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