Snow and Mud

The following was written by Chava, the 2004 RIG Fellow, who was recently stationed in Romania.

This message is dedicated to the memory of Rabbi Ernest Neuman z"l who passed away this morning April 21, 2004 (30 Nissan 5764). At 88 years old he was the last of the Romanian-born Rabbis from before the war in Romania. He was a Giant, a devoted and passionate Jew of Timisoara, Romania dedicated to Romanian Jewry. He will be missed deeply and I am privileged to have known him during my time in Romania.

This weekend I flew to Maramures. This region of Romania was a cradle of Jewish life. Hasidim and pious Jews lived here until 1944 when their communities were shattered, carted off to Auschwitz and burned.

Less than ten percent of the Jewish communities in this region survived.

Sixty years later the Jewish community members of Romania attended the first ever educational seminar on the Holocaust in Romania. This was not a memorial service, but a moment for education, discussion, understanding, emotion and community. The Pedagogical Center, supported by the JDC, developed a moving, coherent, experiential, informative and relevant seminar that will set the stage for more learning and seminars on this topic in the future. Eighty Romanians attended and for many of them it was their first opportunity to really learn about the Romanian Jewish Holocaust.

There were lectures from a renowned Tel Aviv University Professor on the Transylvanian Holocaust (his parents are both survivors), a Klezmer music concert, Shabbat services, a visit to Sighet the hometown of Elie Wiesel, discussions on Holocaust denial, a memorial visit to a mass grave and the testimony of many survivors.

One man spoke of the Hungarian (Western Romania was a part of Hungary at this time) forced labor details that took him, his brother and his father to the Ukrainian frontier for years of hard labor beginning in 1941. He worked on creating roads in the forests and labored at creating a tunnel for hiding supplies. Following the War he spent four years in a Russian Labor Camp and then he returned home to find that it was nothing like his former life.

He spoke Yiddish and I went over to thank him for sharing his painful memories with us. He said it was nothing. That he was happy to share with the next generation, so as not to be forgotten. And then he said those years were all "snow and mud". It was either snowing or muddy. This was his world. Snow and mud.

During the seminar, the group visited the Village Museum of Maramures and saw a 200-year-old wooden Jewish home and synagogue from a community that no longer has Jewish residents. The house was literally picked up and brought to the museum and it was quite something to see.

Our bus parked on the lawn near a gazebo during lunch. It was a beautiful day to eat outside and chat with our friends.

This was the case until we realized that the bus was stuck in the mud. Oy. What a mess! All the men started pushing. They were digging around the tires. They were gathering sticks and stones and shoving them under the bus's wheels. To no avail and eventually we got a tractor from a local farm to free the bus from the mud.

I remember that during Chanukah I was riding home with members of the community from a Chanukah celebration in the small Jewish community of Pitesti. The snow was coming down hard. The driver was driving fast. Too fast. Eventually we were stuck in traffic. Then we were just stuck. The off-ramp was backed up, cars were close together and no one was going anywhere. We sat for 6 hours. Until one of the community members figured out a way to maneuver the bus around the traffic jam. We are freed.

Snow and mud.

The Romanian Jewish community is on a journey. It's moving forward through the snow and the mud that remains. The Jewish community here is navigating post-Holocaust, post-Communist, pre-European Union, modernity—life.

The mud. We get stuck, but people here in Romania are pushing. Pushing forward to make communities work and thrive. People are working together. They get a little dirty in the process, but they don't give up. Even though, sometimes they have to get outside help, or at least call in a tractor.

The snow. It can be cold to be a small community. One can feel isolated. But the man who first told me after my complaints, "don't worry we should be out of this jam by noon tomorrow" was the one who engineered our escape. People are pushing past their previous impediments or limits. People are slowly beginning to take risks. Small ones, but they can make all the difference.

As I leave Romania I can see the possibilities. I have hope and I know that the members of the community here have aspirations as well. The past and the present will lead to the future and it is wonderful to see the community confronting and taking control of both.

Slowly, but steadily. The Jewish community of Romania will get through the snow and mud. They have high hopes and that is what is needed.