It wasn't easy to leave Vladivostok. But, my journey had to go on, and Veronika had to go home. So we packed up our things. She got on a plane, and I got on a boat. After two days of chugging across the Sea of Japan (and two very interesting hours in South Korea), I find myself disembarking in Sakaiminato. My feet find the ground and I'm off again. I take a deep breath and think: "and now for something completely different." After Russia, Japan is quite the culture shock. I don't know what all the rules are here, yet, but I do know that it's very, very impolite to break them. Maybe I'll learn, but my first few hours don't seem like the best omen. My very first train ride in this country, for example, contains one of the rarest of Japanese transit phenomenonae: an unexpected delay. We're somewhere in Okayama prefecture, about an hour and a half from the city of the same name, when the train pulls into a teeny-tiny countryside station. Not surprisingly, it stops. But then, the stop gets longer. And longer. After about thirty minutes, I'm starting to get worried. There have been several announcements in Japanese, and people are starting to look annoyed. I don't speak the language, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to tell that what's happening is something strange. Then, all of a sudden, everyone gets off of the train. I don't know what I'm doing, but I follow them. Waiting outside are three charter buses which I gather have been specially requisitioned to ferry us to Okayama. One of the bus drivers grabs me and steers me onto a bus in which every seat is full. I look around, confused, and the bus driver smiles. Then, he pulls out a small...well, I'm not sure I can call it a seat. It's more of a stool that folds out of another seat, reaching into the aisle. Honestly, I'm pretty excited not to be stranded in rural Okayama, so I sit down and settle in. The bus is completely packed with Friday afternoon commuters trying their very best to get home, a sweet old man that speaks a little English, and me. With a lurch, we set off. Two and a half hours later, we arrive at Okoyama Station. I'm just happy it didn't take three. Japanese traffic is nasty, I found out, especially on Friday afternoons. And that's coming from a Houstonian. So went my first day in Japan. The next morning, I ride the trains down to Fukuyama to meet my family at the Holocaust Education Center, the only Holocaust Museum in all of Japan. Keep in mind, though, that Japan has a Jewish population of about 200 people. The museum directors know the three of us are coming, and they kindly meet my mother, my sister, and myself at Fukuyama Station and drive us out to the Center. In some ways, the HEC follows all of the rules when it comes to Holocaust museums. Clean, modern architecture with a color scheme built on the contrast between large, dark stones, white plaster, and plenty of exposed steel and plate glass. The exhibition, as well, follows the characteristic formula of stark sparsity, pulling few punches and adding few flourishes. There are a few unusual elements, though. There is an entire exhibition devoted to Ann Frank, for example, complete with a full-sized reproduction of her diary and her attic hiding place. Anne Frank is extremely popular in Japan, one of the directors explains. Focusing on her story is one of the primary tactics the museum staff uses to connect with Japanese school children. I wonder how well it works as I examine the 'Diary of Anne Frank' manga on display in the museum's gift shop. The other unusual aspect of the museum, of course, is their emphasis on the story of Chiune Sugihara. To them, our visit is fairly important. We are living proof of their thesis that Sugihara's actions effectively saved the lives of many more people than the original 2,000 visa recipients. They saved the lives of each of the Sugihara Survivor's decedents, people like my sister and myself. Consequently, a few reporters from a small local paper were invited to interview us and take photographs as we toured the museum...and they took that job very seriously. Every time we stopped in front of an image or a display, a photograph was made. It's a surreal experience, touring a museum where you know most of the information by heart, looking at terrible images that you have seen many times, in many ways, each of them recalling the 20th century's most infamous genocide, and relentlessly getting your picture snapped. Not bad, exactly, but strange. In other places, we manage to maintain a lower profile. Or at least a different one. The following day, the three of us travel to Tsuruga, the rural port where the Finklesteins landed after leaving Vladivostok. Three confused looking foreigners, we got plenty of sideways glances. But no one bothered us as we reached the "Port of Humanity," a museum which chronicles the story of the Sugihara Survivors' arrival in Tsuruga. Leading up to the main exhibition was an explanation of the Trans-Siberian route the European refugees took, complete with pictures. Pictures that I recognized, because I had seen all of it with my own eyes. It was all there: Kaunas, Yaroslavsky Station, Novosibirsk, Irkutsk, Lake Baikal, Chita. Khabarosk. Vladivostok. And I'd crossed it all. The rest of the exhibit, though, was even more fascinating. It contained dozens of first-person accounts of the refugees' arrival in Tsuruga. Here was my grandmother's family, seen through the eyes of their Japanese counterparts. Every time an account mentioned a small child, a little girl, travelling in someone's arms or walking beside her family, I had to wonder. Was this an echo, a memory of my grandmother? Was this a random, chance moment, a sighting across a street, transmitted by mouth and memory across all of these years? Our last Sugihara-related stop in Japan was Yaotsu-town, the little hamlet in Gifu Prefecture in which Sugihara-san was born. Our agenda: a visit to a third museum, this one possibly the most detailed and unique, and a private lunch with the town's mayor. The museum was fascinating. We spoke with an expert on the visas who explained Sophie's passport to us. Stories, each of them hidden in the yellowing paper and fading ink, emerged and made themselves known. Across the years, we heard one woman's desperate voice. No money, no visa, desperately searching for a way out, a way to save herself, her husband, and her child.
