Leo, your mother and I pray that you will never forget where you come from, nor the generations who came before you. May your life be a credit to your ancestors, just as we pray that you will someday have descendants as numerous as the stars, whose lives will be a credit to you.
On the morning of Saturday, April 29, 2017, at about 3:00 A.M., Josh called to tell us that we had a new granddaughter, born minutes earlier. This, our sixth grandchild, was Leo’s sister.
Mom and baby were both doing great, he assured us. He told us that they named their new daughter, Bea, after her maternal great-grandmother Debby Neumark, who had recently died. Debby’s Hebrew name, Devora, translates to “bee.” I was so excited that I couldn’t fall back asleep, so I went downstairs.
As I entered the kitchen, I saw a yahrzeit candle that I had lit the night before. Yahrzeit means “time of year.” While not prescribed by Jewish law, it is traditional to honor someone on the annual date of death by lighting a candle, designed to last twenty-four hours.
For a minute, I couldn’t remember who the memorial candle was for. Then I was startled to realize that it was for my mother’s cousin, Beatrice Shereshevsky. Even though I understood that they weren’t naming our new granddaughter for this particular Bea, I was touched by the coincidence.
I managed, eventually, to fall back asleep on the sofa in our family room. A few hours later I awoke to another call from Josh. He wanted to talk more about his new daughter, and he also had a question. He asked how I would feel if Bea’s middle name was Asya, after my half sister. I broke down in tears.
Months later, when my daughter-in-law Dinah was reading a draft of this book, she told me that I got one thing wrong. She and Josh had chosen the name Bea not only for her grandmother Devora but also to honor the memory of our cousin Bea and the family that made it possible for us to come to the United States.
By coincidence, or maybe not by coincidence, our new granddaughter, Bea Asya Foer, was born on the Shabbat, the Sabbath, between Yom HaShoah, the day commemorating the tragedy of the Holocaust, and Yom Ha’atzmaut, the day celebrating the birth of the state of Israel. Which is to say, between the tragedy of the past and the promise of the future. I have given her, as connective tissue, the Kiddush cup from Sura, the woman with whom my mother spent the war on the run. May her name be a blessing, and may her descendants be as numerous as the stars.
EPILOGUE
My mother died at almost ninety-nine years old on the eighteenth day of December, in the year 2018. In Hebrew, the numerical value of 18 translates to chai, which means “life.” My mother, a superstitious woman, would have loved this: She was a survivor who even in her death was associated with life.
She died in our home, where she had lived for the last three and a half years, a house she had disapproved of when we bought it. It had been something of a financial reach for us at the time, and this thrifty, coupon-cutting woman thought it too extravagant. The first time I took her to see it, back in 1987, she toured the house in silence. I was eager for some form of approval—perhaps in her mind’s eye she could envision her large family seated around the table in the sun-drenched kitchen or could imagine her grandchildren playing in the yard. She didn’t say a word until she noticed the fence that separated the yard from the driveway. She went over and gave it a good shake, and it wobbled a bit. The fence was no good! That was all she had to say about the house.
It’s an anecdote that defined our relationship—her penny-pinching and my perceived extravagance. Our inability to say what we wanted to say to each other.
It wasn’t always easy those last few years, when she didn’t want to live alone; with Bert’s support, we brought her to live with us. We made adjustments to the house to accommodate her, including installing a motorized lift to get her up and down the stairs. I suppose part of me wanted to continue to be the good daughter, to play my role of bringing joy, to be worthy of this heroic woman. There were plenty of days, as she declined, when I asked myself how long this could go on. We had upended our lives at a time when we thought we’d be free to travel and visit grandchildren. But it was the right thing to do. I knew this in my heart, but there was also a religious and spiritual aspect to the decision: From a Jewish perspective, action is what counts. You do the right thing. The feelings come later. And they did.
It was in this house that her body lay for almost eight hours before the funeral home took her away. We wanted to surround her—her family, the rabbi, and her caregivers. We didn’t leave her body alone for a second. We were waiting for Frank to return from California, where he had been on business, so that he could say goodbye. We turned on the air-conditioning, even though it was December, to keep her body cool as we watched the blood drain from her face, which began to turn a grayish white.
Somehow, we managed to comply with Jewish tradition, without quite knowing what that entailed. My brother, who is not particularly religious, somehow knew what to do, and he asked for the book of psalms to read as he sat next to her. We felt grief. We felt gratitude. We felt pride. She did it. She survived, and survived with dignity and grace. We felt her life force. Nothing felt unresolved.
Three stretch limos took the family to the funeral and the cemetery, filled with our now-large family—her children and stepchildren, their spouses, her grandchildren and their partners, and her great-grandchildren. One of the grandchildren, watching everyone pile out at the synagogue, quipped, “Take that, Hitler!” This is exactly what she would have said.
