Re: [Cz-L] New book on Czernowitz

Danny,
Thanks for writing. My interest in all this has increased as I have
gotten older. My father only ever smiled, with a great nostalgic look
on his face, whenever he spoke of Kolomayja and Czernowitz. His voice
would lilt as he recalled the food, the parents, the teachers and
school, the prayers, the girls, and the evenings out just being out.
And also, there was his to-me-at-the-time inexplicable ability to
affiliate with Romanian, Polish, German, Hebrew, and Yiddish - a
phenomenon of languages I've only this year begun to understand and
grasp. But when I was young, I always thought: what a magical place
this must have been where my Dad hails from! No wonder he pines so for
those days.

Also, my interest has been furthered by a great feeling of connectedness
through learning the history, beginning to get a taste for how people
lived and what they lived through, so that now, while my ancestors seem
be quite far flung across the European continent, I am finally starting
to "see" where I come from - what kind of Jew my father was, his father
and his father's father was. I am starting to feel "rooted" in a past
that sort of belongs to me more, one that I can peer back into thanks to
this list and my trip and the great resources on the internet. It is
odd to feel as though my soul has one foot planted in the 19th century,
and the other in the 21st, yet that is what it is.

I now have visited my grandparents all - my paternal grandfather, buried
in New Jersey. My paternal grandmother in Vienna. My maternal
grandfather in Berlin. And my maternal grandmother, in ashes, in
Auschwitz. They are all ephemeral. They seem off, afar, unreachable,
they are spirits only, never known in "real life." But as I stood in
Auschwitz, and then in Kolomayja and Cz, they became enlivened. I felt
that, were I still enough, I could hear them, feel them brush by.

Illusion, all, but ah, what illusion.

Well, thanks for letting me go on and on.
Best to all,
Nina

alon wrote:

> Will you be traveling to Cz this year? How did your interest in the
> matter evolve?
> Danny
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> *From:* Nina Kern <mailto:nkern_at_jbs.biz>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, December 21, 2005 9:48 PM
> *Subject:* Re: [czernowitz2006] Re: [Cz-L] New book on Czernowitz
>
> My father, born 1898 in Kolomayja, then raised in Cz, where his
> sister was born and raised for several years ...
>
>>Happy Chanuka for all of you!
>>As much as I enjoy reading memories and testimonies of former Czwitzers, I
>>wonder if there are other 3rd generation members like myself on the list (I
>>am 33) who have an interest in Cz, Bukowina and their jewish identities. Are
>>there?
>>Danny
Received on 2005-12-28 17:31:23