And now, almost eighty years later, the three of us are standing here, looking at her picture in a museum. What other secrets do those dark eyes hold? What stories have we lost? All of those secrets a passport can't tell. Just some thoughts from Japan, Sonia
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There's a lot to say about Vladivostok. But first, I need to talk about something called the JAO. Haven't heard of it? That's not surprising, considering its a tiny piece of land buried deep in the crevice of southeastern Russia. JAO stands for Jewish Autonomous Oblast, although less than 1% of the current population is actually Jewish. But the story goes back a little farther than the present day. Arguably, it goes back a thousand years or so, to the root of Russia's notorious historical anti-Semitism. For brevity's sake, though, let's start in a place more people know about: the Pale of Settlement. The Pale of Settlement, just for reference, was the sliver of land on the western edge of Imperial Russia in which Jews were allowed to maintain a residence. Permanent residence, however, didn't preclude frequent harassment and violence. Pogroms were frequent. A particularly vitriolic wave of carnage occurred, for example, after the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881. Many blamed the Jews for the murder of the Tsar, a view the Imperial government encouraged. Often the Jewish inhabitants of the Russian Empire were faced with a fairly binary decision: flee or die. Many went to the United States. Others went to Palestine, kicking off a wave of Jewish immigration to the region which would later be called the First Aliyah. For these Jews, as well as others that remained in Europe, the pogroms became a symbol of purpose for a growing Jewish nationalist movement. 'Zionism' in the case of Jews that wanted to place this Jewish nation in the Biblical Holy Land. Political Zionism in particular is the system of thought that won out in the years leading up to the creation of the modern state of Israel. But all of that is another very, very complicated story. Regarding the JAO, the most important things to remember are the pogroms and the growth of Jewish nationalism (not that nationalism was unique to European Jews--it was sort of in vogue at the time, if you remember your European history). Now, though, we move into the Soviet Era. The October Revolution and the Civil War tore the country apart. Jews and other minority groups, though, fared particularly poorly. After the Bolshevik government was established, the state policy of atheism and the criminalization of small business took a further toll on Russia's remaining Jewish population. By the time Stalin came to power, however, that population was still large enough to be both worrisome and geopolitically useful. Thus, the Jewish Autonomous Oblast was established in 1928 around Birobidzhan in the Russian Far East with these two goals in mind: 1) to provide a Soviet alternative to Palestine and Zionism and 2) to secure the sparsely populated region from infiltration courtesy of China and Japan. About 654 Jews were sent there in the spring of 1928 via the Trans-Siberian. By October, half of them had either fled or died. The Jewish population of the Oblast never rose much higher than fifty thousand people--the climate was harsh, survival was difficult, and only a few years after the founding of the JAO Stalin's infamous purges began. Jews living in the JAO were not spared. By 1948, though the Jewish population of the JAO had grown to comprise 25% of the regional population, Jews were barred from most professions and were not allowed to attend many institutions of higher education. These hardships, combined with the difficulty of living in the post-war Soviet Union, contributed to a mass exodus which only grew as the Soviet period ended. As of 2010, there were 1,600 people of Jewish descent living in the JAO. I write all of this because the train still passes through Birobidzhan. We stopped at the station, got out of the train and walked around. I saw all of this with my own eyes, and I had no idea of the history that resided there. How much else did I miss? I don't think I'll ever know. Vladivostok is an even bigger mystery. I think I could spend a lifetime here and know next to nothing about the city, relatively speaking. It's a lot like San Francisco, except with fewer people and more cigarette butts. Green hills roll against the shining blue background of the Pacific, contemptuous of the buildings which cling for dear life to their rocky backs. They're a mixed bag, the buildings. Some are old and some are new. Some are a lot newer than they look--Russian building practices don't tend to produce lasting results, especially when the structures in question whether eight months of winter next to the merciless sea. Consequently, crumbling concrete and peeling paint nestle up alongside late-Imperial storefronts and imposing Soviet blocks. Farther out from the city center, a lot of the construction begins to look a lot less...official. Shanties built from cinderblocks and corrugated metal roofing line the streets, fighting for coastline with the endlessly expanding McMansions of Russia's ultra-wealthy. My guess is neither group is up to code, but maybe I'm being overly cynical. Vladivostok is a shipping town, one of Russia's only warm-water ports. Officially, it was founded in 1860, soon after Imperial Russia acquired the territory from China via the rather one-sided Treaty of Beijing (big thank you to the British for facilitating that whole scene...ever heard of the Opium Wars? But anyway, my point is that the Qing Dynasty was in bad shape). It wasn't long before further hostilities broke out between the Russians and the Chinese in the region. Add in a the Russo-Japanese War, several years of Russians fighting Russians (the October Revolution, the Russian Civil War), a few puppet states (the Far East Republic, the Priamur Provisional Government), the restoration of Soviet rule and the fall of the Soviet Union, and you get the modern day Vladivostok. It is important to note, of course, that throughout much of that time the city was also home to the Russian navy's Pacific fleet. Consequently, it was closed to foreigners throughout much of the Soviet Era. It's a little surreal, now, to stand there today as an American tourist and casually take pictures of the Golden Horn Bay. Not that I didn't manage to have my own run in with the Russian authorities. It happened the first morning we were there, in fact. Our train arrived at Vladivostok station at about seven in the morning. There was a trek to the hostel, some much needed shower-power, and then Veronika and I found ourselves in the mood to celebrate. We'd just made it across the whole of Russia, after all. So Veronika suggested champagne, and I said why not. We walked to the Russian mini-mart and bought a bottle, then decided to drink it in Vladivostok's main polishite. Right beneath a giant memorial to the Russian soldiers that fought the Japanese back in 1922. Stellar idea, really. But anyway, we open our bottle, enjoy the fizz-for-all, and settle in on a park bench to enjoy our drink. About half the bottle is gone, and we're just starting to feel all warm and fuzzy, when two figures in black uniforms start to walk towards us. Emblazoned across their chests in yellow Cyrillic letters is the word 'politzia'. Well uh-oh. As it turns out, you can't drink in public in Russia, just like the U.S. The police look at us, look at our champagne, and then tell Veronika and I to follow them. An officer to each girl, we walk across the large open space of the square. My officer says something to me in Russian.
