Six writers share their personal connections to Ukraine: Pete Philipps, Judy Adler, Joan Holtzman, Carol Blitzer, Ruth Lowy, Nancy Moss. Scroll down to see all six.
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Deja Vu
Pete Philipps
One of my earliest memories is standing at the window of our living room in Prague—the first of our family’s way stations between Nazi Germany and America—as a large contingent of German soldiers entered the city and occupied the lovely park across the street from our apartment building—my playground for the past several months.
Too young to comprehend the significance of what was unfolding before my eyes, I watched fascinated as the soldiers cleaned and oiled their weapons and prepared to settle in for the duration. Curious and unafraid, it didn’t take me—or my friends—long before we returned to our treasured playground and resumed our daily games, unhindered by the occupiers.
Looking back, it all seemed perfectly normal and unthreatening. Ironically, one day one of the soldiers asked me my name and, tousling my hair, said, “You’re a nice little fellow.” Little did he know that the hair he was tousling with his grubby hands was that of a Jewish boy.
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20 Years ago in Kiev
Judy Adler
In 2002, my husband Jack, a pulmonary disease specialist was invited to Kiev by the Joint Distribution Committee to give a series of talks. Happily, I was able to join him and while he was lecturing to doctors who were treating an elderly Jewish population, I did something on my own: I made home visits with a translator and social worker.
Jack and I were very impressed with the care given by the Jewish agency. People came for three meals a day, plus haircuts, and entertainment. Also, of course, for social interaction with each other. And yet, all the elderly folks I spoke with had encouraged their children to leave Kiev, to take jobs in Vienna. Berlin. Paris. Somewhere else.
When Russia invaded, I thought of this dependent population and the advice they had given to younger people. I also remembered that we had attended a magnificent classical concert, held at a marvelous hall. Attendees were dressed up – more than we were. They were such an enthusiastic audience.
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Grandma Rose
Joan Holtzman
How could I not feel a connection to Ukraine knowing that my favorite grandmother was born in Odessa. She was a Rose by any other name and though she had come to the states as a young girl, everyone understood that she brought a special, Galitzianer warmth to our otherwise German-Jewish (Jekke) family. There was the food, of course, some rarities at holidays times, but routinely the same on Sunday mornings when bagels and an assortment of smoked fish coupled with vegetables and fruits, were laid out in her cramped kitchen. It was all to be shared with family and friends who came by and stayed for hours, telling stories, interrupting each other and laughing loudly.
I remember that she would sing sometimes in Yiddish – “Rozinkas mit Mandeln” when I was a very young, and “Bei Mir Bist Du Shein,” later on. She taught me the alphabet and took me to the library and to the local Horn and Hardart Automat for after-school snacks paid for with nickels. On special occasions we went to Atlantic City or Radio City Music Hall or the Circus. But she wasn’t just the perfect Bubbe; she was intrepid – a woman of strength and determination who, as a young mother, had taken bold steps.
In her mid-thirties she packed up her daughters, aged nine and two, and moved back across the ocean to live in Europe again (leaving her husband, Grandpa Rudolf, behind to keep the family business going). This was not a frivolous act, but rather the enactment of a plan meant to take advantage of a strange congruence of talents. As it happened, her older daughter, my mother Eleanore, was a child prodigy on the violin and her brother-in-law, my Uncle Herman, a prominent violin pedagogue. Since he lived and taught in Vienna, and sometimes in Berlin, it made sense to make a move that would involve shuttling between those two great capitals.
And so they did. For almost a decade, Grandma Rose orchestrated a complex schedule of studies, practice sessions and concerts, simultaneously paying attention to the very different educational and social needs of her younger daughter, Hilda, all the while learning a new language and building a life for herself. But as the 20’s moved on, and the economic and political situation in Germany and Austria deteriorated, Grandma Rose understood it was time to return to the States.
Back in NYC, she had to deal with the impact of the Great Depression on the family business and adjust to the fact that the glory days of the “wunderkind” were over. Everyone took whatever work was available; my mother’s career as a concert violinist abandoned. But life moved on. My mother married my father, a recent arrival from Germany. And soon there was a steady stream of other arrivals from Germany – his parents and other relatives, barely escaping the Holocaust. Grandma Rose, who, of course spoke impeccable German, helped everyone to settle in and became the matriarch of our family.
