I don't know if anyone else has noticed, but age, ageing and the aged,- or the young,- seems to have crept into the news and media to a great extent lately. We are an ageing society it seems,- all living longer than previous generations,- which is bad for the economy apparently!
First we had the ageing Aussie PM, Howard vs. the new but younger then Opp. Leader Rudd. At least if they would have given his Deputy PM Costello a chance, age would have been removed from the equation. Now they have McCain vs. Obama in the USA.
But we just had the ageing Pope being adulated by masses of young people in Sydney during the Catholic World Youth Day celebrations. Interviewer Denton has just concluded a series of interviews with several senior personalities on ABC TV,- most of whom didn't look exactly in their prime, but they sure were more interesting than some of the younger personalities who haven't experienced very much as yet. None of them were in any position of power anymore though, having given-up on it one way or another!
Now in the USA they have a 70+ Senator up against a 40+ for the next Presidency,- while in our personal circle of friends, the ranks are thinning thick and fast in the 70+ age bracket. In Israel, octogenarian Peres seems to be doing quite well, but poor Sharon was struck down with a stroke at a critical time for Israel, while Mugabee at 80+ is clinging to power in Zimbabwe as though he intends to rule forever.
I have friends who are well past their prime, but still make plans for years ahead, to travel to exotic places and build their dream-retirement home, "but not yet". A (senior)neighbour just came home with a broken leg from travelling just up to the Northern Territory and West Australia,- would I want this to happen in Mongolia or South India? Not me anymore,- (but it never occurred to me in my younger days).
An 80-year-old 'coquette' friend of mine, was fine when we left her in May,-she looked terrific for her age, had men-friends, until one day she returned from a holiday abroad and didn't recognise her 'beau' of 3 months ago and sadly didn't remember even her late husband of 50+ years! The late US Pres.Regan was in that state while President,- how can one vote with confidence for someone in that age group for a top job?
I know sept- and octo-genarians who still want to be at the head of organizations and will fight tooth and nail for it. There are aged people who cling to power over families' money, others do so in the community. Looking at USA Sen. McCain,- not just at his age, but also his supposed state of health,- will the people really want to entrust their nation for 4 years at least ,to someone of that age,- regardless of anything else? On the other hand, is perhaps 45 a little too young to head a whole nation the size of the USA?
I think that the choices those 2 candidates will make for their running mates will be crucial to their candidature.
Without giving-in to getting old,- there must be some reality-check in our lives re when to give-in or give-up on the things we did or planned to do in our younger days. Particularly on yearning or clinging to power over others,- on the other hand, we must eventually be able to trust someone to have power over us at some stage in our lives,- a rather frightening thought!
Miriam M.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Thursday, July 03, 2008
"MY ROOTS TRIP", back to my native city and country, ROMANIA.
1. BUCHAREST (Bucuresti).
We landed in the capital after 3hrs. flying over from Tel Aviv, Israel, on El Al airlines.
Our son met us there, i.e. our daughter, my husband and me and we checked into the REMBRANDT , a recommended (on Tripadvisor.com) 3* hotel in the centre of the old part of the city where the restaurants and night-life,- such as it is,- is happening. A narrow little multi-storey building, belied the fact that the upstairs rooms were huge and all in all it was a very pleasant and comfortable, clean and inexpensive, popular hotel.
The cty's streets are in awful disrepair and extreme caution needs to be taken while walking around. However, a huge reconstruction seems to be taking place now that Romania has been accepted into the European Union and even more caution needs to be practiced going around the many building sites!
Ceacescu's folly of a grand palace is the main attraction in this city, although some of the grand old architecture in Parisian style is still to be seen and is being restored in many cases. We visited the enormous palace and the old Royal Palace which is dwarfed by the new one. The old palace is now a Museum, hosting many temporary and permanent exhibitions. There are many restaurants of various standards in the city, but being used to the Romanian kitchen, we mostly went for the traditional grilled meats, pickles and mamaliga (polenta) which used to be the staple diet of the population. Service though leaves much to be desired,- I suspect because most better waiters and restaurant staff prefer to work abroad and send the money back home! (Cruise liners around the Mediterranean have all East European staff.)
BOTOSANI
We made SUCEAVA our headquarters in the North, some 60km. from my native town of Botosani (bo-to-shan)in the Moldovan region of Romania,- not to be confused with the nearby now independent country of Moldova/Moldavia on the Russian border.
Everyone was very excited for me, driving towards Botosani, which I had left when I was 10years old. What would I remember or recognise? I was warned that this historic old market town of some 200,000 inhabitants had virtually been razed to the ground and rebuilt by Ceacescu's regime. But I was told that a small part of the old main street, the Calea Nationale, was left in its original state with the charming old buildings still there. I couldn't remember the street where we lived without some sort of map to work from, but none seemd to exist, no matter which book store or library we entered to ask about it.
