EMIL DRAITSER
25
aggravated awareness of being an untouchable. I would be deprived of
my people's language, history, and culture. Without memory it's not sur–
prising that one is not a human being any more, but a trifle, a sifting.
This feeling of inadequacy has stayed with me for many years. In the
end, it often forced me to act against my own interests and common
sense. It's painful to admit it, but life is not a movie-you cannot stop
it, rewind to the original reel, and run it again at its old speed .
There was one more reason why I didn't ask questions then. To dig
into one's memory is a luxury of leisure, of relaxation, of at least some
inner comfort. None of us had it then. Although the war was over, the
danger was still there-in every knock on the door, in every hostile
passerby, in the reek of every drunkard who could say that Hitler had
started his work, but hadn't finished it.
Besieged on all sides by leaden words, one's head goes down between
one's shoulders, as mine had done in July and August of
I94I,
in the base–
ment of our building, when the German bombs burst above our heads.
Now, half a century later, I see myself as an unhappy boy, upset by
malicious newspaper articles, wandering around his hometown. What
did I know then about my roots, my grandfather, except that he hadn't
been around for a long time and he'd never be back? As an anc ient
Scythian vase can be recreated by fitting together the shards, can I recre–
ate the image of my grandfather from the fragments of somebody else's
memory?
No photos are left-they had all burned in the flames of war-but
those who remembered him recall a wide, graying beard. I try to picture
him with the features of his children. His older ones, my uncle Mitya
and my aunt Clara, resembled each other, even in old age, in their noble
beauty. Thick black eyebrows, dark eyes under long lashes, a dimpled
chin, and the elegant oval of their faces.
I know that my grandfather perished in Odessa, during the German
(and Romanian) occupation. Before finding out how he died, I want to
know how he lived. What kind of person was he? Mama used to say
that he was a deeply religious scholar. He read a thick book. She showed
with her hands how incredibly thick the book was. At that time
War
and Peace
was the only thick book I knew. Only later did I guess that
Mama had the Old Testament in mind. (I myself would see a Bible for
the fi rst ti me ina Iibra ry in Rome ma ny yea rs later, in the first week
after my arrival from my native land, which I had left forever.)
My grandfather was a native of Uman, Ukraine. From there, in the
early
I930S,
Jewish families scattered all over the world, stirred up by
the revolution, the Russian Civil War, pogroms, and post-revolutionary