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In Search of the Makareve Rebbe
Carol Blitzer
Growing up I was regaled with tales of my grandmother’s family, who arrived in Chicago somewhere around World War I. No one seems to know how old Bubbe Rose was, but I do know her younger sister, my Aunt Mirel, giggled any time she acknowledged her age. My great-grandfather (Kalman Yishayahu Dechnoffsky) settled in Chicago with his second wife, Mary, two daughters and a much-younger son, my dad’s Uncle Lou. They changed their name to Dunoff upon arrival.
I was told that Bubbe was from Zhitomer, described as a shtetl near Odessa. But when my husband, Roy, and I were planning a Viking cruise down the Dnieper River in 2011, moving from Odessa to Kyiv in a week, I pressed my father for further details.
To my surprise, he told me his mother was actually born in Makarov (today spelled Makariv), about an hour’s drive from Kyiv. (Turns out Zhitomer is not far from Makarov.) He also told me that her father was a Makareve rebbe, as was his father before him. At the time they left – more like fled – Makarov, there were about 4,000 Jews in the town, likely more than half the population.
On board the Viking ship, we asked one of the tour guides how we could visit Makarov. She offered to arrange a car and driver, and said she could be our guide on our last day. While others were visiting Chernobyl (!) or the Baba Yar memorial, we headed out for Makarov.
First, we drove through the quiet town, looking for cemeteries. We got out of the car to get a closer look, trying to find a Jewish section. We didn’t find any tombstone dating before 1960, and no Jewish symbols. Next, our guide stopped at the Town Hall, and asked for birth and death records – and whether there was a Jewish cemetery. The clerk told her that all the records had been transferred to a synagogue in Kyiv, and not only was there no Jewish cemetery, but there were no Jews. (Those who didn’t flee the pogroms earlier in the 20th century were killed in the Holocaust.)
But he could point out the location of an old Jewish cemetery: a multi-story building featuring a disco sat atop.
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Born In Black Rock
Ruth Lowy
My grandfather, Samuel S. Simonoff (Simcha Siminovich), was born Oct. 1879 in the town of Black Rock (Kameni Kenetsi) near Odessa, Ukraine.
He immigrated to New York City in about 1905, worked in the garment trades and fur dying (skills learned during apprenticeships in his youth), saved money and brought his parents, his sister and her husband to the United States. He married my grandmother, Lizzie Schneiderman (an immigrant from Romania), and lived with her in New York City where they had three children and ran various small family businesses – corner candy stores in different locations and finally a dry cleaning and tailoring shop in The Bronx.
During his 60s, my grandfather wrote a partial memoir describing what he knew about his parents and grandparents and great grandparents, so tracing our family roots to the 1840’s and depicting scenes of rural and urban life as it existed in what is now known as Ukraine. Among my favorite stories is the one he tells about his parents, and how they became betrothed at the ages of 9 and 10 by their fathers who happened to meet while one of them was buying goods from the other. The families kept in touch over the years allowing the children to know each before they were old enough to be married.
They had a good marriage, accompanied by children AND music. As he tells it, his father (my great grandfather) worked at several trades in the old country but also became a musician who formed a Klezmer band and performed for weddings, bar mitzvahs and other special occasions. In New York, he formed another Klezmer band and lived happily into old age with his wife in the United States.
My grandfather lived to be 98 years old.
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Remembering Lemberg — and Nana
Nancy Moss
My maternal grandmother, (Rachel Shander) told me she came from a place close to Lemberg, a city you won’t find on a current map of Ukraine. That’s because the city she called Lemberg is now known as Lviv (or Lvov in Russian). She considered Lemberg to be a great city and closer than Vienna.
She was born in 1890 and emigrated to the US with her brother Ben in 1904. I have her entry papers as well as her death certificate: she gives her nationality as Austrian. In subsequent years she was proud that one of her brothers fought on the Austrian side in WWI. She wasn’t very politically savvy.
When she arrived in Philadelphia she went to live with her Aunt Amsterdam, who had married well, and where she learned to play the piano. When her brother Ben started a dress factory, Nana (as we called her), worked for him until she married in around 1911.
Nana was a very good cook, and made lovely Christmas cookies- I still have the transcribed recipes, including one for “Viennese Crescents”. She was also very good with the needle. As a young child I sat by her feet as she sewed, and played with the zippers, buttons and ribbons. I should add that she considered my Russian Jewish paternal grandmother very low class and they despised each other.
Because of Nana’s identification with Lemberg, I take Russian attacks in the region personally.
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