The People One Meets Along the Way

For me, the excitement of travel is about the people one meets along the way and this trip was no exception. It was filled with interesting characters with stories to tell. Amongst my group of 30 were many people I knew before and several whom I met for the first time. Some are close friends, some are acquaintances, some became new friends and others will remain acquaintances. Like all groups, it was fascinating to observe the group dynamics, the relationships, the eccentricities, the alliances and so forth. However, this piece is not about us. It is about “them”, the people in whose countries we were visitors.

The group assembles in front of the hotel

Listening to a talk in Odessa's Museum of Literature

I have told already of the lady whose life was saved by a woman on the way to Babi Yar; I have recounted the tale of Galina whose life was eminently better under communism and who now lives in abject poverty with her schizophrenic daughter, Zina. Now I wish to recount some of the stories of those with whom I had a fleeting engagements but whose stories are worth telling. Not, perhaps, because they are special or because they are extraordinary but because, in the context of their environment, they are ordinary. They exemplify the Jewish renaissance that is and has been taking place all over the Former Soviet Union and offer a small window through which to glimpse life in the FSU.

Netalya

The Soviet Union may have fallen but it will take at least a generation for the Soviet mind-set to dissipate. When you book a coach, it comes, not only with a driver, but with a guide as well. In Soviet times, this was to ensure that only the party line was being disseminated. However, I am really not sure what role this plays in the independent states of Ukraine and Moldova.  Perhaps it is the same role – hiding the truth from foreign visitors. They don’t want us straying into poverty-stricken areas; I am sure that the Ukraine does not want us to see the endemic anti-Semitism and racism we have heard about; they certainly don’t want us to see the clean-up operations that they are doing in the lead-up to the forthcoming UEFA Football championships. For instance, I have recently discovered that a massive clear up has taken place of the nation’s stray dogs. Dogs have systematically been rounded up, placed in individual sacks and incinerated alive. 

One of many stray dogs that I encountered

No, what the authorities want us to see is the wonderful culture, the positive historical influences and the beautiful buildings.

Our assigned guide in Odessa is Natalya, a diminutive woman in her 50s with Japanese features who proudly displays a cross around her neck and, on the second day we met, was wearing a jacket with a cross embroidered on it. Here is someone who is steeped in her Christianity and profoundly proud of her Christian faith. However, she seems to understand the Jewish perspective we are seeking. She uses words such as Yahrzeit, (the anniversary of a Jewish person’s death) she knows many of the Jewish communal players and knows all about the post-Soviet Jewish community beginnings.

Netalya

 I would love to ask her of her ethnic origins, how she came to look Japanese. However, that might be prying a bit too far. Instead, we chat about how she understands the Jewish community. It transpires that when the JDC first became involved, she worked as one of their translators and worked closely with my friend Stuart who was JDC’s director of Moldova at the time. She watched the fledgling community take off and worked alongside several of the movers and shakers. She was intrinsically engaged with the development of Jewish community activities from their inception.

Netalya about to take her seat as the synagogue service starts

Netalya listening intently to what Jeremy has to say about Jabotinsky

 As to her religious upbringing, like many Soviet citizens, she was brought up with no religion. She discovered that her father was Jewish and her mother a Russian Orthodox. At the fall of communism, she had a decision to make – follow one or the other or none. She chose Christianity. It almost sounds arbitrary and trivial. However, I am sure that her brief telling of the episode belies the soul searching that must have gone on in her mind to reach that conclusion.

Kira

In Kira we see true leadership. She is unassuming and modest and yet she has moved mountains. Trained as a musician, she first founded and led Migdal Or, an organisation staging Jewish musical theatre.  However, her huge achievement was to overcome enormous odds, during the early days of Ukraine’s independence, to establish a Jewish Community Centre in Odessa with a flourishing portfolio of activities, a large membership and boundless energy.

Kira, flanked by her assistant, watches the show her centre is staging for us

She purports to be secular and yet keeps her head covered in the Orthodox style whilst wearing modern garb. She does this in deference to her Charedi (ultra-Orthodox) husband. To ensure that such a marriage of disparate individuals endures is testament enough to her gruelling spirit; but to witness the remarkable centre that she runs and of which she has been the director since its inception 20 years ago, is awe inspiring.

