Even as the old Jewish Identity Fades in Berdichev, Another is Slowly Emerging in Leningrad
By Aaron Bernstein
Picture of the LYT.
[1]
A Bittersweet Ending
Berdichev, a city in Western Ukraine of 80,000, seems unremarkable in a country like the USSR. However, in the Jewish Renaissance taking place across the former Pale, it is a moderate area of tourist and scholarly. Like many communities across Ukraine, Belarus, and Poland, they have uncovered their long buried past of Jewry, and are rebuilding it for some tourist dollars.
Berdichev itself holds a special place in Jewish history. In a small home located on the outskirts of the city, Sholem Yankev Abramovitsh, aka Mendele the Book Peddler, would begin the modern literary Yiddish tradition with tales of human folly. Today a restored home can be visited by tourists [2], and surrounding the building is a moderately sized cultural center, known as the Berdichev Jewish Community center. Here tourists can learn about Jewish history, take Yiddish courses, and even buy books of Mendele's tales and other literary works in the original Yiddish.
"Here is an old Jewish dining set," says Lev Kurschman, the 88 year old curator of the museum. He takes me to the backroom of the facility, where various artifacts of old Pale life are displayed.
"Here a family of maybe ten would enjoy Shabbat diner," Kurschman says. He then pauses and bends his head. "Mine did as well."
For Kurschman, his role in Berdichev's Jewish Renaissance, is bittersweet. For the Renaisance is largely occurring, as in most other communities in Eastern Europe, almost without its large Jewish population. Kurschman is the only Jewish employee of the Community Center. The tour guides are mainly Russian or Ukrainian, and most of the attendees of cultural activities are semitophilic gentiles.
The reason for this lies in the darker side of Jewish history. Outside the Center is a monument to the Shoah of Bullets, when hundreds of thousands of Jews were mercilessly gunned down across the Western Soviet Union during Operation Teutonic, often with the help of Ukrainian collaborators. The monument, a large stone statue of a family huddled together, shows the fascist brutality toward the innocent.
Sadly for Kurschman, this too is not something for him that is in a museum, but something he barely survived.
"The Germans demanded all of appear near the ravine," Kurschman mutters barely holding back tears.
On August 10, 1940, the Jews of Berdichev, confined to a ghetto were ordered to appear on a ravine. A young 13 year old Lev remembers appearing with two older sisters and his parents.
"They demanded we give up our money and positions in order to be able to work," Kurschman spat bitterly.
He watched in shock as many of his former Ukrainian comrades were among those rounding up him and his family, taunting them all the way.
"A year ago, we sang the Internationale, but know they no longer saw us as Soviets, but as Jews," Kurschman continued.
When thousands of them arrived, Kurschman was behind his older family members when the Nazis pulled out their machine guns, and began the mass executions, surpassing the horror of any previous pogrom 1000 fold.
"I felt my parents and sisters collapse on top of me," Kurschman continued. "It was when I felt blood flow on top of me that I knew they would not get up."
The Nazis then picked up the corpses of the dead and the half dead, and tossed them into a burial pit. Those who were still alive and could crawl out were beaned with a shovel by the Ukrainian militias in a twisted game of Wack-A-Mole[3].
Kurschman hid under the bodies of the dead for up to two days, no food or water, until he finally could crawl out.
"I did not cry when I left. I was out of tears," Kurschman continued. "Having no family to protect, I only became concerned with my survival.
Kurschman would spend the next four years until the liberation of Ukraine fighting as a guerrilla fighter in a partisan band, the loss of family inspiring an incredible hatred for the German Nazis. He was one of 26 survivors out of a 15,000 executed over two days. By the end of the war, over 25,000 of Berdichev's Jews would lie in the ground.
Although 5,000 Jews, including Kurschman, would return to Berdichev, their population growing to 6,000 by 1960. But in spite of this, the decline of Pale life in Berdichev would only continue. Even before the Second World War, the forces of assimilation, state atheism, and migration were already causing Jewish life in the Pale to decline significantly.
