Roztoky and Cernowitz - 8/15/2012

Alez under Roztoky road sign

Steve under Roztoky road sign

Wiznitz cemetery -- here lies a modest, honest woman

Wiznitz cemetery

I have no notion what animal is depicted here.  Looks like a guinea pig to me

(Home of Fran's grandparents)

Alex came at 9 with Alexi (25-or-so son of Vitalli) to drive to Roztoky (the village where Jack born (130 Jews in 1880 & 71 in 1930) )  & then Cernovitz (in Bukovina, where Jack & Frieda Stier came from).   Kimpolung, where Frieda was born, is now in Romania, border is hard to cross.  Grey day, on the edge of rain.

Alexi’s v. aggressive abt passing.  Roads also very, very rutted – half the time we were driving down the left side.

Lady selling dried mushrooms by the side of the road, when we asked for directions to Roztoky & explained why, said we should look up the mayor & find out what house the Stier’s lived in.  

Mayor not in, but accountants in the city hall bldg. (eating sunflower seeds) referred us to Victor Barsuk, the oldest man in the village, lived up a steep hill with his granddaughter, who had kids maybe 9 months, 2 yrs, and 5.  Memorial to Jews killed on July 5^th, 1941 on that hillside, erected July 4^th 2012.

Granddaughter  invited us in – 9 month old cried, but calmed quickly when she picked him up.  He was born in the highlands; his parents were killed by Ukrainian National forces (Bandera), and then he spent 1947-53 in the Gulag.  He came back to the village, found a woman w/ a child, and built the house he still lives in.  So he didn’t live in the village before the war, but remembered that Jews who died in Roztoky were buried in Wiznitz, abt 4 miles away.  

As Steve & I left, he kissed each of us on the cheek. 

Wiznitz cemetery hard to find (Alex clearly doesn’t have Steve’s sense of direction), but very beautiful, in a wistful kind of way.   Headstones (matzevot) leaning every which way.   The decoration at the top would show braided candlesticks with blessing hands for women, blessing hands for Cohanim.  Animals that looked to me like guinea pigs for men – not sure what they were supposed to be.  Women’s epitaphs almost always started,” here lies the modest, honest, woman” and men’s  epitaphs started, “here lies the wholehearted, upright man”.  Very few names I could pick out.  All epitaphs ended with the first letters of a phrase from Samuel I 25:29 “may his soul be bound up in the bonds of life”.

Asked Alex if he’d heard about the Jonathan Saffran Foer book Everything is Illuminated.  Indeed, he had, and had done some background research for the film.  Didn’t think much of either.  (I found the book heavy going – magical realism switching back to a fractured-english translator/narrator).

We ate in a restaurant in Czernowitz – I had mamaliga (corn meal mush with cheese on top); a lot of the food v. salty in a way I didn’t like.  S & Alex did shots of vodka, but I could only sip from a single shot – too much for me.

Next day (S’s birthday), Alex took me to the Cernovitz archives, while Alexi to S to the train station.  In maybe 2 hours, Alex & I found:

Births:

Taube (F) Stier, born 1923 to Meier Hirsh Stier & Manci Stier in Wiznitz

Shaje (M) Stier, born 1924 to Meier Hirsh Stier & Manci Stier in Wiznitz

Son born 1929 in Rostoki, to Abraham and Leah Stier

Deaths:

Estare Stier, died 1920 in Roztoki, of old age (?), born 1849

Braue, daughter of Leib Stier, born 1853, in Roztoki, of old age

Ride back to L’viv was maybe 5-6 hours.

Russ, Ed & Eileen & Caroline arrived in L’viv 8/15 – Russ & we ate in Amadeus (in Lonely Planet) – latkes way too salty for my taste.

Dubromil - 8/16/2012

headstone paving the courtyard

headstone paving the courtyard

former cemetery on this hill

another hill shot

8/16/2012:  (home of Steve, Russ, and Ed's paternal grandmother) Dubromil (in the footsteps of Ely—one of the towns where Ely’s mother’s family came from) – Ely had visited here in 1987 – Steve had asked Alex about Ely’s guide in the earlier trip (also named Alex) – our Alex replied that he was the only Alex working in InTourist  in the 1980’s and guessed that Ely’s guide was KGB.

Dubromil was pretty run down, roads (as usual) pretty rutted.  Alex was generally vg at finding places with clean bathrooms (I’ll spare you details). 

Steve and brothers had worked out a spreadsheet of towns and what they wanted to do in each:  the items for Dobromil were to find the house (formerly of the head of the Gestapo) where the courtyard was paved with tombstones from the Jewish graveyard, and to find the spot where the cemetery had been.  We also found a professor at Lviv univ who had written a 1200 pg book on the history of Dobromil (he had grown up there).  The professor discoursed (in Polish, Alex translating) for some time, so it was well after 2 PM by the time we had lunch.  