Veronika

Veronika’s tale might be typical of any other in the Jewish community. I don’t know.  She is a young married woman of 27 with a 3-year-old son. She works for the JDC in Chisinau as Missions Manager. 

Veronika (in black-and-white striped T-shirt), entering the Kishinev Jewish centre

Her grandparents were from an island off the East Coast of Russia, called Sakhalin, in the Sea of Okhotsk just north of Japan. At the turn of the century two-thirds of the Russian population of 32,000 of Sakhalin were convicts. There were also several thousand native inhabitants. The natives are ethnically similar to all the other nations of the Pacific Rim. Veronika is blonde, so not derived from a native population. 

Her grandparents came to Kishinev as a young family to avail themselves of the bountiful fruit. Sakhalin is a sparsely populated, rugged island. It is cold, wet and remote with an abundance of mosquitoes. Her grandfather persuaded his wife to move on the basis that the difficulty that they had in obtaining fresh fruit would be overcome. To this day, Veronika’s grandmother argues with her grandfather, “have you had enough fruit yet?” She misses the old country.

Veronika grew up unaware of being Jewish and only found out at the age of 18. She and her husband experimented with religious Judaism for a while but they are now happy as secular Jews, expressing their Judaism through cultural avenues. Her grandparents, however, are still refusing to disclose their Judaism. They grew up in Soviet times and have lived through regime changes. They do not know what would be the attitude of any potential future regime so they keep their ethnicity quiet. They know that once disclosed, one cannot undo that disclosure about one’s identity.

I ask Veronika if she has travelled abroad. She tells me that she was in Israel last year as part of her work. It is not what she expected. She is extremely impressed with the infrastructure but aghast at the price of cars. She adds that she and her husband cannot afford to buy a car in Moldova but that the price of Israeli cars is even more expensive. She once contemplated emigration and perhaps Aliyah to Israel but now she considers it not to be economically viable and so in Moldova she stays, one of the poorest countries in the world.

Svetlana

Svetlana is our guide in Kishinev, assigned to us, like Netalya in Odessa, with the bus, to give us a taste of Moldovan life, sites and culture. She arrives very smartly dressed and teetering on high heels. She looks typically Russian and her command of English is not as good as that of Netalya.

We spend the morning visiting sites reflecting on the Kishinev pogrom of 1903 where 49 Jews were killed, many more were injured and hundreds lost their homes and livelihoods. Svetlana has never heard of this moment in her nation’s history. Our first stop is the Jewish cemetery where she struggles through the uneven terrain on her high heels.

Entering the Kishinev Jewish cemetery

Door to a secluded area in the Jewish cemetery

 On the bus, heading towards our next site of interest, she takes the microphone after Jeremy has finished talking about the pogrom and, as we pass Cathedral Park, she points out the beauty of the park and the splendid architecture and ornate finish of the central church, The Cathedral of Christ’s Nativity.  She stresses that we must pay it a visit. I don’t think she quite got what our group was all about.

Memorial to the Kishinev pogrom of 1903

A Tale of Two Cities

The story of Jews in the Former Soviet Union is one of pogroms, desecration, persecution, murder and emigration. In 1941, Jews comprised half of the population of Odessa and a similar percentage of Chisinau (Kishinev in Russian). Today it is 3% in Odessa.

Over 100,000 Odessan Jews died at the hands of the Nazis. Stalin restricted the return of many who had left. In the mass emigration of the 1970s and 1990s to Israel and the West, large numbers left. Jewish life under communist rule was restricted and subjugated. Whilst some underground activity went on throughout the Soviet Union, many Jews simply stopped practising, stopped disclosing their Jewish identity, stopped acknowledging their Jewish heritage. Today, the Jewish population of Odessa stands at around 30,000 and that of Chisinau between 15 and 20,000 . The true figure may be much larger than that due to some children never being told that they were Jewish in the Soviet era, never growing up to reclaim their legacy.

