When we were back in Zborow, Maria, the archivist, gave us the phone number of an old woman, born in Zborow, who currently lives in Lviv. Alex called her this morning, and asked her if she remembered the Nissenbaum family. She did, and right away mentioned how they had a brewery and a flour mill. Unfortunately, she was unable to meet with us. Still, it's nice to know that there's more than one person out there who remembers Mama Manya's family!
Anyway, this morning I dropped off my mom at the airport to fly back home. I can't believe it's only been a week since we arrived--it feels more like weeks, if not months, that we were here, simply because we've experienced so much. My mom comes back in about 3 and a half weeks to join me in Austria, when we'll visit where the Displaced Persons camp was, since that's where Mama Manya and Papa Joe met and were married. Tomorrow, my dad arrives, and after a weekend in Lviv, we'll travel to his mother's hometown Sunday morning, and then Sunday night we'll arrive in his father's hometown, where we'll be for a few days before visiting Krakow. But more on that when the time gets closer!
Today, Alex showed me around the city of Lviv. As my mom mentioned yesterday, we got a taste of the city yesterday afternoon, but today I got to see basically the whole city on foot, and especially the Jewish sites in town. First of all, you should know that Lviv is a typical European city, meaning that it has wide avenues, beautiful old buildings, pedestrian-only streets, courtyards, main squares, and so on. I would have never guessed that there would be such a nice city in the middle of Ukraine, especially after spending most of the week in small towns and villages! I imagine that Krakow and Vienna look something like Lviv, but they're probably better kept up--that's the thing--while Lviv is a beautiful city, it still has the lousy road conditions and deteriorating buildings that are commonly found in Ukraine. Anyway, stops on our tour of Jewish Lviv included the remains of the Golden Rose Synagogue, an Italian-style synagogue that was blown up by the Nazis in 1941, the old Jewish quarter of the city, sites of Jewish businesses and shops near the center of the city (with original painted signage intact), the old Jewish hospital, memorials to the victims of the Lviv Ghetto and Janovska Concentration Camp, and two synagogues that survived the war. One of this, which used to be a Hasidic synagogue, was used as a synagogue and Jewish Cultural Center after the war, but sometime recently, has been out of use. I got out of the car to take pictures of the exterior of the synagogue, and noticed that the door was open. I decided to go inside and look around. The first hallway was used as an exhibit about what happened to the Jews of Lviv during the war, and it seemed like the only other people in the building were a young man and an old woman sitting in that first hallway, speaking in Ukrainian. They didn't seem to mind when I looked around, so I poked my head under construction tape, which was blocking the entrance to the main hall of the synagogue. Besides the fact that the room was being used mainly as a storage room, it looked pretty much intact, although it was clear that no one had prayed in here in years. I then went upstairs, and found abandoned offices and meeting rooms, complete with computers, printers, copy machines, televisions, desks with papers, and so on. It was very eerie--it was like everyone had been there yesterday, but no one decided to show up today. I'm not sure what the story is. As I was walking down the steps, a woman was walking up, and asked in Hebrew, "Is it okay to go up?" I responded (in Hebrew) that there was no one up there, just a lot of stuff. She started to climb the stairs, and following her was a huge group of Israeli tourists! They all said hi to me and I told them I was from Chicago, and it was really cool to see other Jewish people touring these places.
Anyway, tomorrow I'm going to wake up early to try and see some more sights (the top of the town hall clock tower and the art museum) before we pick up my dad from the airport tomorrow. Until then...
Buildings on the main square in Lviv
A former Jewish cafe
The abandoned synagogue interior
No comments:
Post a Comment