The Weakest Link

 

We are all part of a chain in one way or another. Some are a link in a family line, others are the connectors in the history of an ethnic group, a nation, a social, cultural or any other assembly.

That link is not always staring at us or is clearly visible. Sometimes, we need to search for it, join scattered dots, cross- check facts or dig deep to discover it. In some instances, we may be lucky enough and discover that tiny clue which will lead us to the component that we are in search of. In others, unfortunately, we may find that the weakest link is not only weak, but also nonexistent.

In 2002, I embarked on the quest for one.

It happened when my daughter and I attended a summer school programme in Yiddish studies at the University of Vilnius, Yiddish Institute.

Over one weekend, we went to visit both my parents’ hometowns.  My mother’s, Smorgon, was first on the list. Since I had visited the place two years earlier, I was rather familiar with its layout which, incidentally, unlike that of my father’s and others that I visited, changed considerably since the time my mother had lived there.  

My mother’s house was no longer there. The large and menacing grey Pravoslav Church that had once stood there and which my mother could see through her bedroom window, was demolished once the Soviets entered town. The only remnant of the days gone by was the habitual market day which took place on Wednesdays.

Just as I had in my first visit, two years earlier, I tried, again, to find some information about my family’s history, a shred of evidence, a weak link that could reconnect me to that place.

Our tour guide, Regina, a Yiddish speaker herself, was immensely helpful. She was able to find one man who was seventeen years old when WWII broke out. Surely, I thought to myself, he would have heard of the Kozlowsky family (fictitious name, for obvious reasons). My grandfather owned a big, successful wholesale business. He was the richest man in town and their big spacious home was located near the city square.

The old man we met (in the photo below) who was eighty years old at the time, was blind and could not remember much. I tried to help revive his memory and mentioned the name of my grandfather’s competitor, Bernstein (likewise, a fictitious name) but to no avail. Nothing!

I felt empty. I had brought my daughter all the way for nothing, no proof, whatsoever, of a world, part of her world, that once was. The missing link was nowhere to be found.

Our next stop was my father’s hometown. A poor place with a few scattered houses where time stood still. No slight chance of finding the long searched for missing link, there, it was obvious.

“Is there another place you wish to visit before we head back to Vilna?” Regina asked me, noticing my great disappointment.

“Oshmiany,” I responded automatically.

Both my daughter and Regina looked surprised. “Why?” probed Regina, “did you have any family there?”

“No,” I said, “But my parents used to mention that name more than once. I am curious to see it.”
“Interesting,” observed Regina, “I happen to know a Jewish family there, the only Jewish family left there.”

Like my father’s hometown, not much seemed to have changed in that small community since the war ended, according to Bluma De Leon.

Bluma, a woman in her eighties, lived with her daughter, her son in law and two granddaughters in a small house, surrounded by farms, in an area sprinkled with what seemed to have been semi built houses, and many ruined ones.

Somehow, she managed to survive the war and moved to Oshmiany after it ended.

“I was born in Kreve,” she started her story, in Yiddish, of course, “where my father owned a small retail store.”

“Kreve?” I asked, “it was not far from Smorgon, was it not?” I knew the name since my grandmother used to tell me stories, in Yiddish, about life in those little shtetles. I could see them in my mind’s eye. I could draw a map and place each and everyone of them on their approximate locations.

“Yes, I knew Smorgon. I used to go there with my father,” she answered without hesitation. A glimmer of hope was ignited in me. A sliver of light was shinning towards me from afar.

“You have been to Smorgon as a child?” I asked with my mouth wide open and sparkling eyes. “What did you go there for?” I persisted as if clinging to the edge of a lifeline.

“My father used to buy supplies such as flour and sugar from Bernstein.”

“Wrong name, wrong link,” a tiny voice whispered to me as I sank deeper into the armchair in which I was seated. And just when I was ready to give up, I suddenly heard Bluma’s voice as if in a dream, “herring, however, the best herring, he bought from Kozlowsky."

I jumped in my seat. “Did you say, ‘Kozlowsky?’” I heard myself saying.

“Yes, because he was famous for his herring. It was the best there was.” As the tears began gushing down my face, I stood up, walked to Bluma, hugged her and in a strained voice said, "I am his granddaughter. You are the evidence I have been looking for, the living proof, the confirmation that the chain has never been broken. Thank you,"

“But I am just a weak eighty years old woman,” she added, as she was wiping her tears.