The Second World War brutally accelerated the process, and instead of greater acceptance of their faith, the Jews of Berdichev and elsewhere who escaped German gas and bullets found continued hostility from their neighbors, and a blanket of silence the Soviet leadership was pushing on them. Those who sought to maintain their faith chose to flee to the UASR and the fledging Palestinian state. Others abandoned their faith and pursued assimilation into the Soviet nation, and relocated to fledgling urban centers.
A handful of people, like Kurschman, continued to remember their stories in this veil of silence, in hopes that one day, their nation would allow them to tell it, and others would actually listen.
The Cultural Leap and the Black Easter Massacre finally forced the Soviet nation to confront the pervasive antisemitism and deal with tragedies like the Shoah of Bullets. More importantly, it led to communities to finally rediscover and celebrate their Jewish history. Kurschman, the unofficial Jewish scholar, would help open the Berdichev Jewish Community Center in 2003.
But by that point, the Jews of Berdichev were in continued decline. Today, the Jewish population of Berdichev is little over 1,000, over two-thirds of whom are over the age of 65. Every week, the elderly and those old enough to remember the old days are dying out. The young, those who could carry on the traditions, are leaving for opportunities elsewhere, in Kiev and Odessa. Even the old are packing up and retiring. Kurschman himself plans to return to a retirement community in El Salvador in the next six months, because many of his elderly friends have passed on.
"After Yitzhak (his friend) died, I realized that I couldn't go on," Kurschman said sadly. "I have to leave."
Kurschman, however, is not without hope.
Each week, hundreds of tourists buy the titles of Mendele, walk the museums, lay wreathes at the site of the massacre, purchase recordings of Yiddish songs, and even take Yiddish courses in their spare time, Many of them pure Slavs, and not just Jewish tourists. For while Jews of Berdichev may vanish one day, the Gentile authorities are working to preserve their history-good or bad- for generations to come. This is something Kurschman himself never imagined would happen even three decades ago.
"The fact that the commissars here want to keep this, perserve this," he pauses and looks outside as he watches gentile schoolchildren learn about making Matzo from scratch, with a smile, "it means we won. The fascists wanted not only kill us, but destroy our history, our traditions, that we existed. As long as we remember our history, than my family never truly have died."
Uncovering the Past
In April 1987, a 13 year old Natalia Gurevich was taking a history class in her secondary school in Leningrad. Her assignment, as told by her old teacher, Professor Nadezhda Prokiera, was to research her family history and give a presentation about it, and tell a story about a relative. Of course, the kind of the story her old-timer teacher wanted was obvious.
"The Great Patriotic War", Gurevich said with a playful sneer, "Us Leningraders have millions to say about that." We sat in a small kosher cafe located on the first floor of the Leningrad Jewish Center, known locally as the LYT [4], which she founded back back in the 1990s, and is the current director.
Leningrad, and its incredible and horrific story of survival against the vicious Nazi horde which sought to raze the old imperial capital to the ground, remains possibly the most definitive conflict of the Second World War. It defined the war as the precarious survival of socialism against the union between capital and fascism. Those who lived through it told many stories. Those who fled will talk about their life on the frontline, or in the hinterlands of the Soviet Union. Those trapped in the city will talk about the struggle to survive as death itself was evident in the starving streets. In her family, Natalia learned about the latter.
"My grandfather Georgy, I learned, was a doctor," Gurevich commented. "He stayed in hospitals during the siege, working tirelessly even the hospitals became little more than morgues."
The young Natalia, however, wanted to learn if the story was true.
She visited the hospital where her grandfather Georgy had worked. To her surprise, she found records of him working there, dated from the siege of the city.
"Like any Leningrader, I felt proud of my ancestors for defending the motherland," Gurevich said with a smile.
However, a letter found in the files of her grandfather drew her attention.
"The letter was dated 1938", Gurevich said, "I believe it was from a hospital administrator. He called my father 'Grossman' ".
