Warsaw and Lviv: Finding Our Way

For those who may be interested in considering travels to Poland or the Ukraine, I thought it might be helpful to speak to some of our travel experiences and discoveries. I am a price conscious traveler who likes affordable quality. When I plan our trips, I do extensive research, read other travelers' reviews and monitor rates across many sources. My one absolute is Internet in order to write my blog and research my surroundings. Because we had such a positive experience in the Mamaison Isabella while in Budapest last year, I decided to try the same chain in Warsaw. Here I found two Mamaison hotels, one an apartment hotel like we used in Budapest and one which provided a lovely hotel room.

Upon our arrival we went to the Mamaison Regina which is the only hotel located in the old part of the city. Now keep in mind that the old part of the city is actually new having been reconstructed after its wartime destruction. At first I was prepared to not take it seriously, but have come to appreciate that the city went to unusual lengths to preserve its past and the reconstruction is truly masterful. Frescos decorate buildings and design work reminded me of the central plaza in Prague. When we looked out of our dormer window at the Regina we overlooked one of the artfully painted buildings. Around the corner were inexpensive, but appealing restaurants and the Vistula River flowed just a few blocks away. Had we more time in Warsaw it would have been an easy walk across the river to Praga, the area of the city that suffered far less destruction than Warsaw and still contains some of the older buildings. The hotel was tasteful and contemporary and with a favorable rate offered an extraordinary value.

On our return we will be staying at Mamaison’s sister hotel, the Diana, which is an apartment hotel. I expect equally high quality from them. In addition to Budapest and Warsaw, Mamaison also has hotels in Prague, Bratslava and Moscow. The hotels offered favorable rates when booking directly and paying in advance.

We had a lovely dinner our first evening and scoped out a restaurant that served breakfast for the following morning. To our dismay very little was open at 9AM on a Saturday including the restaurant of our choice. We found a small coffee shop where we got the hot chocolate that seems to be typical of at least two experiences in Lublin and Warsaw. Very thick and rich, one eats it with a spoon. The chocolate is similar to what one would find in Spain and is almost dessert – like.

We caught a taxi to the airport in the morning.  A short flight got us to Lviv where I began by puzzling out the Cyrillic on the airport building only to discover that it spelled Lviv. We were very surprised by the airport entry as it felt more like an ancient train station and looked very Soviet.  We later found that a new one is being built. A slow line moved forward into another room. There we found our luggage and had to run it through a screening machine on the way out. The security person asked if we spoke Ukrainian, German or Polish to which we replied “English”. He had been chatting at length with the woman who preceded us, but our conversational prowess just wasn’t up to the task.

When we exited to the central entrance area, we discovered a bank machine which didn’t know what to do with our card. Hmm, how to get money to get a cab was going to prove to be a problem. A Ukrainian came up to us and through gestures asked if we needed a taxi. I was hesitant to take a private cab, but soon saw that there was no taxi line to access. To my question of “How much” the guide replied only, “Dollars, Euros”. I knew the rate was supposed to be between 80 and 100 grivinas which equates to $10-12 and decided to wing it. He pointed out an ATM across the street from the airport and we got enough grivinas for immediate use.

He soon found our hotel and only then asked for 200 Grivnas. I replied 100 and we settled on 150. In Lviv we are staying at the Hotel Chopin which is a lovely hotel in a convenient location. The staff speaks English and it has a reasonably priced restaurant with a fabulous breakfast, omelets made to order, cappuccino and cinnamon filled croissants. Anything we wanted to order off the menu was included with the room fee. One of the appeals of this hotel is that it is around the corner from the Lviv Art Gallery, a collection of largely Polish and Ukrainian art.

We immediately headed over to the more contemporary section of the Lviv Art Gallery covering the 19th and 20th century and largely Polish and Ukrainian artists. The earlier period of the 15th to 18th century is housed in a nearby palace which we will visit on our return. We entered a room with some rather stodgy looking portraits, but half way through it began to get interesting with artwork that seemed more symbolist in origin. Some of the artists’ work reminded us of other artists with whom we were familiar, but most of the names were unfamiliar to us. I was also surprised to see a series of paintings of Jewish imagery, some by Maurycy Gottlieb.

