Features
The River – an excerpt from a new novel by former Winnipegger Zev Coehn
Introduction: The following story is an excerpt from a longer story in Zev Cohen’s new novel titled “Are You Still Alive?”
As Zev wrote to us recently, “this is Chapter One of my novel, “Are You Still Alive?” It is partially based on events recounted to me by my late father Moshe. The story, beyond being one of the countless tales of Jewish survival against all odds during the Holocaust, is also an allegory for the indomitable human spirit intertwined with Rabbi Akiva’s maxim ‘V’havta l’raecha kamocha’. I hope to have the complete novel published soon.
Zev’s writing has appeared several times in the past in this paper. His collection of short stories, titled “Twilight in Saigon,” was published in 2021.
Born in Israel, Zev lived in Winnipeg until he was 17, when he returned to Israel with his parents. He now spends half the year in Israel and half the year in Calgary, where his two sons live.
Chumak leads the way towards the river in the dark. I had walked the route from his hut to the riverbank in daylight a few times and am confident I know the path down to the water and back. This time, though, I intend to cross to the other side under cover of darkness. Chumak, who came up with the idea, eagerly insists on guiding me so, he says, I don’t get lost. He claims he can find his way blindfolded. I think he believes that if this works, he might soon be rid of us, although he hasn’t said anything openly about it. To be fair, my suspicion just might be a projection of my own pressing desire to escape on to Chumak, whom I trust implicitly.
This summer has been uncommonly wet, and tonight the clouds are scudding low, hiding the moon and stars and making it difficult for others to spot us. At first, the only sounds are those of our movement through the brush and the occasional whoosh of passing nightbirds. The path is not overly challenging, and my labored breathing and rapidly beating heart stem more from fear than physical effort. Though I’m soaked to the skin by the constant drizzle, it is a minor irritation in the face of what I expect lies ahead. The sudden rattle of machine-gun fire causes us to instinctively fall flat on the ground, but luckily it isn’t close by, and we move forward a moment later. Distant flickers of lightning and muffled thunder are the backdrops as I blunder through the undergrowth and futilely attempt to avoid trees. Banging my knee against a tree trunk while trying to keep up with Chumak, I stifle a cry of pain, and then suddenly, I slip and slide down the muddy embankment, unable to get any traction. He grabs me before I plunge headfirst into the river.
“Quiet, you’ll get us caught,” he whispers as he holds my arm in his vicelike grip. “There are German and Romanian patrols on both sides of the river. Be more careful, or you will end up dead before you begin.”
The slope ends at the lapping water’s edge, but the river is barely visible in the blackness. A dog begins to bark incessantly on the other side. Has it picked up our scent even before I start to swim? I have no choice but to take my chances. Along the opposite bank downriver, dim points of light seem to be moving—smugglers perhaps or night fishermen. It’s hard to estimate how far away they are. I hope the current doesn’t drag me to them, but there is no going back. At least, for now, no searchlights are combing this particular area. Chumak seems to have picked the right spot.
Lightning flashes again, stronger this time, and in that instant, I realize how far it is to the other side across the rippling current. My swimming experience is limited to a small, calm pond near home, where my brother taught me some strokes. The wide, flowing river looks ominous, but I’ve made it this far, and I can’t give up now. And Chumak urges me on. I’m already knee-deep in the water, shivering, but not because the water is especially frigid.
“You can do it,” he encourages me. “The current isn’t so strong at this time of year. You must do it. It’s your only hope. Go!”
I stop for a moment and turn to him. “If anything happens…if I don’t make it back, help Ella and Sophie, please. They have no one else.” I don’t want to sound as if I’m pleading, but I am.
“Go, nothing will happen. You’re going to save them and yourself,” he says. “It’s the only way. I will wait here till you reach the other side and when you get there, clap some stones together three times to let me know you are safely there. The sound carries far at night. I’ll hear it, and I’ll tell Pani Ella that you made it.” Amid everything, I notice that this is the first time he calls Ella by her name.
I move slowly into the deeper water. At first, it’s easy; the water is up to my chest, but my feet still touch the soft muddy bottom. Then, without warning, it drops away, and I’m flailing and swallowing water. Finally, I calm down, gain control, and begin to swim. The current takes hold and starts pushing me downriver. Sputtering, I force myself to fight the rising panic and use my arms and kick with my legs in a crawl that will hopefully propel me towards the unseen shoreline. It’s working, and I’m not drowning, but I’m weakening rapidly. The combination of sickness I haven’t completely recovered from since the camp and general malnutrition has sapped me of strength. My clothes are waterlogged and drag me down. This can’t continue much longer. How idiotic would it be, I think, if I drowned now before beginning my mission? Rolling over on my back, I take the pig’s bladder that Chumak wrapped the note in from my pocket, and holding it tight, I squirm out of my pants to lighten the load. I let the current carry me and turn on my back to stroke and move gradually in the riverbank direction. It is less exhausting this way.
I’ve lost any notion of time as I float on my back and see nothing but the overcast sky. Has it been minutes? An hour? I fear trying to stand. If it’s still deep, I might sink and not be able to come back up. At least the rain has stopped. Some clouds have dispersed, and I can see stars in the black sky. Then I hear it. A baying sound getting closer. Maybe a dog? Then barking. Yes, a dog. Thankfully I must be near the shore. My feet hit bottom. I totter through the shallow water and, in the faint moonlight, survey a pebbly beach fronting the tree line. There is no sign of the huts nor of the large two-story house Chumak had pointed out some days earlier opposite my point of departure.
The house, he told me, belonged to a certain Nicolescu, a wealthy Romanian and well-known smuggler before the war. Chumak suggested that my woman, as he called Ella, write a letter to Nicolescu in Romanian asking for his help crossing the river. I imagined that he would get the letter to the Romanian or at least knew someone who could do it, so it took me by surprise when he said, “You will bring the letter to him, and he will make the arrangements.”
It seemed like a far-fetched idea. Beyond the problem of my crossing the river, in itself seemingly suicidal, why, I asked, would any Romanian, not to mention a wealthy smuggler, have anything to do with helping Jews? This is probably a punishable offense in Romania and meant certain death in German-occupied Poland. Only gypsies were desperate enough to offer their services. Even if Nicolescu was willing to help me, I had no money to pay him.
Moreover, those who did pay were often betrayed and delivered to the authorities on one or the other side. There was no guarantee of success, and many lost their lives in the attempt. A few days earlier, I saw a clump of corpses roped to each other floating down the river. I didn’t consider my death an issue anymore, but I was afraid of exposing Ella and the child to the risks involved. I told Chumak to forget it. I couldn’t do it.
