Day 4: A Hard Day

Today is the most difficult day of all since we arrived. We meet Ruta, an academic who will be our guide and translator for the following days we are here. We have a team meet at 9.30am to discuss the possible line-up of interviews and schedule for the next few days. We will meet two Holocaust survivors today, Berl and Chasia.

Today has turned out to be the most difficult day for me. I don't know whether fatigue has caught up with me or what, but I am exhausted. I think it has to do with trying to focus on what's being said without understanding what's being said, reading the expression on faces and trying to match it with what the translator is saying, or whether it's about taking notes and trying hard to catch as much as possible down on my notepad. It's also our schedule of course. Waking at 7 or 8am, getting ready for the day, and being on the move until evening. Today, we got back only at 10pm as we returned to the apartment, dropped off our equipment and went to dinner immediately.

After dinner, I spent the last hour scanning photos and recording items we have been given as exhibits. Such amazing gifts - Ben gave us a yamulke and a medal; Chasia an amber pendant. They gave it to us and don't expect it back, though we are happy to do so.

But I think what's worn me out most are the stories. I can't even watch a World Vision ad without feeling angry and sad and everything else in between. Today, when Berl and Chasia shared their stories, I was consumed by both.

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Berl is 84. He lives alone. He is blind on account of his diabetes and glaucoma. He proudly serves boiled eggs, matzo crackers and wine. He speaks about losing his family; his bike ride to his father's 30 kms away to warn him of the Nazi invasion. His dad didn't leave. He was killed. He talks about how he joined the Soviet army when he was 17; he unexpectedly unzips his trousers and shows us a deep long scar where he was wounded in the hip. He recalls that this was "good" because he was off duty for 6 months. He relates tales of moving from place to place, living on food rations dispensed to veterans, of his first wife and his second; also his children. He tells us, "I am 84 years old and close to God." He is waiting, waiting, it seems to me. What he hates most is his blindness because he can no longer work or drive a taxi; his time is spent with his mind. And it is turning against him.


Berl

Berl tells us he is sad; sad when he learnt that there was a Neo-Nazi march this year and it was escorted by the police. Sad that it dishonours those who died. He starts telling us about people being lied to; asked to dig a hole to store food, then buried alive. I think he has lost faith in people. We ask him if he will lend us something for our exhibition or something he can give us; anything representative of him. He gives us a medal he gets for being a model Soviet worker and a yamulke.


Berl's gift

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After lunch, we meet Chasia. She is sprightly and elegant; she has make up on to welcome us. I feel intrusive; her flat is small and we have taken up all the space. Her son has to move into the kitchen to make way for us. I park myself on the door frame between the living room and the balcony; there is no room for Chasia, the camera, Jess and Dan, Ruta, Shiv and I.

She tells us of her Zionist fervour in her younger days. Her first husband, her son, her in-laws, the ghetto. How they had 25 people in a room and one bottle of milk for her 6-month-old son when they first got to the ghetto; how they somehow adapted. How her husband joins the partisans in the forest. How they all die.


Chasia

She shares how she was shot in the arm by a comrade testing a weapon. How she later remarried after the war. She has two children now; she named her son the same name as her first. How she carries the burden of blood lost that she may live. Her story is too steeped with pain to relate much here, too rich in detail to give it justice in a short paragraph, and too harrowing to feel and absorb at one sitting. Her brother has moved to Israel but she has stayed because "this is where my children died."

I am at once awed when she speaks of the joy she has at work - in a community center which used to be the college she spent her youth in - and humbled. I don't know where she finds the strength to forgive and yet not forget.

I am not sure I am looking forward to hearing more of these stories. I am not sure if I feel inspired or angry or frustrated. It all seems so unfair.