The kids kept asking me:" mum, do you remember this? Do you recognise any of it?"
But all I could think that in my mind's eye. everything was quite big with tall buildings, which now seemd so small,- one storeyed, with small iron balconies in front. A monument to WW1 victims in a grassy central spot, triggered recognition, but apart from that, little was recognizable to my eyes.
Suddenly, Sebastian, our guide/driver saw a small plaque above our heads on a building where we were standing and it said.: "the Jewish community centre".
I was really excited to find out who was there and if anyone would remember my father and our family who were prominent in the Jewish community in those days.
I only mantioned my father's name to an elderly gentleman who appeared and immediately ushered us in. He stopped and looked at me and asked me,- the "Furniture maker?" (mobilier, in Romanian). I gasped,- yes,- do you remmeber him? Of course, he would have been a child like me in those days, but he knew the name and who he was and told the guide,- "of course I knew of him,- he was the largest here!"!
After a short visit with a few others there, another man offered to take us around and show us what remains of the former up to 40,000 strong community, now reduced to some 80old souls! One, out of some 70 synagogues, is still in existence, a beautiful one, recently restored with overseas funds,- but set among high-rise apartment buildings! Then he took me to my old Elementary School, where I suddenly remembered running up the steps to school! I tried to get my bearings to remember where we lived, but it was too difficult since there were mostly big ugly apartment blocks around.
We had a traditional lunch in the new centre of town,- quite modern and 'trendy' now.
Then I tried to find my grandparents' graves at the Jewish Cemetery still in existence at the end of town. The curator brought his books with him, alerted by the community leader probably,and we tried to look for names which might refer to my father's parents,- but it was too difficult to identify them exactly as there were too few identifying names or other markers. Plus the old part was totally overgrown and we wouldn't have been able to get to the individual grave-sites.
We departed from Botosani,- again, more in sadness than anything else, but glad to leave that almost forgotten part of my life behind! It was however most interesting and moving for our children to see it.
ROMANIA AS A TOURIST DESTINATION.
THE PAINTED MONASTERIES OF BUCOVINA are world renowned and UNESCO World Heritage recognised. The beautiful outside frescoes of the Orthodox Christian Monasteries from the 14th and 15th century have withstood the vicitudes of weather and time and their colours are still vividly preserved. Tourists flock to view them. Most are still in use today.
TRANSYLAVANIA AND THE CARPATHIAN MOUNTAINS.
We travelled across the big Gorge, which was beautiful and very picturesque as we made our way by car with our driver from Suceava to Cluj. From Cluj in Transylvania we flew out to Budapest, Hungary.
Our Romanian trip was organised bu e-mail through GIGI TOURISM,of Suceava. (Sebastian Triacu, Principal).
We landed in the capital after 3hrs. flying over from Tel Aviv, Israel, on El Al airlines.
Our son met us there, i.e. our daughter, my husband and me and we checked into the REMBRANDT , a recommended (on Tripadvisor.com) 3* hotel in the centre of the old part of the city where the restaurants and night-life,- such as it is,- is happening. A narrow little multi-storey building, belied the fact that the upstairs rooms were huge and all in all it was a very pleasant and comfortable, clean and inexpensive, popular hotel.
The cty's streets are in awful disrepair and extreme caution needs to be taken while walking around. However, a huge reconstruction seems to be taking place now that Romania has been accepted into the European Union and even more caution needs to be practiced going around the many building sites!
Ceacescu's folly of a grand palace is the main attraction in this city, although some of the grand old architecture in Parisian style is still to be seen and is being restored in many cases. We visited the enormous palace and the old Royal Palace which is dwarfed by the new one. The old palace is now a Museum, hosting many temporary and permanent exhibitions. There are many restaurants of various standards in the city, but being used to the Romanian kitchen, we mostly went for the traditional grilled meats, pickles and mamaliga (polenta) which used to be the staple diet of the population. Service though leaves much to be desired,- I suspect because most better waiters and restaurant staff prefer to work abroad and send the money back home! (Cruise liners around the Mediterranean have all East European staff.)
BOTOSANI
We made SUCEAVA our headquarters in the North, some 60km. from my native town of Botosani (bo-to-shan)in the Moldovan region of Romania,- not to be confused with the nearby now independent country of Moldova/Moldavia on the Russian border.
Everyone was very excited for me, driving towards Botosani, which I had left when I was 10years old. What would I remember or recognise? I was warned that this historic old market town of some 200,000 inhabitants had virtually been razed to the ground and rebuilt by Ceacescu's regime. But I was told that a small part of the old main street, the Calea Nationale, was left in its original state with the charming old buildings still there. I couldn't remember the street where we lived without some sort of map to work from, but none seemd to exist, no matter which book store or library we entered to ask about it.
