Sunday, April 15, 2007
Lutsk
We arrived back from Ukraine a week ago and it has been an overwhelming task to try to get it all down to post to the blog. So, we’ve broken it up by city, Lutsk, Lviv and Kiev, to shorten the postings. We’ve included a few photos from the trip, but you can see the full album at princessandthegeek.shutterfly.com. Parts of these posts are descriptions and parts are what I wrote in my journal while we were traveling. Jamie and I were so moved by the experience that we are working on finding a way back to Ukraine. We’ll keep you posted. Also, we’d like to give another huge thank you to those of you who donated towards this project. Your contributions were more valuable than you could have imagined. Thank you.
Sunday
We arrived in Kiev, confused and anxious, not sure what was in store for us. We met our translator, Tanya, said goodbye to the other students and the three of us (me, Jamie and Matt) headed for a long drive to Lutsk. We had a nice dinner and crashed in bed.
Monday
We walk a short way from the hotel and stop at a large blue building. We’re here [at the synagogue], Tanya announces. I can’t believe it. I thought we were going to a secret underground room somewhere. Here is a big beautiful building.
Inside we are greeted by Serge who we met the night before. He takes us upstairs to a small room where we meet a number of women. He introduces them to Tanya and they all laugh. This is her synagogue and she is clearly at home. They talk quickly and loudly. Everyone seems excited. The cantor comes up to Jamie and begins singing songs to him, wanting him to acknowledge which ones he knows. She sings quickly and waves many pages in front of him. We are all overwhelmed. After a very short time, Tanya announces we are done and now we will have a tour.
We begin in the library where we meet the program director. She tells us about the many clubs for the youth, the teenagers, the women who have survived breast cancer, the families, and on and on. She shows us beautiful art on the walls. Each piece was made by members of the art club. They are beautiful.
Then we are shooed into the computer room. Here Project Kesher teaches people, especially women, to use computers so that they can find work. Many people come here, men, children, Jews and non-Jews. But this is really for the Jewish women. Unlike other stark white computer rooms, this one is painted the color of an ocean; it is peaceful, calming, welcoming.
Quickly, this woman begins to tell us a story. It doesn’t seem to transition from the other things she’s taking about; she just wants us to know. The Jewish memorial in Lutsk, the place where many thousands of Jews were shot into pits, has been vandalized and dug up. They found out accidentally, meaning to show the site to another guest, finding the fences surrounding the site broken and human bones exposed to the cold air. She goes to a computer and shows us pictures of what they found, images of human bones above ground in clumps. There are pictures of men from the synagogue in tallit, reciting Kaddish over the bones which they reburied. Her eyes seem to plead with us and she says, ‘We are still in Egypt. We are not yet free.’ We all nod. There is nothing else to say.
Quickly, we are ushered into the sanctuary. It is very small and they don’t seem to want us there for long, maybe they are embarrassed or maybe they are in a hurry. We see room after room, the large hall, the clubroom, the art room, the youth group room. Tanya finds an album and shows us pictures of her when she started the youth group here. She looks around and says with a sigh, ‘When we began, we had no building. We just rented a space and they took down all the pictures we put on the walls.’ We look around at the posters and drawings and flags plastered all over the walls. Clearly, she is very proud of this place.
Later, we took a special drive to find the village where Jamie's great-grandparents were born, Rafalowka:
We drive for over an hour, reading, sleeping, bumping along the rough road. When we stop at a sign, Jamie asks, ‘Is this Rafalowka?’ Tonya says that the sign says New Rafalowka and the driver will get out to find out if there is an Old Rafalowka. After asking a man driving a horse-drawn hay cart, he tells us that there are an Old and a New Rafalowka. Which one do we want to see? We are sure we need Old Rafalowka. We don’t know why. Surely, there’re both old villages, but we say, ‘Go to Old Rafalowka.’
A few minutes later, we stop in front of a big painted sign to take a picture of Old Rafalowka. We slow down and stop in front of an old house. We are at the village counsel.
Inside, we find the counselwoman, on her visiting hours day. She takes us into what looks like a conference room and Tanya tells her we are looking for information about Avram Stoller. Stoller. She is familiar with the name Stoller. Do we know anything else about him? Jamie can’t remember. He becomes very anxious, shifting his weight and looking panicked. What can he ask? He’s come thousands of miles and brought a whole carload of people on an hour and half drive to find his grandfather’s village. Now he’s here. What can he say to make this meaningful and important?
