As the propeller plane began
to come out of the clouds, it got windy. Very Windy.
There was a group of teenage girls sitting with me
in "business" class, giggling with every pitch of
the plane. Funny, I wasn't really frightened,
although, perhaps, I should have been. It was the
bumpiest, most unstable landing I've ever
experienced, but it was fine in the end, and that's
all that counts. Propeller planes, I guess, are more
maneuverable than jets, but maybe that's what we
tell ourselves to feel better.
It was grim in that little
Communist-era terminal in Lvov. The stern-looking
officials, glowering at me, as if I should know that
arrivals must fill out the departure side of the
card they gave me. There were no pencils or pens, no
little tables on which to write. My luggage and
handbag were then passed through an x-ray machine
before I could pass into the impossibly-crowded
waiting room. I found my guide, who was busy talking
to someone. I remembered his face from an IAJGS
meeting. He was holding a sign with my name on it.
My tour began with Lvov's rynek
(market square), the site of a former synagogue,
followed by two old Jewish quarters. Lvov is a
pleasant-looking town, reminiscent of Krakow in its
feeling. We drove a short distance out of town, past
the killing field where the Nazis and their minions
shot 200,000 Jews [The Jewish population swellled to
240,000 in 1940 as Jews fled Nazi-occupied Poland
after the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact], and up a
hill to the camp entrance where a monument has been
placed. I could almost see the victims being herded
from their homes, forced to walk up that hill to the
camp where they would await their fate - shot like
dogs in front of the pits that became their grave.
Lvov Holocaust Memorial
Later, I went to the best
restaurant in Lvov, where I enjoyed herring, duck
breast, and eggplant topped with mozzarella and
tomatoes, washed down with Georgian white wine.
Monday, 17 September 2007
We set out for Vyshgorodok a
little after 9 a.m. The driving in Lvov is insane
but, since no one can go very fast, I found it
tolerable. On the open road, however, the pace
picked up considerably; drivers do not seem to
follow any rules, creating an appearance of chaos.
On the road, a two-lane highway, we passed old
Soviet-era trucks, new Audis, an occasional tractor,
and horse-drawn carts carrying passengers.
It took us almost three hours
to arrive in Vyshgorodok. It did not look like much,
that's for sure. My guide and I drove along unpaved
roads searching, with little success, for
Jewish-associated sites until we took a dirt road,
Shevshenka Street, leading off the main road.
Shevshenka Street felt shtetl-like, and I just got
"that feeling" of being projected back into pre-war
Vyshgorodok.
We came across a cluster of
picturesque old houses. They seemed similar to the
house in a 1930 family photograph that I took with
me with the hope that I might find my family's
house; I could not make a definitive match.
Roykhman family of Vyshgorodok
Unsuccessful, we returned to
the main road, where we saw an elderly woman. We
stopped to talk with her.
Yes, she said, she remembered
the Roykhman family; Roykhman was my grandfather's
surname. The old woman told us where the Jews had
lived. This turned out to be primarily along today's
main road. The old lady also told us that of two
Jewish cemeteries, one was gone, but the other still
existed; she gave us directions to it. She also
confirmed my "feeling" that the road we had just
left was, indeed, where Jews had lived. Finally, she
directed us to an elderly man who might remember
more about the Jews who had lived in Vyshgorodok.
Jewish Street
We found this man. He, too,
remembered the Roykhman name. He stated that they
had sold textiles.
But the sole surviving family
member from that generation told me that at least
some Roykhmans had been in the grain business. The
elderly gentleman went on to say that he had studied
with Jews in the town's only school. That the
synagogue and several prayer houses had been
destroyed by the Nazis. And that the location of the
town's supermarket and bus stop had been the site of
Jewish houses and stores.
town center
supermarket on right
And the old man confirmed that
there had been two cemeteries. An old one, located
in a grove of trees, was gone. He directed us to the
"new" cemetery, down a muddy lane. This cemetery is
in a large, wooded area. It still has some upright matzevot
(tombstones); most had toppled over. The cemetery
also has many horizontal, cement tomb-like
structures that I could not identify.