The kids kept asking me:" mum, do you remember this? Do you recognise any of it?"
But all I could think that in my mind's eye. everything was quite big with tall buildings, which now seemd so small,- one storeyed, with small iron balconies in front. A monument to WW1 victims in a grassy central spot, triggered recognition, but apart from that, little was recognizable to my eyes.
Suddenly, Sebastian, our guide/driver saw a small plaque above our heads on a building where we were standing and it said.: "the Jewish community centre".
I was really excited to find out who was there and if anyone would remember my father and our family who were prominent in the Jewish community in those days.
I only mantioned my father's name to an elderly gentleman who appeared and immediately ushered us in. He stopped and looked at me and asked me,- the "Furniture maker?" (mobilier, in Romanian). I gasped,- yes,- do you remmeber him? Of course, he would have been a child like me in those days, but he knew the name and who he was and told the guide,- "of course I knew of him,- he was the largest here!"!
After a short visit with a few others there, another man offered to take us around and show us what remains of the former up to 40,000 strong community, now reduced to some 80old souls! One, out of some 70 synagogues, is still in existence, a beautiful one, recently restored with overseas funds,- but set among high-rise apartment buildings! Then he took me to my old Elementary School, where I suddenly remembered running up the steps to school! I tried to get my bearings to remember where we lived, but it was too difficult since there were mostly big ugly apartment blocks around.
We had a traditional lunch in the new centre of town,- quite modern and 'trendy' now.
Then I tried to find my grandparents' graves at the Jewish Cemetery still in existence at the end of town. The curator brought his books with him, alerted by the community leader probably,and we tried to look for names which might refer to my father's parents,- but it was too difficult to identify them exactly as there were too few identifying names or other markers. Plus the old part was totally overgrown and we wouldn't have been able to get to the individual grave-sites.
We departed from Botosani,- again, more in sadness than anything else, but glad to leave that almost forgotten part of my life behind! It was however most interesting and moving for our children to see it.
ROMANIA AS A TOURIST DESTINATION.
THE PAINTED MONASTERIES OF BUCOVINA are world renowned and UNESCO World Heritage recognised. The beautiful outside frescoes of the Orthodox Christian Monasteries from the 14th and 15th century have withstood the vicitudes of weather and time and their colours are still vividly preserved. Tourists flock to view them. Most are still in use today.
TRANSYLAVANIA AND THE CARPATHIAN MOUNTAINS.
We travelled across the big Gorge, which was beautiful and very picturesque as we made our way by car with our driver from Suceava to Cluj. From Cluj in Transylvania we flew out to Budapest, Hungary.
Our Romanian trip was organised bu e-mail through GIGI TOURISM,of Suceava. (Sebastian Triacu, Principal).
4th of July, 1941-2008. BUCOVINA, Romania-Ukraine.
4th July, 1941.
the Russian army which had occupied the then Northern Romanian territory of Bucovina, was in retreat.
On Thursday morning, the word went around the countryside among the peasants that for 24 hours they can do whatever they like to the Jews living among them in that region. One village was called Ciudei (Czudin, in German having been part of the Austrian/Hungarian Empire prior to WW1)now part of the Ukraine and known as Mezhirech'ye. In this village lived my mother's family,- her father, sister and husband and all her friends with whom she had grown up. By then, my mother had moved into the Moldovan part of Romania proper, when she married my father.
The peasantry took advantage of this "window of opportunity" with a vengeance! The bestiality which ensued is described in testimonies of various child-survivors who were hiding at the time, as well as in a book published in 1945 (in Romanian) by Marius Mirca (Ed. GLOB Bucuresti). They plundered the houses after the people fled and huddled in groups around the edge of the village.The Mayor then ordered them to be incarcerated in the prison, perhaps trying to save them out of his better conscience. But by the Saturday afternoon, he ordered the village Church bells to toll, while the Romanian soldiers who had arrived by then shot them all through the grills in the doors of the cells. Those still remaining in the village, were hounded by the villagers, children hurled out of windows after their parents were shot. Everyone helped in the pogrom.
Bodies, many still alive were hurled into makeshift graves. The ground was moving long after they were covered with earth. Out of the 70 families in the village, only 3-4 escaped. Listed in the book among the victims' names was also my aunt's family Schachter.
MAY 2008.
I visited the village with my husband, son and daughter. I wanted to see whether there is any sign, any kind of memorial to show what had happened 60 years earlier in not only that particular village, but right across that part of Bucovina during those fateful few days in 1941.
