Out of the Shoebox Read online

  How could anyone simply go on with their day after such a revelation? I thought that, by now, nothing could surprise me anymore in this saga, but I was wrong. Events have their own dynamic, and one thing begets another. Once a door has been opened, or a connection made, events unfold of their own accord. A few days ago there was no Viktor, no trip to Chortkow, and now there was a trip, and Viktor, and even a treasure hidden 74 years ago. I wrote to Viktor and thanked him for his hard work and stunning discovery. I let him know I had no wish to claim the treasure, but I would love to photograph the items and hear how they were found. I was worried that the man who had found it might get spooked, break contact and wouldn't meet with me. With the existence of the treasure still echoing in my mind, refusing to leave my consciousness and move into the back, I began preparing for the trip. I put together all the addresses and some pictures of people and houses from those days in a small folder to take with me. I also wrote to Miri Gershoni, asking her to put me in touch with Kobe Kon, that is Jacob Cohen, who was my family's neighbor in Chortkow. Kobe, about fifteen years younger than my parents, was the boy who lived across the street. A boy who witnessed my family's everyday life. Kobe survived the Holocaust in Chortkow and immortalized my family members in his memoirs.

  "Your parents came from different worlds," he told me, "your mother from a Hasidic home, her father from the Stretin Hasidic dynasty and your grandmother wore a wig. I used to go past their large store-and-warehouse every day. Your father, Junio Finkelman, came from an educated family. They belonged to Rabbi Shapira’s Synagogue. Rabbi Yeshayahu-Meir Shapira was the first Zionist rabbi in Chortkow. He encouraged his congregation to get an education and convinced parents to encourage their children to pursue post-secondary studies. Your mother's parents opposed their marriage, your father wasn't observant enough... there was no love lost between the rabbis' communities [...] I remember that in the far window was Dr. Karl Halstuch's office, your Aunt Zelda's lawyer husband. In the next window Dr. Simka worked. They lived together. The grandfather died when I was about ten [...] there was another house on their land that they rented out. It was further down and the entrance was in an alley off Szpitalna St. [...] I remember your parents came from Palestine, before the war, to show off their new baby, I remember it like it was yesterday. They managed to get out when the war broke. I met Zelda, your father's sister, and Zigush (Sigmund) her son, after the war when we all came back to Chortkow. Adam, her second son, did not survive. Later they went to stay with your uncle in Colombia. I also met Loushu, your cousin Zelda and her husband Lolo, everyone came to see who and what survived, but found nothing because everyone was dead and everything had been stolen. It was very difficult; it's hard to describe just how difficult [...] I remember we played soccer when I was a little boy. The ball flew into the Finkelmans' yard and I was very scared... I went home to ask my mom to get the ball back... I can still remember how the ball flew into their yard... I don't think it broke anything, but I was scared."

  Later in our two-and-a-half-hour meeting with Kobe, he went over a map of Chortkow with Miri and me and pointed out the houses of my near and far relations. I tried my luck and asked if he knew Mordechai Liebman, or anyone else from the Liebman family, but unfortunately he did not. Towards the end of our meeting Kobe turned to me, as though to answer an unasked question:

  "You know, through all the years that I've worked and built a life here I never thought of Chortkow, neither I nor my wife who survived Auschwitz. Maybe we didn't have time for memories. But today, and in recent years, I think about it and remember a lot... so much so that I can't tell if my memories are real or imagined... I remember people, houses and the smallest details... I sit for hours and recall things. I remember how it used to be, not what it's like today. I visited with my son and Miri about five years ago... but the memories and the images are from the past... when I was a boy and youngster."