We first visit Odessa with its tales of Haskala (enlightenment), prominent Jewish thinkers, Zionist leaders and the like. We visit an Orthodox synagogue and see pictures of how it had functioned as a gym during the Soviet period. The upper gallery has been obliterated and turned into an upper floor by the insertion of a complete floor. This renovation can not be rectified as the pillars have been altered so that they will no longer sustain the previous structure. The sanctuary therefore now operates on a single storey with a partition behind which the women sit. There is a thriving attendance here.

My focus, however, was on an organisation called Migdal (Hebrew for “tower”).  This is the most uplifting and life affirming Jewish Community Centre you could imagine. It is no tower! However, we are assured that it is an eminently appropriate name as the community have laid the foundation stones of the proverbial tower and are continuing to build upwards. Its building is small and somewhat in need of repair but it has so many programmes running there that the director, Kira, refuses to innumerate them.

Kira, the director of "Migdal" and her interpreter

She introduces herself via an interpreter and gives us a flavour of the place. On the walls are works of art, history exhibitions, pictures, photos and colourful expositions of various sorts. Then we are treated to the most wonderful show of talent. First the teenagers who put on a little dramatic display, followed by the cutest little children doing a wonderful dance and show. The teenagers return and then the little ones again. There is also a singing trio who, we are told, have travelled internationally to sing. Not sure what “international” means in this context but they are good. All this is followed by the “youngsters”, as she introduces them – the Holocaust and Ghetto survivors who dance for us. What is wonderful is that all sectors of the community are acknowledged, welcomed and included. Would that all societies were run in this way.

The performance of the little kids

Teenagers dancing

Trio of singers

The "youngsters" - Holocaust and Ghetto survivors show us their dancing skills

Next we go upstairs. We view a cross-generational painting class going on, a class of little children and a music room as well as several other rooms such as a library and other activity-specific rooms.

Painting class

Music Room

A children's class

This is a place of invigoration, of Jewish rebirth, of Jewish life, hope and spirit. From the ashes, 20 years ago, of an underground community, struggling to gain access to literature of Jewish interest, clambering for any snippet of Jewish culture, we are witnessing the phoenix arising, a fledgling community emerging. This is truly inspirational and genuinely a delight to be a part of, if only for this very fleeting moment.

The next day, we depart for Chisinau. The experience we have there couldn’t be further from the uplifting, life affirming experience we had in Odessa. We know that we will be visiting families. That is all we know about what awaits us.

The bus pulls up outside the Jewish Community Centre and we are immediately split up. Half of the group enters the Centre whilst the other half are split into carloads and taken in groups of 5 to visit social welfare cases. Nothing could have adequately prepared me for what I faced next.

After a long drive with a social worker in the front and our translator, five of us head off in a minibus to a poor neighbourhood of Kishinev. We arrive at a run down block of flats,  enter a particularly dingy and decrepit entrance and walk up the crumbling stairs in a dark and dank stairwell.

Immediately on gaining entry, we are confronted with the most oppressive and overwhelming smell that pervades the apartment. It is filthy, piles of junk everywhere, no discernible beds or furniture – just piles of stuff and that invasive smell pervading my olfactory senses to the exclusion of all else. I feel my chest tightening and I have to check myself from reaching for my asthma spray so as not to offend. There is a cat roaming around and evidence of cat excreta all around (although, not in the room where we are taken to meet the mother, Galina). The room we are in has a very old TV set in the corner which, we are told, no longer works. In the centre of the room is another very old TV set (the kind with knobs and dials from the early 70s) which is left on but silent, with a black-and-white image flickering constantly while we talk. There is an Oriental rug on the wall which she tells us was brought in by her husband when he was alive. The apartment is quite simply an exponent of abject poverty and squalor of mammoth proportions.

This room had two large sacks of raw potatoes on the floor (see on the bottom left of the photo) which had spilled out with the result that there were potatoes all over the floor.

The “family” we have come to visit are an elderly lady in her late 80s who lives with her daughter in her early 60s. The daughter is profoundly schizophrenic and is the only carer of the old lady. It is clear from the state of the apartment and the demeanour of the daughter that not much caring is taking place here. In a welfare state, the daughter would have residential psychiatric care and Galina would be cared for in a home for the elderly. No such facility is available in this fledgling country with very little material wealth.

