RelativaTree

We had a phenomenal time at the Kiev archives.  The archivists were welcoming and gave us a terrific tour. 

We’ve been really fortunate in our visits to various archives. Archivists have been welcoming, eager to speak with us about their holdings, happy to bring us the record books we need to do our research, and permitting us to get copies of records as needed.

Of course, in addition to immersing ourselves in the archives we have also been able to wander the streets to see where our ancestors and those of our clients lived. For the areas in the former Russian Empire, such as Kiev, we often have no indication of street or house number, and when we do have a house number, it is difficult to locate where that residence might have been. There are of course exceptions, but we generally are only left with clues connected to either a church or the Jewish community. When we don’t have much to go on, all we can do is look at neighborhoods with older homes and buildigns that still stand, and take pictures of those to at least set a tone for what the place may have looked like, and find out as much as possible about local history from various types of records, to give context to the ancestor’s lives.

Scenes such as this one with a horse pulled cart are common in today’s Eastern Europe. When I was here 9 years ago, I often saw these on the road with hay and farm products piled high in the cart.  I had no idea whether this would still be the case.  Of course a big city like Kiev has changed considerably over the last 9 years.  There are more shops and restaurants, malls, and the number of people on the streets is astonishing.The city still struggles in terms of ambiance with many building remaining from the Soviet era still dominating.

By late afternoon we were off to Khmelnitsky. I know this town better as Proskurov which was its name prior to 1954. In the annals of Jewish history, Bogdan Khmelnitsky is not a name to be celebrated. He is of course a hero in Ukrainian history since he led a Ukrainian peasant uprising against the Poles. During the course of that uprising in 1648-49, perhaps thousands of Jews were massacred, since they often worked on the estates of Polish nobles, the Jews were linked to the Poles by Khmelnitsky and his followers. I wonder what we will find there.

On the way to Kovel last night, I got a text message from Phyllis Grossman. Phyllis was one of my co-chairs for the IAJGS 2016 conference in Seattle and we became good friends while working on the conference.  She attended this year’s conference in Warsaw, and was one of the Ukraine SIG luncheon speakers.  After the conference she was going to spend some time in her ancestral towns, and she was staying in Lutsk until 20 Aug!  When she first texted, I had no idea if we would have time to see her in Lutsk. As it turned out, as exhausted as we all were  from our travels yesterday, we woke up pretty early, packed the van and were ready to go.  I texted Phyllis to see if we could meet for lunch in Lutsk.  It was Sunday, so we expected to see church goers, but were confused by all the people who were very dressed up and carried baskets of fruits.  It turned out that we were in the middle (or maybe the end) of the apple harvest and this was a day that the harvest was blessed.

Lunch was to be at a 14th century castle! On the way, we passed a sign pointing to where the 17th century synagogue (now a gym) stands.

If we had more time we would have gone inside the castle, but we knew that we still had a very long drive to get to Kiev after lunch.

There are houses still standing which were occupied by the Jewish residents of the once thriving Jewish community.

It is always wonderful to meet up with old friends especially in unexpected places!

We headed off to Kiev where we were to meet up with two Ukrainian researchers – Anna and Ella. Full disclosure – Ella is also my cousin. Ella’s grandfather and my grandmother were siblings, and many years after the Holocaust, Ella and I found each other. Since then (1985) we are in constant touch, now primarily via email.

Although in Vilnius, the kosher restaurant was closed, to my delight, Mendi’s the kosher restaurant in Kiev was open, and we all enjoyed a wonderful dinner there.

Our walk around Kiev took us past the Sholom Aleichem Museum. In Ukraine, he is a folk hero and everyone learns about him and his stories from a young age. Last time I was in Ukraine, Ella and I saw a showing of Fiddler on the Roof in Ivano-Frankivsk. Seeing it acted out in Ukrainian, in Ukraine was very insightful – especially when I found out afterwards from conversations with the director and producer, that it was considerd to be a universal story and that the pogroms were thought to just be allegorical since “everyone” knows there were no pogroms before WWII.

Really?