We crossed the border into Ukraine from Romania, near Suceava. Our driver/guide had warned us that the old Communist corruption was rife over the border and sure enough, on the pretext that our visas were not correct, we had to fork out 20 Euros before they would let us through into the Ukraine.(Romania was now almost fully accepted into the EU, so their overt corruption has stopped!) Even then, we had to promise to be back by 5pm, before the guard was going off-duty,- probably because he wanted another 20Euros to let us out! An hour later, driving through some desolate countryside on narrow roads, we reached the village,- still marked as Ciudei, in Ukrainian.
We had no idea where to look or for what. Our guide asked around a little and someone pointed in the direction behind a large school. We found a simple black plaque on a white-washed pillar, inscribed in Ukrainian.
We were only able to decipher the date, 'July 1941' and the number '643'and understood that this was it! Further few questions to a couple of older women sitting on a bench, elicited a pointed finger towards the playing field behind and the word 'bodies' (in Russian).
We left them to Rest in Peace under that grassy field. I felt a sense of 'closure', because at least there was something, no matter how simple the memorial, to show what had happened in one fateful few days 60years ago.
Our daughter was moved to tears and whispered to me as we were leaving the village,- "this place doesn't look as though it had changed much since those days when Oma was growing up here."
Quite frankly,- I don't think that generation deserves much better,- some still seem to remember what happened, although their parents and grandparents were probably the actual perpetrators and they may only have been kids, witnessing perhaps the atrocities. Do they feel any guilt? Any responsibility to make amends? Probably not,- too busy surviving themselves perhaps.
The horse and carts trundled past, among a few cars and people walking holding their shopping bags. It was a picture from the pre-ww2 era.
the Russian army which had occupied the then Northern Romanian territory of Bucovina, was in retreat.
On Thursday morning, the word went around the countryside among the peasants that for 24 hours they can do whatever they like to the Jews living among them in that region. One village was called Ciudei (Czudin, in German having been part of the Austrian/Hungarian Empire prior to WW1)now part of the Ukraine and known as Mezhirech'ye. In this village lived my mother's family,- her father, sister and husband and all her friends with whom she had grown up. By then, my mother had moved into the Moldovan part of Romania proper, when she married my father.
The peasantry took advantage of this "window of opportunity" with a vengeance! The bestiality which ensued is described in testimonies of various child-survivors who were hiding at the time, as well as in a book published in 1945 (in Romanian) by Marius Mirca (Ed. GLOB Bucuresti). They plundered the houses after the people fled and huddled in groups around the edge of the village.The Mayor then ordered them to be incarcerated in the prison, perhaps trying to save them out of his better conscience. But by the Saturday afternoon, he ordered the village Church bells to toll, while the Romanian soldiers who had arrived by then shot them all through the grills in the doors of the cells. Those still remaining in the village, were hounded by the villagers, children hurled out of windows after their parents were shot. Everyone helped in the pogrom.
Bodies, many still alive were hurled into makeshift graves. The ground was moving long after they were covered with earth. Out of the 70 families in the village, only 3-4 escaped. Listed in the book among the victims' names was also my aunt's family Schachter.
MAY 2008.
I visited the village with my husband, son and daughter. I wanted to see whether there is any sign, any kind of memorial to show what had happened 60 years earlier in not only that particular village, but right across that part of Bucovina during those fateful few days in 1941.
We crossed the border into Ukraine from Romania, near Suceava. Our driver/guide had warned us that the old Communist corruption was rife over the border and sure enough, on the pretext that our visas were not correct, we had to fork out 20 Euros before they would let us through into the Ukraine.(Romania was now almost fully accepted into the EU, so their overt corruption has stopped!) Even then, we had to promise to be back by 5pm, before the guard was going off-duty,- probably because he wanted another 20Euros to let us out! An hour later, driving through some desolate countryside on narrow roads, we reached the village,- still marked as Ciudei, in Ukrainian.
We had no idea where to look or for what. Our guide asked around a little and someone pointed in the direction behind a large school. We found a simple black plaque on a white-washed pillar, inscribed in Ukrainian.
We were only able to decipher the date, 'July 1941' and the number '643'and understood that this was it! Further few questions to a couple of older women sitting on a bench, elicited a pointed finger towards the playing field behind and the word 'bodies' (in Russian).
We left them to Rest in Peace under that grassy field. I felt a sense of 'closure', because at least there was something, no matter how simple the memorial, to show what had happened in one fateful few days 60years ago.
Our daughter was moved to tears and whispered to me as we were leaving the village,- "this place doesn't look as though it had changed much since those days when Oma was growing up here."
Quite frankly,- I don't think that generation deserves much better,- some still seem to remember what happened, although their parents and grandparents were probably the actual perpetrators and they may only have been kids, witnessing perhaps the atrocities. Do they feel any guilt? Any responsibility to make amends? Probably not,- too busy surviving themselves perhaps.
The horse and carts trundled past, among a few cars and people walking holding their shopping bags. It was a picture from the pre-ww2 era.
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