My Relatives From Kosiv

Another 2 months or so went by and I received an email from my friend Seth pointing me to Peter Schattner’s personal website containing his travelogue to Auschwitz and Ukraine, and more specifically Kosiv, with a well-described guide named, Alex Dunai. After reading his page, I was immediately intrigued and called Schattner out in CA, who again reassured me that it was safe to travel in Ukraine and that Alex Dunai was the man for the job. Without doing any further research, I emailed Dunai and hired him a month later to plan a trip for me and my mother to Krakow, Auschwitz, Zakopane, Belzec, L’vov, Kolomayya & Kosiv. In the back of my head, I worried about how I was going to convince my mother to travel with Alex, an unknown quantity, when she kept saying she felt safer with Ori’s guide. I just had a feeling Alex was right for the job….

Before I begin my travelogue, I must tell you that in June ‘07, 2 months before we were supposed to leave on our journey, I got an email from a Lisa Brocco, inquiring whether I had relatives from Kosiv, but I had gotten these emails before and wrote back that we were probably unrelated as Bader, my mother’s maiden name, was very common. She told me that she had seen my name on various Holocaust websites and was just looking for a connection. Luckily, she persisted, because as it turns out she is the great-granddaughter of Benny (Beryl) Bader, who I thought was my mother’s father Ezra’s only brother and who came to NY at the turn of the century ahead of the Nazis. Turns out, she possessed a complete family tree, except for Ezra and was looking to fill it in, which I gladly did. Truth be told, she enlightened me, much more than I did her, as her tree included not only Benny, but also Chaya Ruchel, Sarah & Gedaliah Bader, all who came to the US at the turn of the century and were Ezra’s remaining siblings who my mother never had a clue about, though they all lived at one time in NY, not so far from her. Sadly, they were all long dead and even their children were except for one child in Queens, Bill Bader, Benny’s 94 year old remaining son, my mother’s only living first cousin. Of course, she called him right away and he told her about making care packages to Ezra and sending them to Kosov and about the bench in a certain cemetery that the siblings dedicated to Ezra’s memory, either out of guilt or profound sadness or a combination of both. He also told her that his great grand nephew, Joe Meszler, was the Reform rabbi in my former hometown, Sharon, MA. I called him immediately and we had a nice conversation and agreed to meet upon my return from Kosiv.

We landed in Krakow during the last week of August, 2007, and Alex was there to greet and hug us. In retrospect, I am sure that without Auschwitz nearby and the defunct Jewish Quarter, tourism would be but a trickle to this dark dank nondescript place. Krakow loves having its Jews right where they are, dead, and fondly remembered. The Jewish Quarter is an abomination, seven synagogues turned into museums and a Kosher restaurant run by non-Jews. The only other thing we found of note in Krakow was the original orphanage my mother was brought to after the war which was easy because she had the address (38 Ulica D’luga) and recognized it immediately when she saw the "big grey doors."

The next day we drove to Auschwitz/Birkenau, an hour west of Krakow. There’s almost nothing I can add to what I’ve already seen written about these horrible places. Especially at Birkenau, the only question that haunted my thoughts was who is more evil here, the Nazi murderer who walked a post or the Pole who lived nearby, strutted outside the electric barbed-wire, looked through it and then merrily went on his way to work each day like nothing was wrong… We had to pay about $7 to leave the Auschwitz parking lot, another fine example of Poles making money off of three million Jewish corpses. I had no words when the attendant stuck his hand through our window for the gelt and still don’t but, in retrospect, am sorry that I didn’t jump down his throat. We finished that day by visiting Oscar Schindler’s factory, which again, not surprisingly, the Poles are trying to convert into an art museum.

We went south our final day in Krakow towards Zakopane, the "Vail" of Poland, in an effort to find my mother’s second orphanage, where famous Lena kept her 100 children prior to ferrying them to France and then to Israel. Alex, who by then had become my mother’s third Jewish son, as a result of his ability to empathize, speak Yiddish and eat whatever she told him to, was able to find it within seconds of our arrival there. But it is not the orphanage I will remember or the way some bitter old Polish woman tried to chase us out of its courtyard and stop us from taking pictures. You see, it was Octoberfest down there and the central streets were upholstered with tourists and locals selling their wares. One vendor surprised me as I came upon him because he was selling his paintings done of Chasidic Jews. But why here of all places? I called Alex over to see if it was worth buying one or two, but Alex told me to look closer and, sure enough in each picture those religious Jews were all doing the same thing, counting money.

I quickly suggested to Alex that I buy it, put my fist through it and then hand it back, but Alex responded, "Why give him a penny?" and he was right. It occurred to me then why so many of the most notorious death camps are located in Poland. The Nazis understood that with the Catholic Church’s stranglehold over Polish minds and hearts no one would object too strenuously, and they were right. The anti-Semitism preached in every church translated its way perfectly onto the streets.

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