"Ne poonumayo po-Russky," I say. "Skazalesh?" he asks. "Niet." Well shit. Obviously, I'm an Amerikansky, but when we get to the police box there's no doubt. It's sort of a blue shipping container with a small police office inside. We take out our passports. The officers look at mine like I'm from another planet. "Interpol," one of the officers jokes. I laugh, but it comes out far to loud. While our passports get the third-degree, the officers start asking questions. Veronika does the talking. I didn't understand most of the conversation, but Veronika explained it later. I imagine it went a little like this: "What the hell are you doing here? How did an American and a Muscovite end up day drinking in Vladivostok?" "We took the train." "For seven days?!" "Technically it's only six." "Oh, well in that case. Why are you here?" "The American girl is tracing her grandmother's path out of Lithuania." "Ok, cool. But why?" "I don't really, know, but she's doing it." "You're both students?" "Yes." "Christ. Ok, well, here's what we're going to do. We're going to put your names on a list, that way our bosses know that we're doing something. But you're story is weird and its pretty boring working here, so we're going to let you go without doing anything else. Consider yourselves warned, don't do it again." "Yes, officer! Thank you!" *Veronika turns to me* "Nod your head and look happy," she says in English. "And say thank you!" "Spasiba bolshoya!" I scream. One of the officers escorts us out of the police box. "Oh, and watch out for your passports," he says in Russian. And just like that, we're in the main square once again, clutching our half-finished bottle of champagne. Vladivostok is a little like that, on reflection. It's a beach town that spends most of the year frozen solid, a cosmopolitan city with no metro, a reputation for provincial manners, and countless little rabbit holes one can find themselves lost down. It's Russian as Russian can be, and yet Moscow is literally on the other side of the world. As in, the distance between Vladivostok and Houston and the distance between Vladivostok and Moscow is roughly the same, clocking in at just over 9,000 km. And some how, some way, we're here. Some how, some way, this city exists. And it's beautiful, easily one of the most amazing cities I've ever seen. Dos Vadanya, Vladivostok. Ruler of the East, perhaps you are. But nevertheless, the journey goes onward, Sonia Like millions before us, we depart from Yaroslavsky Station. But Veronika and I don't really have time to admire the grand, vaulted ceilings or the picturesque stone cresting. In fact, we hardly have time to catch our mutual breaths--we're too busy dashing through the station, crowded even at 11 P.M. at night, our arms loaded up with luggage and plastic grocery sacks. Maybe we got some funny looks, and maybe our timing is a little tight, but we manage to make it, with the two of us barreling into our four-berth compartment about five minutes before the train is scheduled to leave. Ludmilla, who has already claimed her bed, just smiles at us, laughs, and drinks her tea. It's black, steaming in a glass-and-metal mug rented out by the train company. Pure Russia. This isn't exactly her first locomotive-type rodeo--if we're going to impress her, it will take a lot more than some scrambling and some shortness of breath. A few minutes, a sudden lurch. Veronika turns to me. "We're moving," she says. Our Trans-Siberian journey has begun. The first night is uneventful (after we manage to make the train, of course). I take the top bunk and Veronika takes the bottom. Somewhere around Nizhniy-Novgorod we gain a fourth and final compartment-mate, a business babushka on her way to Irkutsk for a conference and some summer fun. The train rolls through Perm, Ektanienburg, and Kazan, and the four of us settle in for the long road ahead. Until Ludmilla hurts her back, that is. She's in her mid-fifties, and stuck in the top bunk on a bouncing train. So when her lower lumbar region seizes up like a turkey's backside the night before Thanksgiving, it's not a good scene. Did you know that Russian trains keep a trained doctor on board at all times? I didn't. But as the train rolls on and Ludmilla's pain worsens, we begin to see an awful lot of these doctors. Once or twice a day, each time the train pulls into one of the larger stops. The stops, by the way, can range anywhere from two to thirty minutes. Most of the time, if the train is going to pause at a station for longer than fifteen minutes, people start to pour out of the cars in their flip flops and sweatpants, looking to stroll around or maybe fit in an opportunistic smoke and some quick Instagramming. The larger stations are equipped with everything from rows upon rows of little produkties (food stores) to nail salons and souvenir shops. Smaller stations tend to host local people hawking smoked fish and baked goods instead of brick and mortar stores. An illegal practice, technically. But the farther you get from the big cities, the fewer ways people have to make money, and the more important train-station commerce becomes. There's a saying, in Russia. "Everything flows downhill to Moscow." Regional disparity has plagued the country for centuries. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, though, the nature of that inequality has changed (well...sort of). As state businesses were privatized, it was well-connected individuals who gained the vast majority of the dissolving government's wealth. Combine that with the lopsided way in which the modern Russian Federation's economy has prospered (natural gas, oil, and more oil) and you end up with the country as it is today: well-modernized and relatively wealthy cities and oil-producing regions...but less hospitable circumstances everywhere else. The change is evident the farther the train travels to the east--the stations and cities become smaller, the condition of the various buildings and roads deteriorate. Even along the Trans-Siberian though, things are relatively good. It's the main east-west axis for the country. There's simply too much land and extremity (sub-thirty winters, swampy springs, and sweltering summers) to make other infrastructure feasible without some serious, serious investments. So, while things in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, and even much of the Trans-Siberian corridor have changed dramatically in the past fifteen to twenty years, the situation farther north and east remains quite desolate. Somewhere around day three, we reach Novosibirsk, the largest city in Siberia. It's population has exploded since the end of the nineteenth century, when the central section of the railroad was built. An interesting history, in and of itself. 5, 772 miles, the longest railway in the world, and it was completed in roughly twenty years. Tsarevich Nikolai II inaugurated the initial construction of the Far Eastern segment of the railway in 1890. Construction of several sections occurred simultaneously. Which didn't happen by magic, of course. Huge numbers of people were recruited throughout Siberia and European Russia. 'Recruited', in this case, is often a euphemism--much of the labor involved in building the railway was actually done by convicts and soldiers. The railroad was used to transport prisoners and troops before it was even completed. Fresh blood and grain, the prime cargo of the rails we ride upon. But all of that is old news. By the third day on the train, Veronika and I are getting a little desperate for a shower. Harsh conditions, I know. It was a luxury we thought we would have to go without, but much to our delight, we discover that showers can in fact be had for 150 rubles a piece (about two dollars). So, with our towels in hand we mozy on down to the first class compartments for the day's main event. The shower is pretty nice. The only hard part is not falling over as the water hits the floor and the train jerks around...imagine taking a shower on the subway in New York. Well, except there's no one staring at you. But you get the point. Anyway, once we get our showers we decide to check out the train's bar and restaurant car. Remember how I said we didn't buy nearly enough beer? Well we really didn't buy enough beer. Luckily, there's good company in the bar, even if the drinks are ridiculously overpriced. That night, we meet a French documentarian and his cabaret singing best friend, a Polish Russophile, and two soldiers on their way home from their bases in Central Russia. And we make friends with the restaurants manager, a woman who has been riding back and fourth on the Trans-Siberian for ten years. A trip every few months since her divorce. And still, somehow, she has the patience to smile at a bunch of drunks with foreign accents until the time comes to send them all, humming and swaying, back to their various beds. Sleep comes slowly, like the sunset. But that never lasts long. The train pulls into Irkutsk during the wee hours of our fourth morning. Our compartment mates leave us and we settle in for the long ride ahead. Until we reach Lake Baikal, that is. The Jewel of Siberia, the deepest lake in the world. We first catch sight of it spinning around a bend, sparkling and blue: Breathtaking, it is a sight that will keep us going for days. Watching, though, I can't help but wonder. Millions of others have seen the same thing, rolling along this spur of railroad which snakes along the shore. What has it meant to them? A last breath of beauty, a glittering symbol of hope one is afraid to feel? Did it mean everything? Did it mean nothing at all? What did it mean, I wonder, what did it mean to the dark eyes of one little Jewish girl? To the still, sad eyes of her anxious mother? There's no way to know. And how. The time has come to find some more beer. One night at the bar is enough; Veronika and I hop off the train to search for some fresh supplies instead. We find what we're looking for in Chita, the town to which the Decemberists were exiled in 1825. A few beers on and a couple of stops down the road, we gain some new compartment mates: a young mother and her little girl, Dasha. Dasha is about eight years old, with a mouthful of braces and, of course, a figit spinner. Day five and six go by slowly; Veronika and I play a whole lot of a Russian card game called Durak, Dasha teaches me my Russian numbers, and we desperately search for some milk and some fresh fruit. Oh, and of course, we meet Johann. Veronika encounters him first, one morning when she can't sleep. He's about five-foot-four and q-bald, with glasses that swell his baby-blue Berlinner eyes to the size of moons. At sixty-seven years old, all Johann needs to travel the world is his pacemaker and his inheritance and his handy-dandy rucksack. He loves trains, and talking, and 'getting in touch with the people,' as he says. So it makes sense that when he sees Veronika looking out of the windows, watching the vast expanses of far eastern Russia slip by, he would ask her to breakfast in the dinning car. "Thank you, Papa," as Johann would say. Some champagne and some daylight and Veronika manages to fall asleep. Johann, though, never sleeps. I'm convinced of it. Which means that a few hours later he wanders over to our compartment and introduces himself to me. It's an interesting thing, to meet a German born just after the end of WWII. It's one of the first