“What choice do you have?” Chumak pressed. “Don’t be a fool. You, the woman, and the child definitely won’t survive on this side of the river, and you will stand a better chance over there, as far away as you can get from the Germans.”
His understanding of the situation is correct. The local peasants were handing Jews over for some butter or sugar and an opportunity to steal their belongings. They say a drowning man will grasp at a razor blade to save himself, so I agree.
“Even if I manage to make it across, how will I convince him? I have no money.”
Chumak was skeptical about my claim of penury. This wasn’t out of spite that he had thought through but rather an inherited bias. He was of the age-old school that believed Jews always had hidden treasure somewhere. He was convinced that if I couldn’t offer cash immediately, Nicolescu would accept a promise of future payment from a “high-class” Jew like me. To me, this appeared to be just wishful thinking since Chumak admitted never having actually done business with this Romanian smuggler, who was out of his league.
Chumak remained adamant, and his confident tone was hard to resist. “Tell your woman to write that she comes from an important, prosperous family in Romania that will pay him generously for his efforts. Give him a written guarantee.”
Before I could change my mind, he produced a slightly greasy lined sheet of paper from a child’s copybook and a blunt pencil stub. I took it to our hideout in the nearby forest, where I cajoled Ella, who also thought the plan was absurd and not doable, into writing the requisite supplication and promise of reward.
Standing on the flat terrain on this side of the river, I realize that the current took me downstream, and I need to walk back to the Nicolescu house. I’m not sure how far it is, but at least I can see where I’m going in the moonlight. I find some stones and strike them together three times, as I promised Chumak, hoping that he hears me, and goes back to report to Ella. Not expecting a response, I walk close to the tree line, off the riverbank pathway used by locals and military patrols. When a searchlight sweeps the river from the Polish side, I scamper into the trees, waiting, breathing hard, and picking up a dead branch for self-defense. Going forward, I detour through the woods to avoid a small group of men sitting by the embers of a fire smoking and passing around a bottle. Hunters or fishermen, I believe.
The house lies ahead through the gate of a stone-walled enclosure. No light escapes from the windows. Nearby in the compound, there are two thatched-roof peasant huts, weak light emanating from one of the windows, and a barn where a horse nickers. I stop to consider which building would be best to approach, and then, as I take a step closer, the dogs come at me, snarling. I fend them off with the branch, hitting one of them in the head. It runs off whimpering while the others keep their distance, growling, and barking. I’m done for. They are going to wake everyone. I retreat into the adjacent cornfield, crouching there cold, miserable, and afraid, as a woman appears holding a lantern outside one of the huts. She calls off the dogs and shoos them into the barn. As she locks the barn door, she stares into the darkness in my direction before going to draw water from a well in the yard and returning to the hut.
I can’t stay here much longer as indecision eats away at my remaining determination. It’s time to make a move, either forward to Nicolescu, whatever the risk and chances of success, or back across the river in abject failure. I run to the hut showing light and knock hesitantly. The dogs continue barking hysterically in the barn. Nothing happens, and I try again more decisively.
“Who’s there,” asks a muffled woman’s voice in Ukrainian.
“It’s me,” I reply. What else could I say?
She opens the door a crack. People must be accustomed to seeing strange sights around here because she doesn’t slam the door in the face of the wet, disheveled, half-naked specter that stands before her.
“What do you want? Who are you looking for?” the woman asks as if I was routinely passing by.
“I have an important letter for Mr. Nicolescu. He needs to see it,” I say, also in Ukrainian.
She invites me into the hut. Alone in the single, earthen floor room, she wears widow’s black. Wrinkeled but unbent, her age is indeterminate. Most of the space in the room is taken up by a traditional wooden loom, while a large blackened icon of the Savior hangs above a stove. I rarely devoted attention to Christian symbols, having never, so far, entered a church and always hurrying by the ubiquitous roadside shrines in our vicinity with eyes averted. The narrative of Christianity and Christians as moral and physical threats was, since time immemorial part of our Jewish psyche, but I have no direct personal experience of it. Even the murder of my father by Jew-hating thugs, which undoubtedly weighed heavily on my perception of the people who surrounded us, didn’t feel like a religious issue. Now though, as I stand here shivering, Jesus on the cross seems to be observing me ominously. But, immediately, my attention is drawn away to a piece of bread on a side table, and without invitation, I grab it and chew hungrily. The woman sees that I am exhausted and soaked and tells me to sit and rest. She brings me a blanket and pours a cup of water, watching silently as I continue chewing the bread thoroughly.
When I finish, she says, “You are from over there. You’re a Jew.” It’s not posed as a question, and she clearly knows why I have come. I’m not the first desperate Jew who has shown up on her doorstep. To my relief, she doesn’t take long to make her decision. “I will take you to Mr. Nicolescu’s mother. She lives in the other hut. Maybe she will help you.”
“Thank you.” I’m wary of digging too deeply into the subject for fear of treading on sensitive toes, but I’m also anxious to find out what has happened on this side of the river and know what to expect if Ella and Sophie are to cross with me later. “Are there any Jews left around here?” I ask warily. “What about the Jews in the city?”
“They got rid of all our Jews,” she replies in a matter-of-fact tone. “They say the devil came for them. You need to watch out.”
“Come,” she beckons. “We should go to Nicolescu’s mother before anyone else sees you here. People won’t hesitate to give you up.” I follow her to the neighboring hut, where a tall, old woman approaches us. “Who is that with you, Bohuslava?” she calls out in Romanian. “Beware of robbers. I’ll get a stick and run him off.”
Bohuslava walks over to her. “Shh, be quiet,” she says in Ukrainian. “Stop fussing. He means no harm and just wants to show you something. “Come here quickly,” she gestures to me.
Grey-haired, slightly stooped, with one eye clouded by a cataract, she must be in her seventies but looks far from frail. She takes my hand with a firm grip. “Let’s go inside,” she says.
She lights a kerosene lamp. This is a much bigger and well-appointed abode with an ornate porcelain stove dominating the room and a dining table covered in a hand-embroidered red and white tablecloth. Adjacent to the stove stands a single bed occupied by a young woman sleeping, oblivious to us.
“Bohuslava, you may go,” the Romanian says. “Just keep your mouth shut, or it won’t be long before everybody is aware that you take in Jewish strays. We don’t need that kind of trouble.”
“What will I say?” answers the other woman on her way out. “That you have a new lover and a Jewish one at that,” she cackles.
