Re: [Cz-L] Future Czernowitz online exhibition

I have a document that may be of interest to you.

“ A report on travel to Czernovitsy”, wa=
s written by my father, a Yiddish poet and writer Naftali Hertz Kon. In 1944=
, after the Soviets re-occupied Bukovina, he was sent by the Jewish Anti-Fas=
cist Committee in Moscow, of which he was a member, to Czernowitz to write a=
bout the local Jewish resistance fighters who aided the Red Army in the war.

What he found upon arriving in Czernowitz was so horrific that it had nearl=
y eclipsed for him the story of the Jewish resistance. “ A =
report on travel to Czernovitsy” describes these horrors i=
n great detail to the leadership of the Anti-Fascist Committee.

In a nutshell: The just-established Soviet authorities in Czernowitz adopte=
d a policy of unremitting cruelty and repression towards the emaciated, frig=
htened, sickly, and clad in rags survivors of the Transnistria camps and ghe=
ttoes trickling into the city. The survivors were denied residence permits,=
 without which they couldn’t obtain jobs; and in many cases=
 they were outright prevented from entering the city. Those that made it to =
the city, were hiding in basements, abandoned buildings, and all kinds of un=
savory places. Random raids were all too common, with able-bodied women and =
men being grabbed on the street and deported to places like Sverdlovsk and D=
onbass, the centers of heavy industry short on labor. Many of those deported=
 left children or elderly parents behind, with no provision for their care.=
 

The copy of the report in my possession is a Russian translation of the Yid=
dish original, published by Lev Drobyasko in the Holocaust and Modern Times=
, March-April, 2003, No 2(8) ), a publication, I think, of the Kiev Institut=
e of Judaica. Drobyasko, who I understand passed away recently, had unearthe=
d the report while searching the archives of the Soviet Ukrainian Ministry o=
f Internal Security.

If you are interested I could attempt a translation. Not being a profession=
al translator, it may take me awhile.

The report is a remarkable document on three accounts. First, gathering tha=
t type of material so openly critical of the Soviets, and then writing and s=
ubmitting it, required for a Soviet citizen an enormous courage, a courage t=
hat my father must’ve known was practically suicidal. Seco=
nd, treading precariously, my father peppered the text with standard Soviet =
phraseology, such us “political education of the masses�=
�€, “politically unproven elements,â�=
� and many others. Nevertheless, the ruse did little to soften the s=
cathing condemnation of the report by the Soviet authorities, who classified=
 it as “scurrilous”, “ho=
stile”, ”anti-Soviet” and=
 such. And finally, the report, though it, until recently, never saw the lig=
ht of day, was very likely the very first account of the plight of the Bukov=
ina Jewish survivors at the hands of the Soviets in the immediate aftermath =
of the WWII.

A few words about my father. Naftali Hertz Kon was born in Storozhynetz in =
1910, and published his first poems at the age of 18 in the Tshernovitser Bl=
eter. He left Bukovina in 1929 and didn’t return until 1944=
, when he arrived there on the assignment I described above. He returned to =
Czernowitz again sometime around 1945, this time with my mother, my sister a=
nd me, to make the city our home. In 1949, Stalin unleashed a campaign again=
st the Committee. Its leadership was either assassinated, murdered, or impri=
soned. My father was arrested and sentenced to death. The sentence was later=
 commuted to 25 years in the Gulag. He was released in 1956, following Stali=
n’s death and Chrushchev’s era of â=
€œthaw”.

My family left Czernowitz for Warsaw, in 1959, as Polish repatriates, thank=
s to my Polish-born mother. My parents and sister emigrated to Israel in 196=
5, and I with my physicist husband defected in 1966 and made our way to New =
York. Father passed away in Tel Aviv in 1971.

The story of my father’s tragic life and his remarkable, b=
y all accounts, poetry is the subject of a lengthy article by Karen Auerbac=
h, a doctoral student in Jewish Studies at Brandies University. The article =
will appear in the spring 2008 issue of Polin, a magazine published by Brand=
ies (http://www.brandeis.edu/aapjs/polin/).

Regards,
Ina Lancman
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Received on 2007-10-19 15:21:22