💾 Archived View for bbs.geminispace.org › u › stack › 22791 captured on 2024-12-17 at 15:01:34. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
My grandmother was maybe five years old. She sat on the side of a dirt road, waiting to die, with her brother next to her. They sat there for hours waiting for the Ukrainians to come back.
They were walking along a dirt road near their house when the horsemen with rifles came galloping down the road. They surrounded the kids and told them to sit.
"Sit down and don't move, little Yids. We have to kill a few big Yids, and then we will come back and kill you". They galloped away.
And so they sat silently for hours. Eventually, the sun started to set, and her brother said, "maybe they are not coming back?"
- - -
And so my grandmother did not die that day, and I get to tell this story.
It happened in a small town near Odessa. My great-grandparents ran from the beautiful Polish city of Lvov after Ukranians stormed it in 1918 and burned down the Jewish neighborhood.
I think they ran the wrong way and wound up in the middle of Ukraine right after the revolution. Sadly it was not the last time they had to run for their lives, as Ukraine was not a safe place for them.
I can't imagine how they survived, but I am certainly glad they did.
Dec 13 · 4 days ago · 👍 gritty, Yretek · ❤ 1
Ahh, old Lemberg! It is an absolute tragedy what happened to the Jews of that area. Lemberg, Mukachevo, Beregovo, all thriving cities with a very unique Jewish culture. I mourn the loss of such richness and life. Thank God your grandparents lived. One of the neighbours of my grandparents survived the Shoa (albeit that was a few decades later) by being hid in the cesspit of an out-house. The rest of his family, gone. One of my best childhood friends was his granddaughter.
What I find tragic about it all is how the Communists then proceeded to employ the same henchmen (they had the skills, you see), and “finished the job”. And after that, it was state policy to keep schtum about it all and protect those henchmen. We never faced up to the facts that those committing the pogroms could have been our grandparents, for us who are not Jewish.