I wondered whether my
great-grandfather Zelig was buried there; he
probably was. I wished I could find his grave. Too
many of the tombstones, however, were either face
down in the dirt or were illegible. The upright,
legible headstones were beyond my ability to read,
as I do not know Hebrew. Tears came to my eyes. I
could not find my great-grandfather Zelig. Yet, I
was at peace knowing he was near.
Jewish Cemetery
I left Vyshgorodok and
continued on to Volochisk, Ternopol, Kamenets
Podolski, Vinnitsa, Uman, Odessa, and Kiev. These
were the towns and cities of a culturally rich but
now lost world of my ancestors.
My great-great-grandfather,
Yosef Chaim Goldfarb, produced eight children – five
sons and three daughters. In order to avoid the
draft, each son took the last name of a childless
couple. This is how my great-grandfather Elchanan
Goldfarb became a Kuter.
Great-grandfather Elchanan had
eight children, one of whom was my grandfather
Azriel Kuter. Grandfather Azriel, and his wife
Rachel Goldfarb, were cousins. They, in turn, had
six children; five of these children and their
families perished in the Holocaust. The sixth child,
my father Avrum Kuter, immigrated to America on 17
June 1935, where he "Americanized" his surname to
Cutter. A brief history of his family follows.
Abraham Cutter ha-Levi
Abraham Cutter née Kuter was
born at home during the winter of 1908 in the
village of Vyshgorodok, Kremenets Uyezd,
Volhynia Gubernia, Russian Empire. Today,
the village is part of Ukraine.
During World War I,
Vyshgorodok's birth records were lost. Abraham's
parents took advantage of this loss. They recorded
their son's year of birth as 1909, so as to delay
his future army registration by one year. [ed.:
Abraham was six years old when World War I began.]
Once a male reached the age for army duty, there was
still an opportunity to avoid service, as such
service was contingent on a lottery; Abraham did not
have to serve in the army.
Abraham's father, Azriel,
managed the estate of the local lord in the town of
Verbovitz (Wierzbowiec), about 4.6 miles northwest
of Vyshgorodok. The family lived on the castle
grounds until Abraham was three years old. In 1912,
rumors of revolution made the Kuter family, being
Jewish, uneasy about living on the lord's estate.
The lord gave them a piece of land adjacent to the
palace where they could build a house. However, the
local townspeople protested this decision – Jews
were not allowed to own land. The lord threatened
action by Cossacks if the townspeople persisted in
their protest; the house was built and the Kuter
family lived there many years.
Zionism
As Abraham matured, he became
active in Zionism. Abraham collected funds for Keren
Kayemet [ed.: Jewish National Fund raised
money to purchase land in Eretz Yisrael to create
a Jewish Homeland]. His fundraising activities
did not endear Abraham to the townspeople. He was
not dissuaded in his efforts and Abraham's pushkeh
[ed.: Yiddish word meaning "little coin box"]
filled up.
Abraham also was active in
organizing groups of chalutzim [ed.:
person who moves to Israel to help establish
modern agricultural settlements]. Abraham was
destined to become an ambassador of good will for
the fledgling Jewish State. He worked with Menachem
Begin, Vladimir Jabotinsky, and other Zionist
leaders in training and preparing young men for aliya
[ed. immigration to Israel].
Work
At the age of sixteen, Abraham
and his cousin Laeb Goldfarb, went into business
together. They sold agricultural products from honey
to grain. In 1926, Abraham travelled to Vienna to
purchase a threshing machine. For eight years
beginning in 1926, Abraham ran his business in the
region between Russia and Poland, referred to as the
"buffer zone". Businessmen enjoyed tax-exempt status
in the "buffer zone".