things Johann mentions to me, growing up in a bombed-out west Berlin during the decade after the war. He's a big fan of the Berlin Airlift and the Marshall Plan. Not so big on the GDR or the Soviet Union, but then again his father was a German soldier who spent five years in a Russian prison camp. He insists that socialism is an unworkable system, that it's faults can still be seen in the Russia we're currently travelling through. Personally, though, I don't think the customer service Johann complains about has so much to do with ingrained apathy as the fact that Johann himself doesn't speak any Russian. Instead, he prefers to scream at people in English. Not my strategy, but to each their own I guess. Not that Johann is a bad guy. He isn't. But he does have an interesting way of seeing the world. What would he say, if I told him that my grandparents thought of themselves as Germans? I try, but he doesn't want to talk about it. To him I'm American, and so are my grandparents. Not Germans. Not Jews. He talks about the suffering of the Germans, of Berlin, after the war. He talks about his father's suffering in a Siberian P.O.W. camp. But there is other suffering he doesn't want to talk about. "My grandfather is from Nuremburg," I say. "But he left when he was small. Just before WWII." "Ah," Johann says. "Do you know why he had to leave?" "He's Jewish." It's the answer Johann is expecting. He's prepared. "Ah yes, so he had problems. My relatives in Philadelphia, they were like that too." I don't press. I choose to let the history rest the way Johann has presented it. I wonder how often the roles have been reversed, how often I have done the same thing to someone else. Night number six. Home stretch. Which calls for a celebration. Remember how I mentioned the people at the train stations, selling things? Well ask any of them if they have beer, and there's about a 95% chance they have it. Vodka, maybe? Well if you buy beer without vodka, you're wasting your money. So we get some of that too. Keep in mind that buying vodka from someone standing on the platform at a train station is really, really not a good idea. About 20% of the alcohol consumed in Russia isn't produced through government-regulated channels. Which means it can quite easily kill you--something I didn't know at the time. The bottle was sealed and it had a label, but I have a feeling that means about jack-squat. Anyway, we pay the woman and receive our newspaper-wrapped vodka parcel. Then we invite Nikita and Dima, the guys we met a few days before, to have a drink. Which is how I find out a little bit about how difficult it can be, to be young and poor in Russia. Dima, for example, is missing his two front teeth. He tells us that he lost them defending a girl from several attackers, but its difficult for me to believe. Who knows? The guy is twenty-one, the same age as me. His first divorce has been finalized within the past, forty-eight hours. His ex-wife has just aborted what would have been their first child. Dima claims it was an act of vengeance, but I'm not so sure. Anyway, he's just trying to get away from the little town where all of this went down, to take the money he has left from his time in the army and move to Moscow. I don't ask what his ex-wife will do. It's easy to see that Dima loved her, however complicated those feelings may be. It's not hard to tell that those cuts run deep. Eventually, though, the last of our beer runs out. We are young, but the night is not. Veronika and I go back to our compartment, and eventually we fall asleep. Before we know it, the morning rolls around. Veronika and I pack our things, fold our linens and say goodbye to our tiny home. Six days on a train, and I've caught just a glimpse of the people riding it. Just a glimpse of the vast, complicated country they call home. And honor and a privilege I will never be able to fully express. Victory from Vladivostok, Sonia P.s. Veronika, thank you so much for travelling with my clueless American butt. You're the absolute best and I love you to death, devochka So the time has come. We're about to board the train. But with six days on a rolling box ahead of you, you have to be prepared. Which means a trip to Ashan, the European Target. Imagine the superstore you know and love, except the peanut butter is about four times as expensive (I thought Europeans hated peanut butter?), there's a vending machine that dispenses farm fresh milk, and there's a lot more kilbassa. It is still Russia, after all.
But I digress. After gathering all of our necessary supplies (ramen, instant mashed potatoes, powdered soup, sausage, water, napkins, tea, oatmeal, instant coffee, and not nearly enough beer) we're ready to...oh no...I'm so sorry, but....we're ready to roll out. I'm sorry, but it had to happen. Anyway, we check out, bag our stuff, and manage to make the train by the skin of our teeth. Time to sit back and relax, I'll see you in a week. доброе утра! First, let me start off by saying I let my fear get the best of me in my last blog post. I could edit it away, but that wouldn't be quite honest now, would it? So, to correct myself--Sasha is a creep, and harassment of women is a problem here, just like everywhere else. But there's a lot more to this city than that. In general, during my time in Moscow I have felt very safe, and the Russians I have met at my hostel are extremely kind, open people. It is not any scarier to be a solo female here than it would be in, say, New York or London, with the sole exception that I don't speak the language, so it's a little bit harder to navigate social niceties. Just like anywhere else, though, there are people you want to talk to, and people you'd rather avoid.
