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Joan Adler writes about her trip through Chornyi Ostriv. Photography by Bobby Furst.
Saturday, August 12th[2000]:
Saturday, August 12th[2000]:
Today we visited the last two of our towns, Cherni Ostrov and Sharovechka. Cherni Ostrov is about a half-hour to 40 minutes west of Khmel’nitskij. All our other towns are south except for Slavuta, which is north. We were going in a different direction than we had gone before. We passed fields with small sections burning; white smoke filling the countryside. There weren’t so many cows, but all the other usual assortment of animals, vehicles, and houses were present.
Cherni Ostrov is another village located off the beaten path. Getting there, we drove over a small river and through a very charming village. We saw a small boy herding a mother pig and about eight piglets. Very cute.
A railroad crossing. A man and woman sat in this little shack all day waiting for a train to come by. Then they lowered the arm to prevent the almost nonexistent traffic from going across the tracks while the train is approaching.
This village has brick and cement houses, some very large, and there are some very large buildings we thought were community buildings. We stopped near the central market, renok (pronounced REYNOK with the emphasis on the NOK) to see what was being sold. One woman had only watermelons, round ones like all the others we’d seen. We were continually surprised that everyone grows exactly the same produce and then tries to sell the excess. We wondered who would buy this since everyone seemed to have the same vegetable and fruits for their own personal use and also in excess.
A man had a tray table with cigarettes and hard candy on it. Across the street a woman had an ice cream cart and umbrella. She sold bottled water too. Next to her there was a man in a wooden trailer only slightly larger than a newspaper kiosk in the states. He had a large variety of mismatched items including a bent coat hanger strung with dried fish; a whole smoked fish on a plate (without its head). He had a deck of unusual playing cards, with cards 1 – 6 and three face cards. He also had toilet paper and small packets of what we would consider samples of hand lotion and shampoo.
Alex Dunai (our wonderful guide) identified two men as gypsies or Armenians; they seemed fascinated by us. Alex was uncomfortable with their attention and urged us to move on. We asked the man with the trailer and woman with the ice cream cart if they recognized our family names but they were too young and both said the original town residents don’t live here anymore.
Later, we learned that Cherni Ostrov means Black Island and that more than 100 years ago there was a kind of sickness called black sickness. We wondered if it was plague. People who had this sickness were sent to Cherni Ostrov because the river surrounds part of the town forming an island. The illness was isolated there. Could this be why our ancestors left?
We asked if there was a Jewish cemetery or any older people. We were directed to an 80 year old woman who lives next to the bus stop. Alex remembered where that was - a fence surrounded the blue house. Inside was a nasty growling dog. Thank goodness he was chained up.
The woman came out but she couldn’t talk. She had a plastic piece in her throat that made us think she’d had cancer of the throat or larynx. In a whisper, she indicated that her husband would come out to speak with us. He did, buckling his belt, obviously getting dressed to meet us. It was late morning but we guessed he had nowhere to go and didn’t always dress. It didn’t take long to realize he was missing one hand. He explained he had lost it in the war and that the government didn’t provide any assistance for war veterans, a familiar story. He asked how the US government treated their veterans. This was a question we’d been asked several times before.
Neither he nor his wife knew our family names but he said he had many Jewish friends and still corresponded with someone in Israel who promised to send him parcels but never did. This was also becoming a familiar story; this disgruntled cry that no one was doing enough to help or was not sending goods from the outside world. Even after he had put this person up and had given him three dinners, he hadn’t received any gratitude for his hospitality.
He offered to take us to the Jewish cemetery in town and we readily agreed to drive him there. Once we parked on the side of the road, he led us down a dirt path, past some grazing cows. The cemetery was fairly new and all the stones were inscribed in Cyrillic. We saw the names Barg, Rosenbaum, Grossman, Hitman and Creitchman. All the stones were individually surrounded by painted, iron fences, like those we’d seen before. Many had the likeness of the person inscribed on them. As we were leaving this area, we noticed an older stone at the edge of the forest. Its own fence also surrounded it but this one was written all in Hebrew and two iron arms framed the stone. We thought this might have been the rabbi’s stone.
As we walked around the cemetery, Joan was stung on the hand by some insect. She is allergic to many things and was concerned about having an anaphylactic reaction. But she didn’t want Alex to know about it because he was so very concerned about our welfare that she didn’t want to make a big deal about it. She told Bobby just to keep an eye on her. If she started to swell, or have difficulty breathing, she wanted Bobby to know what was happening. We’d passed the local hospital and Joan felt it might be better to die on the roadside than have to visit there. She didn’t want to use the medical insurance we purchased at the border. And she didn’t want to regret not bringing the disposable syringes she’d been encouraged to take with her when we left on our trip. She took an allergy pill and we continued on. Perhaps it would prove to be a good thing that we were already in a cemetery.
Then, as we looked harder, we saw more stones in the forest, much like we had when we were in Vrannov Slovakia. The cemetery was so overgrown, we couldn’t see too many more stones, but the man said there were many more. When we asked about older cemeteries, he said there was another cemetery further down this path and we asked to be taken there. This one was on the side of a hill, but in a clearing. We decided it had been cleared mostly by the grazing cows and goats that walked among the stones. This cemetery was more like the ones we’d seen in Kuzmin and Sharovka. Most of the stones were toppled and broken. Little remains but some broken bits of grey composite stone.
The man said there was one more cemetery in Cherni Ostrov, a very old one. We asked to be taken there. It required a drive to another part of the village. We passed the hospital but Joan didn’t want to stop. Although her hand was hurting, nothing more was happening and she wanted to wait before drawing any attention to what had happened. Just so you won’t be kept in suspense any longer, Joan’s hand continued to hurt all day but never got any worse. By the next day, it was fine and we were both relieved.
When we exited the car at the place where the man indicated, we saw a group of people also park their car on the side of the road. They were in dress clothes and were carrying bunches of flowers. The man told Alex and he explained to us that they were going to a wedding. They also had to walk through the woods on this dirt path. No one would have clean shoes or clothes when they arrived. We guessed it would not be noticed.
We walked down a path, through a field with some trees, a hobbled horse and a few cows, to a beautiful place on the top of a very high hill where we could see the whole village and lots of countryside before us. The man had told us it would be impossible to tell that this place was a cemetery and he was right. Even the broken stones were gone. We could see only a few places where bits of stone were visible but it was impossible to tell that these were the remnants of tombstones. Nonetheless, we were moved to think that some of our ancestors may have been buried here.
We were high up and could see the river before us, all the usual complement of animals, some children swimming in the river downstream, and some large village houses. We could also see the island that gives this town its name, Black Island.
This cow is grazing in the cemetery. It was impossible to tell there had ever been tombstones here.
[We were told of] a Polish count who lived in a blue house we could see to our left on the bank of the river. The count used this house as a hunting lodge. He built a bridge to the island and many people came to visit him here and stayed.
It is difficult to keep in mind how hard these people’s lives are when confronted with the peaceful, quiet countryside. This is truly a beautiful country. It is also hard to imagine how difficult our ancestor’s lives must have been to leave, and what a culture shock it must have been for them to arrive on the Lower East Side of New York with its crowded tenements and lack of natural beauty.
Our guide also showed us some former Jewish houses; one belonging to a man named Noodleman. One very large tile house looked so large we thought it was a community center. He said this Jewish man was very rich. He owned six stores. He had eight daughters and two sons.
We brought our guide back to his house, thanked him for his help and gave him 20 hryvnas. He asked if we had given him US dollars and seemed disappointed that we had not. Then we drove on to Sharovechka.
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