“Sit,” the tall woman says, pointing to a chair beside the table. Like most Romanians living on the border, she is fluent in Ukrainian, while my Romanian is rudimentary at best. “Show me what you brought,” she asks. I remove it from the pig’s bladder and hand the grotty piece of paper to her. She dons reading glasses and concentrates on the message.
“Good Romanian,” is her first reaction. “Who wrote it? It couldn’t be you.”
“My wife,” I say tersely.
“Is she from around here?”
“She is from the city,” I reply. “Actually, we’re together but not officially married. She has a small child, her daughter, with her. They were forced across the river with others a few months ago, and we are trying to get back to the city to join relatives who might still be there. The situation on the other side of the river is deadly.”
“Yes, I know. It’s not really safe here, either. If you’re caught, they will send you back there without a second thought. Don’t expect much pity here because nobody wants to get in trouble for hiding Jews from the authorities.”
Not wanting to get into a discussion on motivations. I prefer to get to the point. “I was told that your son, Domnul Nicolescu, has experience getting people across the river. If your son could help us, we will take our chances. It’s preferable to certain death over there.”
“I can’t speak for him,” she says. “He is a good man, but I doubt, though, that he would be willing to take such a great risk. He was never involved in the smuggling of people across the border. It’s a bad business. For him, it has always been cigarettes and other contraband.”
I am surprised, honestly, that she speaks so openly of her son’s activities to a stranger… especially to one with a price on his head. Though she doesn’t hold out hope, her demeanor and attitude give me a sliver of confidence. “You should get some rest,” she suggests, “and I will take you to him in the morning.”
“What is your name?” I ask.
“Margareta. And yours?”
“I am Emil. Thank you, Doamna Margareta, for your kindness. I hope your son takes after you.”
She wakes the girl rudely and pushes her into the other room. “Here, take this bed. The servant girl can sleep in my room. I will leave some dry clothes for you and wake you when we need to go.”
“Thank you again. Good night.” I kiss her hand.
“Good night, Domnule Emil. Sleep well.”
I feel exhausted and drained, and my shriveled muscles ache from the unaccustomed effort of swimming across the water, but sleep remains elusive. It’s not the discomfort of the thin, lumpy mattress and the scratchy wool blanket that still hold the sour odor of their previous user, nor is it the constant, sometimes frantic, barking of dogs outside that keep rest at bay. By now, I’m also habituated to grasping moments of sleep in more dire circumstances, whether in the camp barracks or on the cold forest floor. Tonight I’m kept wide awake by the train of thoughts and questions running in a relentless loop through my mind. Are Ella and Sophie safe on the other side, alone with the Chumaks? Will Nicolescu agree to help without payment in advance? Will we be betrayed by the smuggler as so many have been before us? What lies in store for us on this side without any means for survival at our disposal? Should we hide in the countryside here or take the risk of heading for the city? I try to block out the most subversive, monstrous, cowardly, and tempting considerations, but they are there. The palpable fear of swimming back across the river toward the near certainty of death, tries to convince me that I’m now safer and that on my own, I stand a better chance of hiding and surviving. Yes, I would be abandoning Ella and Sophie, but by going back, I would only join them in being captured and killed. They would be safer staying with the Chumaks, who certainly would take pity and continue to conceal and support a defenseless woman and child. Or maybe I could remain here and just send the smuggler for them. I want to scream. I will go back.
The sun is up when Margareta nudges me awake and offers me a mug of hot tea while waiting as I put on the clothes she brought. They belong to a larger man, but they will have to do. I walk with her to the door of the house. A few people, already out and about, are on their way to work in the fields, some leading cattle and a flock of sheep. The men doff their hats and greet her, paying no attention to me.
Margareta instructs me to wait outside and enters without knocking. I hear raised voices inside. “Have you lost your mind? Why did you bring him here? Do you want to get us arrested? Send him away!” A few moments later, Margareta reappears with another woman, a pale ash blonde of about forty, holding a cigarette in her long elegant fingers with a worried look on her face — definitely not of the farming class. The woman scans the yard nervously.
“My mother-in-law told me what you want. I am sorry, but Mr. Nicolescu doesn’t do this business. We cannot do anything for you.” Her voice trembles and she is obviously terrified. “Anyway, he is not here. He is in the city, and I don’t know when he will be back. You must go. It’s dangerous here, and you will get us into trouble. Please go now.” She starts to retreat into the house.
I can’t hold her against her will, and if Nicolescu is indeed away, there is nothing more to be gained here. “Thank you, Doamna Nicolescu,” I say in Romanian and press my luck. “I will go, but could you kindly give me some bread?”
She goes inside and is soon back with half of a large loaf. I once again kiss her well-manicured hand and turn to leave.
“Mr. Emil,” says Margareta, “You should not wander around here in daylight. It’s dangerous to stay out in the open. Why don’t you hide in the barn till dark? It will be safer that way.”
“Again, you are so kind, Madame, but I must return to my family. It has been too long already. They are alone and will worry that something bad has happened to me. I will be as careful as I can.”
“Very well, if you must, but follow me.” She leads me into the forest on a narrow footpath that is a roundabout way down to the water’s edge. “Eat the bread, you need the strength, and it will be ruined in the water,” she says. I need no more encouragement as I almost choke, devouring it. She turns to leave. “Be careful, Emil, and good luck to you. I will talk to Nicolescu when he returns. Maybe he will agree to help. He has more conscience than that frightened ornament he calls his wife. How can he find you?”
“There is a peasant named Chumak. He knows where we are,” I tell her.
“Yes, Chumak. I know him. He also used to smuggle cigarettes before the war.”
“Thank you, Madame. I will remember your generosity.” She is gone.
I sit brooding among the trees looking at the river as the sun glints off the streaming water and listening to cheerful birds chirping. I can’t help but ponder the difference between the elderly women, Bohuslava and Margareta, and the wife of Nicolescu. I’m not surprised by the younger woman’s reaction. It is one version, slightly less brusque, of the general refusal to help Jews. But, all other considerations aside, who can blame people for fearing the fatal punishments meted out by the Germans and their Ukrainian lackeys to so-called Jew-lovers? Would I behave any differently in their shoes? I am more impressed, not to say astonished, by those candles in the darkness, people who have everything to lose, yet whose basic humanity causes them to stretch out their hands to support their fellow men and women. That rough peasant Chumak, whose whole universe is his tiny homestead next to an unknown village on the banks of the river, heads my list of the righteous. Now I add Bohuslava and Margareta to it. The existence of such people, beyond their contribution to our physical safety, keeps alive my essential positivity toward humankind and allows me to still retain some belief in our survival.