Abraham's business was based
on the Polish side of the border. In 1933, he
received a notice from the Polish Taxing Authorities
for back taxes, interest, and fines for the previous
six years during which he had operated in the
"buffer zone".
Abraham went to court. The
government's claim was that the law had been changed
years before Abraham had arrived on the scene. The
case took two years to wend its way through the
Polish legal system. The Polish Supreme Court
decided that Abraham was to pay the back taxes he
owed, but the court waived the interst and fines. A
partial victory.
By 1935, the atmosphere had
changed. Hitler came to power in 1933. The
anti-semitism of the people of the "buffer zone"
became virulent. Abraham, like millions of others
before him, craved freedom, equality, and
prosperity. America, "Der goldene medina",
the land whose streets were paved with gold,
beckoned. Abraham sold his Diesel threshing machine,
paid his debts, and left Poland.
America
Abraham's wife, Sarah Waxman,
had earlier departed for America. Abraham left his
family and joined his wife. He arrived in America on
the SS Kosciusko, a ship of the Ggdynia line. It was
17 June 1935. He would never see his Polish family
again; they perished in the Holocaust.
When Abraham came to America,
he knew no English. He set out to remedy this
deficiency by enrolling in night school despite only
having an elementary education. Abraham received his
Certificate of Literacy on 5 October 1942. He had
earlier, on 30 September 1941, become a citizen.
Abraham and his wife Sarah
lived with Sarah's parents, Rachel Vertzman Waxman
and Beril Waxman, in a small Williamsburg, Brooklyn
apartment. In the 1940's, this section of Brooklyn
was populated by Orthodox Jewish immigrants.
Initially, Abraham and his wife had to sleep on
chairs.
Abraham's first job, as a
garment presser, earned him five dollars each week.
Not satisfied with this arrangement, and ambitious,
Abraham began his own garment waste materials
business. He bought waste cuttings from garment
manufacturers, and sold the cuttings either for
recycling or for rags to wipe industrial machinery.
His business was a success, allowing him to move his
family to Flatbush, Brooklyn, at that time a better
section of Brooklyn.
Activism
In the old country Abraham had
involved himself in Jewish affairs. He continued
this involvement in America, becoming active in a
wide spectrum of Jewish communal affairs. He was
President of Chevra Mishnayoth Shomrei Shabbat,
President of Agudath Achim of Midwood,
vice-president of the Federation of Wolynian Jews,
and a generous supporter of the United Jewish
Appeal.
In 1958, Abraham was
instrumental in having his Chevra donate a Sefer
Torah to a new Israeli settlement synagogue. Again,
in 1973, he was scheduled to fly to Israel to
present another Sefer Torah. The Yom Kippur resulted
in the cancellation of all commercial flights. Not
to be deterred, he used his connections to secure
passage aboard a miltary transport. Uon arrival in
Israel, Abraham presented the Sefer Torah to Rabbi
Goren, Chief Rabbi of Israel.
Abraham became involved at the
1951 inception of the State of Israel Bond Drive.
Bonds were fifty dollars, and the drive was
attempting to get a foothold in the Jewish
community. Abraham soon became treasurer of Israel
Bonds Fraternal Division for mobilizing fraternal
and landsmanshaften [ed.: social group of
people from the same shtetl]. He was also a
member of the State of Israel's prestigious Prime
Minister's Club Award, given to honor and recognize
philanthropic deeds for the state of Israel. Abraham
raised more than a million dollars.
New Beginnings
Abraham had experienced the
horrors of pogroms during Tsarist times, and lost to
the Holocaust those memebers of his family that
remained in Europe. Jews had been perenially
scapegoated for the social and economic ills of
Europe. It was clear that the Jewish People needed a
Homeland of its own, free from abuse and
economically secure.
Abraham's decision to
immigrate to America turned out to be a fortunate
choice. Those of his family that remained behind
were consumed by the flames of the Holocaust. His
choice guaranteed a future for the remnants of his
family.