  ***

  On My Way

  Flight PS778 from Tel Aviv to Kiev took about three hours and twenty minutes. I fell asleep shortly after the plane left the gate and taxied to the runway. I don't remember it taking off, I was too busy thinking about the trip on which I was embarking, and those thoughts quickly turned into a dream. I woke up when the flight attendant announced that we were landing and had to fasten our seatbelts. I felt as if I’d jumped ahead in time. I like falling asleep on planes and suddenly finding out the flight is nearly over. When my fellow passenger, Sergei, asked me for the purpose of my trip, as the plane began its descent, I answered with a smile: "A sort of family visit... I'm going to see places, family and friends I don't know yet." Despite Sergei's perplexed look, I felt my answer had been accurate, it wasn't your typical “roots trip”. I knew there was no better description for the journey I set out in the early hours of the morning. I had a few goals and questions I wanted answered, but mostly I felt it was a journey into the past, unlike other trips or vacations. I wanted to connect past with present and create new memories of people and of a time that will never return. The layover in Kiev was short. Going through emigration control and moving between terminals kept me focused and cut short my apprehension about the encounter with Chortkow. The first flight’s passengers had been a mix – many were Israeli, but the flight from Kiev to Lviv had only Ukrainians aboard. I felt like an alien. The Cyrillic letters and Slavic language, which sounds so foreign to my ears, increased my feeling of alienation. So my first meeting with Viktor was accompanied by a sense of relief.

  I liked his straightforward attitude. "I suggest that we drive to Ternopil today. It's about a three hour drive, but if we stop at a couple of castles and palaces it'll take us until late afternoon and we’ll arrive at my place in the early evening." We loaded my suitcase into the car, I took out my camera and we were on our way. Traffic was light. When I commented on the good quality of the roads Viktor laughed and said this was probably the only road in Ukraine that was up to Western standards, it was paved for the UEFA European Championship and hasn't had a chance to deteriorate yet. Alongside various Western cars, I was surprised at the number of Russian Lada cars, fifteen and twenty years old, some running on gasoline some on natural gas; evidence of a class gap and social polarization. Viktor, as though reading my mind, explained that with a $150 a month salary, which is what the average civil servant makes, it's hard to afford a new car. "All government employees and civil servants take on a second job, each according to their ability and workplace. First, you need enough to live on, and only then do you spend money on luxuries..."

  After about an hour's drive we reached Olesko Castle. For a moment it reminded me of the familiar landscapes of Germany or France. A large structure situated on top of a hill, part fortress, part palace. Green fields stretched across the horizon, and tourists in their Sunday best walked hand in hand up the hill. The only difference was the language. It was Polish, Viktor confirmed after I’d recognized my mother's native tongue. The castle was part of a Polish historic route, a kind of heritage trip for Poles who were forced out of Ukraine, or a trip tracing the history of Polish Kings for others. The castle, now serving as a museum, was impressive. It magnificently displayed the 700 years of kingdoms, wars, natural disasters, ruin and rebuilding that it endured. Today it offers tourists its architectural charm and prized works of art.

  This was the first time I encountered Ukraine's many beauties: the landscape, the beautiful houses, the palaces, synagogues, gravestones, women... it was such a surprise because the last thing I expected to encounter in this trip was beauty.

  Christ - detail of a wood sculpture at Olesko Castle

  Pidhirtsi Castle - view from the gardens

  Our next stop was an enormous castle – "as though it had been moved intact from its place along the Rhine..." I chuckled to myself as the thought crossed my mind; I was associating its beauty with places I know, but perhaps here were the originals?

  This was Pidhirtsi Castle, built in the mid-17th century. Located about 80 km east of Lviv, it was most likely
designed by an Italian architect influenced by Muslim, Spanish and North African styles when working on the castle walls. It is surrounded by pleasant gardens and a breath-taking pastoral landscape. The castle was used by Polish kings as a palace and withstood many attacks by great armies who tried to conquer it, such as the Cossacks, the Turks, Austrians, Russians and Germans. In the last decade the castle and palace have stood deserted. They are closed to the public, time and neglect eating away at the walls and buildings till they are in danger of collapse. Viktor explained the situation in Ukraine, comparing it to a grand palace crumbling with time: "Everyone takes for themselves, and no one cares about the whole."