What next, I ask myself? I achieved nothing and have no other plan in reserve. Swimming back in broad daylight now seems suicidal. Maybe drowning is a good option? But that means abandoning Ella and the child, and I have already decided this is not an option. Bring back yesterday’s rain, I pray. I pray, though my belief in the idea of an Almighty, never cast-iron, has been dramatically undermined by the past year’s events. Then the wind picks up, and the miracle unfolds. Dark clouds scud across the sky, and the first drops wet my face, replacing the tears. In moments the downpour becomes torrential. I tie the new clothes around my neck and dive into the river, feeling more energetic on my way back. The current is slow enough for me to gradually dog-paddle most of the way across and finish with a few crawl strokes.
I’m carried only about a half-kilometer downstream, and elation replaces caution as I drag myself onto the riverbank and start walking. Climbing up the steep slope, Chumak’s hut is soon ahead, but when I approach and enter it, nobody is there. I look for Ella and Sophie, but the barn is empty too, and figuring that Chumak is probably out working in the field, I continue upwards into the forest towards our erstwhile hiding place. Ella and Sophie are supposed to wait there for me in case of trouble. I call out not to surprise them but there is no reply. I run to the hideout. They are gone.
Features
What I miss
By DAVID TOPPER When my late wife, Sylvia, and I moved into the house I’m still in, we brought with us not only our furniture and other things from inside the old house, but some outdoor plants and flowers – even a shrub. The shrub, of course, was small: a young mock orange. Sylvia had a thing about mock oranges, so we dug it up and took it with us to the new house. Then there were irises that we inherited from the previous owners of our first house. I can still recall Sylvia doting over those irises when we moved there in 1971. They were very different varieties from those she was familiar with. I liked them, too. I also remember a rose bush. Well, everyone likes roses. Appropriately, it was red. So, the irises, along with the mock orange and the rose bush were transplanted to the new yard. That was in the summer of 1976.
For reasons that I cannot explain, when it came to plants and such, there was a sort of division-of-plant-labor between us. I took care of all the indoor plants and Sylvia did the outdoor ones. This meant that she only worked during the relatively short span from late spring to early fall, since we live in Winnipeg, Canada. Whereas, I looked over the house plants all year long.
Actually, I can explain something. You may have noticed that when speaking of digging up things I use the plural. This was because Sylvia enjoyed physically working in the yard. This digging urge she acquired in the year after High School that she spent working on a Kibbutz in Israel. It was daily hard physical labor in the field: digging, planting, pruning, picking and so forth. Yet she always talked about it lovingly. That was 1960-61 and I saw the blissful look on her face when working in our yard, from 1971 onward.
In time we had a diverse array of plants and flowers. In no particular order, we had lilacs, peonies, hostas, lilies, day-lilies, irises, roses, tulips, lungwort, elephant ears, clematis, rhubarb and the mock orange (which – along with the irises and roses – had grown quite nicely, since the summer of 1976).
All this lasted until the foremost transition in our lives. Early in 2014 Sylvia was diagnosed as being in an early stage of dementia. Over the next six years, as she drifted deeper into her black hole, I gladly obliged taking over the household chores, some of which I had begun already – such as doing most of the cooking. As for the outdoor tasks from spring through summer, that deeply implanted love of gardening was one of the last things to go from her immediate world. Even when she was not too sure who I was, she was glad to work with me in the yard with a shovel in her hands – and a smile on her face.
Sylvia died in the winter of 2020. Come spring, it was just me and the yard.
I don’t remember if it was that first spring or one later, but one day I noticed that the mock orange looked less robust – so I pruned it. That seemed to work for the summer, but the following spring it lost its vigor. More pruning didn’t help. Thus, slowly, over time, it died off and I dug up what was left.
Around the time I was still fiddling with the mock orange, I noticed the rose bush that Sylvia gave lots of love and care was not looking its usual hearty self. I got the fertilizer that she used to try to revive it, and that seemed to work. But the following year, the bush lost its vitality – and nothing I did (extra watering; keeping it dry) worked to impede the track it was on. In time, the rose bush died, too.
“What’s next,” I shouted to our yard.
The following spring the tulips came up as usual, but didn’t look as healthy as they should. These had a special meaning, since we bought the bulbs on a trip to Holland and planted them ourselves. Obviously, I tried everything I could to bring them back – reading all that the Internet had to say about tulips. Needless to say, that was the last summer for the tulips.
“Oh no,” I cried the following spring, when I first saw the irises. They were up, but not looking very well. This was probably the most difficult loss. I don’t know why, but those irises were part of an exceptional bond between us. Sylvia and I and the irises: their singularity symbolized the uniqueness of our relationship.
The irises were the last to go.
As I write this, the rhubarb still comes up, but it’s not as hearty as it used to be. The rest of the plants are doing fine: lilacs, peonies, hostas, lilies, day-lilies, lungwort, elephant ears and clematis. Incidentally, I also have a unique fondness for the clematis, since I bought it and planted it myself many years ago.
I wish to make clear that I’m not putting forth any causal or symbolic or spiritual or mystical meaning to all this, in relation to Sylvia’s demise. Rather, I’m just telling the story of my personal experience with the plants and flowers in our yard. You may read into it whatever you wish.
Now when I walk about my yard, enjoying the remaining plants and flowers amidst the bushes and trees, I not only see and derive pleasure from all that I still have – but I also “see” what is missing: that mock orange, the rose bush, those tulips and the irises.
It also reminds me what I intimately and ultimately miss.
Tags: bonding |caring |coping |loss |sharing |symbolism
David R. Topper writes in Winnipeg, Canada. His work has appeared in Mono, Poetic Sun, Discretionary Love, Poetry Pacific,Academy of theHeart & Mind, Altered Reality Mag. and elsewhere.
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Features
A “Tour” of Antisemitism in Eastern Europe
By HENRY SREBRNIK As we enter the fourth year of the “October 7” wars, things in Eastern Europe remain dire. There have been dozens of attacks on Jewish institutions across the region.
True, there are a few bright spots. Albania’s prime minister is a surprising ally of Israel in a mostly Muslim country. Edi Rama openly defends Israel’s right to protect itself, and condemns Hamas in extremely harsh terms, calling them the “Nazis of the 21st century.” He notes that waves of Jewish refugees were welcomed over the centuries.
