The Echoes
Over the last few days I have been watching the reports of civilians hunkering in the steel factory in Mariupol. The videos show Mothers and children who have been stuck with no place to escape and concerns that not enough food and water will be available to sustain them. Their trauma is raw, their future uncertain.
I look at the faces and I hear echoes.
In 2009 our family traveled to Ukraine with 30 people from across the world who were like me, descendants and extended family members of the small town of Bolechow (Bolekhiv). Three of the men on our trip were hidden for months in desperate conditions. Their life stories and descriptions of their time in captivity were chilling and inspiring.
When my cousins Shlomo and Josef Adler and our friend Stan Ostern traveled with us to Ukraine in 2009 only Shlomo had been back since the 1940’s when they had left as two young teens and as a child. Yet even though decades had passed, their memories walking in their birthplaces were vivid and their stories were detailed.
Shlomo and Josef were hidden for months “between the walls” in a space built for one yet occupied by two, a Christian farmer and his family had provided them with food and shelter. After stopping briefly by the stream bed where they were hiding before arriving at the farmer’s home at a pre-determined time in the middle of the night, our small group listened for an hour as Josef and Shlomo quietly told their story to our group. They were 2 of only 48 Jewish survivors from a Town that originally had about 3000 Jews in 1940.
Stan’s story was very different but equally chilling. In the nearby larger Town of Stryy, Stan, his mother and sister survived the war hidden together. After being in a ghetto for close to a year, a Jewish man with incredible foresight arranged for the construction of a bunker beneath an existing home. The space was constructed in a way that it was possible to tap into the city gas line and a main water pipe and to extend two vents into the building’s attic to serve as a conduit for air and food supply. When the Nazi troops occupied Stryy 35 Jews including Stan’s family and four other children under 15 managed to get into the bunker built for 12.
In constant fear of being caught, they slept during the day and only moved around at night. Aware that Jews were being shot en masse and rounded up to be sent to their deaths at Belzec, this group stayed in the underground hiding space for close to two years until August 1944 when the Nazis were driven out of Stryy.
When we were in Stryy in 2009 we went with Stan to the bunker. We walked down a dark damp stairwell one person at a time to see inside the abandoned space. But what was equally stirring was standing outside in the courtyard imagining what this experience must have been like for a small child. The bravery of both the children and their parents, the unbelievable strength that it took to remain in the darkness knowing what would await you if you tried to leave was hard to imagine.
Stan’s story has always had a special resonance for me. I first read it online almost 20 years ago and eventually contacted him and introduced myself. It was because Stryy was very personal to me. My father had attended school there and more importantly had two married older sisters who were living in Stryy immediately before the war when my Grandmother lost contact with them. One aunt’s last address was mere blocks away from the town’s central square and the building where Stan had been hidden.
We don’t have verified confirmation of what happened to my aunts and their families or even exactly when. Based on the historic record in Stryy, most likely as was reported to my grandmother one Passover in the late 1940’s, they were shot in the street. But they may just as likely have been in the Stryy Synagogue when it was locked and then set on fire with hundreds inside. Or maybe they were put on trains to Belzec and immediately were put to death in the gas chambers. We likely will never know. It will forever haunt me.
Stan, Shlomo and Josef taught our family immeasurable lessons about strength and also about how true goodness by righteous people can save lives. The selfless work by our friends Alex and Natalie Dunai right now laboring to protect families and children are an echo, too.
We are seeing war crimes in real time. Unlike World War II before instant communication was available to us as it is now, we won’t have to wait to hear survivor stories to understand the magnitude of the depravity.
The children of Ukraine are calling out to us. We must help them every way we can.