The name Grossman led Gurevich to ask her father, Valentin about it.
"When I showed him the letter, he went catatonic," Gurevich. "Like I thought I had discovered a horrific secret."
A Tsarist Mentality
The history of Jews in Russia is more complicated then simply pogroms and racism.
While the tsars frequently riled up antisemitism to support themselves, and banned the majority of Jews to the Pale , a select few Jews with valued skills and business sense were allowed to enter the capital. In return for their privileges, they were required to abandon their traditions and become Russian.
"This cultural domination was a powerful tool of the ruling classes," said Meyer Vinsky, a professor of Soviet cultural history and part time teacher at the LYT. "This was meant to distract the various peoples' from fighting for their rights."
Even after the fall of the tsar and the consolidation of Soviet power, the Soviet government continued the tsarist policy of assimilation toward non-Russian peoples.
"Even Comrade Stalin, an oppressed Georgian, retained this tsarist mentality," Vinsky commented. "Abandoning his own identity to imitate the men who had conquered his people." [5]
Jewish people, despite officially equals, were often discouraged from practicing their culture, except from a proletariat standpoint. And like in tsarist times, those who wanted to assimilate into society often did adopt Russian identity.
Georgy Gurevich, born Grossman, originally came from Shostka, in a Jewish community similar to Lev Kurschman. Unlike Kurschman, Gurevich, whether motivated by opportunism or ideology, abandoned his Jewish roots and name to work in Leningrad. It was easy, as Grossman was blond, and not easily identifiable as Jewish, similar to Natalia who does not appear Jewish to an outsider.
Assimilation was the goal of Leningrad's 200,000 Jews, and others living in the Russian Republic. Ironically, the abandonment of their traditions that may have protected them. Unlike their cousins in Ukraine and Belarus, the Jews of Leningrad managed to survive and avoid the Holocaust of Bullets that would kill a million and destroy the world of piety that Kurschman and others like him were born into.
"After my father confessed, it was like a fire had been lit under him," Gurevich said. "He seemed eager to learn about his roots."
Against the objections of her mother, Leonida, Valentin dragged his daughter to synagogue, suddenly eager to learn about his roots. For Valentin, who lived under a shadow of oppression, his daughter's rediscovery of his buried heritage was a sign of his long repressed desire to practice in the open.
Natalia, however, had little interest in service.
"I found the whole thing boring, just standing and praying," Natalia says with disgust. "I didn't see a point."
While her father's generation was a generation of Jews that had buried their faith, and only practiced in private, Natalia's generation, born in the fires of the Cultural Leap had not the same want. Their desires-American movies, sex, and drugs-were not spiritual. Of course, her concerns were also reputation.
"A mob of fascists attacked those walking into the city," Natalia says with anger. "Calling us Zionists and capitalist puppets."
Prejudice also awaited her at the synagogue. Due to the rule of matrilineal descent in the Halakha, Natalia was not considered a Jew, and was barred from the traditional service.
"This one asshole rabbi even called me a gentile bastard child," Natalia said with fury on her face.
The Leningrad of the 1980s, despite the growing cultural shift, remained a society in transition. Even in a growing freedom, old prejudices remained. Caucasus people were still called "Black-ass", LGBT communities remained mostly underground and disliked, and Beria-style gangs continued to persecute those challenging the supremacy of Soviet power.
Black Easter and a New Awakening
By 1992, Natalia was enrolled at an engineering college in Leningrad, hoping to become an electrician, when the horror of the Pogrom was revived in Easter of that year.
"I was sitting in my dorm when a roommate of mine showed me the newspaper," Natalia said.
For many Jews of the Soviet Union, the evil of Black Easter did not inspire fear or emigration. As with every injustice, it instead inspired resistance. Those who assimilated would no longer hide from their heritage.
"I decided then I was not going to let those fascist bastards from keeping me down," Natalia said with a wicked smirk. "I was going to fight by embracing my Jewish background."
