Re: [Cz-L] Future Czernowitz online exhibition

Hi Czernowitzers
 In order to clear up a few historical facts. Without trying to minimize the
atrocities inflicted by the Soviet regime on Jews in general, on Bukovinan
Jews ( before and after the Fascist regime) in particular - The Jews who
were denied entrance to Czernowitz after the Liberation were Jews who did
not originate from Bukovina before the war. Jews (and others) tried to flee
the Soviet regime (or at least improve their life) all the time by moving to
the west of the (former) Soviet Union. The story of those Jews who
sympathized with the Soviet system is a chapter by itself.
Regards
  Yosef Eshet (Jerry Wolf)
Raanana, Israel






----- Original Message -----
From: <sottovoce1_at_verizon.net>
To: "Czernowitz Genealogy and History" <CZERNOWITZ-L_at_cornell.edu>; "Steven
Lasky" <steve725_at_optonline.net>
Sent: Friday, October 19, 2007 5:21 PM
Subject: Re: [Cz-L] Future Czernowitz online exhibition


I have a document that may be of interest to you.

“ A report on travel to Czernovitsyâ€�, was written by my father, a
Yiddish poet and writer Naftali Hertz Kon. In 1944, after the Soviets
re-occupied Bukovina, he was sent by the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in
Moscow, of which he was a member, to Czernowitz to write about the local
Jewish resistance fighters who aided the Red Army in the war.

What he found upon arriving in Czernowitz was so horrific that it had nearly
eclipsed for him the story of the Jewish resistance. “ A report on travel
to Czernovitsy� describes these horrors in great detail to the leadership
of the Anti-Fascist Committee.

In a nutshell: The just-established Soviet authorities in Czernowitz adopted
a policy of unremitting cruelty and repression towards the emaciated,
frightened, sickly, and clad in rags survivors of the Transnistria camps and
ghettoes trickling into the city. The survivors were denied residence
permits, without which they couldn’t obtain jobs; and in many cases they
were outright prevented from entering the city. Those that made it to the
city, were hiding in basements, abandoned buildings, and all kinds of
unsavory places. Random raids were all too common, with able-bodied women
and men being grabbed on the street and deported to places like Sverdlovsk
and Donbass, the centers of heavy industry short on labor. Many of those
deported left children or elderly parents behind, with no provision for
their care.

The copy of the report in my possession is a Russian translation of the
Yiddish original, published by Lev Drobyasko in the Holocaust and Modern
Times, March-April, 2003, No 2(8) ), a publication, I think, of the Kiev
Institute of Judaica. Drobyasko, who I understand passed away recently, had
unearthed the report while searching the archives of the Soviet Ukrainian
Ministry of Internal Security.

If you are interested I could attempt a translation. Not being a
professional translator, it may take me awhile.

The report is a remarkable document on three accounts. First, gathering that
type of material so openly critical of the Soviets, and then writing and
submitting it, required for a Soviet citizen an enormous courage, a courage
that my father must’ve known was practically suicidal. Second, treading
precariously, my father peppered the text with standard Soviet phraseology,
such us “political education of the massesâ€�, “politically unproven
elements,� and many others. Nevertheless, the ruse did little to soften
the scathing condemnation of the report by the Soviet authorities, who
classified it as “scurrilousâ€�, “hostileâ€�, â€�anti-Sovietâ€� and
such. And finally, the report, though it, until recently, never saw the
light of day, was very likely the very first account of the plight of the
Bukovina Jewish survivors at the hands of the Soviets in the immediate
aftermath of the WWII.

A few words about my father. Naftali Hertz Kon was born in Storozhynetz in
1910, and published his first poems at the age of 18 in the Tshernovitser
Bleter. He left Bukovina in 1929 and didn’t return until 1944, when he
arrived there on the assignment I described above. He returned to Czernowitz
again sometime around 1945, this time with my mother, my sister and me, to
make the city our home. In 1949, Stalin unleashed a campaign against the
Committee. Its leadership was either assassinated, murdered, or imprisoned.
My father was arrested and sentenced to death. The sentence was later
commuted to 25 years in the Gulag. He was released in 1956, following
Stalin’s death and Chrushchev’s era of “thawâ€�.

My family left Czernowitz for Warsaw, in 1959, as Polish repatriates, thanks
to my Polish-born mother. My parents and sister emigrated to Israel in 1965,
and I with my physicist husband defected in 1966 and made our way to New
York. Father passed away in Tel Aviv in 1971.

The story of my father’s tragic life and his remarkable, by all accounts,
poetry is the subject of a lengthy article by Karen Auerbach, a doctoral
student in Jewish Studies at Brandies University. The article will appear in
the spring 2008 issue of Polin, a magazine published by Brandies
(http://www.brandeis.edu/aapjs/polin/).

Regards,
Ina Lancman
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Received on 2007-10-21 16:00:57