Marla was invited to speak to English high school students in "Gymnasium number 1" in Rohatyn.
She suggested that I talk to them as well.
In the hotel, the previous night, I adjusted a slide show ( thank you google drive!) that I presented to some students back home on Geneology - to the expected audience , not knowing if I will have internet in the school or not.
Lucky for me, I was able to connect their computer to the internet via a hotspot on my iPhone (definitely worth what I paid my cellular provider for this "package" ...).
I was able to download it and present it, which still amazes me, especially in a place which seems to be so far behind in so many aspects (like doing everything manually in the fields just like it was done for generations and generations).
There were more than 30 students with three teachers and one American peace corps volunteer. They were quiet and respectful (Even though they probably didn't understand all that was said, especially when I talked with my Israeli accent).
We had a very warm welcome and a very warm goodbye from both the teachers and the students, and that was a great change from what you see in the stores and in the streets: very little smiling...
Marla showed us around and took us to where the Jewish Ghetto was (before it was burnt in the final liquidation), the Jewish quarter, the surviving synagogue (that stands deserted), and the gestapo headquarter whose parking lot was paved with Jewish Headstones.
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| The Gestapo Headquarter inner yard |
We left Rohatyn after dropping Marla off at the north site and headed toward Narayev, where my grandmother and my two uncles were born. The roads are not in great shape but the scenery is beautiful and many stork nests with full occupancy can be spotted on the way.
In Narayev we started in the "city hall", where the secretaries know nothing about the names that I ask about, or the prewar map or anything else from that prewar era...
The mayor gets out of another office while we are there and he promises that a book with info and photos from that "era" is coming out in a month, including Jewish photos.
Of course I leave them my address and hope they will contact me when that book is available for purchase.
We walk around the village for a while, Sophia and Oleh try to ask some older people about the "Hebrews".
One welcoming family brings grandma (86) from the fields and she talks to us for a while. She gets very emotional when she tells us of a Jewish family that was locked by the owner of their hiding place (cellar) and were later buried by him and how the same man suffered before he died.
The family claims that some Jewish tombstones are in the cemetery but we couldn't find them.
At one point I find myself crossing this very large cemetery back and forth, hoping to spot just one Hebrew letter, or any other sign that will shout to the world: "You see? There really were 700 of us here in this village - just before it became "Judenrein" (clean of Jews) !!!"
But nothing is left.
My plan was to continue to Knyhinicze, my grandfather's village. Somehow I feel too tired for another search in vain, I prefer to go back to Rohatyn, where we meet the group surveying the new Jewish cemetery that was robbed of some of its tombstones, but some very heavy ones are still there...
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| This is a photo of the surviving headstones in the New cemetery, taken probably by Marla or Jay in the fall,My battery died... |
We don't know for sure if there is a mass grave here, but some rumors say that there is one here as well.
Marla and Jay treat all of us to our last dinner in Rohatyn, the pizza is very good and it goes very good together with the Lvivsky beer.
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