“On the eve of World War II, only about 200 Jews lived in Albania,” he told the Jewish magazine Mishpacha. “After the Holocaust, there were more Jews here than before — about 3,000. We didn’t hand over a single Jew to the Nazis. Seventy-five Albanians are officially recognized as Righteous Among the Nations, but in truth, the entire population mobilized.”
There is also better news from Croatia. Rabbi Pini and Raizy Zaklas moved to the country in 2004 to establish the first Chabad centre on “the land of a thousand islands.” Coming from their native Israel, it took time for them to come to terms with the fears of the Jewish community.
“We spent the first decade just earning their trust,” Raizy explained. “We had to put our grand ambitions aside and choose an individualized approach, fostering relationships through one-on-one meetings at coffee shops. Sometimes we felt disheartened at the slow pace of growth here, and worried we weren’t making progress. But I see in retrospect that we were putting down roots.”
In 2016, the Zaklas purchased a five-story building in the centre of Zagreb. Since then, it has become the spiritual center of Jewish life in the country. It’s a place where hundreds of weddings, bar and bat mitzvahs, and holiday programs take place annually. It’s a place where more than 3,000 Croatian Jewish men, women, and children find connection with their heritage. And it’s a place where thousands of tourists visit each year.
Less positive is the position of the Czech Jewish community. The Federation of Jewish Communities in the Czech Republic registered a total of 4,694 antisemitic incidents in 2024, compared with 2023, when 4,328 cases were reported. The severity of antisemitic incidents dramatically increased following the events of October 7. 2023. Anti-Jewish hatred, particularly in the form of demonization and delegitimization of Israel, became socially accepted and, according to the Federation, dominated public opinion.
In Greece, a spate of incidents in 2025 included a pro-Palestinian protest that blocked Israelis attempting to disembark from a ship in Syros, an alleged attack against Israeli teens in Rhodes, and an attack on King David Burger, a kosher eatery in Athens. Greek Jewish groups condemned an “anti-Zionist patrol” which took place on the streets of Thessaloniki, 95 years after assault squads targeted Jews in the same city. The left-wing anarchist Rouvikonas group organized the “anti-Zionist patrol” heading toward Mavili Square, which they said “Israeli capital has parasitically infiltrated.” They were joined by members of the groups Permanent Struggle for Class Liberation and the Libertarian Initiative of Thessaloniki.
However, in recent years there has been great improvement in formal Greek-Israeli relations, particularly following the disintegration of Israeli relations with Turkey. In August, Israel and Greece finalized a $3.5 billion deal, called the “Achilles Shield,” providing the Hellenic Republic with a multilayered antimissile system designed to protect the European Union country against aerial attacks from nations such as Iran and Turkey. It is one of the largest defence export deals in the history of the Jewish state.
The two countries “share common strategic interests and face shared regional challenges,” Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz indicated. “At a time when actors with hegemonic ambitions are seeking to expand their influence and undermine stability in the region, Israel and Greece will continue to deepen their defence and strategic cooperation.”
Hungary too is a bright spot. It has stood virtually alone in defending Israel in the European Union. Budapest has consistently blocked one-sided, anti-Israel statements and stood firm on Israel’s right to defend itself. At the United Nations, where Israel is routinely demonized, Hungary has refused to go along with the mob. And not just on the international stage. At home, Hungary walks the walk.
Hungary is home to the largest Jewish community in Central Europe, with estimates ranging from 80,000 to 100,000 Jews, most of them living in Budapest. The city is one of the only capitals in Europe where Jews can freely wear a yarmulke without being harassed, attend synagogue without metal detectors and celebrate Jewish holidays without police guarding the doors of synagogues. The government has invested millions into preserving Jewish heritage sites, restoring synagogues and funding Holocaust education not just as a formality, but as a national priority.
Poland had the highest Jewish population in Europe prior to the Holocaust and was also the site of the Nazi death camps where most European Jews were murdered. It has therefore always been careful to curb expressions of antisemitism since it became a democratic state in 1989.
But the proportion of Polish citizens who dislike Jews has risen to 40 per cent, according to Poland’s Centre for Public Opinion Research’s 2026 findings. Conducted annually since 1993, the survey asks Poles whether they like or dislike various national and ethnic groups (21 in total). It found that the proportion of people saying they dislike Jews rose eight percentage points, more than for any other group.
Still, thousands of people converge on the historic Jewish quarter of Krakow every summer to attend the annual Krakow Jewish Festival. The festival was initially launched three-and-a-half decades ago for a non-Jewish audience as a new generation of young Poles has discovered a shared past in their mixed history.
“We seek to reintroduce the Jewish contribution to Polish culture to mainstream Polish society after many decades under Communism, where Jewish issues were banned in the country, and people didn’t know that Jewish contributed so much to our heritage,” Krakow Jewish Festival director Robert Gadek explained. “Here you have a Jewish festival that is being held in the open air, and everyone feels safe.”
The war in Gaza sparked a wave of antisemitism in Romania, which has a poor track record of protecting its Jews. Antisemitism in Romania today is visible in far-right demonstrations, extremist political movements, and hostile rhetoric in parts of the media. “It’s getting worse,” according to Alexandru Muraru, a member of Romania’s parliament and vice-president of its National Liberal Party, who is not Jewish. “In Western Europe, they have big Muslim communities, which generates antisemitism. In Romania, there are only one or two mosques, but our antisemitism has historical roots.” Indeed, it does. In the 1930s, Greater Romania was home to some 800,000 Jews, giving it the world’s fourth-largest Jewish population after the United States, Poland and the Soviet Union.
“Back then, Jews made up an important proportion of Romanian society,” indicated Gilbert Șaim, who is the gabbai, or custodian, of Bucharest’s famous Choral Temple. “Despite widespread discrimination, there were villages, towns, and cities with large Jewish majorities — even villages established by ethnic Jews centuries ago, like Podu Iloaiei.”
Only 20 per cent of Romanians know about the Holocaust or its wartime role under pro-Nazi puppet Ion Antonescu. Most are unaware of their country’s role in the mass murder and deportation of hundreds of thousands of Jews during World War II. Antisemitism is expanding on social media, Facebook, TikTok and Telegram, though less visible in traditional mass media. The COVID pandemic amplified conspiracy dating back to the late 19th century. Despite a ban on glorification of Nazi heroes, at the end of November 2024, there was a public ceremony to commemorate a fascist leader.
This past April, the European Parliament lifted the immunity of one of its 33 Romanian members, Diana Sosoaca, the controversial leader of the ultra-nationalist and antisemitic SOS Romania party. Sosoaca, a lawyer, received the honorary Order of the State of for her support of the Palestinian cause.
