The Education of a Traitor: A Memoir of Growing Up in Cold War Russia (20 page)

“When the war started, they never told us that the Germans were exterminating Jews—not in the newspapers, not on the radio. They knew about that, but we didn’t. You see, in the first war (World War I) the Germans treated everybody the same, no matter Jews, Ukrainians, or Russians. So when they began advancing toward Ukraine, the Jews didn’t leave immediately. But then it was too late.”

“How did the Germans know who the Jews were?”

“They always knew. We’re ‘noticeable,’” Grandma says with a crooked smile. “And Ukrainian ‘volunteers’ helped them, too.”

Here she stops, but not for long, “As the war started, Pinchas and Rosa’s husband were drafted in the army, so Rosa moved in with her mother Dorka. When the Fritzes burst into their house, Dorka lay in bed, sick, and Rosa had just given birth to a baby boy. They pulled Dorka outside on her blanket and dragged Rosa out by the hair with her baby in her arms. Dorka couldn’t walk, just lay on the ground and moaned. They shot her in the head.”

Grandma’s face looks like a ravaged
stetl
, but I cannot stop. “What happened then?”

“They rounded up all the Jews and marched them to a ravine,” Grandma says. “Made them dig their own graves and then shot them with machine guns. They were very economical, you know. Put people in double rows, so they could kill two with one bullet. And those who did not die, the soldiers and the Ukrainian police buried alive."

“What about Rosa?” I say, squeezing my cold hands.

“Oh, Rosa was very patriotic. Shouted that the Soviet Army and Stalin would avenge their deaths. Sure they did!

Bitterness in Grandma’s voice floods the apartment and splashes outside through a half-open window. “So many Jews were killed and buried in that ravine, just like stray dogs. But Stalin didn’t allow a monument to their memory. Who cares about dead Jews.”

“How do you know this, Grandma?”

“Several people survived and told others. We’re all survivors,
bubala
, our ancestors before us, those who escaped death during the war, and even those who are being born now. We have to be. Nobody cares about us, nobody defends us.”

At that, Grandma turns around and heads to the other room, leaving unwashed cups on the kitchen table.

Back row: Grandfather and Grandmother (far left); Dorka and Pinchas (far right). Front row: my uncle, my mom, and my aunt; Rosa (far right), 1929.

I stay behind, feeling small and lonely, the way I felt a long time ago, when I got lost in the wintery Sokolniki park. But there was a woman who helped me then, who took me to my grandfather. She
did
care.

There are some good Russian people! I want to tell Grandma. But the door is closed and, who knows, maybe I just got lucky. As they say, “Do not be born pretty, be born lucky.” And I am not pretty.

The next day, Mother and I sit beside each other darning my cotton stockings. Mother’s fingers quickly fly over a damaged heel, leaving behind neatly intersecting rows of threads. I try to mimic Mother’s precise movements, but my fingers are awkward and my mind is wandering.

“Mom, is it true what Grandma told me about her Ukrainian relatives?”

“What did she tell you?”

“She said that the Fascists shot them and buried them in a ravine, together with other Jews and their babies.”

Mother glances at me. “That’s true, but don’t talk about that in school, okay?”

“Why? They were victims of Fascism!” I say, studiously repeating the words from my history textbook.

Mother says nothing, but her fingers begin moving even more quickly, like bees buzzing around their hive.

“How many people did the Fascists kill there, Mom?”

“Tens of thousands. In just a few days.”

In my mind, I try to envision how many people that is. Is it like the crowds at the Victory Day parade?

“Do we have any relatives left in the Ukraine?”

“They are all there. In Babi Yar.”

“Where is that?”

“Babi Yar is the name of that ravine,” Mother says and adds, “Let’s talk about something else.”

At night, I have a hard time falling asleep. I toss and turn in my bed, and listen to the wind howling outside the window as if mourning the terrible fate of the people I never knew.

“They are all there,” sounds in my head, and when I close my eyes, I see skulls and bones—large and small—sticking out from the black earth like worm-eaten mushrooms in the deep woods, and I hear the muffled cries of invisible children.

A month later, we are invited to my Aunt Raya’s birthday. When we appear on her threshold, the table is already set, but my aunt and her daughter are still in the kitchen. Aunt Raya, red in the face, is delivering a monologue about Sima’s “impossible absent-mindedness,” while Sima silently crawls around the floor, wiping up bits and pieces of multicolored vegetables—an expression on her face like that of St. Sebastian shot with arrows.

“Raya, let me help her,” Mom says, quickly assessing the situation. The pride and joy of any Russian party,
olivje
salad, made of boiled potatoes, eggs, dill pickles, green peas, and finely chopped bologna—all liberally doused with mayonnaise—is scattered across the kitchen floor.

“No,” Aunt Raya says, in the tone of a nun who won’t give in to the temptations of the world. “She dropped it, she should clean it up! You just go in and enjoy yourselves.” And as my aunt directs us to the dining table, she turns around and says to her daughter, “Don’t you leave the kitchen until you fix the salad!”

I look at Sima. Her eyes are glistening suspiciously, her lips are quivering, and her usually meticulous hair-do has shifted off center and looks disheveled. Whatever her ‘impossible’ faults are—besides not paying attention to me, that is—she is a sorry sight.

I let my relatives get ahead and approach my cousin. “Sima,” I say quietly. “Your hair is tousled. Do you want me to bring you a comb?”

“No.” Sima says abruptly, but as I turn around to leave, she softens her voice and says, “Wait, bring me a couple of hair-pins. They’re in our room, in the top drawer. Thanks.”

