. There was no one home but there was some missing concrete on the side of the door that might have been a mezuzah at one time. The neighbors didn’t know anything either but everyone wanted to know why I was so interested in this house. I explained it was for my family research and they said, “well you got a photograph, that’s good enough”. It seems that the Ukrainians are terrified that the Jews will come back and try and retrieve their property. Nothing more to see so I left and met my traveling companions at the Rynek. What fascinated us all though was that Marek, Alicja and Joanna’s parents’ house was just down the block and across the street. So it was almost certain that they all knew one another. Maybe we were even related. All this way from so many far flung places in the world and they had been from the same block! By the time I met up with the group they were panicked that I had been missing but I got what I came for. Marek came back from the Mayor’s office less than satisfied. The Mayor was glad to hear that we weren’t asking for the crosses to be removed from the cemetery. But he wouldn’t give Marek a pre-war town map because it is a “state secret”. That’s what he said, “ A state secret”. Yeah. A secret because the Jews and Poles who lived there before the war might want their property back so they won’t let them or their heirs know where the properties were. He said we could put up a memorial at the cemetery but the Jews would have to pay for it and he couldn’t guarantee it wouldn’t be vandalized. There is so much poverty here. The Ukrainians steal the memorial plaques for the metal, they steal everything not nailed down. They barely have any teeth and forgive me, but a lot of them look kind of off. I think it is probably fetal alcohol syndrome. They have nothing. Except churches. Many, many opulent churches with gold doors and copper roofs made with money from abroad earmarked for that purpose only. They could probably use some funds for seeds or industry I would think. Or a dentist for God’s sake. RADLOVITZE I will never really be sure as to what exactly happened to my family. A woman whom I'd met thirty years ago, who confided that she was my cousin Sabina’s best friend told me she had been shot in the woods when she was 20 years old. That would have been in Radlovitze, a small village about 5 km from Sambor. At the liquidation of the ghetto, the Germans took the last surviving Jews to a clearing in the forest and murdered 7,000 of them. I believe this is most likely where Sabina, her mother and sister were killed. As we drove down the road to the site I looked out the window and couldn’t believe what I saw. There were swarms of mosquitoes dive-bombing the windows of the car. I have never seen mosquitoes that size. They must have been the size of horse flies. No shit, I was afraid to get out of the car. But I had to, this is what I had come to do, to place stones with my aunt and cousin’s names on them and say Kaddish for them. Within SECONDS I was covered with bites. Jesus, it was unbelievable. They were even biting the driver and he wasn’t Jewish. There was the same garbage strewn around. What the fuck is wrong with these people? Have a little respect for God’s sake. It was sickening. There are three sites at Radlovitze and they are overgrown now. Aside from the garbage and the monster mosquitoes it was strangely placid. The sun was shining, there were wildflowers and it was so peaceful. We kept imagining that here were these poor people, naked, terrified, being tormented by the mosquitoes, screaming and now it was so bucolic, so pastoral. You would never find this place in a million years, it is buried deep in the woods. I placed my stones with each of my relatives’ names on them and said good-bye. I had a dream about a year ago that Sabina told me to leave her alone. I don’t believe in the afterlife or any traditional God so I attribute this to my overdramatic imagination. Still it’s time to leave her in peace. STARY SAMBOR After lunch we went to Stary (old) Sambor where my paternal grandfather’s family was from. The mayor of that town is personally interested in restoring the old synagogue but has run out of money so it sits boarded up. We drove to the ancient cemetery outside of Stary Sambor. There the graves are over 500 years old and have been left intact. Well ,they were toppled over but a survivor named Jack Gardener from Canada had them set up right again. Unfortunately Mr. Gardner has passed away and his children are either unable or unwilling to commit any more funds. It’s just as well. Everything Mr. Gardener restored has been either vandalized or overgrown. I wish I could read Hebrew better because I’m sure all the Wahrsagers are buried there. At the entrance to the cemetery were a pile of headstones. The Ukranians like the light colored stones so they remove them for construction materials and kitchen counters. They had broken the gate and stacked some stones obviously aiming to return for them. Can you imagine? I just wanted to get back to our driver. He kept himself distant from us even though he could converse with everyone but me and ate his meals with us. By the end of the third day, he was lighting candles at the gravesites alongside us. He was a bit bewildered about these children and grandchildren who came all this way to go to the cemeteries of their relatives. But by last night I think he “got” us. I sensed he liked us and while he might not have understood what we were doing he respected it. IT’S NOT THE CATSKILLS ANYMORE