Sasha, as it turns out, is one of those people. The day after my last post, he found me again, and proceeded to be very thick-headed about leaving me alone. Luckily, one of the hostel employees noticed the situation and helped me out. She then explained to me that Sasha was being kicked out of the hostel because he had been causing problems for many of the guests. Since then, google translate and a lot of charades has allowed me to meet other Russians at the hostel (both men and women) who have been very kind, friendly, and respectful. And Moscow is a beautiful city. With just so much history it leaks out all over the place. Churches, Soviet memorials, Imperial-era parks, and people who have lived out a lifetime in one of the world's greatest capitals. The entire city is under construction, at the moment, with many points of interest being cleaned, renovated, or otherwise restored. And with some new ones being built. Ask any Muscovite about the construction schedule and you'll get a roll of the eyes, at least--poor planning and coordination means that most of this work is getting done now, at a rush. And a little bit of our old friend corruptsia means that a lot of it is also getting done below board and below budget. Not good omens for the longevity of the final products. But, despite all of the construction and a few unnerving encounters, I really have been blown away by my time here. Strolling across Patriarch's Bridge and walking through beautiful parks is hard to beat. And exploring a city, even when the scenery isn't so conventionally picturesque, is its own sort of experience. Moscow, you have my heart. You're a city I'll never forget. Good morning from Muscovy, Sonia так, so, the last twenty four hours or have been even blurier than my pictures. It started with my ride back to Vilnius. I deliberatly took a short distance passenger train in order to depart from Kaunas Railway Station, which is the same place my grandmother and her parents left from back in 1940. Not the same building, though. WWII and the Soviet occupation and all of that. But with a picture of my grandmother as a little girl hanging in the current building, it still seems like a lot of overlap. And if we we're being realistic about it, for me to make this trip historically accurate I would need a whole lot more persectuion and anxiety. I mean, I had a Lithuanian lady yell at me because I was taking too long on the toilet, but somehow I don't think that's the same. In all seriousness though, I think it's important to remember, if only for myself, that the goal of this trip was never historical accuracy. Rather, it was to honor my grandmother's memory by keeping her memory and her story alive. But, onwards, ever onwards. Once I was in Vilnius, I went through passport control and boarded the train to Moscow. At this point, absolutely everything changed from Lithuanian to Russian. In the words of a Belorussian I met in the train station--"you don't speak Russian? Good luck." So the time had come to make my first trip on an overnight train. A dry run for the big train, if you will. It went well, considering that I don't speak Russian and I drip Americaness like a sac full of hamburgers. The ride went something like this: I got onto the train, found my berth, and stayed there for about ten hours. It was sort of homey in the open car. Crowded, with coats and shirts hanging everywhere and people occupying every seat. Everyone had food with them: sausages, sweets, tupperwares full of sliced vegetables. And everyone had tea. Mugs and mugs of steaming tea. The train stopped three times for passport control, and to allow some bored-looking soldiers to board and search the train. My American passport got a whole loy of scrutiny and funny looks, but it must have been ok, because they let me through. After the border guards had finished their work, everyone unrolled the bedding provided by the train company and went to sleep. At 6 o'clock the next morning, the train pulled in to Moscow's Byelorussky Station. And that's where I met Veronika, the absolute SAINT that's going to accompany my confused American behind all the way across Russia. But first, Moscow. It's a lot like other big cities; New York, London, Berlin. Loud, crowded, and excellent public transportation. And lots of very impressive sights to see. But I think my most interesting encounter came about once I had checked into my hostel. Because it was there that I met Sasha, the 25 year old oddball from somewhere north of Murmansk. With my minimal Russian, I thought he was 14. If only that had been our worst miscommunication. Because Sasha, upon finding out I was from the U.S., proceeded to ask if I worked, how much I made in a week, and if I would marry him so he could come to America. Suffice it to say I tried to let him down easy. But without speaking the same language, it was diffcult to get my poing across. Once Sasha finally understood, he decided if he couldn't comd to the U.S., maybe a kiss and a little more would be enough. I was not, as the kids say 'down' with this. It was only when I left the hostel with Veronika that Sasha left me alone.
