Glory to the Heroes / Heróyam Sláva

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July 12, 2017

Nadya patiently helped me navigate Lviv’s archaic train ticketing process the day before my ride. After a night under the TV tower with some local students, I arrived at Lviv Railway Station just in time to watch my 6 AM ride leave.

The ticket only cost about four USD but the next train wasn’t until 7 PM. My flight was the following night. The 7:30 6-hour marshrutky (suspensionless Soviet-era bus) ride was the only option.

Three haphazard connections later I landed in Zabolotiv center; a few shops, quaint homes with gardens along broad dirt roads, and an imposing statue of Ukrainian hero Ivan Franko, all surrounded by expansive farmland. Prior to arrival my search revealed the only remaining aspect of Jewish life in Zabolotiv to be a Hasidic graveyard. I made that my mission.

I guess the first few people I asked about the “Jewish cemetery” only heard the first word. I was referred to Manès Sperber, bust on a pedestal, at least twice. Apparently, he was the only one of us still above ground.

Sperber was a psychologist and philosopher born in Zabolotiv in 1905. I couldn’t get much else out of him. Later searches revealed him to be raised Jewish, but he renounced his faith after hearing of the atrocities committed during the Ukrainian War of Independence and refused his Bar Mitzvah.

I conceded to use a translator app on a taxi driver instead of asking for help, assuming others often stumbled into town seeking the same site. This got me dropped off at a remote Christian cemetery on the edge of town. I walked back to the center. The second driver took me to a church on the other side of town. I had him turn around; nothing against Mary statues, but I only had an afternoon. My assumption seemingly invalidated, if I could just put two words together I’d get three pilgrimages for the price of one.

While I had no internet connection in Zabolotiv, I did manage to accomplish something useful on the Banya-temp, comically bumpy, sleep-deprived, slightly hungover, sparse cell-coverage fever dream of a marshrutky ride in; I saved a webpage containing a 1996 appraisal of the Zabolotiv plot by Hodorkovskiy Yuriy Isaakovich for the International Jewish Cemetery Project:

Present town population is 5,001-25,000 with fewer than 10 Jews. […] No other towns or villages used this unlandmarked cemetery. The urban flat land, separate but near other cemeteries, has no sign or marker. Reached by turning directly off a public road, access is open to all. No wall, fence, or gate surrounds the cemetery. 501 to 5000 stones, most in original location with 25%-50% toppled or broken, date from 18th to 20th century. Locations of any removed stones are unknown. Some tombstones have traces of painting on their surfaces. The cemetery contains marked mass graves. Municipality owns property used for agriculture (crops or animal grazing). Properties adjacent are residential. The cemetery boundaries are smaller now than 1939 because of housing development.

Occasionally, Jewish or non-Jewish private visitors and local residents visit. The cemetery was vandalized during World War II and occasionally in the last ten years. There is no maintenance. Within the limits of the cemetery are no structures. Vegetation overgrowth is a seasonal problem, preventing access. Water drainage at the cemetery is a seasonal problem. Serious threat: uncontrolled access (leads to destruction of tombstones), vandalism (destruction of tombstones) and existing nearby development (The widening farmland threatens to cut into cemetery.) Moderate threat: pollution, vegetation and proposed nearby development. Slight threat: weather erosion.

Isaakovich’s account set my expectations low but contained my last resort; a set of coordinates. And of course, they led me right back to the center of Zabolotiv. The sun wasn’t getting any higher, and I was beginning to accept whatever I wanted to see had disappeared sometime within the 20 years since the IJCP report.

While trying to explain “JEWISH CEMETERY” with my translator app in Ukrainian and Russian and English to the third and final prospective driver, a woman and what seemed to be her teenage daughter approached us. I guess they pitied my struggle and translated where I needed to go.

They also asked about my business in Zabolotiv; after a few sentences Inna and her mother offered to host me for the night. That was too easy. Wary of them and the driver, both were my only bets. I hopped in the cab hoping their address was real, safe, and I could find it.