Alex’s lunch plan was he’d come up with a meat and a non-meat menu with the restauarant, and we could choose between them (but no mix-and-match).

After lunch, we headed up the hill to where the cemetery used to be – and then S, E, and R spent ¾ hour stumbling around over the uneven ground figuring out the exact spot where Ely’s 1987 pictures had been taken – matching hills and fields and houses.

I insisted on eating at the Vintage (where the food was good); Russ, Ed, Eileen & Caroline went off for pizza.

Synagogue in Lancut (8/18/2012 -- out of order)

8/17/2012: Stary Sambir & Nanczuka Mala

8/17/2012:  (home to family of Steve, Russ & Ed's paternal grandmother) Morning in Stary Sambir cemetery on hillside by road.  Had been cleared by Jack Gardner, US philanthropist.  In principle, we were going to divide up and look for Nussim (Natyan) and Beila Reisner.  In fact, the hillside was steep and the weeds (tho cut at least once during the summer) were calf-high.  Even where the lettering on the stones was readable, our Hebrew didn’t get us much past “a simple and upright man”, or “a modest woman”.  I left Eileen the easiest-to-navigate section (Steve had headed to the steepest and most distant) and betook myself to mid-slope.  I tried to move systematically & take pix, but even that had me puffing and panting after a (shamefully) short while.

Anyway, we gave up after maybe an hour, headed for the nearest town where the 8 of us ate for around UAH 125 (so USD $15.)

We travel in a white van, fitted with 3 seats in front (Caroline sits there, being the thinnest), two middle seats (prime real estate).

Anyway, the three rear seats bounce a lot and have no seat belts.  The bouncing matters because the roads are rutted (deep holes)or, if they’re just uneven, Alexi (aged 23, an unemployed comp sci graduate) is driving 100 kph.  The roads are 2 lane, often nec to pass – it talks a while to get used to tearing down the left hand side of the road.

After lunch, we headed for Nanczulka Mala, listed as either the birthplace or residence of Nussim (not clear which).  Very pretty valley – forest & pasture – a little like Mimi’s slice of Vt, but with gardens in the foreground.  Alex asked the old folk (one of whom we later found out was born 1950, so same yr as me), did Jews once live here?  They said yes, pointed us to a bridge, the people at the bridge pointed us to a synagogue vondation with a mond where the stove used to be.  There was never a cemetery there – people were buried in Stary Sambir.

The family we were asking questions of invited us for coffee – we filed onto the porch of their little store and the coffee turned into coffee with cognac and cookies.  They run a small store, farm, raise a few cattle (they’re only a few miles from the Polish border).

We’re sitting in the office of a notary who is preparing (separate) powers of attorney for Alex / his daughter to do genealogical research in the government archives on behalf of Russ & me.  Quite a procedure – I’d say we’ve been here about an hour.

Lezajsk, Rzecow, Przeworsk, 8/18-19/2012

Memorial to the Jews at Przeworsk (corner of bus station)

Przeworsk

Przeworsk

Lezajsk town hall, under renovation

Lezajsk

Lezajsk

Lezajsk town hall

EU funding for Lezajsk town square renovation

synagogue at Lezajsk

Ohel, Lezajsk cemetery

Lezajsk cemetery

Lezajsk

8/18-19/2012:  (home to Fran's mother's father's parents) Rzecow & Lezajsk -- Crossing the border took a couple of hours – first to exit from Ukraine and then to enter Poland (an EU contry, and don’t you forget it).  Lots of smuggling of liquor & cigarettes – so one of the steps is to look in all the containers and crevices.  We said we had no cigs/liquor to declare – that got all our bags opened & inspected.  

Water in Poland mostly safe to drink, unlike Ukraine.  Roads are graded to 1^st world standards.  Towns much more spruced-up.  V. suburban look to the countryside – each house in its little yard, surrounded by decorative gardens.  Many families bicycling on Sunday, or pushing strollers with fat, immaculate babies.

Picked A & L up at the Reczow airport.  They looked particularly enourmous.  We went to airport café for lunch – L ordered a sandwich; A ordered pierogies (sprinkled with pork).  L sneaked one of A’s pierogies & A speared L’s sandwich with his fork, holding it hostage.

A declared that the Polish eagle on the zloty looked like a startled chic ken; now, of course I think of what he said every time I see one.

V hot day & I quickly goty thirsty (lunch was salty and I hadn’t brought along a big enough bottle).  Steve gave a (good) summary of the significance of the Rzecow Reisners to his grandparents’family.  Alex did a short talk.  We walked around in search of various addresses (none of which we found – we didn’t find any open stores to buy water, but the town square was lined with cafes).  After we saw the old synagogues and what was left of the old cemetery, a plaque on a bolder commemorated the former cemetery.