Today was to be a travel day. The best laid plans as they say.  No, I don’t mean we didn’t travel, because we did. We even got to our destination, with no mishaps, well nothing major or damaging in any real way.

We went walking around Białystok in the morning, after breakfast, since we had a couple of hours before we needed to leave, and before Julia, our Belarus researcher needed to catch a bus back home. Julia had met us in Białystok the previous day.

The big excitement of the morning was the hot air balloon parked on the pedestrian mall, and about to take off. I’ve never seen the process close up – just previously on TV or in movies. The balloon was enormous and it seemed to take forever to get aloft. But fly away it did.

I found a bookstore and purchased a couple of children’s books in Polish as gifts. Of course, neither of the children for whom I purchased them, nor their parents know Polish, but I figure that it’s never to early to start acquiring language skills.

We finished packing and by now the process of packing the van goes very smoothly – each bag has a space and we can do this quickly. We got on the road, knowing that we would only be making a couple of brief stops, lunch would be one of them. I was excited because the way we were driving to cross the border to Ukraine would take us through the fabled town of Chelm. I had grown up with Chelm stories and indulged myself when I worked at synagogues, by reading these stories to the children in the Hebrew schools.

The day was pleasant and the drive was easy. After a couple of hours on the road, we came to a town that was sizable enough for restaurants and shops and we stopped. There were several pizza places on a pedestrian mall, and we randomly chose one. We ordered pizza and salads. The first pizza arrived – a vegie pizza covered with arugala on top of mushrooms and peppers. The second pizza (these were 22cm individual pies) – also vegie but without the arugala. About 10 minutes later a plate with arugala arrived. Every 10 minutes or so another dish arrived. There were 5 of us, so just the arrival of the food took a long time. It was over half an hour after we first ordered that the first dish showed up.  Poor Lina. She ordered the simplest thing – a salad with chicken. It arrived about half an hour after the last of the 4!  It was barely edible. Good thing we stock the van with chocolate bars and cookies.

We got back in the car. It’s a good thing we didn’t know what the rest of the day had in store for us, otherwise, perhaps we would have just gone back to Białystok!

Our phones were set to google maps for directions and we often had directions in both Polish and English depending on how many phones still had battery time. There were two different directions, one was an hour shorter than the other, so of course, we opted for that. I was slightly bummed because the directions took us near but not through Chelm. There must be a Chelm story just waiting to be told about that.

It turned out that the hour difference had to do with the border crossing, and it probably saved over 5 hours, not just one. We followed the twists and turns of the route and found ourselves facing the longest line of cars and trucks any of us had seen. We found ourselves, however, near the front of the line, so we did what any sensible people would do – we took the first opening and got on the line behind a big truck, and when it started to move, we did too.

So did a Border Guard. She came over to us to find out how we got to the front of the line. Marek tried explaining about the directions from google maps. She in turn explained that the only way we could short cut the trip was with a diplomatic pass or if we had children in the car younger than 3. Marek asked if a pregnant woman fell into the category, and she said sure, but wanted to know which of the 4 women in the car was pregnant. We all laughed, and thankfully she didn’t look too closely – two of us were clearly too old, and the other two were way too thin. She waved us through. We thought “wow, this was easy.” Yeah, right. This was only the first of what would turn to be 5 check points – two on the Polish side and 3 on the Ukraine side.

We had arrived at the first point at 5:30 PM, then our clocks adjusted themselves to 6:30 – Poland and Ukraine are in two different time zones.  By the time we got through the last check point, it was after 9:30 PM. We understand that there was a 15 hour wait for the trucks to get through and that some of the cars would be waiting over 8 hours. Since our trip was supposed to include another entry into Ukraine next week, we started examining our options – after all, we had 3 hours to do this on line, and another 2 hours until we reached our destination for the evening in Kovel.

We finally decided. We would not chance another border crossing into Ukraine. After we leave Iasi, Romania next week, we will drive further east in Romania and stay in Bestritsa, Romania for one night, then travel to Debrecen, Hungary, and drive through Slovakia to get back into Poland.  We frantically scrambled trying to find reservations for the two nights in hotels – we needed 5 rooms each night, which is not the easiest to do, but we prevailed!

