EMIL DRAITSER
No
Kith, No Kin
A
UGUST
1949·
I'm twelve. I don't feel like going home. Empty,
devastated, I roam the streets making wider and wider circles
around my house. At first
r
go around our block. Trying not to
raise my head, I go along Lanzheron Street, turn on Gavan Street, then
on Deribas Street. From the newsstands on my right and my left, the
headlines of
Pravda, Izvestia, Literary Gazette, Soviet Ukraine,
and the
Black Sea Commune
shout at me: "Cosmopolitanism's Ideology of
Imperialist Bourgeoisie," "Love Our Motherland, Hate Cosmopolites,"
"Rootless Cosmopolitanism Serves Warmongers."
Sometimes I manage to raise my head. But I wince every time I see a
Jewish name in the headlines: "Anti-Patriot Brovman, Without Kith or
Kin," "Geldfeinbein's Slanderous Writings," "Cosmopolite Kholtsman's
Sabotage."
"People without kith or kin," I repeat. I still don't fu ll y understand
its dark purpose. I get only its literal, bitter sense. The earth hasn't
cooled down yet from the flames of the war. The bones of the slain
haven't crumbled into dust yet, haven't vanished without a trace. My
kin, my tribe, are nearby, under the very same soil I am treading with
the soles of my imitation-leather sandals.
To be without your kin, without roots, means knowing neither your
grandfather, nor your great-grandfather.
If
I belong to the "rootless," I
am not of the native population. Does that mean my roots are some–
where far away? Or am I a human tumbleweed? In the autumn I had
seen how large, prickly balls were swept by the wind across the naked
fields. These gray freaks would jump up on lumps of dry soil, turning
over so quickly as they moved that I could hardly see their crushed lit–
tle roots.
I share a long martyrology with many others of my generation. Only
now, a half-century later, do I attempt to glue together the image of my
never-seen grandfather. Who was Wolf Bendersky? Where did he come
from? Where did he go? What happened to him in between?
In
1949
I didn't want to know anything about my Jewish ancestors .
In front of me, in the haze of time, my future fluttered, full of anxious,