We then wandered over to the Rynek Square to explore the town and enjoyed the variety of architectural styles which were represented. A striking building with winged figures atop beckoned at the end of a central avenue and we learned that it was the Opera House.

It was a Saturday night and many people were out, but the restaurant that had been recommended near our hotel had closed by 9 PM. Back to the Rynek we went to find an open restaurant. At the one we selected the waitress didn’t speak any English and our command of Ukrainian was nil.  Helplessly she looked around the restaurant for help. Taking our order soon became a community effort. A woman at the next table understood our question and relayed it back to the waitress in Ukrainian. Yet another woman helped her on the next question. With the aid of the entire restaurant we soon succeeded in placing an order. 

Thus ended our initial foray into Lviv. We look forward to more explorations on our return and may draw on our guide, Alex, for suggestions as Lviv is his home.

Jewish Life in the Soviet Union

Currently I am doing a series of oral histories in a Jewish elder facility focused on the topic of identity and legacy.  One of the facilities is home to many Russian immigrants and I have had several interesting interviews in recent weeks.  One in particular has stayed with me.  The person I interviewed, Boris, told me first of the death of his parents and sisters at the hands of the Nazis.  First they had to build a bunker for Hitler and then were executed upon its completion.  Boris held out a picture of a beautiful woman, his sister, the only picture he has of family.

He then related a story about his father-in-law who had a Russian passport prior to the revolution.  By Russian he meant that it said he was Christian.  His father-in-law’s parents had converted and married in a church in order to get the benefits of jobs and education which were frequently barred to Jews.  After the church wedding they went home and had a Jewish service.  After the revolution his father-in-law went to the authorities and asked for a Jewish passport.  He believed that he would now be able to exist as a Jew without discrimination.  Unfortunately that hope was not fulfilled.

Boris related how he and his wife had chosen to have their son take his mother’s name which was not a Jewish name as it was derived from a town.  They made this choice to protect him from discrimination. After they followed their son to the United States his son took back his father’s Jewish name and lives proudly today as a Jew.

These interviews have heightened my interest in learning about life in the Soviet Union as a Jew and that interest was furthered by a wonderful book titled Ester and Ruzya: How My Grandmothers Survived Hitler’s War and Stalin’s Peace by Masha Gessen.

The author of this book is a journalist who traces the story of her two grandmothers, close friends before their son and daughter married producing the author.  Both Jewish, one was born in Bialystok and went to Russia to study, the other was a Russian Jew by birth.  Ester, the Polish Jew, loses her father and fiance to the Nazis, but her mother is deported to Russia saving her and giving Ester a small nucleus of family.  The story relates the challenges of being Jewish both in pre-war Poland and in post-war Russia.  Many of the pre-war incidents she references echo the stories I’ve gathered from Dora, my friend who came from the Polish town of my grandfather’s birth.  I had not fully appreciated the deep Zionist stirrings in the Polish communities nor how much the doors of other countries were slammed in the faces of Jews who sought escape prior to the war.  Limited numbers were allowed into Palestine and in the five years prior to Hitler’s rise in 1933 the US issued just 33,000 visas to Europe’s Jews.  The post 1924 visa files that I now access in family history research exist only because the US was shutting the door. 

Many of the Jews who survived were those who were able to make their way to Russia or were deported to Russia.  Yet living in Russia brought compromises and challenges.  One grandmother is a censor of international correspondents and is in the unique position of reading the uncensored news even while she must literally toe "the party line".  Taking a stand against reporting on others can mean danger not only to oneself, but to one’s family and joining the party is necessary for survival, but not necessarily sufficient.  Throughout this the obstacles strewn in one’s path to securing education and employment as a Jew are daunting.  The Zionist stirrings are viewed as challenges to the Russian state and Jews were targeted with deadly anti-Semitism.  My interview with Boris comes into sharper focus as the outcome of this virulent history.  Many of the children immigrated to seek freedom from discrimination and the parents followed in their wake.