Flattered to be of help, I dash to the room that nineteen-year-old Sima still shares with her sixteen-year-old brother. There is no mistake about which chest-of-drawers belongs to her and which to Roma. I approach the one with balls of wool and knitting needles on top and pull the top drawer open: a comb, mascara, lipstick, eye liners, and other items from a young woman’s treasure box reveal themselves. I grab two hair-pins and close the drawer. Then curiosity gets the best of me, and, instead of turning back to the kitchen, I pull out the next drawer.

There I see a thin pile of official-looking papers and, next to them, a small red-colored leather book with the word “Passport” on it. Without hesitation, I reach for Sima’s passport, open it, and read.

Name: Seraphima (Sima’s full name); date of birth: November 19, 1945; Father: Nikolai Podberezov, Russian; Mother: Raisa (Aunt Raya’s full name) Podberezova, Jewish. Then my eyes jump to the ubiquitous fifth line—Nationality: Jewish.

So, it is true that half-Russian Sima chose to be registered as Jewish. Mad, isn’t she? I shake my head, put Sima’s passport back, and keep looking. The third drawer reveals a stack of knitting patterns and a fashion magazine in a language I do not recognize. I open it up. Pretty, well-dressed coquettes stare seductively at me from every page, manifesting a life that my school teachers would never approve of.

I want to put the magazine back, but something falls out of it and lands on the floor. I pick it up. It is a hand-written paper. The words “Babi Yar” appear on the top of the page followed by a name—Yevgeny Yevtushenko. I have never heard of Yevtushen-ko, but he must be a poet, for underneath his name runs a column of short uneven lines:

“No monument stands over Babi Yar.

A drop sheer as a crude gravestone.

I am afraid.

Today I am as old in years

As all the Jewish people.”

How strange! This is the second time I have heard about Babi Yar in a month, and in a poem, of all places!

“I seem to be Dreyfus …”

I stumble over the unfamiliar name but keep reading.

“Beat the Yids (kikes). Save Russia!”

This, unfortunately, sounds too familiar.

“I seemed to be Anne Frank …”

Another name I do not recognize, but I hurry forward. Finally, the conclusion:

“In my blood there is no Jewish blood.

In their callous rage, all anti-Semites

Must hate me now as a Jew.

For that reason

I am a true Russian!”

I finish the last verse and turn the page over, trying to find an explanation for what I just read. The back page is blank—no comments and no dates. Is this really poetry? The rhyme is different and the rhythm, too. Not at all like Pushkin or Lermontov or Esenin, not even like the famous Soviet-era poet Mayakovski, all of whom we study in school. As for the subject, I have never read poems about Jews. In fact, I have never read anything about Jews that does not portray them as conniving or greedy, or worse.

Yet these lines bleed with anguish and compassion, and although there is nothing in my school curriculum about Alfred Dreyfus and Ann Frank, and I do not understand some of the poem’s allusions, I understand one thing. This poet, Yevgeni Yevtushenko, who, by his own admission, has no Jewish blood, mourns for Jewish victims, whether they were betrayed by their countrymen, killed during the pogroms, or executed by the Nazis. He mourns for people he never knew and was not related to, for those like Dorka, Rosa, and her little baby boy, and also for the fact that there is nothing at Babi Yar that marks the place of so many terrible deaths.

I wish I could read the poem one more time, but Sima’s voice draws me out my trance, “Did you find my hair-pins?”

I rush back to the kitchen.

“
Za smertju tebya posilat
!” (Finally! As if I sent you to fetch death!) Sima greets me, irritated. She stops cutting vegetables, and with both hands pulls back loose strands of her hair and secures them with hair-pins.

I quietly stare at her, unsure if I know her at all. Well, I know that she is a college student, that she likes movies, that she always seems to know about current fashion and supplements her dowdy store-bought clothes with her own knitting. Stuff like that. Yet I know nothing about important things. Like how did she learn about Evgeni Evtushenko and his poem? Why did she register as Jewish? Did she ever meet her father?

Mother said that Jewish women who marry into a Russian family are all miserable, but is that always true? Evtushenko must be Russian or Ukrainian, but surely Mother was not talking about him—if he were to marry a Jewish woman, that is. There must be some good Russian men, and in fact, my Aunt Raya might have been happier with her first husband, who was Russian, than with my Jewish Uncle Abraham, and Sima with her biological father.

“Sima, are you done?” I hear my aunt’s voice.

Sima grabs the bowl of freshly made
olivje
salad and takes it into the room. The salad is passed around, voices get louder, and glasses are raised—wine for women and vodka for men: “Happy birthday!” My uncle leans toward his wife and kisses her on the lips, and she, flushed from the attention or the incident in the kitchen, gets up, makes a circular gesture with the glass in her hand—“Thank you, my dears!”—and drinks the contents of her glass.

I shift my eyes from one familiar face to another—everyone seems happy, even Sima’s lips curl into a weak smile. Suddenly, deep hostility rises inside me like heartburn. How can they celebrate Aunt Raya’s birthday or anything else, for that matter? With all those people killed and buried in a hole, with Grandpa gone, and Aunt Raya forced to marry a man she does not love? Or … does she? I look at my aunt again. She gives me a carefree smile and turns to her husband who is busy telling jokes.

Laughter and clanking of glasses intensify my gloom even more. I turn to Grandma. She’s gone through so much. She must be feeling like me! But the look on Grandma’s face is one of pleasure and contentment. She is still alive, and she presides at a table surrounded by her offspring. What else can an old woman desire?