The synagogue was packed with hundreds of people—her friends, her children’s friends, her grandchildren’s friends, even the friends of her great-grandchildren, who thought of her as Bubbe, all of whom came to honor and remember. They learned new details about her, about her escape from the Nazis and her complicated life in America. She was gone, but she wasn’t vanishing so much as growing bigger and more heroic as the details of her life were recalled. The word “superhero” was invoked numerous times to describe her.
Nine-year-old Cy, the youngest great-grandchild to speak at the funeral, said, “I loved everything about Bubbe. I loved the color of her hair. I loved the welcoming ‘Hello, sweetie, you’ve grown so much since I saw you, honey.’ I loved the kisses on the cheeks as if all my worries were out of me and back into the world.”
My mother had made a decision a few years before her death that her final resting place would be at the old Beth Shalom Cemetery in Capitol Heights, Maryland. This is where the family that first welcomed her to America is buried. Her plot is right next to Cousin Bea, and a few steps from her Aunt Jean and Aunt Chia, and close to not-quite-four-year-old Cousin Mark, the first member of the family to be buried here. My father is buried here, as well, in a plot on the other side.
After the funeral, the rabbi invited everyone in attendance to come to the burial at the cemetery, but she warned that it would be crowded and, with its narrow, windy one-way road, somewhat difficult to access on that rainy day. It would be like a shtetl, she said. And it is a shtetl of sorts, filled with her landsmen from Kolki and Trochenbrod, many of whose names I recognize.
Her grandsons and their wives were her pallbearers. Together they carried her plain pine casket, the one mandated by Jewish tradition, meant to equalize people in death and to enable their quick return to dust. Her grandchildren carried her casket from the hearse to the grave and lovingly lowered it to the ground in the freshly dug, and very muddy, plot. We covered the casket ourselves with shovelful after shovelful of cakey, clay-like dirt. As they took turns shoveling, the boys would pause to hug one another. Each knew he had been her favorite.
The night before the funeral, I remembered the jar I had filled from the mass grave in Kolki, the one where my mother’s mother, Esther, lies, along with my mother’s nieces—Lifsha’s daughters, Sura and Fruma Chia—and her grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. I decided to bring that jar and pour its contents into her grave as a way to
give her family a more dignified burial. To bring their ground to her, and her to them.
The rain picked up, and our shoes sank into the mud. I opened the jar and sprinkled dirt from nearly eight thousand miles away onto the casket. Everything was in its proper place, the earth where it belonged.
For my parents, and those who came before them.
For my grandchildren, and those who will come after them.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Writing this book was harder than I thought and much more rewarding than I could have ever imagined. It was a journey made possible by incredible people to whom I will be forever grateful.
To my agent, Rafe Sagalyn, and my editor, Tim Duggan, who both believed in this book long before I did.
To Susan Coll, my personal editor, who became my friend. She helped lead me along the path from memory to ink.
To the terrific community of professionals at Tim Duggan Books and Crown: David Drake, Will Wolfslau, and Aubrey Martinson. Thanks to Kathy Lord, Julie Tate, Jennifer Backe, Vincent La Scala, Susan Turner, and Elena Giavaldi. And the superb publicity and marketing team of Ellen Folan, Stacey Stein, Melissa Esner, Dyana Messina, and Susan Corcoran.
To Avrom Bendavid-Val, a huge debt of gratitude for introducing me to the real story of Trochenbrod, which he recounted in his book The Heavens Are Empty and in the documentary Lost Town, created with Jeremy Goldscheider.
To the memoirists and authors who contributed to the understanding of these places and times, among them David Schwartz, Betty Gold, David Katz, Margarete Feinstein, Robert Hilliard, and Morton Kessler.
To Sergiy Omelchuck, our guide in Trochenbrod, and to Anna Kurnyeva, our unstoppable, warm translator, researcher, and friend. Special thanks to Anna’s father, Ivan, who drove us across western Ukraine.
To Natan and Itzhak Kimmelblat, in Brazil, who embraced me as a fellow Trochenbroder.
To Mira and Chaim Binnenbaum, who drove me from one end of Israel to the other to meet Trochenbroders.
To the Lischuk family in Ukraine whose grandfather, Davyd, hid my father. You are truly my Ukrainian family. Special gratitude to Lesya, who maintains contact between our families.
To Father Patrick Desbois, my hero, who has devoted his life to tracking down and documenting Holocaust mass graves in Ukraine and the former Soviet Union.