Ordering Visa Files

As of late I've been busy preparing for my travels to Poland. Today I received enlargements of all of Dora's photographs which have an odd power in their grainy quality. There is one of her and her father which was clearly folded four ways to fit in a shoe throughout the war. We'll be bringing these photos and Dora's story to Poland together with my paintings to tell the story of the former Jewish community.


On another topic, a month ago I ordered a visa record from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service for a cousin of some sort who had left Glasgow for the Chicago.  My quest is to tie him back to the Belarus shtetl of Dunilowicz and thus solve a long time family mystery of a link to relatives in the UK. Yesterday I received the first step in this process, the case number for which I paid $20.  Then I pay another $35 in order to get the visa file which should contain a birth record.  It took one month to get through this first step.  All ordering is on-line so very simple to execute.  I always wonder what the mailman thinks is the story behind this correspondence from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service that comes to my home.

Who Tells the History?

Last week I attended the conference of the Council of American Jewish Museums (CAJM)  in Philadelphia.  There I had an opportunity to visit the new National Museum of American Jewish History.  There were many topics of interest at the conference and as the focus was on story it tied closely to the type of artwork that I do.  Museums are exploring the use of oral histories as a way to tell the story and Holocaust museums are evaluating the question of how to teach about the Holocaust when the survivors are no longer present. 

Hovering over all of these discussions is the fundamental question of who tells the history and what is the story?  Is it told differently if it is a museum focused upon the Jewish experience, the African – American experience or other museums grounded in the ethnicity that they represent?

I put that question to the test as I toured the Museum of American Jewish History.   I was curious as to how they would addressed America’s response to news of concentration camps in WWII.  They accurately noted that the State Department had willfully obstructed the flow of information about the plans of the Nazis and prevented actions being taken to rescue Jews.  Information was provided to them as early as 1942 which they not only failed to respond to, but buried.  Would this show up in a museum with a broader focus?  What about quota systems for Jews that prevented them from gaining entrance to schools solely on the basis of their ethnicity?  There is history that is uniquely told by those most affected by it and I came away feeling that this new museum did an admirable job of telling it.

Prior Research Solves the Mystery: More Scottish Discoveries

Yesterday I wrote about my discovery of a branch of my Belarussian family that settled in London and Glasgow.  That discovery sent me back to my files to see what I may have gathered previously that might now make sense in light of this new information.

A year ago I had access to the records of the Jewish Chronicle.  This UK publication documents many of the important life events within the Jewish community.  When I went through it, I recorded any record that noted a Kodish as well as articles on family ancestral towns.  Now I had some new names to search, Sarah and Barnet, Max and Jack.  My searching proved fruitful as I discovered an obituary for Barnet in 1916 which told me that he had come to the U.K.  It named his three children, Max, Solomon and Jack, but didn't mention his wife who presumably predeceased him.  Then in 1974 I stumbled across the obituary for Max's second wife that names all their children, spouses and grandchildren.

I find that much of the time I put into genealogy research is prospective.  I record all the records for family names in a region or time period where I knew they lived, trusting that at some future point it will all make sense.  It is like laying out all the pieces for the center of a puzzle which just look like a jumble until I get the straight edges into place to anchor them.

