millions of Ukrainian people for two long years. There is locksmiths; murdered are wagon drivers, tractor drivers, no home in a single Ukrainian town or village where you chauffeurs, cabinet makers; murdered are millers, bakers, will not hear bitter and evil words about the Germans, pastry chefs, cooks; murdered are doctors, therapists, dentists, no home where tears have not flowed during these past surgeons, gynecologists; murdered are experts in bacte- two years; no home where people do not curse German riology and biochemistry, directors of university clinics, fascism; no home without an orphan or widow. These teachers of history, algebra, trigonometry; murdered are tears and curses flow like streams to an immense river of lecturers, department assistants, candidates and doctors collective grief and fury; day and night, its troubles and of science; murdered are engineers, metallurgists, bridge pain roar beneath a Ukrainian sky that has been darkened builders, architects, ship builders; murdered are pavers, by the smoke of raging fires. agronomists, field-crop growers, land surveyors; murdered There are also villages in Ukraine where one doesn’t are accountants, bookkeepers, store merchants, suppliers, hear any crying or see tear-filled eyes, villages that are managers, secretaries, night guards; murdered are teachers, ruled by silence and peace. I visited a village like this on dressmakers; murdered are grandmothers who could two occasions—the first time on 26 September, and again mend stockings and bake delicious bread, who could cook on 17 October in 1943. This village, Kozary, lies on the chicken soup and make strudel with walnuts and apples; ancient Kievan highway between Nezhiny and Kozelets. and murdered are grandmothers who didn’t know how to I visited Kozary once during the day, and another time do anything except love their children and grandchildren; on a heavy autumn night. On both occasions silence and murdered are women who were faithful to their husbands, peace ruled over Kozary—the peace and silence of death. and murdered are frivolous women; murdered are beautiful The Germans burnt seven hundred and fifty homes here young women, serious students and happy schoolgirls; before Easter, and seven hundred and fifty families were murdered are girls who were unattractive and foolish; burnt alive in these homes. No one, not a single child or murdered are hunchbacks; murdered are singers; murdered old woman emerged from the flames. In this manner the are blind people; murdered are deaf and mute people; Germans punished a village for having sheltered partisans. murdered are violinists and pianists; murdered are three- Tall, dusty weeds had sprouted from the ashes. Wells were year-old and two-year-old children; murdered are eighty- filled with sand and gardens were covered in wild grass. year-old elders who had cataracts in their dimmed eyes, cold A withered flower could be glimpsed among the weeds. transparent fingers and quiet, rustling voices like parchment; There is no one in Kozary with whom one can mourn, murdered are crying newborns who were greedily sucking no one to talk to, no one to cry to. Silence and peace at their mothers’ breasts until their final moments. All are murdered, many hundreds of thousands, millions of people. This is not the death of individuals at war who had weapons in their hands and had left behind their home, family, fields, songs, books, customs and folktales. This is the murder of a people, the murder of homes, entire families, books, faith, the murder of the tree of life; this is the death Ukraine Without Jewsof roots, and not branches or leaves; it is the murder of a people’s body and soul, the murder of life that toiled for generations to create thousands of intelligent, talented artisans and intellectuals. This is the murder of a people’s morals, customs and anecdotes passed from fathers to sons; this is the murder of memories, sad songs, and epic tales of good and bad times; it is the destruction of family homes and of burial grounds. This is the death of a people who had lived beside Ukrainian people for centuries, labouring, sinning, performing acts of kindness, and dying alongside them on one and the same earth. hang over dead bodies buried in homes that have been There are descriptions of Jews in the works of all of reduced to rubble and covered with weeds. This silence is our great writers who have depicted life in Ukraine— more horrifying than tears and curses; it is a silence more Gogol, Chekhov, Korolenko, and Gorky. How could it terrifying than moans and piercing lamentation. be otherwise? Who among us born and raised in Ukraine And it occurred to me that just as Kozary is silent, did not from their earliest years absorb a living portrait of so too are the Jews in Ukraine silent. In Ukraine there Jewish people in the cities, shtetls and villages of Ukraine? are no Jews. Nowhere—not in Poltava, Kharkov, Remember Sabbath days when elders walked with Kremenchug, Borispol, not in Iagotin. You will not see the their prayer shawls beneath poplar trees on quiet spring black, tear-filled eyes of a little girl, you will not hear the nights; remember old men standing on corners carrying sorrowful drawling voice of an old woman, you will not on sly and clever conversations among themselves; glimpse the swarthy face of a hungry child in a single city remember self-important shtetl shoemakers, sitting on or a single one of hundreds of thousands of shtetls. rickety stools in front of the rickety doors of their shops; Stillness. Silence. A people has been murdered. remember naïve, humorous signs hanging above the Murdered are elderly artisans, well-known masters of locksmith, hat-maker and tailor shops; remember bearded trades: tailors, hatmakers, shoemakers, tinsmiths, jewellers, wagon drivers showered in bags of wheat flour tied up housepainters, furriers, bookbinders; murdered are workers: in their aprons; remember old ladies in dresses offering porters, mechanics, electricians, carpenters, furnace workers, you candies and apples; curly-haired, black-eyed children 1† • Jewish Quarterly