"Finding Stobykhva"

"Are you sure you want to go to Stobykhva?"

"You can get there by boat."

How long can it take to go from Povorsk to Stobykhva, in northwestern Ukraine, we asked ourselves. Stobykhva is the name of the town of birth on Zvi's father Pinhas's Palestinian (British Mandate) passport. (He immigrated to Israel in 1931.) But the road on our map, 18 kilometers in length, from Povorsk to Stobykhva, has been erased by time, perhaps by the Polesian marshes. It is impassable, this is all we know. On the newest maps, it no longer exists. So we soon discovered that getting to Stobykhva is much more complicated than we'd imagined. On the afternoon of the 16th, when we were trying to find our way there, by passing the town and approaching it from the northeast, through the marshes, we asked a woman for directions to the town, and the above quotes are among the things she told us. The road was pretty primitive, and in the end we reached a cobblestone type of road, which gave us a very bumpy ride. The area was remote, and there were few villages along the way. Then, after asking again and again how to go to Stobykhva, Alex Dunai, our guide, driver and translator, turned around and we retraced our steps on this same road, and returned to the Ukraine Hotel in Luck/Luts'k, a drive of over two hours.

The next day, we tried to go to Stobykhva via Kamin' Kashyrs'kyi, approaching the village from the northwest. We hadn't planned on visiting in Kamin' Kashyrs'kyi, but here we were, in the town of our possible cousins, the Argentinian Stepak family. So we visited the memorial there, by a sand quarry at the edge of town, where the Jews from the ghetto had been murdered. It is on an elevation, and the black marble is broken, held together by a metal frame. We don't know whether the memorial was sabotaged, or simply a victim of the elements. Another memorial is in the middle of the town, at the site of the ghetto.

It was rather late in the day, about 4 p.m., when we left Kamin' Kashyrs'kyi, imagining that we were near northwest of Stobykhva. Alex asked people along the way for directions. Most people appeared to have no idea of how to get there. The roads were unpaved and bad. In the end, after a much longer trip than we had anticipated, we reached a place at the edge of forests, with about four or more unpaved tracks heading in different directions. We tried each of them, but in each case gave up, when we didn't see any sign of a town. At one of them there was a sign marked "Stobykhva forest". But we didn't know whether that forest was on the way to the town or merely nearby.

We returned to a neighboring village, Velikiy Obzyr, after Zvi and I had given up on finding Stobykhva. Only Alex refused to give up. He found a tractor owner, but it was raining, and the man said he didn't have room for all of us on his tractor, anyway. However, he recommended we try another resident of his village, a man with a Russian "jeep". He got in the car with us, and directed us to the man's house. The man agreed to take us to Stobykhva, and we were in luck; his grandfather was born there, so he knew how to go there.

Stobykhva

Late in the day, we arrived in the village, which today has only some 28 households. On the way, which was fairly long and very bumpy, and in the end, did go by the road through the Stobykhva forest, the driver told us about the town. He said that a year ago, there had been a celebration of 300 years of the town, and people had come from around the globe. He didn't know whether there were Jews among them.

Our local driver, whose name I neglected to ask, deposited us near the center of the village, at a private home, a simple wooden structure, like all of the homes, but with colorful painted decorations on the outside. The family invited us into their home. We spent about an hour with a 94-year old woman, Alexandra, her daughter Alena, and Alena's husband, and another woman.

Our hosts gave us some facts about the Jews of the village. Before WWI, there were about 90 Jewish households. In contrast to what is written in Pinkas Hakehillot Volhyn (Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities—Poland, Volhyn), they told us that some Jews had lived there until WWII. But we still assume – but will never know for sure - that Pinhas Stepak's family did not return to the town after WWI, but remained in Kovel.

A couple named Shoshana and Dov had visited this family a few years before, and the family had a plate in the Armenian style from Israel, with something written in Russian on the back, including the names Shoshana and Dov. After our return, I found online at Jewishgen a speech given by Shoshana nee Donitz at Kamin' Kashyrs'kyi, in 1997. She mentioned her husband's name, Dov, at the beginning of her words there. According to our hosts, Shoshana's father had remained in the town, and hid in the woods, and survived. His name was either Ansel or Yankel.

In the center of the village, there used to be a synagogue. Nothing remains, nor of the cemetery.

There used to be industry in the town, before the Russian evacuation in the 1970s. There was a match factory, and an alcoholic beverage factory. Some people purchased ponds, where they caught fish. Their grandfather used to deliver fish to other places for a living. There also used to be a huge market in Stobykhva, twice a year.

The wealthiest family was the Melnitzer family. Ilya, who is no longer living, the father of the Alena, and the husband of Alexandra, was a friend of Duvid Melnitzer. They had both served in the Polish Army. Duvid was captured as a Polish soldier. The Nazis didn't know he was Jewish. He worked as an interpreter for the Germans. And he wrote letters to her father. In his last letter he wrote that "I have to go to a medical board" where they presumably found out that he was Jewish; the family heard no more from Duvid.

There were two daughters in the Melnitzer family, Sura and Maria. They were sisters of Duvid. Sura was an outstanding beauty. Their mother was Rachla (Melnitzer).

Both women cried as they recalled Sura and Maria. A commander of the Gestapo took care of the sisters. He had been shot in the leg, after which he went to a Jewish doctor. He asked his commander for permission to take these two women. For a while they stayed with him. Then, when the Germans decided to deport them, he told them to run away to Verkhy(a), near Stobykhva. Our hosts said that had Sura and Maria returned to Stobykhva, they might have been saved. But instead they went straight to Kamin' Kashyrs'kyi to the ghetto. Their mother also went to the ghetto and saw Sura taken to her death. All were shot. The daughter told us a legend that later, when the local people took first steps to renew operation of the sand quarry, they found Sura's very long blond hair. Everyone had cried. And the idea of using the quarry was abandoned.

Another story they told was about a Jewish teenager named Alter, an orphan raised by the Melnitzers. The family we visited had kept him in their house, and Alter was seated on the stove, when German soldiers came to the house and asked if they knew of any partisans; they told them that Alter was their cousin. The soldiers asked him whether he stayed in the house or went home. He left and escaped to the partisans, and survived the war.

Alexandra told about two more boys who had hidden in a hole in a tree by day. At night she brought them food to the flour mill at the edge of the village. One was named Shmuelko. Both survived. They were from Verhy, not Stobykhva.

Alena said that where the Jews were buried, a kolhotz took the gravestones as building material. There had been nice old trees at the cemetery. The Jews dealt mostly in trade. There were also craftsmen—such as shoemakers and blacksmiths.

They said that the Russians had had plans to turn the area into a military training ground. This was in the 1970s, I believe. They had evacuated all of the residents, paying them compensation. The younger people took the compensation and moved to cities such as Kovel and Luts'k. The older people eventually made their way back to Stobykhva. But the town had deteriorated. They lived in primitive conditions, without phone lines or electricity, and with limited access. Now they have electricity, although at night, we saw only faint light from within the houses—and no outside lighting.

We left Stobykhva as the light was fading. After we returned to his village to retrieve our car, the driver of the jeep led us out of his village, to the "highway" to Luts'k. It took us about three hours to get back to Luts'k, through intermittent fog from the marshes. At one stop, Alex pointed to the stars, which appeared exceptionally clear, bright and large in the dark sky, unhindered by city lights. It was a most memorable visit.