The toilet with no door and no light

The only opportunity to wash in the apartment was this bathroom. The only light was from the flash on my camera

Galina, her face obliterated by me, with the oriental rug on the wall behind her and a useless TV set to her left. Nowhere is there anywhere to sit and we conduct our conversation standing up.

The social worker (who is employed by Chesed, a Jewish welfare charity, and not by the state) takes the daughter off to chat with her and we remain in the room with Galina, asking her questions and trying to glean a little of her life.

She had five brothers, all of whom were enlisted to fight in the Great Patriotic War (WW II). One is repatriated when he receives a head wound and never regains his health. The other four are all killed in the fighting. She seems to have come originally from Belarus, spent some time in Siberia but somehow lands up in Kishinev, where she has resided for 27 years. After a brief marriage, the daughter returns to live with her mother where she has been ever since. She used to work as a music teacher until becoming schizophrenic, and now is incapable of working.

The pair live on the meagre state pension that Galina receives which provides about half of their living expenses. The Joint Distribution Committee supplements this income and brings in meals three times a week, as they do for countless Jewish families across the vast expanse of the FSU. The old lady talks of being afraid of going out because the youngsters in the area are anti-Semitic. It is hard to know how much of this is paranoia borne of old-age, and how much  is the racist and anti-Semitic attitude we hear is endemic in her country or whether this is genuine anti-Semitism borne of jealousy that she is receiving help that is not available to non-Jews. The truth is that about 35% of people living in FSU countries are living below the bread line. The Jews are more fortunate than their non-Jewish compatriots because they have access to a source of support. No doubt there are many people living on her estate in the same conditions but with no access to the support that Galina receives.

Next, we are taken to the community centre. It feels cynical after the experience we have just had. It is pristine and white. The tour is slick. We are shown round various committee rooms. There is a course being taught in many of these rooms. Single women are being given the skills to become economically active and to improve their lot. Different aspects of skills for work are being taught in each room. We are shown classrooms and activity rooms and are eventually taken down to the basement where there is a local Jewish museum and we are treated to a little dramatic display by some of the children in costume.

A small show presented by youngsters in the museum

Signs throughout the building are in Russian, Moldovan and in English. They clearly receive a lot of American visitors on fact-finding “missions” trying to determine where to donate money. It feels like what we are shown is in fact designed for the benefactor tourists from America.

There is no doubt that this charity is entirely necessary. The work that goes on, both in the homes of the needy and in the community development exercise of the centres, are absolutely central to the reinvigoration of the Jewish communities of the towns and cities across the FSU.

I can’t help wondering if the two aspects can’t be combined - the activities in the community centres and the welfare. Individuals benefit enormously from the support and social capital that is derived from their visits to the centres. Perhaps a group of volunteers could be set up to visit the likes of Galina and her daughter to spruce up her apartment and improve her living conditions. Such a team would benefit from the social capital inherent in the teamwork and from the work experience; the recipients would benefit enormously from the improvement in their living conditions.

I realise that what I have taken away - the impressions, the snapshots and the notions - represent just the briefest of forays into a very complex situation. I am but a helicopter, hovering briefly over the scene before moving on. What I express, therefore, can only be regarded as my personal impressions and no more. I do not pretend to have any depth of understanding of the complex parameters that all of these scenes operate under. I am just happy to know that Jewish life is returning where once it withered.

A Picture Paints a Thousand Words

 I am continuously fascinated by the many different journeys that those of us sharing the same itinerary can have. We are 30 people visiting the same sites and meeting many of the same people. However, I am convinced that 30 different journeys were had, observing different aspects and concentrating on different areas of interest. 30 different trajectories of discovery, fulfillment and education.

 

Take me and Lawrence (my husband) for instance. He is intrinsically a historian. Not by training, but by inclination. He takes in facts and figures, dates and events. I will listen to the same ten minutes of explanation from our guide, Jeremy, and immerse myself in how people lived, what they got up to and how they interacted. I am intrinsically a sociologist. I am also often distracted by animals and insects, the living things that interact with humanity.