Uncomfortable and unsettling, but at least it didn't turn out any worse, I guess. Yesterday, I arrived in Kaunas. The trip out was easier than I expected, but not quite simple. After arriving at Vilnius International Airport from Istanbul, I board the first bus I could find that said 'stotis' (the Lithuanian word for bus/train station) on the front. Easy, right? The only problem: I don't know which stop the stotis is at. So I go a stop or two too far, and get to see a bit more of Vilnius than I bargained for. But, using my stellar cross-cultural communication skills (pointing and saying stotis) I manage to find my way through the wide, Vilnius streets and their...welcoming sentinels, squat buildings made of half-painted wood and aged concrete. Boarding the express bus to Kaunas proves easier than getting to the station in Vilnius, and after an hour or so of verdant farmland and dripping Baltic forest, I arrive at the Kaunas Autobus Stotis. Kita stotelė: the Sugihara House Museum, which has been set up on the former site of Sugihara's abode and consulate in Kaunas. Supposedly, it's about a fifteen minute walk from my hotel, most of it past houses that look like they just survived WWII. Some of them probably did survive WWII, actually. Kaunas is a bit of a patchwork. Fresh (or crumbling) concrete construction alternates with older buildings which roll across the lush hills of the city like a quilt. At some point, my walking takes me to the end of the road I've been relying on. But I still haven't found the street with the museum. The rest of my route, as it turns out, is up. Concrete stairs, almost lost in the clamoring growth of the Lithuanian summer, climb upwards across the hill through gardens and shivering trees. As I reach the top, I realize that this is the street I am looking for. Vaizganto, it's called, a narrow residential street in a quiet, back corner of Kaunas far from the city's center. But as I walk down this quiet street, I realize there's a problem. Because echoing down the pockmarked asphalt is the sound of construction. And it's coming from 30 Vaizganto Street, the address where the museum is supposed to be. Instead, though, the building is covered in a facade of plastic sheeting with a sign announcing the opening of a new restaurant. "Maybe I have the address wrong," I think, and proceed to run up and down the street looking for anything that vaguely resembles a museum. But there's nothing. People are peeking out their windows, glaring at the crazy American with her curly hair and her Imaging Dragons tee, but I'm past caring. I have to find the house where Sugihara lived. At this point, a nauseating horror sweeps through me. What if that gestating restaurant really is where the museum used to be? How crushed, how furious would my grandmother be, to know that Sugihara's legacy had become an upscale-yet-still-casual fine dining experience? I'm on the verge of tears when I notice a wet, paper sign clinging to one of the wooden beams on the construction site. "Entrance" is says, in English and Japanese, with an arrow pointing down into the pit. What else can I do? I follow it. After stepping over some loose lumber and getting down under the construction site, I find my way into the museum. All four rooms of it. As it turns out, my grandmother provided many of the materials they use in their exhibits. Her image and her story are on their walls, and there's even a picture of my family in the back room. And, on the desk meant to act as a mock-up of Sugihara's work space, there's a copy of Sonya Finklestein's passport. The strange thing, though, is that's not the end to the surprises. I'm at the museum for maybe fifteen minutes when the director, Simon, walks in with a tour group of three Americans. And one of them is from Houston! We talk about my project, and theirs, and I get to watch them decipher the German on the passport. It's something I remember doing with my grandmother, her going through and explaining the German terms, me watching the passport and her hands. On my second day in Kaunas, I had planned to visit the Ninth Fort. But that morning, something stops me. I'm not sure what. Maybe it's a certain hesitancy--I've heard that it's become a bit of a tourist trap. But I am a tourist of course. David Foster Wallace once wrote something about being a tourist; that it was like being a fly on the carcass of the very thing you had come to appreciate. Maybe that's a bit extreme, and maybe David Foster Wallace, despite (or maybe because of) his constant insecurity had some issues with being consciously inferior, but there is something to the idea. Why become one more fly (well, more of one than I already am) when what I'm trying to do is honor, not destroy? Why dwell on death I can't contemplate when what I want to do is give new life to old things? Perhaps, also, I am afraid. Of what, I'm not sure, but I can feel it floating inside me like an unbroken wave. There is something about that place which keeps me away. So, instead, I decide to do something that will connect me with my grandmother's memory: I go to an art museum.