  Though by now it had sunk-in that Ukraine had many more beauties to offer than I expected, I was still surprised to see the next place we visited Zolochiv Castle. The palace, spectacular in its character and architectural finesse, replaced the images of the crumbling castle we’d left just an hour earlier. The palace seemed as though it had just been completed yesterday. Its earthy red color suited its delicate shape, and, its position within an open garden, gave it perfect proportions. Undoubtedly, the castle and palace were a surprising aesthetic experience after the neglect we had witnessed at the previous castle. This marvelous castle was built in the 1630s, and the palace added decades later. The castle was conquered by the Turks in the latter half of that century, and came back under Polish rule in the early 18th century. In the 19th century it was sold to the Austrian Empire. The picturesque castle was converted into a hospital, and later a jail. As I walked through the gorgeous gardens at the front, I noticed a sign by the entry gate. In shock, with chills down my spine, I read the sign commemorating 14,000 local Jews who were murdered in the holocaust and 2000 Jewish victims who were murdered in a pogrom by Ukrainian peasants two days after the Germans conquered the region. The Jews murdered on July 4th, 1941 were buried in a mass grave on the castle grounds, right under my feet. It was my first encounter with death in Ukraine. A chilling and unexpected experience in one of the most beautiful and serene places I have ever seen. It was an inconceivable juxtaposition of architecture, culture and art above ground, and thousands of Jewish victims in a mass grave below. A kind of dissonance that couldn't be bridged, a mixture of heaven and hell all in one place. I couldn't contain the contradiction and tears came to my eyes.

  Zolochiv Castle

  For a long time I was restless. I knew that probably every piece of land in Ukraine, especially in Galicia, bore the scars of hundreds of mass graves. That I could be standing over such a grave, in this pastoral setting, was shocking to me. Neglect and dereliction were what I associated with death. This beauty and aesthetics created an intolerable contradiction.

  We continued on our way to Ternopil. At first we were silent, but after a few minutes we began to talk. I told Viktor that I was done for the day; I had no energy, need, or wish to see anything else along the road. I asked that we stop by a liquor store so we could pick up some cold beers for dinner. I was amazed by the selection of beers and vodka found in a local liquor store, dozens, all for the same price as pop. Clearly, I would sleep well that night. We agreed that, over dinner, I would tell him and his wife Tania why I decided to visit Ukraine. I thought that if I shared the story of the lot and all the events of the past two years it would help Viktor better understand what this trip was all about. Viktor smiled and asked if it was a sad story, I replied that it was both happy and sad. "I think my aim here is to connect to a memory I don't yet have, something I want to discover and experience here."

  Viktor took advantage of the last few minutes before we reached his home to be open with me: "Tania might be sad… we lost our baby about two months ago... we came back from Ireland so we could have the baby here and he died after fifteen days." Heavy stuff indeed, and it added to the dark atmosphere that surrounded us since we left Zolochiv Castle. I was apprehensive about meeting Tania, but my fears evaporated as soon as I saw her beautiful smiling face. Tania was happy to see me. I felt welcome. We enjoyed delicious pasta and cold beer, and the conversation flowed. I told them of the lot, and how events unfolded as though guided by a hidden hand just for me. Viktor asked many questions so as to better understand the order of events and the various family relations. He had a hard time understanding the religious and cultural differences between my mother's and father's families; for him all Jews from that period, of which he learned from photos, were the same. I did not find anything offensive in his words, his questions were completely innocent. He was of a generation that learned of local history through the filters of a communist government, to whom religion was superfluous and harmful, and Jewish or any other ethnic history was dangerous. After Ukraine broke away from the USSR it chose not to deal with the horrific memory of the extermination of Jews, in which its residents had taken an active part. Viktor lives in a country where the grand vestiges of Jewish culture are crumbling, synagogues and cemeteries are disappearing and there is no local or national policy to preserve them. What little Viktor knew was from reading and meeting Jewish tourists while guiding them on their roots-tracing tours. But I was the first whose family came from Chortkow; my family's homes were near his home, the story I told took place in his hometown. It wasn't a distant story, it took place right here under his feet, in the air that he breathed. And it raised questions. I think the most difficult issue to deal with was the erasure of memories – the victim doesn't want to remember, so as not to awaken old demons and relive the trauma, and the murderer is too ashamed to tell the story. And so, absurdly, the silence is preserved.