After a short drive, I was let off at a nondescript gravel road. I didn't see anything but obeyed the the driver and started to walk. The road quickly degraded into a dirt path; I half expected to be greeted by a crew of local gopniks (thugs) collaborating with Inna and the driver.

The surprise I experienced was more disturbing than violent. A few hundred feet in I started to notice that some of the large, seemingly randomly distributed stones had an intentional shape about them. I had been trampling the dead.

Isaakovich got it all wrong. The site wasn’t “threatened;” it was gleefully neglected and totally destroyed. And not just during WWII. A Coke can crushed over a hand-carved Star of David. Gum stuck on lion crests in-between careful Hebrew lettering.

The scene was post-apocalyptic, or at least post-Judaic. The “graveyard” sprawled across young forest and fields in various states of abandonment. Maybe the cab drivers couldn’t understand why I’d want to come here. Or maybe this wasn't something they wanted an outsider to see. (Or maybe my Ukrainian was really useless.)

Bordered by the backlot of an elementary school and a few private backyards, the entire area now felt unwelcoming. The sky had become increasingly overcast and the landscape unreasonably dark. The atmosphere was heavy.

I felt shame walking by the hundred or so graves in my vicinity overturned and unpreserved, knowing all I could do was document their degradation. The contrast between the last few days made the bleakness of my current situation sting. Nadya had taken great care to ensure my experience in Lviv was full of friends and culture.

Now I was alone in a rotting field, surrounded by sinking graves. My new reality was hostile. There was more to see, but I felt an urgent need to follow my ancestors’ footsteps out of Zabolotiv.

Jonathan Safran Foer also came to Ukraine after his sophomore year of university. He tried to find the woman who rescued his grandfather during the Holocaust. In a 2002 interview, he reported:

I went [to Ukraine] for three days, and I found absolutely nothing. I didn’t find the woman; I wasn’t even close to finding the woman. And I didn’t even find the type of absence I was anticipating. It wasn’t an evocative absence; it wasn’t a moving experience. It was just nothing.

He elaborates in a 2004 interview:

I did go to the Ukraine [⚠️sic ] in the summer of '97. I wasn't doing research for a novel, per se, but neither was I simply doing genealogical research. It was somewhere in between. What I found was nothing but nothing. There weren't even people to ask questions of, or gravestones to light candles by. What I found was one, huge hole.

Jonathan may have been better off for not looking too hard. He claims in the 2004 interview, “Holes are often terrible in life, and wonderful for art. An absence inspires creation. Most works of art, I imagine, are in response to a need to fill something.”

My experience was worse than empty; I was brimming with dread. I started making my way toward the main road. If only Inna hadn’t steered me toward ruin I could have at least written a New York Times Bestseller. Surely that was the will of the cab drivers, my Ukrainian was perfect.

Just as I had found my way onto one of the more recognizable footpaths – farmland on one side, forest on the other – I heard a man calling from behind. I turned around to see him emerge from the woods: short, wrinkled, without shoes and most of his teeth, and frantically beckoning me to follow.

A quote from Everything is Illuminated’s Alexander echoed in my head: “I do not want to make you a petrified person, but there are many dangerous people who want to take things without asking from Americans, and also kidnap them.” The mysterious man claimed he couldn’t operate my translator app, didn’t bother to attempt a word of English, and had a dangerously impish smile.

I had absolutely no signal and felt increasingly isolated, but memories of Nadya and her generous friends got the best of me. Wordlessly, desperately, I followed my unnervingly-eager guide away from the farms and further into a thickly wooded area.

If this was a plan to get me alone it was working. Notably, we weren’t heading in the direction he came from. This observation, coupled with wandering around graves dehydrated for too long, added credence to a third and fourth possibility of this being's nature: harmless hallucination or indeterminately disposed apparition.

We went deeper into the woods. I still had no indication of where we were going or what he wanted me to see. Gravestones increased in density on both sides, foretelling the role I could soon fill as the freshest fertilizer contributing to Ukraine’s renowned black earth.