Although antisemitic incidents are not too common, Serbia, like most other countries in Eastern Europe, also contends with a strong nationalist streak. Around 1,500 Serbs belong to extremist groups, of which perhaps 120 are active. Serbian Action, a small group of neo-Nazis, occasionally holds rallies and spray-paints antisemitic, anti-immigrant and anti-gay graffiti on public buildings.
Israeli and Serbian officials denounced antisemitic comments made by demonstrators during a clash between Serbian students and police at a protest last April. “Death to Vucic and all the Jews around him,” one protester said in a televised interview, referring to Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic. “Long live Serbia.”
Nemanja Starovic, the Serbian minister of European integration and the chair of Serbia’s delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, called on the protest leaders to “unambiguously condemn these antisemitic incidents and to immediately remove all antisemitic messages and slogans from university premises.”
A cause of uncertainty among Jews in Slovakia is the continuing defence by some traditionalist Slovak Catholic clerics and others of the reputation of Father Jozef Tiso, Slovakia’s most senior perpetrator during the Second World War. Tiso was responsible for extreme anti-Jewish laws and widespread Jewish impoverishment followed by expulsion of most of the country’s Jews to Nazi death camps. Yet there has emerged a whole literature of excuses for him.
As Slovenia takes a hard line against Israel, its tiny Jewish community feels increasingly isolated. Slovenia’s Jews have experienced a pattern of hostility for decades. In June 2024, Slovenia’s parliament voted to recognize a Palestinian state, only one week after Spain, Ireland, and Norway had taken that dramatic step. Half a year later, Slovenian public broadcaster RTV, became the first in Europe to demand Israel’s exclusion from the 2025 Eurovision Song Contest. RTV warned it might boycott future editions of Eurovision if Israel isn’t expelled.
Slovenia banned imports from Jewish settlements in the West Bank, only a week after prohibiting all weapons trade with Israel, the first EU member to do so. It also became the first European Union country to impose a travel ban on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Henry Srebrnik is a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island.
Features
The Red Inheritance – a short story
By H.C. Piloski
PART I — ROOTS
Foreword
The Red Inheritance is a work of fiction built on real histories. The political movements, neighbourhoods, and events depicted here — from Winnipeg’s North End to the Holodomor, the gulag system, and the ideological battles of the twentieth century — are drawn from documented fact. The characters themselves are invented. Their names, relationships, and private lives have been changed.
This story engages with difficult truths: the idealism that drove many to fight fascism, the blindness that led some to excuse Stalinist terror, and the intertwined traumas carried by Jewish and Ukrainian families who fled Europe’s catastrophes. It also reflects the historical record of the Soviet security organs and the diverse individuals who served within them. These realities are presented not to assign collective blame, but to illuminate the moral complexity of an era when ideology often overshadowed humanity.
What follows is fiction. But the shadows it walks through are real.
This story is one thread in a larger tapestry of inherited memory and consequence.
I. The Tape (1934 → 2026)
Rachel Levinson found the box on a humid August afternoon in 2026, tucked behind dusty binders in the archives room of the Jewish Heritage Centre. It was unlabelled except for two faint words:
CP — Private.
Inside lay brittle pamphlets, yellowing papers, and a cassette tape with a fading label:
Labour Temple. 1934.
Her grandfather, David Levinson, born in 1915 to Polish immigrants Sarah and Moshe, had been the youngest of four children — a fact that shaped both his stubbornness and his need to prove himself in the crowded Levinson household. He had been a young Jewish organizer in Winnipeg’s North End, swept up in the Jewish Youth AntiFascist League. He had told her stories of the confrontation at Old Market Square, when Jewish and Ukrainian youth chased the brown shirts out of the square in 1934.
But he had never mentioned a tape.
She slid it into the old player.
A click. A whirr. Then his voice — younger, sharper, filled with conviction.
A faded photograph showed him as he once was: lean, brighteyed, a mediumsized North End boy toughened by winter streets and by the old prewar YMHA — the building Jewish youth used before the Hargrave and Qu’Appelle “Y” existed. That building was long gone now, replaced decades later by the Asper JCC in the south end — another reminder that the world her grandfather moved through had vanished, leaving only photographs and memory.
Her grandfather spoke of fascism rising in Europe, of solidarity, of the Soviet Union as “the only nation standing unflinchingly against tyranny.”
Then another voice mentioned a poet. A furnace. Books burned.
The tape clicked off.
Rachel sat frozen, the silence louder than the recording.
II. The North End (1930s → 1990s)
She drove to the North End the next day, needing to remember before she judged.
Her grandparents’ house on Matheson Avenue still stood — modest, sturdy, with a vegetable garden in the back. She remembered Shabbat dinners: the smell of chicken soup, her Baba Rivka’s laughter, her grandfather’s gentle voice blessing the candles.
The North End had always been a world unto itself:
Ukrainian churches with onion domes catching the prairie sun
Jewish bakeries on Selkirk Avenue selling poppyseed rolls and rye bread
Old synagogues tucked between corner stores
Brick houses, stucco cottages, and woodframe homes built by immigrants who arrived with nothing but hope
It was a neighbourhood shaped by trauma and by the stubborn hope that refuses to die:
Jews fleeing pogroms
Ukrainians fleeing famine
Poles fleeing war
Indigenous families surviving despite everything
Her grandfather’s politics had grown out of this soil — out of fear, out of solidarity, out of the belief that collective action could save people from the horrors they had escaped.
But the tape suggested a darker truth.
III. Her Grandfather’s War (1939–1945)
Rachel dug through old family papers until she found his service records.
David Levinson Royal Winnipeg Rifles Enlisted: 1942 Served in England, Normandy, and the Netherlands Demobilized: February 1946
He had fought fascism directly, not just in rallies but on the battlefield. He returned home a decorated veteran, married Rivka in 1947, and began work as a skilled employee at CP Rail.
He had been everything a family man should be.
And yet he had remained a Communist — not the romantic kind who drifted away after 1956, but the loyal kind, the dogmatic kind, the kind who refused to believe that Khrushchev’s revelations at the 20th Party Congress were anything more than Western propaganda.
A Stalinist.
IV. The Letters Home (1942–1945)
Among the papers Rachel found were copies of letters David had sent home during the war — to his parents, his siblings, and to Rivka, his wifetobe.
They were eloquent, heartfelt, and full of longing.
To Rivka:
“The nights here are long, and the cold seems to seep into the bones. But when I think of you lighting the candles on Friday night, I feel warm again. I carry that light with me.”