We finally got to Kovel, really hungry, checked into our rooms and went, at close to midnight, in search of food. An all night supermarket was a short walk and we bought a huge bag of food for $9!  The exchange rate is incredible.  I decided that ice cream would be perfect and opted for something called black ice which I thought was chocolate. Don’t ever buy something called black ice to eat unless you are attempting to disguise yourself as the walking dead for Halloween. Whatever the ice cream touched turned black. Not a pretty sight.

Tomorrow, onward to Kiev!

Such a short distance – 80 km from Białystok to Łomża. Driving didn’t seem so short. Actually it was our error. Someone read 30 instead of 80, so the half hour drive to the archives was much longer than half an hour.  The directions were pretty clear, but the archives themselves weren’t on the main street on which we thought we would find them, but off an alley and parking lot!  The inauspicious looking building held a wealth of treasures.

Our original plan was for some of us to stay doing research in the archives while the rest went off to a church repository.  Instead we all jumped into the records which the archivist kept bringing to us. She, like all the archivists we have met on this trip was wonderful and gracious and eager to help.

The room we were in was small and we took it over.

As in our previous stops in Warsaw, Kaunas, Vilnius, and Suwałki we quickly became immersed in the task at hand, and the room was quiet except for an occasional gleeful comment when one of us located a name for which we were searching. Hours passed.

The pages were so fragile and yet had lasted so long. The writing, much of which was still very clear after 200 years. Page after page – the books I was looking was arranged by family, and I was amazed to see the same names in different languages – Russian, Polish and Hebrew. I watched the changes that took place as the names were written in the different languages as they morphed from one spelling to another, maintaining the same sounds but could clearly visualize how the sounds changed at a point in time. The Russian Лев when written in Polish became Lew – if the spelling remained the same on arrival in the US, the pronunciation would have now changed!

Marek and I left the others in the archives to finish up and walked about 15 minutes to the cathedral where the diocese records would be kept. We briefly met with a priest and a secretary, both of whom were eager to help, and we soon found ourselves digging into beautiful books. The paper was think, hand made and very durable and it was explained that the paper was such that it wouldn’t get ruined when wet. The ink was still dark enough to read, some pages looked like they had been written yesterday.  The handwriting was clear. The records we were looking at were all in Latin, and these were marriage records. Marek gave me clues to look for to find the names – “inter” would be followed by the name of the groom, then his parents, the next clue was “et” – and following which would be the name of the bride.

The cathedral office closed and we went back to the archives to meet up with the rest of the group and continue on to the next stop: cemeteries and parish churches. The priest at the diocese told Marek that the parish priest had some records we’d be interested in – conscription lists. It was unclear to anyone why the parish priest would have those, but they were of interest to us in locating an ancestral family, so off we went. When we arrived at the church, it was clear that some celebration was about to happen. The priest at first did not admit to having the records, until Marek let him know that the diocese said he did.  Because the celebration (a 50th anniversary) was about to begin, we were asked to return in half an hour. That, we thought, would give us time to find the cemetery in Wincenta, but driving up and down country roads did not yield the results we had hoped for, and then it was time to return to the church.

I just realized, as I was writing this, that although the photos I have been taking are all of old buildings, we are also passing some wonderful looking new houses. They are just not what I am interested in and I search out these older structures to photograph. Most of my pictures are being taken as we are speeding by in the van. Lindsay, who is sitting behind me, has been great about getting blasted by wind every few minutes as I lower the window to take yet another photo!

We returned to Białystok where there was a very important commemorative exhibit in place from 16 – 19 August – this marked the 75 anniversary of the Białystok ghetto uprising. Our hotel is on a huge pedestrian mall with restaurants and shops. The exhibit was places on one side of the mall by the main pedestrian and vehicular thoroughfare. Across the street was the Białystok archives and the exhibit continued there. I was pleased to see people stopping to read the information about the ghetto and the uprising, and even on boards set asid for that purpose, to sign their names. The name of the exhibit is Białystok Remembers.