We arrived at a hidden opening in the trees. Ducking through dense summer foliage, we emerged onto a narrow path with a dimly lit clearing at the end. We were completely isolated. According to the JewishGen entry about Zabolotiv: “No Jews remain in the town.” I felt like I was about to find out why.

There stood a large concrete and iron cage about seven feet tall, with bars too narrow for a body to fit through. Beyond them, human-height forms dwelled in the shadows.

Isaakovich specifically mentioned there were no structures; what the f*** was this cage for?

With a fiendish grin the old man beckoned me closer, his few teeth suddenly sharper. I couldn't help thinking of Borat's lyric, “throw the Jew down the well” — I wasn’t about to become the subject of a Ukrainian remix about a cage. I resolved to fend for my freedom against the man and his gopnik/ghoul accomplices should they pounce from beyond the corner.

Slowly, I made out the shadows to be at least four massive, relatively well-preserved gravestones. But if the cage wasn’t for me, it was time to jump to the next conclusion; my wallet. I had many reasons to suspect this was at least a con:

From what I had seen, the people here treated what remained of the Jews with little respect. Above ground, our family fled during a series of pograms. Their inhumane details occupied my mind before and after reading about them on the marshrutky ride in. I was primed to notice the UPA flag (sometimes a symbol of the Ukrainian far-right) flown near the town center.

Great-great grandpa Abraham didn’t survive Zabolotiv by trusting thy neighbor, and neither did the writers of A City and the Dead; Zablotow Alive and Destroyed; generationally compounded suspicion got me this far, and it required me to confirm what this guy was about before proceeding.

I remembered the translator app had a speech-to-text feature. It turned out the clearing, adjacent courtyard, and building were the man’s personal property. He explained that he and his wife constructed the tent-like ohel with the help of an organization to protect the graves of once-important shtetl Rabbis. They were sharing their land and time to maintain them, but that didn’t explain why.

All that was left to nail down the motive was to confirm he wasn’t Jewish; he and his wife were not. So I asked point-blank why he did it: he responded that the graves were in danger. Abraham cackled, Sperber remained smug. I wouldn't disappoint them by buying into a pay-per-view graveyard experience, at least unknowingly.

The game was obvious. On the off-chance a relatively spoiled Jewish foreigner waltzes through, the couple could easily solicit donations. Exploitative and macabre sure, but resourceful; whatever, I’d be the next jerk to pay dues at the roadside attraction. At least theirs had substance. Unprompted, I offered up some of the meager cash from my wallet.

He pushed my hands away; clearly, it wasn’t enough. The woman I thought to be his wife watching us from the edge of the courtyard turned back towards their home, presumably to alert the resident gopnik of my shiny watch. We continued bartering and the man continued to feign rejection; we both knew this ended with him getting paid.

I barely noticed his wife emerge from their home with a plastic shopping bag, making a beeline toward our increasingly animated moral play. She wedged herself between us and slowly drew an apple out of the bag. Looking me in the eyes, she confidently placed it in my hands atop the crumpled pile of Ukrainian hryvnias.

The act of giving seemed to put a definitive end to negotiations. Which meant a few things: I could stop worrying about gopniks, I wasn’t going to sabotage Abraham’s legacy by circling back to Zabolotiv for a dirt nap, becoming the punchline of an intergenerational comedic traumagedy, and — …

… The couple in the well-worn farmhouse really had no ulterior motive to maintain the graves. This shoeless man, in the right place at the right time, couldn’t have even been sure what I was looking for. But he chased me down on a whim.

They were going out of their way to preserve and share this legacy for no other reason than it was a good thing to do.

The cynical mindset I internalized from Everything Is Illuminated and records of the pograms melted away in the face of such massive mitzvah. Disturbing memories of defiled gravestones were rendered inert, their significance vanquished by this man and woman. They were eager to support the memory of a people not their own, in a place at times indifferent, inhospitable, or even murderous towards them; that selflessness held the line against it all.

The tensions I’d created dancing around inquisitions of my ethnic and religious background now seemed senseless. I reframed tainted interactions and relationships with heightened clarity, applying a shiny new appreciation-filter to each memory. Damn Safran Foer — it really felt like the light was flushing everything else out. I allowed myself to become a gratitude-filled mess.