“Even the weakest link can, sometimes, become the strongest one.” I whispered to her as we stood there holding each other for a long while.

A Vanished Culture

Last night, I was watching a TV programme about the acclaimed Yiddish poet, Avraham Sutzkever.

In my view, he is probably the best poet that the Yiddish language ever gave rise to.

Fortunately for me, Yididsh is my first tongue. What a blessing it has been to be able to read and study this and other great Yiddish poets in that language, in the context of the Yiddish culture

Sutzkever was born in the town of Smorgon, my mother’s hometown. As a result of the Ribbentrop-Molotov agreement, their part of former Poland fell into Russian hands. Shortly after the Nazi invasion into the Soviet Union, in the middle of 1941, they set up a Ghetto in Vilna to where my parents and their family were transferred. Sutzkever, also, ended up there.

Vilna, its rich Jewish history and Jewish life have been part of the fabric of my upbringing. Prior to the war, I had a large family there. My late grandmother visited that city on a regular basis. I used to listen to her stories, her vivid description of famous landmarks, its thriving Jewish culture, Yiddish theatre and renowned scholarship of Yerushalayim D’Lita” (Jerusalem of Lita). That city was an inseparable part of me.

I have been to Vilna three times. During one of those times, I spent a summer programme at the Vilnius University Jewish Institute with my daughter. It was there that I was introduced to the great Avraham Sutzkever.

One of his poems that was taught in the course, “By the Golden Chain,” (Songs from the Diary), especially, caught my attention. Here is my free translation of it from the Yiddish:

“By the golden chain […]
Already time to unbutton out of darkness the secrets

Where tiny hearts of slime continue to beat in the ocean’s laboratory

Now it is time to drink wine with long drowned
Sailors in water – innkeepers on deck of ocean, in a cabin

And hear them tell of pirates, albatrosses

And Love of a thousand years, and everything not yet - tranquil.”

It struck a familiar note. As an undergraduate in English Literature, these words reverberated those of another poem, a very well known one. It was Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” written in the late 18^th century.

 In Coleridge’s poem, after the ancient mariner commits a sin by killing the albatross, guilts hounds him. The ship he was on was wrecked by a storm and its crew of sailors sank to the bottom of the sea. The mariner was its sole survivor.

Without getting into the discussion on why Sutzkever chose that metaphor, I remember being astonished and utterly awestruck at the fact that he was familiar with Coleridge’s work. Moreover, I was very impressed by how well he incorporated it into his poem.

After having delved into some of his other poems, I understood the profundity and talent that Sutzkever possessed. I was intrigued, curious and challenged by his poetic gift and decided to learn more about him. What I discovered was overwhelming.

Poetry, Yiddish poetry it turns out was Sutzkever’s survival mechanism during the harsh daily reality of life in the Vilna Ghetto. That did not come as a surprise to me. Having been exposed to the pearls of Yiddish culture, values, its humour, I was aware of their potential to generate a perennial spring, keeping its speakers’ spirits and minds forever alive and alert. They were the source of vitality, endurance, and resilience that prepared, guided and supported Jews through the monstrous chapter European Jewish history.

Sutzkever wrote a poem every day during his stay at the Vilna Ghetto. He was also involved in the vibrant cultural life and activities in the Ghetto and was even able to salvage some literary works.

Following their liberation, Sutzkever, his wife and young daughter made their way to Eretz Yisrael.

Unfortunately, in the early days of the nascent state, Yiddish was discouraged from being taught, spoken. It was suppressed and even banned. To modern day Yisraelis, it was the language of the Diaspora, the language of the people who had allowed themselves to be led to slaughter without much resistance. Many mocked and ridicule me for speaking it with my grandmother. Many continued to mock me for teaching it to my daughter.

 I vowed, then, that I will do whatever is in my powers to preserve that great and wealthy culture. It is the fiber of my essence, the culture that helped shape my destiny and that of my offspring. I, we owe it to hundreds of years of Jewish survival and to all the immolation our Jewish brothers and sisters have endured to keep its practice alive and thriving.

It will not stop with me. It cannot stop with me.