To Hannah Jopling and Gail Schwartz for their extensive interviews of my mother. And to Sarah Kaiser Hyams, who spent endless hours transcribing some of those interviews and locating documents in the Holocaust Museum’s database.
To the readers who helped improve the book at every phase, including Jackie Leventhal, David Marwell, Louise Myers, Anat Bar-Cohen, Barbara Heller, Marge Mueller, Amy Oringel, and my newly found cousin Cheryl Kahn.
To my husband, Bert, who supports and encourages me in everything I do. Nothing would be possible without Bert—my life, our family, and this book, which he read many times as the drafts mounted. Bert made it possible for me to take care of my mother in the last years of her life. I know that she loved him. In a family of secrets, she would pull him aside and say, “Esther and Julian don’t tell me anything. I need for you to tell me what is going on.”
To our three sons, each of whom played a key role in the evolution of this story.
• Jonathan, who unlocked the door with Everything Is Illuminated.
• Frank, who was the first member of our family to write my mother’s story. Frank also took the trip with me to Ukraine and continues to travel the journey.
• Josh, who got the last word with the naming of Leo and Bea Asya.
To my grandchildren, who inspire me every day to keep memory alive.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ESTHER SAFRAN FOER was the CEO of Sixth & I, a center for arts, ideas, and religion. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband, Bert. They are the parents of Franklin, Jonathan, and Joshua, and the grandparents of six.
A Reader’s Guide for I Want You to Know We’re Still Here by Esther Safran Foer
1. Think about the title: What does it mean? How does it inform Esther’s journey? Who is the “I,” the “you,” and the “we”?
2. In the first chapter, Safran Foer writes, “It has been said that Jews are an ahistorical people, concerned more with memory than history.” Do you agree with the statement? In what way does your own family fit into this idea? How does this idea fit in with Jewish religious observance?
3. In that same paragraph, the author continues, “History is public. Memory is personal. It is about stories and select experiences. History is the end of something. Memory is the beginning of something.” In what way is memory the beginning? What is shared history if there is no shared memory? What is a memory if one has not personally had the experience? Was Esther’s search looking for history or memory?
4. What role did Everything Is Illuminated play in Esther’s story? How did the fictional story echo reality and how did it impact reality?
5. Esther writes about how Amos Oz’s book, A Tale of Love and Darkness, enabled her to begin to confront her own trauma around her father. Have there been works of literature which have informed your own understanding of your family history or identity?
6. Why do you think Esther’s mother kept her father’s letters from her, even as an adult? Was this an act of protection?
7. Esther writes that she is a “hinge” between her mother and her own children, that she had a “role in this story as the biological link” between the two generations. Other than being a daughter and a mother, how does she work to fulfill what she sees as her role in the story? Does her contemplation of her role differ from that of anyone in a “sandwich generation”?
8. In preparation for the trip, Esther decides to bring her family Rosh Hashanah cards to Ukraine. What does it mean to leave something behind? Why did Esther choose the cards as her object to leave?
9. On many occasions, elements from the natural world (dirt, trees, etc.) are mentioned throughout the book. When did they appear, and what was their significance?
10. Esther’s son, Frank, appears on a panel entitled, “Can memory save us from history? Can history save us from memory?” What do you think that means? How would you answer those questions? In what way does I Want You to Know We’re Still Here address or answer those two questions?
11. In recounting the family’s Passover traditions, Esther writes, “It’s an occasion to bring memory alive….Storytelling is fundamental to resilience.” Why is storytelling fundamental to resilience? Do you think this is referring to personal resilience or communal? How does this contrast with the way in which Esther’s parents, and many other survivors, chose to move forward with their new lives without talking much about the past? What are some of your family traditions—in general or around a holiday—that are designed to bring memory alive?
12. The concept of names appears throughout the book, from Esther’s desire to learn her half-sister’s name to the descriptive nicknames that were used in the shtetls and the shifting names of the villages. There is also the poem by Zelda Schneurson Mishkovsky that was read at the mass graves in Trochenbrod, “Unto Every Person There Is a Name.” What is the significance of a name? Why is it so important to Esther to discover her sister’s name?
13. When asked why she refused a piece of pork even in the face of starvation, Esther’s mother answers that, “if nothing matters, there’s nothing to save.” What does she mean by that? What is she trying to save? Is there something that you feel so strongly about that you would stand behind it no matter what you faced?
14. Nadiya asks Esther, “Why are you here?” Aside from learning concrete details about her father’s family, why does Esther travel to Ukraine? What does she want to find that she didn’t find through records, maps, testimonials, genetic tracing, and books? Have you been on a heritage trip or thought about trave
ling to an ancestral homeland? In thinking about a trip like that, what did you hope to find, to learn, to experience?
Guide created by the Jewish Book Council, 2020.
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