Maybe this hopefulness was what the man was excited to see the whole time. He was just as cheeky, but exhibited a new air of contentedness. More than anything, the couple embodied immensely powerful spirit, despite probably not being apparitions. The man unlocked the ohel and I reflected among the graves, many of which were adorned with candles and stones. Visitors didn’t come often. This was a lucky encounter.

I asked to take a few pictures of the couple and their yard. We hugged goodbye (at this point I was certain they were real) and I thanked them, leaving to catch a taxi to Inna’s with a backpack full of apples and water bottles.

My fight-or-flight-enhanced memory piloted me from courtyard to main road, and Inna’s turned out to be real and gopnik-free. On arrival, her mother found me train tickets and arranged for a neighbor to give me a ride to the stop the following morning. Inna showed me her family’s garden, and we tried whatever was ripe. We discussed her favorite flowers. She showed me her drawings; she was a talented artist.

We joined her mother, grandmother, and great uncle for dinner in their farmhouse: cured meats, homemade jams, fresh fruits and vegetables from their small plot, all washed down with beet juice. I crashed into her brother’s old room for a few hours of rest. The pressure in the atmosphere finally resolved; Inna’s mother reported a powerful thunderstorm rolled through while I was sleeping.

In the early morning I moved from cozy farmhouse to cool summer night to warm car to small railway platform to the old train, and back to Lviv. I felt grounded, understanding more about where I was from, even if I’d never be sure of what went wrong with the cab drivers, which had nothing to do with my infallible Ukrainian.

On the ride back I discovered that against my protest, Inna’s mother secretly packed my bag full of snacks. I should have expected as much; Grandma never let me leave her house without a bag full of leftovers. I realized there was nothing lucky, supernatural, or dangerous about my journey — everything I experienced was ensured by persistent Ukrainian good-will.

* * *

Fall 2022

Shortly after my visit, the European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative surveyed the site and refurbished the ohel and gravestones it contained. There is still much work to be done, but everything seems to be in better shape with help from the residents of Zabolotiv.

A history of the site’s stewardship is documented by the Jewish Heritage Guide:

[the] cemetery site is owned by the municipality of Zabolotiv. Stakeholders include the local civil community, foreign descendants of Zabolotiv pre-war Jewish and other families, historians, and students of Jewish culture; the graves of the tzadikim are of particular importance to their descendants and to followers of their Hasidic dynasty [...] Activists include the Geder Avos Jewish Heritage Group… [the] World – Center of European Rabbis (WCER) […] [and] Oholei Tzadikim… An open-frame ohel was built over the graves of tzadikim of the Hager family at the southern end of the cemetery in the 1990s … There is no informational signage.

The last two claims are incorrect. There was a thin metal sign at the top of the ohel tied to the steel bars with small-gauge metal wire which seemed to have been removed during renovations. According to a voice-message translation from a friend, Liron says the sign states the structure was erected in 1989.

It also credits the builders, including a local Rabbi’s grandson, more family, and some community members, highlighting two:

“and then… OK, wait, I need to think about the name in English.”

“Ok, it’s gonna be quite literal, so it’s gonna sound weird but – the ‘right’ of the saintly like… saint people?… the saintly woman and man who live here will protect them.”

She pauses. Her scrunched face and shrug are audible.

“I guess it’s not really a ‘right’ but their… how will I describe it — “

“Good character? Something about that.”

Glory to the heroes / Heróyam Sláva

* * *

My anxieties reflect ignorance rather than the reality of modern Ukraine, which according to Timothy Snyder, was and will be the only country to elect a Jewish president with 73% of the popular vote, as long as Israel’s election has more than one candidate. For a far more realistic account of moving between Jewish, Eastern, and Western worlds see Helen Chervitz.

If you’d like to support Ukrainians, please do so through Razom; if you’d also like to get something out of it, Saint Javelin has some cool stuff.

📷: Canon PowerShot ELPH340 16MP 1/2.3 12x

To Glory to Ukraine / Sláva Ukrayíni