We should all remember.

We stayed at a pleasant hotel in Suwałki , The Loft. We arrived just ahead of the rain last night. One of the major challenges of a trip like this is balancing the time the travel itself takes with the limited hours that each archive is open and the directors are available to assist us, and our own desires to track down not necessarily places we can identify as part of the research we are doing, but places that are older and that help us (and our clients) to visualize what the town looked like when the ancestors lived there.  Some days are just not long enough.

In Suwałki we found it impossible to find a balance. The archives were a real treasure. The Director was on vacation and took the time to come in and spend with us.  He showed us some recent (and exceptional) books about the area. We purchased one as a reference and know that there is one additional one we need to purchase.

Helpful staff members brought out book after book after book (well, you get the idea). Which we spent the day pouring over. On some incredible lists of the Jewish community, we identified the names of people we were researching and kept looking for even more.

Unfortunately the day was just not long enough. Although we had gotten to the archive at 8, by the time it closed, at 3, none of us had taken a break – of course we had neither food nor water with us, and we were exhausted. We hoped to be able to grab lunch (late though it was) before getting on the road to Białystok where we would stay for two nights. This will actually be the last time we stay for more than one night in a city until 24 Aug when we next stay in one place for two nights.

We chose a restaurant randomly (as seems to be the case for most of our meals) and waited about an hour for food to arrive. Finally, exhausted but slightly refreshed we got back on the road for a two hour drive. Arriving in Białystok was not as easy as we thought it would be. Poor google maps has a great deal of difficulty in pronouncing street and city names (usually rendering them less than intelligible), at least in the English version we used most of the time. Even the Polish version, competeing with speech for our attention could not guide us to the right alley way to find our hotel!  We drove around and around in circles before we found the correct road.

What was the day lacking? We didn’t have time to really get around in Suwałki. SOme days are just not long enough.

Today we took a longish drive – about 3.5 hours, and thanks to Marek’s careful maneuvering of the Euro-Style van, all went well. The border between Lithuania and Poland didn’t change in the week since we left – no formal border crossing. Our plan was to stop in Augustow as we did last week on our way to Mariampole.  This time we wanted to get some pictures of this beautiful resort town, and it was a great place to stop for a late lunch.

We parked the van and started to wander around, being very mindful of the growing storm clouds above us. We really didn’t want to get soaked again, if we could help it.  The rain did hold off (lucky us)!  The wing on the right side of the building below, the local tax office, is built over one of the synagogues. Although there is no sign of the thriving Jewish community that was once here, it is easy to imagine that any of us with ancestors who lived in nearby Suwalki or Bialystok may have come here for a day of picnicking by the banks of the river, or brought goods to the weekly market, to buy or sell. All the towns had markets but each had a specialization.

We saw what looked like a festive gathering in the park where long ago, the weekly market must have been held. Now it was a flea market. Not that we were particularly in the mood for fleas, but markets like this often provide wonderful insight into culture.As we passed by chuckling at some of the “valuables” on display, something caught my eye and I stopped. I had to blink several times to get my brain to understand what I was looking at.

I looked closer at the display and gasped at the treasures that must have come from a Jewish home some where in Poland during the war. The seller who couldn’t have been any older than I am and is probably much younger, said that a while ago he had gotten an item like these and it sold right away so now he looks for them whenever he goes to buy things. I believed him, and wish that I could have bought everything there – redeemed the captives, so to speak, brought them “home” where their value (not financial) would be understood. The seller did understand the value of the silver, and acquiring the collection was beyond my means. I did purchase one item.

It is a beautiful silver grogger crafted in 1873. We will use it on Purim during the megillah reading, and imagine it being used by a family long ago.

After I purchased it, the seller took out some other items which nauseated me, and I left.

These were armbands from the Warsaw ghetto, and the stack was covering the stars required to be sewn on clothes.

We stayed and took some photos of the area, later on had a late lunch, but my energy and mood are depressed and my heart is sick.