28
PARTISAN REVIEW
During three years of occupation by the Wehrmacht troops, seven–
teen thousand Jews in Uman would lie down under the bullets, filling
the neighboring ravines and gullies with their bodies. Why would they
calmly undress while the rifles were loaded? Why would they accept
their death without murmur? Would they really come to realize the jus–
tice of Ecclesiastes's words: "As he came forth of his mother's womb,
naked shall he return to go as he came"?
But I don't want to get ahead of myself.
In the early thirties, life for my grandfather, as well as for other Jews
in Uman, had become difficult. The ties of time came undone. The
young scattered in all directions, attracted to the lights of big cities. Why
survive the revolution, and Petlyura, and blood, and hunger, and still
stay in the same place that had been prescribed by the tsar, the Pale of
Settlements? Buoyant Russian songs rang out over the radio: "We have
no barriers on the sea and on the earth!" The new generation openly
laughed at their ancestors' faith. Synagogues were turned into ware–
houses for turnips, potatoes, and beets. For the young, the old Jews
dressed for prayer seemed like scarecrows at a country fair.
Moscow was far away, in the north. You would need a lot of winter
clothes up there. Grandfather Wolf's own people-his sister-in-law with
her husband and their children-headed south, to the Russian Paris.
They settled there and got acclimated. The city was large; there would
be enough space for everyone. Odessa was a city of promise. The fact
that she was open to the sea raised hopes that winds of freedom would
blow down her streets-opportunity for another li fe, not quite clear, but
limitless to the imagination.
At their children's urging, Grandfather Wolf and his wife Khava left
Uman.
What happened next? I question those who might remember him.
Subconsciously, I expect to meet in these stories not a living man, but a
holy one. Remoteness in time makes a figure pristine. But what I hear
catches me off guard. It makes me uncomfortable. Arriving in Odessa,
my grandfather couldn't keep up with the "mighty step" of the times.
He lagged behind. He brought his Uman with him.
It
kept beating under
the pocket of his new city jacket. With its customary rhythm, it made its
presence felt.
"Do I remember your grandfather!" Uncle Misha says, his eyes wide
open, as if I had asked him a very stupid question. "Do I remember him?
Ha! I met him before you were born when I came from Minsk to Odessa
for your parents' wedding." My uncle would have been no more than
eleven then.
