A visit to the US - USHMM and YIVO

We have just returned from a short trip to the US. During our visit there, we spent several days at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in Washington DC and also at YIVO Institute of Jewish Research in New York City.


Multiple uses for a jar: to paste a sign on, to collect tips in, and to show one's patriotism. Seen in a bar.

The US is of course in the grips of election fever. There are signs of Obamamania everywhere. Everytime we turn on the TV, it's one analysis or another about the possible outcome of the 2008 Elections. Some people have gone to extraordinary lengths to show their support - even in their Halloween decorations!


A creative Obama pumpkin in a window in NYC

At USHMM, Shiv got stuck into memorial books, literature, videos of survivor testimonies and the photo archives. As for me, I spent most of my time going through reel after reel of microfilm. One collection in particular stands out for me. It is a collection of documents from the office of the Vilnius City Commander and spans 20 microfilms containing hundreds of police reports, correspondence, lists of arrested people and instructions between 1941 and 1944. On one, I find a blurred stamp of the Nazi eagle encircled within a postmark "Wilna".


A partial sample of a report within the collection - note the blurred stamp and the Nazi insignia

A feeling creeps over me during those few days we spend at USHMM; it is not an unfamiliar sensation. It is a kind of lethargy. I experienced it when we were in Lithuania. I realise that my threshold for submerging myself in the Holocaust has become lower and lower. This is not to take away from the profundity of the archival documents we came across; they are truly enlightening, harrowing and the richness of the bounty that has survived is something I am truly grateful for. I think it's just that I have become so saturated that it takes very little information to wear me out on an emotional level. I am therefore glad that we have a few days break in between.


A pedicab ride through NYC streets

We arrive in NYC on Saturday. On Monday, Shiv heads straight for YIVO. I decide to take a break and go off to the Guggenheim instead. I join her on subsequent days. We both agree later on that perhaps we should spend more time at YIVO; the collection or archival materials they have there is truly amazing.


Shiv at the entrance to YIVO. Note the inscription on the board.

I am particularly touched by the contents of one of the folders I go through. In it are letters dating between 1939 and 1941. The first is from a gentleman in NYC who pleads with a Mr J, also from NYC, that he has received a letter from a woman in Vilnius to arrange passage out, that things have become untenable or difficult or something to that effect. There are letters back and forth between them, also letters to the immigration department, the US embassy in Kaunas and Moscow, and so on. The usual bureaucratic things - that permission will expire in such and such a time, that it is unlikely that permission will be extended, that a sworn affidavit is required to show that the woman and her children will be cared for financially when they come to the US.

The later letters refer only to passage for one of the children, a young girl. I think, did the family give up trying to leave because they wanted to increase their chances? Why did they choose to send only one daughter and how did they decide? Then I come across a letter from the benefactor to the said woman. It is postmarked 1941. The year that Lithuania was invaded by the Nazis. It has been returned, marked as opened by the authorities and undeliverable. Chillingly, the Nazi eagle motif is stamped all over the back of the envelope. Did the girl make it to the States? Did she, like the rest of her family, perish in Kovno ghetto or at one of the forts in Kaunas? The audacity!, I think, to open the letter and send it back. Was it to create a front of normalcy?

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Shiv has just booked the flights for Lithuania. We will be returning there in about 2 weeks. I am looking forward to seeing Ruta, Fania, Cholem... so many people we have become friends with, who have been so generous of spirit with us. I am not sure though about how I feel about revisiting Vilnius. Something inside me feels as if it has changed. I can't explain it. Maybe it will become clearer during my time there.