Lost and Found

Papa Joe's family home in Kolomyja

Today we visited Kolomyja (pronounced Kolomeya), the birthplace and hometown of my mother's father, Joseph Birnberg, whom I called Papa Joe. Papa Joe's family owned a textile business that produced a type of rug as well as some clothing, and sold their products all over Europe. Papa Joe, born in 1920, went to a local Polish school as well as a Cheder (religious Jewish school) and then went on to trade school to become an accountant, which he worked as for a year from 1940-1941. Papa Joe decided to join the Russian army so that he could fight against the Nazis, and during the war he both worked as a builder and accountant for the Russian army, and this was how he was able to survive. The rest of his family was murdered in Kolomyja, and Papa Joe learned what had happened in 1945, when he returned to Kolomyja to see much of it destroyed. His house however, was still there when he visited in 1945, as well as when a friend of his went back to visit in 1993. We started off our day by visiting the local historical museum, to see if they could match up the addresses we had for Papa Joe's house and his father's textile business with the current Russian/Ukrainian street names. We spent a lot of time there while Alex convinced the reluctant historian to keep looking for things, and while she was working, we wandered around the museum. It gave us a feel of what a nicely decorated home/building would be like, since it was decorated in the older style. We figured out the new street names, and also came up with a few more destinations: a pre-war synagogue we knew still existed, a different synagogue currently in use, and Papa Joe's Polish school. We found the pre-war synagogue, now a bank, and the other synagogue, at which no one answered the door. We then started to look for the school. We only knew the name of it--Piramowicza, and the historian at the museum said that it was most likely in a building that was currently being used as an employment center. We asked people where this was, but on the way there, I noticed another building that looked familiar to me (from the Yizkor book) as the school building. However, we went to the employment center instead, and when we got there, we asked inside if anyone knew what the building was before the employment center. We talked to the director of the center, who had us call a former director who might know. The former director thought that the center was previously a Russian school, not a Polish school, so instead we went to the building that I thought might have been the right school. We walked around the building to get inside, and a teacher led us to the vice-principal--the building is still being used as a school. He sat us down in his office and began to explain (all of this talking to people, by the way, is through Alex. No one speaks English!) some of the history of the school, and we asked if he knew Piramowicza. He didn't, but a bunch of curious teachers came over to us, and looked on at our documents in pictures, and then were very excited to help us. They took us upstairs to look at pictures of students from the '30s, and then showed us some old pictures of teachers. We sat in a little office for a little while they copied our pictures for their own records and called a former teacher of the school, who they thought might know something. He called us back later, and told us that the employment center was in fact the Piramowicza school--that in the 20's and 30's it was a Polish school, not a Russian one. With all their help, the pieces of the puzzle fit right together...especially when we began to look for the street Papa Joe's house was on, and it turned out to be the very next street over from the school, and the first house on the street. It had the same address as Papa's Joe's, but the street name was different. It was clear that the whole outside of the house was original to Papa Joe's--the style was very old, but everything was in extremely good shape--especially the ornately carved wooden door--and only the windows seemed to be replaced. We went around the house to enter, since the door handle wasn't on the front door, and saw that the house had been divided into two apartments, and where the front entrance was, was turned into a storage room. However, we saw that there was very nice red and blue stained glass on top of the door. We knocked on one of the apartments, and a very large shirtless Ukrainian man opened the door. We explained that Papa Joe used to live in this house, and asked if there was anything on the inside that was original to his house. He said that when they moved in, there was nothing inside the house, and it was he who divided it up into the two apartments and made the storage area. However, he let us look around and take a picture out the window, just like the one we've always had of Papa Joe's family (see below). We spent some more time outside the house, just taking in the fact that this was really where he was! It was such a nice location, right next to the school and the former great synagogue and the main square, and it was (as was the city as a whole) the total opposite of what someone expects from one of these former homes in the "shtetl"--it wasn't like Fiddler on the Roof at all. Instead, it was a beautiful, colorful, clean, well-kept large city. Anyway, we took some "artifacts" from the outside of the home, and then planned to return to Kolomyja on Sunday to visit where Papa Joe's father's business was, as well as Nadworna, a city close by, where Papa Joe's brother lived with his family. Oh--and still no luggage, which means that we've been buying more and more Ukrainian clothes. Let's just say...we'll fit in very well with the style here. See below.

Us in the main square (Rynek) in Kolomyja

Piramowicza School

The Birnberg family outside their home

Us outside the Birnberg family home

"Traditional" Ukrainian clothing