To his parents before Normandy:
“I don’t know what tomorrow brings. But I know why I’m here. If we don’t stop them, they will burn the world. I want to come home to Matheson Avenue. I want to sit at your table again.”
To his younger brother:
“Study hard. Live well. Don’t let the world make you bitter.”
Rachel felt her throat tighten. These were not the words of a zealot. They were the words of a young man trying to hold onto hope in a world on fire.
V. Her Father’s Story (1950s → 1978)
Her father, Michael, listened quietly as she explained what she had found.
“I knew he was involved,” he said. “More than involved. Dedicated.”
He admitted he had briefly joined the Young Communist League in the 1970s, swept up in youthful idealism. He had even attended the World Youth Festival in Havana in 1978, a gathering steeped in revolutionary rhetoric.
“But I drifted away,” he said. “Your grandfather never did.”
“He wasn’t perfect,” Michael said, “but he was steady. He worked hard, showed up for people, and carried more than he ever complained about. Whatever his politics were, he was a good father.”
“And he had a quiet sense of humour,” Michael added. “He could make you laugh when you least expected it.”
Then he told her something else — something his father had shared only once.
“During the war,” Michael said, “the men in his unit used to say, ‘Thank God the Red Army is fighting on the Eastern Front, so we don’t have to die.’ He never forgot that.”
It wasn’t ideology. It was survival. The Eastern Front had been a furnace, and the Red Army had walked into it first. For David, that memory fused with politics, becoming part of the reason he believed the Soviet Union had carried the heaviest burden in defeating fascism.
She asked whether he thought David had known about the poet.
Michael hesitated.
“He wasn’t a cruel man. But he believed in the cause. Maybe too much.”
VI. Her Mother’s Silence (1970s → 2026)
Her mother, Elaine, folded laundry as Rachel asked what she knew.
“I wasn’t political,” Elaine said. “Your grandfather knew that. He never pushed it on me.”
She explained that she had gone along with his beliefs because they were simply part of the household — relics of his past, not demands for her future.
“He was stubborn,” she said. “But he wasn’t a bully.”
Rachel believed her. But the poet’s books had burned. And someone had stood nearby.
VII. The Professor (2026)
She met Dr. Samuel Rosenfeld, a historian of Winnipeg’s Jewish left, in his cluttered office at the University of Manitoba. Books were stacked in uneven towers, papers spilled across his desk, and a halffinished cup of coffee sat precariously close to a pile of archival photographs.
He recognized her grandfather’s name immediately.
“A committed man,” he said. “Fiercely loyal. Sometimes too loyal.”
He handed her a folder about a Ukrainian poet who had immigrated to Canada, published a slim volume of verse, and then — in a burst of misguided hope — returned to the Soviet Union in 1932.
He disappeared into the gulag.
His books were burned in the Labour Temple furnace by local Stalinists.
Mykhailo Horodetskyi (1905–1933?)
Dr. Rosenfeld recommended books: Let History Judge by Roy Medvedev; The Strangest Dream by Merrily Weisbord; The Harvest of Sorrow by Robert Conquest; Red Famine by Anne Applebaum; The Forsaken by Tim Tzouliadis; How People Live in Soviet Russia (1932 in Yiddish, English translation 2020) by Mendel Osherowich.
“That last one,” he said, “was written by a Jewish journalist from New York who visited Ukraine during the famine. It was ignored for decades. Your grandfather probably never read it.”
Rachel felt a quiet ache. Her grandfather had lived in a world where certain truths were simply not allowed to enter.
VIII. The Prague Spring (1968)
As Rachel continued reading, she found references to another moment her grandfather had never spoken about: the Prague Spring of 1968.
Czechoslovakia had tried to build “socialism with a human face,” loosening censorship, expanding freedoms, allowing people to breathe again. And the Soviet Union crushed it under tank treads.
Her grandfather had been in his mid50s — old enough to understand, young enough to choose.
Had he defended the invasion? Had he doubted for the first time? Had he stayed silent?
The Prague Spring was a fracture point for many Western Communists.
But not for him.
His loyalty endured.
IX. Her Friend from Ukraine (2026)
Her friend Oksana Melnyk, a refugee who had fled Russia’s genocidal war against Ukraine, listened carefully as Rachel told her everything.
“My grandparents fled Ukraine during the Holodomor,” Oksana said. “My grandfather saw the Bolsheviks murder his parents in their village.”
Rachel felt her breath catch.
“They walked for days,” Oksana continued. “They buried their dead in frozen ground. They survived because they refused to die.”
She told Rachel about the missile strikes, the mass graves, the deported children — the new war of erasure.
“Russia is trying again,” she said.
Rachel realized her investigation was no longer just about her grandfather. It was about two histories colliding — but not equivalent histories.
David had fought fascists abroad, returned home, married, worked, raised children, tended a garden, blessed candles, and lived a long life in a free and democratic country.
Oksana’s grandfather had survived a stateengineered famine and witnessed murder.
The moral terrain was uneven, and she needed to tread carefully.
X. The Poet’s Poem (1932 → 2026)
Oksana translated one of Mykhailo Horodetskyi’s surviving poems — smuggled out of Ukraine before he disappeared.
“Harvest Without End” Translated by Oksana Melnyk
We cut the grain with blistered hands, but the fields do not forgive. Each stalk remembers those who fell, each seed refuses to live.
The earth is full of quiet bones, the sky of unsaid names. We gather what the land still gives, and carry sorrow like a flame.
Yet even in the darkest dust, we plant because we must. For harvest comes to those who wait, and hope grows from the rust.
Rachel imagined the book burning in the furnace, the pages curling, the words disappearing into smoke.
She imagined her grandfather standing nearby.
XI. Two Funerals (1998 & 2011)
She remembered her grandfather’s funeral in 2000 — the cold wind, the Hebrew prayers, the earth falling onto the coffin.
She remembered her Baba Rivka’s funeral in 2011 — the thawing spring air, the gentle mourning.
Two graves. Two lives. Two histories.
And now a third history — Oksana’s — had entered her own.
XII. The Decision (2026)
Rachel sat at her desk, opened her laptop, and began to write.
Not to condemn. Not to absolve. But to understand.
Her grandfather had fought fascists. Oksana’s grandparents had fled Communists. Both had suffered. Both had survived. Both had believed they were fighting for a future.
She would tell all of it.
The heroism. The blindness. The love. The silence. The contradictions. The pain carried across continents and generations.
She owed that to her grandfather. She owed that to Oksana. She owed that to the truth.