My love of art museums was something fostered by my grandmother. We spent hours in them, growing up. She was the kind of person who hated to miss a single piece or exhibition. So, for both of us, I decide it will be good to visit the M. Čirlionis Museum, near the Kaunas City Center. I accidentally end up in the Great War Museum, which contains, among other things, a display of all the military helmets Lithuanians have worn from the middle ages right up into the nineteen-eighties. Guns, too. There's even a special children's room, complete with a little command tent and tiny supply crates for the kids to sit on while they watch videos about how the modern Lithuanian military is trained. I swear I've never seen anything like it, and I've been to Israel. Levity aside, though, it does put one in a certain mood to contemplate the glorification of national suffering and war. Perhaps I run the risk of sinking into cliche, or of applying a foreign set of values to cultural beliefs I don't understand. But, setting all of that aside, the museum was a disturbing alternative to the Ninth Fort. Because it means that the ideas and forces which caused so much suffering for so many people, Jewish, Lithuanian, Russian, German, are still floating around un-interrogated. Beyond that, I'm not really sure what to think. One last thing: the folks at the Sugihara House Museum are absolutely wonderful. Their museum needs lots of support, though, so if you have the time please, please visit their website at http://www.sugiharahouse.com/en. Maybe even make a little donation, eh? Who knows, maybe you're feeling crazy. Snaps for Kaunas, Sonia A quote from the last letter my grandmother wrote to me, whıch she had wrıtten ın October of 2014, but I recieved two mınutes after her death: ``All I can leave wıth you are the memorıes of my uncondıtıonal love.´´ Two minutes? Or was it two hours? I can't remember if her body was still there. A year and a half on, and I can't remember. I was so sure I would never forget. It was my grandmother who first warned me about memories. "You can't always trust them," she said. "People get far away. Things change. And people change them." There I was, an awkward fifth-grader clutching my latest Holocaust memoir to my chest (yes, I had a phase), and trying to understand what she meant. How could she, of all people, tell me not to trust the words of those who had suffered so much? How could she say that these things weren't real? But now I better understand her caution, I think. It wans't the events themselves she was skeptical of, just the memories surrounding them. Consider, for example, what you just read. It's not what my grandmother said. It's my memory of what she said. And I don't remember the words exactly. I don't remember where I was standing, or what I was holding. I remember, generally, that my grandmother tried to explain the way trauma and time can change memories, distort them. I remember she told me this because I was reading about the Holocaust. But the words themselves--those are lost. It is only in the here and now that I've recreated them. So ten years on, maybe I understand a little more. I can see how a writer can shape memories, stretch them to fit their story. I can see how a little time can destroy some things and enshrine others. And I can see how some memories can rise from nowhere, make themselves felt and heard, and then disappear back into blankness and confusion, becoming far away, unreal. No longer a part of the fabric of the self. But perhaps they aren't real. I can't tell. Humans (and this has been rigorously proven) can manufacture memories. If we're good at anything, it's fooling ourselves. Isn't it lovely when irony cuts both ways? But enough of that intrusion. I was talking about my grandmother and her secrets, not mine. No, her memories. No, her thoughts on memories. And she was right, memories are slippery. They're hard to pin down. And if you do manage to pin them down, there's probably something wrong about them. But then where does that leave us? I don't know. Perhaps the veracity of my memory doesn't have to bother me so much. How much do little details matter, really? Except that its so much larger than that. It's about beliefs, and experiences, and the way we think about ourselves. It's about whether something happened or something didn't, about whether someone believes you when you have the courage to reveal the things that lurk inside. And its about what you have of a person, when they're gone. When my grandmother died, the memories swelled. I wanted to swim in these memories, to hang on tightly to each and every one of them. I wanted to enshrine them, vacuum seal them so that they could never escape. But now, many of these memories are gone. My worst fear is that I will lose them all. They say that women are the guardians of memory. Family memories, of which we have many. From mother to daughter, grandmother to grandchildren, stories and knowledge are passed on. Preserved. If women really are such guardians, then my grandmother was the Commander in Chief. She saved photos, made famıly trees, took down addresses. She travelled across the world ın search of the past. An ecyclopedıa of storıes and memorıes, of the hıstory that she taught over and over agaın.
But there was always a feelıng, a suspıcıous lurkıng underneath. What were these storıes hıdıng? Because there ıs another phenomenon, ın famılıes. Some storıes replace others, takıng the place of those whıch cannot be told. And so, whıle the story of Sugıhara and the larger narratıve of the Holocaust were ın some ways lıberatıng for my grandmother, I thınk they also served to keep her grounded. To aıd her sense of self and keep other storıes at bay. In some ways ıt ıs a phenomenon whıch occurs every tıme a story ıs told, a memory recalled. It ıs changed, consolıdated, made to look lıke somethıng concrete but at the same tıme brought farther from the realıty of events. And, honestly, I don,t know that there´s anythıng wrong wıth that. In some respects ıt may just be the way humans work. But, nonetheless, ıt raıses some questıons. For one, how can you be the gaudıan of somethıng you´re not sure exısts? How can you protect somethıng that´s meant to change? I don´t know. I don´t know anythıng. I am ın Turkey now. Istanbul for one nıght. It´s kınd of hard to get to Lıthuanıa, as ıt turns out. But, on the brıghtsıde, I get to take advantage of Turkısh Aır beıng amazıng. They put you up for free ın Istanbul ıf your connctıon through Ataturk ıs more than 10 hours after your ıncomıng flıght. It´s a beautıful cıty, Istanbul. Though most of my tıme ın ıt was spent ın traffıc. Musa, the guy who drove me out here, was very nıce. I had about two words of Turkısh and he had maybe four of Englısh, but Google Translate fılled ın some of the gaps. You know, ın ıt´s own weırd Google Translate type way. I stıll don´t know what ``Georgıa Lottery´´´was supposed to mean, but that´s ok. It´s ınterstıng, travelıng as a solo woman. Especıally one who looks lıke she´s about fourteen. Most people don´t care, but there are some people who seem quıte protectıve. Also some vaguely creepy stuff that seems aımed at ıntımıdatıng me, but that ısn´t that dıfferent from home. Well, anyway, I´m goıng to sıgn off now. I´m typıng on a Turkısh keyboard and everythıng ıs just dıfferent enough to make wrıtıng dıffıcult. Hopefully I´ll actually have some pıcture to post tomorrow. Hello from Istanbul, Sonıa P.s. The Guardıans ıs thıs beautıful, beautıful book by a poet named Sarah Mangusso. If you have some tıme, you should check ıt out :) |
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