 

By the same token, I have seen the photographs of four separate people on the same trip and all seem to focus on a different aspect. Mine focus on people - engagements of people with history or interacting with each other. One group of photos from a member of our group (let’s call them “Places”) that I have seen focuses on the places of interest – bold, framed and concise. Lawrence concentrates on the people, centring a person in a view to contextualise the scene and a fourth (“Culture”) centres on the cultural nuances – for example, people in costume, gilt ceilings, dancers, weddings and customs. We each take away what we need and leave the rest behind.

 

I, for instance, witnessed many of the same scenes depicted in the photos of others  but it never occurred to me to record them graphically.

 

Take, for instance, the memorial to Odessa’s Jews. Lawrence’s photo is matter-of-fact. The words are clear, the symbolism is stark and Jeremy is seen with siddur (prayer book) in hand, ready to recite the Kaddish (prayer we say when remembering the dead). This is a moment in history (our own) juxtaposed against an historical event - clear recording for posterity of what happened, with whom, how and why – an historian’s perspective.

 

“Places'” photo is front on, shows the monument in its entirety, framed by its surroundings. Nothing else. “Culture” has not included this monument in their album at all. Perhaps because it is a monument and doesn’t fit in with the cultural bias of their collection of photos.

 

I took two photos of the same monument, one from behind, observing the people engaging with it. This picture invites the viewer to become a part of the scene, almost observing it from within, feeling the mood of the people beyond (admittedly, if I were taller, there would be a better portrayal of the people).

 

The other picture I deliberately took slightly from the side and from on the ground looking up. This places flowers prominently in the foreground, obscuring the writing but giving a sense of proprioception to the monument itself, an awareness of its place and interaction with its surroundings, a juxtaposition of life and death.

My picture of the Potemkin Steps is just that, a picture of the Potemkin Steps. No people.

It is symbolic of the gateway to the city that the location affords. I can visualise centuries of travellers arriving at the port and making their way up these steps to begin their engagement with Odessa.

I took another picture of members of our group on the steps. The steps themselves are only visible in the distance but the group is watching a clip taken from the film “Battleship Potemkin” on a laptop.

Lawrence’s Potemkin Steps are posed photos of the two of us, a record of our day on the Potemkin Steps.

Other photos show the multitude of life, for instance the variety of animals and birds cruelly carried around by hawkers, selling the opportunity to hold it or photograph it for a brief moment. There are photos of people coming up the steps taken from the top, coming down, taken from the bottom. There are people in costumes of all descriptions. Other than for my own photographs, I cannot comment on what motivated the photographers. I can only observe what I see in their pictures, what has been deliberately preserved by them for posterity.

Each of us has recorded the memento that he or she wished to take away from this experience. Each of us has focused on a different facet of the same experience. None of us is right. None of us is wrong. Each of us is expressing our own individual take on the same set of circumstances – a fascinating look at human nature. We cannot rely on our fellow travellers to have shared the same experiences or preserved the same memories. Each memory and the tangible records of each individual's experiences are different and unique.

My Kin

It is Friday night in Odessa and we are about to attend a synagogue service. I am not a keen synagogue attender and particularly not keen on praying but I am eager to attend this service as it will be an opportunity to witness an example of what has become the reinvigoration of the Jewish community of the Former Soviet Union.

Our group of 32 arrives at the shul and are offered an effusive welcome by the 20 or so individuals who have come to the Friday night service tonight.  This is a small Reform community in Odessa. Reform means that they have chosen to follow a form of Judaism which values modernity and recognises that the laws and directives written in the scriptures are anachronistic and need to be updated for a modern world.

As we enter the building, we notice an extravagant table of goodies, laden high with bountiful fruit, cakes, biscuits, home-made buns and much else. After shaking hands with a variety of community members who have each made an effort to shake each of our hands, we are ushered to our seats in the small sanctuary part of the building. We take our places on long uncomfortable rectangular benches in front of slightly taller rectangular benches to act as tables in front of us. On each of the tables are a number of siddurim, prayer books, written in Hebrew, Russian and Russian transliteration. Our group mostly choose to follow the Hebrew. There is a sense that for those whose Hebrew reading is slow, this might prove an alienating experience.

Most of the elderly people we meet have little command of English, whilst the younger members seem more able to communicate with us with varying degrees of proficiency. The leader of the community welcomes us with a few words in Russian whilst one of the youngsters translates.