Natalia, however, understood that she could not win over the modern Soviet generation with an appeal to tradition. The old-style Jewish celebrations, and old-style prejudice had alienated the young Natalia. Judaism had to become attractive to outsiders, if it was going to survive.
"Most people my age wanted to have fun, not stand around in a hot suit reading an old suit," Natalia with a grin.
The young Natalia began writing to Jewish communities in the UASR and Canada, asking them for advice. She began meeting with other Jewish people in her university. More importantly, she asked her Russian friends what they would like to do in a Jewish club.
"They originally told a racist joke," Natalia said, "but when I pressed them, they said 'it would be like one of those new clubs, singing, dancing, drinks."
In 1994, Natalia founded the LYT in a small warehouse in Leningrad. Here, she would be constructing the new Soviet Jew.
"I never expected what would follow from that tiny building," Natalia said with a smile.
A Shared Judaism
Seven decades after the fall of fascism, the memories of the siege have largely faded in the Second City of the USSR. The Leningrad of today is one that works toward the future, and that seeks to uphold the ideals of Comintern instead of being merely mouthed about them.
The tsarist tradition for Russification has been replaced by a celebration of cultural diversity. Many of the 7 million residents [6] of the modern Leningrad are non-Russians, many of them are non-Soviet migrants from the Eastern bloc.Through the city, dozens of languages are spoken everyday. Many faiths, from Orthodox Christianity to Catharism, are practiced. Millions of tourists from around the world come to the city see the beautiful palaces and museums left behind by the tsarist predecessors.
20 kilometers south of the Hermitage, the HQ of the YLT, nickname the Menorah building for its Menorah like design, rises from the surrounding landscape. Built in 2009, funded by Jewish groups from across the Comitern, it has become the unofficial Jerusalem of the Eastern bloc, and a place of fun and learning for Leningrad's Jews, who have grown by 50,000 in the last two decades.
It is here that modern Soviet Jewry has emerged. While there are several synagogues on the grounds of the facility, these are not the only things a visitor can enjoy here.
"We have shops, languages, gyms, restaurants, bars, language classes in Hebrew and Yiddish, poetry," she says as we leave the cafe. "And a discotechque," she says, pulling my arm toward the red doors where it is located.
What is more important than the facilities offered are the patrons themselves, and who is allowed. Half of the people I've met here are not Jewish. Many of them are Slavic, some of them East and Central Asians. The chefs at the cafe I ate at are Chinese who whip up a delicious Palestinian-Chinese fusion dish. This is a Jewish center than invites goyim, rather than rejects outsiders. Here, non-Jews can participate in the Maccabean Hannukah, with some getting to play Judah.
"Only by teaching people about what Judaism is can we bury the demons of hatred," says Natalia. As we enter the discotheque, we find a Yiddish tradition that not even Mendele could have conceived: A group of Belarusian rappers singing a techno mix of old Yiddish songs. The multiethnic crowd jumps at the modernized version of this old language.
Gurevich has worked hard to promote this new Jewish identity of shared tradition. Other Jewish communities throughout the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc are taken this openness model with incredible success.
The old isolated life in the Pale may be dying out, but the fortune of the Soviet Jewish community, by building a new tradition based off openness seems brighter than ever.
[1] OTL, this is the Jewish community center of Dnipropetrovsk, said to be one of the largest in the world. I'm stunned that they would build such a building in the city that was less than one percent Jewish.
[2] OTL, it hasn't been restored, but I figured ITTL, the authorities would be eager to resurrect the an old symbol of Yiddish culture.
[3] I read about this in Dina Pronicheva's horrific account of Babi Yar.
[4] Leningradskiy yevreyskiy tsentr
[5] Stalin was awfully quick to embrace Russian culture, as I've observed. Like Hitler was a wannabe German, I think Stalin was a wannabe Russian.
[6] OTL, it got to be about 5 million, but I figured with the USSR's survival, the population would get bigger.