Gary M. Pomerantz

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A Story of Family: In search of Grandpa's world

A visit to the old neighborhood ...

... mirrors the
journey of a lifetime

The Atlanta Journal and Constitution
February 1, 1998

By Gary M. Pomerantz
Staff writer

Kremenchuk, Ukraine - Since boyhood I'd held an image of Kremenchuk: a cold, severe, communist place, with snow falling. It was only a village in my mind. There, a bonfire burned, 1,000 villagers stood beside it, rubbing their hands to keep warm, and every one was named Pomerantz, or at least Pomeranietz. All were my kin, and when they saw me, they would know me.

But now I'm an adult and I'm here, really here, in Grandpa's town. It's bigger than I imagined, a town of 248,000, full of factories. But it is a Jews' town no more.

The old immigrant grandfather I barely knew has been dead 30 years. Yet I have come, with my father, to look for him, through the dense mist of time and blood ---much of it Jewish blood ---back past Yeltsin, and the fall of communism, and past Khrushchev, and even past Joseph Stalin and his purges, to the time of Czar Nicholas, his army and his pogroms.

We are looking for Grandpa, for a piece of ourselves and our Jewish heritage. Also for our name (Was it changed at Ellis Island?) and for the street address, hard by the Dnieper River, where Grandpa said he lived as a boy: 22 Yevreyskaya Ulitsa.

22 Jews Alley.

Now it is a Friday night service, the sabbath candles are burning low in front, as Dad and I sit before 70 Ukrainian Jews. They have old, craggy faces and smiles marked by gaps and gold. Hearing of our presence, they have called for us to come from our seats in back.

They seem awed by the sight of amerikansky visitors, and we are equally awed by the sight of them. We sit in a community center auditorium because the historic synagogue down the street, built in 1851 and almost certainly attended by Grandpa, is a burned-out hulk, vandalized three years ago. Once this city had six synagogues, 31 prayer houses and 22 schools known as yeshivas. Now, all are gone.

These Ukrainians are full of questions about America. Through our interpreter, they ask, is there much anti-Semitism there? Are many Jews working in Hollywood? (Dad mentions Steven Spielberg, a name they seem to know.) A man asks Dad how much he knew about Hitler's extermination program early in the war.

"Very little," Dad replies, "since I was only 9 or 10 years old." The man seems disgusted, convinced at least that FDR knew more than he let on and allowed Jews to perish.

We tell them why we have come: mishpucha, or family. They tell us there are no Pomerantzes left in Kremenchuk, or any Jews with similar names. The records are all gone (Hitler's tanks and bombs did that) and so are the Jewish storytellers, emigrated with their memories to Israel and America. In Grandpa's day, Jews composed nearly half of Kremenchuk's 88,000 residents. Today fewer than 5,000 Jews remain.

A woman says that as a schoolgirl she often walked past a fine home with a mailbox marked " Pomerantz." That was in 1926, long after Grandpa and his family left. Yet it's enough to make me believe that our name might not have been changed by some clerk in the New World, after all.

We ask about Yevreyskaya Ulitsa.

The reply is that this very street, Kvartalnaya Vulitsya, once was known as Yevreyskaya Ulitsa, but that that was only a nickname among Jews.

A man with a handlebar mustache stands and says, "Nyet! Nyet! Nyet!" The old Yevreyskaya Ulitsa was not here, he insists, but several blocks away, on what is now 1905 Vulitsya.

A spirited debate ensues: Where was Jews Alley? We had flown 14 hours from Atlanta, then driven three hours more from Kiev through the Ukrainian farmlands to get here. Yet now the only Jews on Earth who can tell us offer two answers, not one, and so it's a mystery still, like Grandpa himself. In these people, their manner and looks, I see Grandpa. Through them, my heritage, once an abstraction, comes to life. Had Grandpa stayed here, this is how he would've looked and acted.

And as I'm listening intently to these wonderful, proud, barking Ukrainians, I feel a catch in my throat, and suddenly I realize that I am crying.

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