  The story I tell sounds like a mystery, or historical romance, where the protagonists fall in love, get separated, reunite, escape from hell, start a family in a faraway land, their families are murdered and their son goes back to the scene of the murder to look for memories – this story creates a kind of shared experience, empathy, something one can identify with. The story builds a bridge and suddenly we are all part of it. You could feel it in the air, in our words, in our looks and even in the way the beer tasted.

  Viktor was on board, all excited, and suggested that tomorrow, before we drive to Chortkow, we go into Ternopil and try our luck at the local archives: "There's a good chance you could find documents related to your family." I try to cool his enthusiasm: "I don't believe we'll find anything… many went there before me and couldn't find any documents related to Jews… there’s no documentation of anyone being sent to Belzec… people I know were told that the old Chortkow Archives burned down… and the Belzec Museum also said they had no documents. It's a waste of time." Viktor wouldn't let it go, and I gave in thinking there might still be a chance. Perhaps that guiding force will play a part once again and we will find something of value.

  ***

  At the Archives

  I woke up after a good night's sleep. Viktor and Tania's apartment in Ternopil is pretty, modern and spacious. The warmth and coziness of their place made me feel like I was staying with friends. I was amazed that Viktor felt more like a friend than a guide. The conversations of the day before brought us closer, sparked a shared interest and created a joint challenge, and, surprisingly, we became full partners in this adventure. While drinking my first cup of excellent espresso, I suggested Tania join us for the trips outside of Chortkow and got a smile of agreement.

  It was a holiday in Ternopil, but not really a day off. Throngs of people in festive white clothes, holding flowers and apples, were gathered around churches. It was the Feast of the Transfiguration, celebrated by Orthodox denominations on August 19th of the Gregorian calendar. According to the gospels, on this day, Jesus received equal status with Moses and Elijah with whom he was seen talking on top of Mount Tabor and heard the voice of God call him "son". The priests' chanting echoed through the speakers. It was their customary Blessing of First Fruits of the year.

  The archives were open. It was a vast building that had seen better days. We passed a bored guard at the entrance. The halls were dark and the walls were in dire need of a pa
int job. A lighter shade would not be amiss at all, I thought, but the most prominent sensation was the stillness. There was no movement in the building and for a moment I thought the employees might be off for the day, or taking part in the praying outside. Viktor led and I followed into the first room. Behind piles of paper and folders sat an elderly clerk who did not raise his head when Viktor asked where we should look. He sent us down the hall to try our luck in one of the other rooms. This time we came across a younger clerk. She lifted her gaze, listened to Viktor's questions and told us to go to room 18 on the top floor. I liked the room number. It stands for good luck in Judaism. Here we met a severe-looking clerk. She had an air of authority. This room was also full of folders and piles of documents on the tables and shelves. It seemed as though nothing had been moved in ages. An old computer, turned off, sat on the corner of a desk, and the smell of old paper filled the air. She listened to Viktor's questions and they talked quietly in Ukrainian. I, of course, didn't understand a word. Suddenly Viktor asked that I write down the names I was interested in, and as though on autopilot I wrote down: Mordechai Liebman, Dr. Sima Finkelman, and Menachem Mendel Kramer. I could write down more names, but that's what I wrote. Next to each name Viktor added a note in Cyrillic letters and then gestured to a door. I left first and Viktor stayed behind for a few minutes, probably still talking to the clerk. "I believe we will find documents. Tomorrow morning we'll have to come back. I'll ask Tania to come and pick up whatever they find; I believe they'll find documents that did not go up in flames." When Viktor saw the astonishment on my face he added with a smile: "In Ukraine you need to know how to search... the stamps to prove the documents are authentic will cost you a pretty penny...and I explained that you had no problem paying." Again I felt like an actor in someone else's script. This time I was about to find documents. I could feel it clearly. Will I find out who Mordechai Liebman was? Or what happened to my Aunt Sima the doctor? Or any other details about my grandfather Menachem Mendel Kramer and his family? I did not know the answers. One thing I did know: I would have them soon enough.