Leader of the community addressing us

 I am reminded of my first days of living in Israel where I met and associated with many Russian new immigrants. They were, to my young eyes, completely alien – culturally, linguistically, anthropologically and socially. We would see the older “Russkies” (as we Westerners unkindly referred to them, conferring a pejorative connotation) in the local dingy makolet (Israeli grocery store, modelled, I thought,  very much on a Soviet style – nothing like the colourful and multi-ethnic corner stores I had been used to in the West). The elderly Russian ladies would push you disdainfully out of the way, whilst making their purchases. Despite linguistic and cultural difficulties, I did manage to make quite a few Russian friends in those days. Some stayed in Israel and became “Israeli” while many moved on – to America, Germany, Italy and other places, and we lost touch. During those early days I picked up a few phrases and taught myself to read Cyrillic and we managed to communicate during ball games and cycling in the streets using the smattering of phrases we exchanged. I was always fascinated, having carried a South African passport which was not valid in a large number of places, by what happened behind the Iron Curtain, how life went on.

So, here I am sitting in a room with a number of little old ladies on the front row who, 40 years ago could have been the little old ladies pushing me out of the way in the makolet or failing to acknowledge the theory of personal space in the street. The service starts and immediately I am struck by the fact that we have no problem following the service, following and reciting the prayers alongside our hosts and even singing in the same tunes, tunes we are all – regardless of our origins – familiar with. At this point I realise that those “Russki” ladies pushing me out of the way 40 years ago are my kin, a salient realisation.

The service is led by a young man in his 30s. He picks up his guitar and starts to sing the songs with the most exuberant and enthusiastic attitude I have ever witnessed. A broad smile comes over his face as he chants the songs and never leaves him until the service is over. I am enchanted by him and can understand how he manages to hold his “audience” in thrall week after week. I want to take him home to spread his brand of sunshine.

Service leader who broke out into a broad enthusiastic grin as soon as he started the service, a grin which never left him until the service ended.

About 20 minutes after it has started, the service seems to be over. Our hosts are all out of their seats and parading up and down the aisles wishing us a good Sabbath and once again shaking our hands exuberantly. We start to gather our things in order to proceed to the Kiddush table to break bread together. No sooner have I picked up my handbag than the service suddenly recommences and the congregants are seated back in their places, the vociferous handshaking over. I am told by one of our party, who has attended this community for a service before, that this is what they regularly do – spontaneously break to reaffirm the Sabbath greeting before recommencing.

I am not a regular synagogue-goer but I thoroughly enjoyed everything about this service - the charm of the congregation, the effusive welcome, the generosity of spirit and the enthusiastic singing and even more enthusiastic handshaking.

We help ourselves to the mountains of food that are on offer after we have blessed the wine and the bread. This is now a chance to mingle and, language permitting, to share and hear stories. I spend some time talking to some of the youngsters who tell us about their lives, their dreams, their plans and their Jewish pursuits and trajectories. All very interesting.

I then move on to speak (through a translator) to a woman in her late 60s who tells a fascinating tale. The year is 1941 and she is 18 months old and being carried in her mother’s arms toward Babi Yar – and certain death. As the column of weary Jews is being marched onwards, they happen to pass a local village where a young mother is grieving the death of her baby daughter. She runs out to the passing procession of marching Jews, locates a woman carrying a young baby and offers the mother salvation for the baby. The mother agrees, knowing that she will never be able to protect her daughter from the Nazis. The women swap babies and our protagonist lives for many years thinking that her adoptive parents are her birth parents and never knowing that she was born Jewish. In her fifties, she receives a letter from the mother she thought had given birth to her, on her deathbed, letting her know the truth about her birth. It is at this point that she begins to engage with the Jewish community and discover something of her Jewish heritage.

Up and down the FSU such stories are played out - people discovering their Jewish birthright in a variety of ways and with a variety of reactions and outcomes. Not all are as dramatic and heart wrenching as the story above. Not all result in engagement with the Jewish community; but all tell a tale that adds to the huge corpus of such stories, each adding a small fraction to the emergence of Jewish life and a Jewish collective identity behind the former Iron Curtain.