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.