In reviewing information I had collected on the Kodish family I found one piece of information that looked intriguing.  In 1938 Jacob Kodish, presumably the brother of Max, immigrated from Glasgow to the US. He noted he was born in Vilna, the district that branch of the family came from and which was the larger area around Dunilowitz.  He was 47 at the time so would have been born in 1891.  He was going to his wife Bloome in Chicago and noted that he had been in the US in 1923 and 1925.  An immigration record for Bloome shows up in 1923 with their children Joe, Sid and Anna going to her brother in Chicago.  So what causes me to think this is the correct record?  Three things aside from the Glasgow linkage...He gives his nearest relative in Glasgow as his brother Solomon. At this point his other brother Max has died as has his father so Solomon would have been the only one left.  The other detail that causes me to think this is a family member is the way he came over.  He worked on the ship as a waiter in exchange for passage, exactly the same way that his nephew Lewis Kodish came over.  The fact that he went to Chicago where Lewis also went seems to indicate family members that both may have accessed. As the 1940 census isn't out yet, I can't check to see if they were still in the US at that date, but I do have a plan of attack to secure more information.

In 1938 he would have needed to have obtained a visa to come to the United States.  In fact he would have needed one in 1925 also.  A visa file can be ordered from the US Citizenship and Immigration Service which will typically include a birth record and other identifying information.  As Jacob was born in Eastern Europe it would provide the link I've been seeking to the original ancestral town.  It may also provide more information on the original name of his mother who is where the relationship to my family resides. 

So one death record opens up the door to 25 new members on a family tree and a likely linkage to the Eastern European community from which they originally came.

A Discovery in Scotland

This morning when I checked my e-mails, I had an exciting surprise.   As I’ve been preparing for our upcoming trip to the Ukraine and Poland, I had placed a message on the Ukraine Special Interest Group of jewishgen.org.  In that I had asked if anyone had been to Kamenetz-Podolsk or Chotin and if so if they could share any information.  One of my responses was from a name that was familiar to me.  Harvey Kaplan, the director of the Scottish Jewish archives, was on my list of people to contact to pursue my British/Scottish roots.  An e-mail exchange followed and this morning I was greeted with an e-mail from Harvey with the death record of a relative who links back to my Belarussian shtetl of Dunilowitz.

A little back story follows, but you can also find more detail in the following blog entries: Finding my British Family and Finding my British Family Take2.  A cousin of my father remembered family in England and receiving a gift of boxing gloves from them.  He remembered their name as Kodish.  Upon his death I found in his photos one signed “from your cousin Louis Kodish” and the search ensued.  Since then I have found immigration records to and from the U.S. of Louis and his wife Katherine.  In 1929 he came to a relative in NY and then moved to Chicago.  In 1934 he returned to Glasgow which was the home of his father Marks Kodish.  I obtained his visa file as a visa was required for immigration in 1929.  Within that was his birth record which gave his mother’s name.  I traced him back to Glasgow in 1934 at which point I lost the trail.

I shared this information with Harvey who checked several sources and while not finding Lewis discovered a death record for Marks/Max Kodish, his father.  The first thing I do when I receive such a record is try to confirm that it is the correct person.  A few things lead me to believe that it is.  Listed by his name is the name of both his first wife and his second.  The first wife’s name is Kate which corresponds with the birth certificate for Lewis Kodish.  The person who submitted the record is Jack Kodish.  When I went back to my notes from almost ten years ago, I discovered that my father’s cousin also had remembered a Jack or Jacob Kodish.  According to the death record this is the brother of Max.  After confirming these details I noted something unusual.  The record gave the names of Max Kodish’s parents.  They were listed as Barnet Kodish and Sarah Kodish with a maiden surname of Rothschild.

My great-grandfather’s original name was Raichel, but upon coming to the United States he followed the lead of another cousin and changed it to Rothschild.  Did this happen in England as well?  It is quite possible that Barnet and Sarah did not immigrate, but their names were Anglicized by the person providing information in the death record.  My great-great grandfather Pesach Mordechai, who never left Dunilowicz,was listed as Peter and Max in the death records of his children.  As there was contact between the family in Great Britain and the US they would have known of the name change to Rothschild and may have updated the maiden name in their family retrospectively.