The counselwoman looks at him with kind eyes and begins talking to us through Tanya. There were many Stollers. Today, in a nearby city, the mayor’s wife is named Stoller. She suggests that we find her. Jamie looks more nervous. He asks, ‘Does she know about the Jews in the village?’ ‘Before the war,’ she tells us, ‘there were many Jews here. This street was a Jewish street. Maybe 1500 people once lived here. 800 would have been Jewish. There were two synagogues, this house was once a Jewish house, the house across the street was also a Jewish house. There were many Jewish stores. There is still a Jewish cemetery.’
We are all quiet. We seem to know that we have found the right place. This is where Jamie comes from. But how can we find out more? He looks at me with anxious eyes and says, ‘I wrote this all down. I asked my grandmother. She told me so much and I didn’t bring any of it with me. How could I come all this way and not bring that piece of paper?’ ‘We didn’t know,’ I say. How could we know which questions to ask? The counsel woman invites us to sit down and talk with her, but we feel stuck and say that we will leave.
Outside, we take pictures of this once Jewish home and joke about 800 Jews with two synagogues. Was one Conservative and one Reform? Of course there would have to be two synagogues so that there was a place for them to not go to.
We get back in the car and try to find the Jewish cemetery. We drive along dirt roads, looking at sagging homes and chickens casually wandering the street. The driver asks a man on the road if he knows where the Jewish cemetery is. The man tells him that it was very old and is no longer around. He asks another man who says his father told him about a Jewish cemetery, but he’s never seen it. We turn around and try another way. We make a turn into a wooded area and drive along dirt tracks. When we reach the end, our driver gets out to look for the place. We sit, not really grasping where we are or what we might find. When the driver comes back, we follow him into the woods, still unsure where we are going. Nearby is a dump, then a road, and much father there is a cemetery in a clearing. Even from this distance we can tell that this is not our place, too many crosses. We continue to wander, climbing through pine cones and needles, feeling silly and unsure. We are stopped by a man working in the woods. He tells us the Jewish cemetery is right over there; we’ve already passed it. We look, but see nothing and walk in his direction.
Then, suddenly there is a cement stone covered in moss next to our feet. And we look closer and see bits of tombstones everywhere. We walk carefully now, not sure where graves and headstones are.
Many broken stones lay haphazardly around the ground, many under pine needles and dirt. We brush away what we can, looking for the name Stoller. But, there are no last names. All the graves are in traditional Hebrew, only first names and the parents’ names.
Still we look. Maybe something will be familiar. As we climb carefully though, reading what Hebrew is legible, the stranger says that these graves were dug up when the people were told there was gold in them. Now we begin to see what we are looking at. Time has not broken headstones, only greedy people. Time has simply begun to cover up what happened here. None of us seem surprised. The people here are poor and probably believed that Jews had money. We are not surprised, only sad. No one was here to care for these graves.
We continue to wander, looking at names and symbols, accidentally walking on stones covered deeply in the forest’s ground. The stranger speaks again. ‘There was no time for the Jews to escape. They were all killed here when the German’s came.’ I see Jamie’s face. He knows this is the place. He must have had family here. They must have been killed. I look at him and think of his great-grandfather that we know so little about. If he had not left this small village, for whatever reason he did, he would be somewhere in this ground. My husband would have never been born.
I take photograph after photograph, trying to capture our experience. Each one looks flat, confined. They do not show the hollow, broken stones, or the beautiful moss growing into the carved letters. They do not play the sounds of roosters and life happening just behind us in the village. And they do not show the serious faces of the stranger and our driver who are not Jewish, who know why we’re here, who look at us with sincerity and honesty and without hate or pity.
Matt asks us to say Kaddish with him. We should have a minyan for this prayer, at least 10 Jews present. We are missing more than half the requirement, but we gather together over one grave at random. The four of us recite the words while the two Ukrainian men watch. I wonder if they know what we’re doing, if they can guess what these words mean.
We walk back to the car and wash our hands, a cleansing ritual to separate the living and dead. We squeeze into the small car, turn around and slowly drive away. Matt says maybe we are the last Jews to see this graveyard, maybe we have said the last Kaddish. Or maybe not, I think. Maybe someone else will come one day, looking for answers, searching for roots. Maybe it will be us.
