It is always nice to meet Czernowitzers in Czernowitz (Chernivtsi) – old and young! Stories are exchanged, old stories, new stories, wishes and hopes for the future.
From left to right: Janne, volunteer of Action Reconciliation Service for Peace, Mykola Kushnir, Director of the Jewish Museum, Arthur Rindner and his girlfriend Rina, Edgar Hauster and I.
The witnesses of Galicia’s multiethnic past are still there. But piece by piece they vanish. Many already don’t know about their meaning any more. When I was in Hrymailiv in February to change from one bus to another, I asked a few people for the location of the local synagogue. No one of them had ever heard of a synagogue in town. Today I was there.
I leave Lviv (Lwow, Lemberg) later than I intended. It is already 2 o’clock when the bus departs from the bus station and the trip takes longer than I thought. After 4 hours we reach Buchach. I change my plans and decide to stay overnight.
My destination today is called Uhniv, with just about 2,000 inhabitants, the smallest town with the status of a city in Ukraine. From Lviv (Lemberg, Lwow), there are rarely direct buses to Uhniv. I decide to go first to Rava Ruska and to change the bus there.
I’m traveling in Ukraine again. Lviv (Lemberg, Lwow), some excursions and the work-camp to clear the Jewish cemetery in Chernivtsi (Czernowitz) are on my itinerary. It feels good to be back!
Prof. Józef Lipman is one of the few Holocaust survivors from Boryslaw, Galicia. Together with Klaus Hasbron-Blume and other volunteers of Action Reconciliation Service for Peace (ASF), he returned to Boryslaw in the fall of 2013 for the first time since the war. In Starzawa he met Stefania, his former nanny. Klaus and the volunteers of ASF visited Stefania again this year. Klaus has documented this visit in a short note that deeply moved me, and I therefore reproduce it here.
It was a short trip in early June to Galicia – only three days. But enough to explore Belz and Burshtyn and to take pictures. Today I received the scanned black-and-white films and made a first selection. Here are the results. I have not yet decided which shots I will add to the two photo exhibitions in September. What are your favorites?
The ride from Lviv (Lemberg, Lwow) to Burshtyn is wonderful. On the Galician hills poppy florishes blood red, our marshrutka (mini bus) passes horse-drawn carts, cows stroll on the road and over all storks are circling – writing enigmatic signs in the sky. Burshtyn, that is in Yiddish and Ukrainian amber. Two synagogues and a Jewish cemetery are preserved.
Today I was in Belz. The usual bumpy roads and courageous marshrutka (mini bus) drivers. That alone does not make a story. But Belz turnes out to be unusually beautiful and interesting. Although the town is so small that one can walk through it in no time, it offers many traces of the rich heritage of Galicia. Ukrainian, Polish and Jewish traces.
Since I was in Ukraine in February incredibly much happened. I witnessed the revolution. When I was back home, everything changed quickly. Russia annexed Crimea, Russian fighters are terrorizing the east of the country now. Ukrainians elected a new President. Now I’m back for a short trip of four days. My first impression: In Lviv, people desire nothing more than a piece of normality. And they celebrate this normality.
Vanished World 