The record contains additional information which may prove useful in the future.  It tells me that Max Kodish was a furniture manufacturer and his father was a “restauratent”.  At first I assumed that he ran a restaurant, but in combination with his son’s profession, I wonder if he might have restored furniture.  While Max died in Glasgow it lists both his address in Glasgow as well as his usual residence which is an address in London.  Given that his son was born in London, he appears to have lived in both Glasgow and London at different times.  It also provides the address that he died at in Glasgow which could well be that of his brother Jack.  He died at age 58 in 1936 so would have been born in 1878.

So now I turn to the question of how I’m related.  To figure that out I had to map out the relationships and group them by age, not always foolproof in a time when families were large and childbearing often an extended period.  To counter that I listed ages of siblings when possible to capture the broad range for comparison.  By working my way backwards I concluded that Sarah Rothschild Kodish was a sibling to my great-great grandfather, Pesach Mordechai.  Max was a cousin to my great-grandfather and Louis a cousin to my grandmother.  And so a mystery is solved about that mysterious British connection.  Still many puzzles to explore, but the relationships are now explained.

In 1997 my parents went to London for their 50th wedding anniversary and copied down Kodishes from the phone book.  Fourteen years later we've identified relationships.  Answers unfold over many years.

Puzzles that I will continue to explore are whether Barnet and Sarah immigrated to the UK.  With their names identifed, I can now begin to explore that question. I also can explore the history of Max's brother Jack and any family he may have had in the UK.  The puzzle of what happened to Louis and Katherine also remains an open question.  New answers raise new questions and no dearth of puzzles to explore.

Preparing for Poland and a Question of Identity

With my return from London, I've quickly plunged into my next two projects.  The first is my upcoming show in Radom, Poland, the town of my grandfather's birth.  The show will be of artwork based on the former Jewish community and derived from a 1937 film created by a visiting former resident.  My artwork will represent one part of the exhibition.  The other with which I am also deeply involved is telling the story of my friend Dora, a former Radom resident.  Dora, a survivor of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen settled in my community after the war.  She has shared her stories with me through many hours of interviews as well as her scrapbooks of photos that capture a time before the war and during the ghetto. My task has been to complete, edit and link our hours of interviews to the photos that best tell her story.  I share this in turn with the arts & culture center in Radom to translate the interviews to Polish for their audience for this portion of the exhibit.  In between I try to complete the paintings I plan to bring with me to Radom.  I’ve been working on a few images of the elder religious Jews.  While Dora has spent much of her life working with Holocaust education and done many visits to Radom, this will be the first where she speaks to Poles about her memories and experiences.  She said to me that she is going with me because she hopes it will prove to be “meaningful.”  That is my hope as well, although for me personally it has already proven to be that.  Sharing the story in Poland will add yet another layer of meaning.

The second project with which I am working is also oral history within my own community, yet closely linked to the cultural heritage that I have been exploring in Eastern Europe.  Together with a partner, I am interviewing residents at a Jewish elder care facility.  In recent weeks we have done two interviews, both with women in their 90s and I am energized and delighted with our results.  Firstly because they represent a positive model for me of how one can age. Secondly because of the richness of their stories and the way they evoke Jewish cultural history and give me a view into local history.  I feel like I’ve been entrusted with something of value and hope that I can do justice to it.  The project is called the Jewish Identity and Legacy project and focuses on both how a Jewish identity is formed and how that in turn feeds legacy.  I plan to develop a series of artwork around the stories at a later date and am pleased at the rich visual imagery that is emerging.

I think we often focus on topics that address our own questions and the topic of Jewish identity is one I often contemplate.  I am convinced that while it may relate to religion, it doesn’t have to.  There is more to it than that and I am interested in understanding that question. The women we interviewed grew up in strong Jewish communities with deep ties to both religion and culture, environments that don’t exist in the same form today.  We live in a world of greater assimilation that presumably will affect the sense of Jewish identity in the future.  And yet…As a non-religious Jew married to a non-Jew, I have a strong Jewish identity that has only deepened through my research into cultural history.  So what is that all about?  I look forward to examining that question as I delve into this project.