We leave Rafalowka quietly. It is not a surprise what we have found here, but it is not what we thought we would find. Jamie came searching for roots. Instead we found earth and pine needles and moss and growth, slowly covering the remaining Jews of Rafalowka.
Tuesday
We spend the day touring Lutsk. At night, we participate in the large community seder. We sit with the Netzer group (youth group). It is an energetic, enthusiastic seder with lots of music and dancing.
Sunday
We arrived in Kiev, confused and anxious, not sure what was in store for us. We met our translator, Tanya, said goodbye to the other students and the three of us (me, Jamie and Matt) headed for a long drive to Lutsk. We had a nice dinner and crashed in bed.
Monday
We walk a short way from the hotel and stop at a large blue building. We’re here [at the synagogue], Tanya announces. I can’t believe it. I thought we were going to a secret underground room somewhere. Here is a big beautiful building.Inside we are greeted by Serge who we met the night before. He takes us upstairs to a small room where we meet a number of women. He introduces them to Tanya and they all laugh. This is her synagogue and she is clearly at home. They talk quickly and loudly. Everyone seems excited. The cantor comes up to Jamie and begins singing songs to him, wanting him to acknowledge which ones he knows. She sings quickly and waves many pages in front of him. We are all overwhelmed. After a very short time, Tanya announces we are done and now we will have a tour.
We begin in the library where we meet the program director. She tells us about the many clubs for the youth, the teenagers, the women who have survived breast cancer, the families, and on and on. She shows us beautiful art on the walls. Each piece was made by members of the art club. They are beautiful.
Then we are shooed into the computer room. Here Project Kesher teaches people, especially women, to use computers so that they can find work. Many people come here, men, children, Jews and non-Jews. But this is really for the Jewish women. Unlike other stark white computer rooms, this one is painted the color of an ocean; it is peaceful, calming, welcoming. Quickly, this woman begins to tell us a story. It doesn’t seem to transition from the other things she’s taking about; she just wants us to know. The Jewish memorial in Lutsk, the place where many thousands of Jews were shot into pits, has been vandalized and dug up. They found out accidentally, meaning to show the site to another guest, finding the fences surrounding the site broken and human bones exposed to the cold air. She goes to a computer and shows us pictures of what they found, images of human bones above ground in clumps. There are pictures of men from the synagogue in tallit, reciting Kaddish over the bones which they reburied. Her eyes seem to plead with us and she says, ‘We are still in Egypt. We are not yet free.’ We all nod. There is nothing else to say.
Quickly, we are ushered into the sanctuary. It is very small and they don’t seem to want us there for long, maybe they are embarrassed or maybe they are in a hurry. We see room after room, the large hall, the clubroom, the art room, the youth group room. Tanya finds an album and shows us pictures of her when she started the youth group here. She looks around and says with a sigh, ‘When we began, we had no building. We just rented a space and they took down all the pictures we put on the walls.’ We look around at the posters and drawings and flags plastered all over the walls. Clearly, she is very proud of this place. Later, we took a special drive to find the village where Jamie's great-grandparents were born, Rafalowka:
We drive for over an hour, reading, sleeping, bumping along the rough road. When we stop at a sign, Jamie asks, ‘Is this Rafalowka?’ Tonya says that the sign says New Rafalowka and the driver will get out to find out if there is an Old Rafalowka. After asking a man driving a horse-drawn hay cart, he tells us that there are an Old and a New Rafalowka. Which one do we want to see? We are sure we need Old Rafalowka. We don’t know why. Surely, there’re both old villages, but we say, ‘Go to Old Rafalowka.’
A few minutes later, we stop in front of a big painted sign to take a picture of Old Rafalowka. We slow down and stop in front of an old house. We are at the village counsel.Inside, we find the counselwoman, on her visiting hours day. She takes us into what looks like a conference room and Tanya tells her we are looking for information about Avram Stoller. Stoller. She is familiar with the name Stoller. Do we know anything else about him? Jamie can’t remember. He becomes very anxious, shifting his weight and looking panicked. What can he ask? He’s come thousands of miles and brought a whole carload of people on an hour and half drive to find his grandfather’s village. Now he’s here. What can he say to make this meaningful and important?