Remember the Rabbi and his wife? Well she came to pick me up today with her five kids under seven years old ) in a taxi (with no seat belts mind you) and brought me to the Jewish community’s summer camp. “Okay, I thought, “ she’s gonna hit me up for money, I get it”. By the time I toured the school and camp I was totally blown away. This Brooklyn Rabbi and his Rebbitizn (pregnant with her 10th child) have spent the last 16 years gathering the remnant of the Jewish community here and offering them a place to belong. She told me about the families who send their children here. Most of them barely have any Jewish heritage but have some connection to what was once their past. Many of them have alcohol, drug problems, abuse and domestic violence issues. She said when they first came 16 years ago, her husband had encouraged her to visit people’s homes. She was reluctant to do so but he said, “you need to see how people live to understand them.” One day she brought food to a family and offered to put it in their refrigerator. When she opened the door, it was completely empty. And they had several kids. She said she broke down and cried. Since that time they put together a really impressive building with funds donated to them by the Lauder foundation, complete with a music room, computer room and immaculate kitchen. Since the recession, the funds have dried up though. The grass is totally overgrown but they can’t afford a lawn mower. What moved me most was when she told me that they invited gentile kids from the handicapped children’s school to visit their school. The kids spoon-fed the children in wheelchairs and sang and danced with them. She overhead a tearful Ukranian mother say to another, “the Jews accepted us when nobody else did”. They have taken these deprived kids in Lviv and sent them to another of their camps in Kiev, away from their dysfunctional homes. She never asked me for a dime. If this trip would have been purposely orchestrated it couldn’t have been more perfectly scheduled. At first I believed that the first few days’ tours were simply background noise and there was nothing to investigate but my own family’s story. I decided that I could dismiss the Ukrainians but instead they have taught me how poverty, ignorance and resentment can only lead to no good. Letting people rot in their prejudices just pickles their souls. And somebody always gets hurt. I’m not sorry I’ve come here. I had to come here. My family doesn’t exist anymore and there is little more I will learn about them. It’s taken me 33 years to get here and let it go. Tomorrow with Olga I’m meeting a historian who is going to look into the Lviv archives to get whatever data is left. And that’s it. More or less. HOW I ENDED UP IN UKRAINE WITH TOTAL STRANGERS Marek and I met on the web. It’s too complicated to explain so I just wanted to tell you about the people I am traveling with. They are Marek, his wife Ruth, Alicja, Joanna, Genia and Olga.. Marek (Marian/Meir) and Alicja (Ala) are brother and sister. Their parents were both survivors from Sambor. They were in hiding together under a pig sty in a kind Ukrainian man's farm. They married right after the war. Joanna (Yohanna)is their younger cousin. Her father was their mother’s brother. He was one of the very few Jews who was able to escape the infamous Janowska labor camp. All of the cousins grew up in Warsaw. In 1968 Poland deported the remaining Jews after the 6 day war (the Soviets supported the Arabs) and Marek and Alicja’s family moved to Gothenberg, Sweden. Joanna’s father was dead and her mother wasn’t Jewish so they stayed in Warsaw. Alicja married a Swede and has lived in Sweden and raised two children. She and her husband are currently living in Brussels but keep their home in Gothenberg. She speaks Polish, Ukranian, Swedish, French, English fluently and is currently studying Flemish. Very worldly and well read. She lived in the States for 3 years. I am not sure what her career is because she was so multi faceted I never got around to asking her. Marek moved to Israel in the 70’s and married Ruth. He is an Engineer. Ruth was born in Poland to parents who had been deported to Siberia during the war and returned. Along with all the other Polish Jews she left Poland in 1968 and went to Israel. She is a Pediatrician. Joanna moved to New York sometime in the 80’s and lived there for 15 years working for Nomura. She now lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts. She is an artist, photographer and librarian. Genia was born in a ghetto in 1941 to very young parents. Her desperate mother threw her over the ghetto walls in a wicker basket in 1942 to Polish Christians who saved her life. Her 6 month old sister was thrown to a different couple but after decades of looking, Genia has never found her. She is an attorney who writes and paints and currently lives in France and Israel. She is haunted by her past. Olga is our guide. She was brought up about 100 miles from Lviv. She has degrees in Economics and History. She isn’t Jewish but is married to a Jew. The both of them have dedicated their lives to preserving the sites of the ancient Jewish community that no longer exists in this part of the world. She is tireless and incredibly knowledgeable. She looks like an angel. I suspect that she is. I had no idea of these people before I came but am connected to them in a way I couldn’t predict. For those of you who know of my obsession with all this for so long, these people are as obsessed as I am about the people who once lived in this town.