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420 LUBOML
and shrieks: "Don't take away my sidewalk! I
need it!"
In Kovel, the Jewish cemetery was destroyed
10 years ago, its stones used in the foundations
of government buildings. The former synagogue
now is a sewing factory.
Sima Schichman, a Jew from Kovel, takes us
to the place where 20,000 Jews were killed. A
monument is being created at the highest spot
on this swollen, grassy expanse.
Sima worries: Her family is moving to Israel.
Who will care for this holy place when they are
gone? After every heavy rainfall, she returns with
a small box and picks up bones. Today, she
kneels and feels the earth: she picks up the leg
bone of a child; then, part of a pelvic bone. Valya,
eyes to the ground, picks up part of a skull.
Nearby, a middle-aged man is harvesting
mushrooms. He is bent over, scouring the
scrubby earth with his eyes.
"Why do you do this, don't you know what
is here?" Sima asks him.
"Of course, but this is an excellent place for
mushrooms," he says. "I have been coming here
since I was a child."
By early evening, we are in Masheve, nearly
back to Luboml. A late-summer sun slants across
the wide fields in this tiny village, setting haystacks
afire.
Pyotr asks the first older man he sees: "Do
you remember the Axelrod family?"
"Axelrod? . . . Axelruth!" the man says, cap
low over his eyes, his face reflecting the orange
sunset. He thinks and talks. "Ah-ron," he says.
"Ah-ron Axelruth."
A family passes on their wagon, parents,
grandparents and children, staring at us. A brown
colt races down the road to catch up with them.
"Henia," he says. "MaIke. Yisroel."
He remembers Hen ia's wedding day. It was
just like a Ukrainian wedding, he says: She wore
a white dress, and they had music. A fiddle, a
clarinet"Jewish music," he says.
Do you know Domka Stoyanovich, Pyotr
asks.
Yes, the man says. She has been dead for 20
years.
Do you remember where the Axelrods lived?
Near the little church: He points across fields
and fences.
We get back in Valya's red car and bounce
across the rutted roads until we can't drive farther.
Pyotr's aunt lives here. He asks her: Do you
know where the Jewish family lived? Yes. She
leads us down the road toward the west; the
puddles and sky are silver and orange.
A woman greets us. We ask her, and yes, the
Jewish family lived next door. Her gold teeth
shine.
We walk with her to the door of her house.
Her 93-year-old father is sitting on a wooden
bench, back to the sun. His eyes are clear.
"Tatu," she yells into his ear.
"Do you remember the Jewish family that
lived next to us?"
"Axelrod."
He looks at me.
Does he remember the names, I ask.
Mira translates. And the daughter yells in his
ear again.
"Tatu . . . do you remember the names?"
"Ah-ron; Liebe; Malke; Henia; Sheftl ... and
Yankl went to America."
The air and ground are shaking.
What happened to them, Mira asks. "They
were all killed," he says.
I move toward the fence. Go ahead, they tell
me. I walk out on the upturned earth of this little
field; both sky and ground are gray-purple.
"Maybe they saw the same trees," says Mira,
standing with me and Pyotr.
Before I left for my journey, my father blessed
me and had me recite the prayer for safe travel,
asking God to guide me toward "life, gladness
and peace" and protect me from "all manner of
punishments that assemble to come to earth . . .
Blessed are you, HaShem, Who hears prayer."
I am sure my Zede recited the same prayer
70 years ago, before leaving his mother at the
train station for a long life filled with gladness
and peace. His words echo in the empty space
once filled by the lives of parents and brothers
and sisters.
Reprinted with permission from the Jewish
Week.