The counselwoman looks at him with kind eyes and begins talking to us through Tanya. There were many Stollers. Today, in a nearby city, the mayor’s wife is named Stoller. She suggests that we find her. Jamie looks more nervous. He asks, ‘Does she know about the Jews in the village?’ ‘Before the war,’ she tells us, ‘there were many Jews here. This street was a Jewish street. Maybe 1500 people once lived here. 800 would have been Jewish. There were two synagogues, this house was once a Jewish house, the house across the street was also a Jewish house. There were many Jewish stores. There is still a Jewish cemetery.’We are all quiet. We seem to know that we have found the right place. This is where Jamie comes from. But how can we find out more? He looks at me with anxious eyes and says, ‘I wrote this all down. I asked my grandmother. She told me so much and I didn’t bring any of it with me. How could I come all this way and not bring that piece of paper?’ ‘We didn’t know,’ I say. How could we know which questions to ask? The counsel woman invites us to sit down and talk with her, but we feel stuck and say that we will leave.
Outside, we take pictures of this once Jewish home and joke about 800 Jews with two synagogues. Was one Conservative and one Reform? Of course there would have to be two synagogues so that there was a place for them to not go to.
We get back in the car and try to find the Jewish cemetery. We drive along dirt roads, looking at sagging homes and chickens casually wandering the street. The driver asks a man on the road if he knows where the Jewish cemetery is. The man tells him that it was very old and is no longer around. He asks another man who says his father told him about a Jewish cemetery, but he’s never seen it. We turn around and try another way. We make a turn into a wooded area and drive along dirt tracks. When we reach the end, our driver gets out to look for the place. We sit, not really grasping where we are or what we might find. When the driver comes back, we follow him into the woods, still unsure where we are going. Nearby is a dump, then a road, and much father there is a cemetery in a clearing. Even from this distance we can tell that this is not our place, too many crosses. We continue to wander, climbing through pine cones and needles, feeling silly and unsure. We are stopped by a man working in the woods. He tells us the Jewish cemetery is right over there; we’ve already passed it. We look, but see nothing and walk in his direction. Then, suddenly there is a cement stone covered in moss next to our feet. And we look closer and see bits of tombstones everywhere. We walk carefully now, not sure where graves and headstones are. Many broken stones lay haphazardly around the ground, many under pine needles and dirt. We brush away what we can, looking for the name Stoller. But, there are no last names. All the graves are in traditional Hebrew, only first names and the parents’ names. Still we look. Maybe something will be familiar. As we climb carefully though, reading what Hebrew is legible, the stranger says that these graves were dug up when the people were told there was gold in them. Now we begin to see what we are looking at. Time has not broken headstones, only greedy people. Time has simply begun to cover up what happened here. None of us seem surprised. The people here are poor and probably believed that Jews had money. We are not surprised, only sad. No one was here to care for these graves. We continue to wander, looking at names and symbols, accidentally walking on stones covered deeply in the forest’s ground. The stranger speaks again. ‘There was no time for the Jews to escape. They were all killed here when the German’s came.’ I see Jamie’s face. He knows this is the place. He must have had family here. They must have been killed. I look at him and think of his great-grandfather that we know so little about. If he had not left this small village, for whatever reason he did, he would be somewhere in this ground. My husband would have never been born. I take photograph after photograph, trying to capture our experience. Each one looks flat, confined. They do not show the hollow, broken stones, or the beautiful moss growing into the carved letters. They do not play the sounds of roosters and life happening just behind us in the village. And they do not show the serious faces of the stranger and our driver who are not Jewish, who know why we’re here, who look at us with sincerity and honesty and without hate or pity.
Matt asks us to say Kaddish with him. We should have a minyan for this prayer, at least 10 Jews present. We are missing more than half the requirement, but we gather together over one grave at random. The four of us recite the words while the two Ukrainian men watch. I wonder if they know what we’re doing, if they can guess what these words mean.
We walk back to the car and wash our hands, a cleansing ritual to separate the living and dead. We squeeze into the small car, turn around and slowly drive away. Matt says maybe we are the last Jews to see this graveyard, maybe we have said the last Kaddish. Or maybe not, I think. Maybe someone else will come one day, looking for answers, searching for roots. Maybe it will be us.
We leave Rafalowka quietly. It is not a surprise what we have found here, but it is not what we thought we would find. Jamie came searching for roots. Instead we found earth and pine needles and moss and growth, slowly covering the remaining Jews of Rafalowka.
Tuesday
We spend the day touring Lutsk. At night, we participate in the large community seder. We sit with the Netzer group (youth group). It is an energetic, enthusiastic seder with lots of music and dancing.