PART II — THE SHADOWS
XIII. The Embassy Rug (Late 1950s → Early 1960s)
There was another story — whispered, half forgotten — that Rachel could not ignore.
In the late 1950s or early 1960s, senior leaders of the Communist Party of Canada were invited to the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa. They were presented with a customwoven rug, a gesture of fraternal solidarity.
Pinned inside the rug, hidden beneath the fabric, were several thousand dollars in mixed denominations.
No receipts. No explanations. Just quiet loyalty.
It wasn’t a purge. It wasn’t a gulag. But it was a reminder: ideology had its networks, its incentives, its subtle pressures.
Her grandfather had lived in that world. He had trusted it. He had defended it.
And yet he had also blessed Shabbat candles, tended a garden, and carried her on his shoulders when she was small.
Contradictions. Everywhere.
XIV. The MP Who Spied (1940s → 1950s)
Rachel found another thread woven through her grandfather’s world: Fred Rose, Canada’s only Communist Member of Parliament.
Rose had been elected in 1943 on a wave of wartime goodwill — a Jewish labour activist who spoke passionately about workers’ rights and antifascism. But after the war, the truth emerged: Rose had been an agent of Soviet intelligence, passing information to the NKVD.
He was arrested in 1946, convicted, and eventually deported.
Her grandfather had never mentioned him.
Rachel realized that the Party David belonged to was not just a political movement. It was part of a global network — one that demanded loyalty, silence, and sometimes complicity.
The rug in Ottawa had not been an anomaly. It had been a symbol.
XV. The Jewish People’s Cultural League (1930s → 2026)
A week later, Rachel visited a modest community centre in the North End — home to the Jewish People’s Cultural League, a secular leftwing Jewish organization that had once been a hub of Yiddish culture, labour activism, and socialist politics.
The room smelled of old books and percolated coffee. Posters of Yiddish poets lined the walls. A faded banner read:
JUSTICE • PEACE • CULTURE
An elderly volunteer explained that the League had run choirs, libraries, lectures, and children’s programs. They had fought fascism. They had defended civil rights. They had also — sometimes reluctantly, sometimes fervently — defended the Soviet Union long after its crimes were known.
Rachel listened, thinking of the poet’s burned book.
The volunteer showed her a photograph from the 1940s: a crowd gathered for a League event, her grandfather somewhere among them, young and earnest.
“These were good people,” the volunteer said softly. “But they were caught in something bigger than themselves.”
Rachel felt the truth of it. Ideology had shaped communities as much as individuals. And her grandfather had lived at the centre of that world.
XVI. The Councillor’s Shadow (1940s → 1986)
Later that night, Rachel reread the article about Joe Zuken. She realized he was the perfect embodiment of the contradiction she was trying to understand.
A Communist and lawyer by training, he had fought for the poor first as a member of the Winnipeg School Board, and later as a longtime City Councillor. He even ran for mayor one year — a campaign that drew support from a wide range of leftists and other progressives, generating headlines across Canada and even in The New York Times.
He was an impassioned orator — sharp, articulate, and unafraid to confront injustice headon. A Marxist who defended civil liberties. A man who believed in the Soviet project but also challenged inequity at home.
Her grandfather had admired him. She found a note in one of David’s old journals:
“Zuken speaks truth even when it costs him.”
Rachel wondered whether her grandfather had seen in Zuken the version of Communism — really democratic socialism, much like that practiced by the governing New Democratic Party — that he wished were real: humane, principled, uncorrupted.
But history had not been kind to such hopes.
XVII. Sontag’s Reckoning (1982 → 2026)
Rachel reread Susan Sontag’s famous 1982 speech at Town Hall in Manhattan — the night she stunned a room full of American leftists by declaring:
“Communism is fascism with a human face.”
The audience had gasped. Some walked out. Others shouted. But Sontag didn’t retreat. She insisted that moral clarity required naming the crimes of Stalinism without euphemism, without nostalgia, without excuses.
Rachel wondered how her grandfather had reacted when he heard about it. Had he dismissed Sontag as a traitor to the cause? Had he ignored it? Had he felt a flicker of doubt?
She would never know.
But she understood something now: the moral rupture Sontag described was not abstract. It lived inside families like hers — in the gap between David’s idealism and the realities he refused to see.
XVIII. The Conversation (2026)
She met Oksana at a café on Corydon Avenue. They sat by the window, watching people pass by.
Rachel told her everything — the tape, the poet, the furnace, the rug, the League, Zuken, and Sontag’s Manhattan reckoning.
Oksana listened quietly.
“My grandfather saw the Bolsheviks murder his parents,” she said. “He never forgave. He never forgot.”
Rachel nodded.
“My grandfather fought fascists. He believed he was saving the world.”
They sat in silence, two women carrying two histories — different in scale, different in suffering, but both shaped by the same century’s storms.
Finally, Oksana said:
“Maybe your grandfather wasn’t wrong about the fight. Maybe he was wrong about the system.”
Rachel felt tears rise.
“Maybe,” she whispered.
They sat for a long moment, the café noise fading into a soft blur around them. Outside, a couple walked a dog. A bus hissed at the curb. Life went on — ordinary, unthreatened, free.
Rachel thought of her grandfather’s life: the house on Matheson Avenue, the garden he tended, the letters he wrote home from Europe, the steady job at CP Rail, the Shabbat candles he blessed with a gentle hand. He had lived in a country where he could argue, vote, complain, hope. His convictions had shaped him, but they had not destroyed him.
Oksana’s grandfather had lived in a world where hope itself was dangerous.
Rachel finally said, “He lived a good life, Oksana. A safe life. He came home from the war, married my grandmother, raised children, worked hard, grew tomatoes, read the Free Press, and believed he was part of something noble. He didn’t suffer the way your grandfather did. Not even close.”
Oksana nodded, her eyes softening. “I know. And that’s why this matters. Your grandfather had the luxury of believing. Mine had the burden of surviving.”
Rachel exhaled, feeling something settle inside her — not peace, but clarity.
“I’m not writing this to judge him,” she said. “I’m writing it because I finally understand the scale of the world he lived in… and the world your grandfather survived.”
Oksana reached across the table and squeezed her hand.
“That’s all any of us can do,” she said. “Tell the truth. Even when it’s complicated.”
Rachel looked out the window again. The lateafternoon light had shifted, turning the street a muted gold. Two histories — one sheltered, one scarred — had met in that small café on Corydon Avenue.
And for the first time, she felt she could carry both.
H.C. Piloski is a Winnipeg writer who works quietly at the edges of memory and history. His fiction often begins in archives and ends in the private places families rarely speak about.
