PROMO #1

Click on the link below to watch the first promo of Mamaliga Blues, the documentary of our adventures in Moldova. The film is 90 percent finished; however we need extra funding to complete it. If you have access to any company or person who may be interested, or know of any funding application/possibilities, please send them this way for further discussion: mamaligablues@gmail.com


Click on:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-bhrWeL_P0

Thank you!

COMING SOON!

Very soon I will be posting the trailer of the documentary about our adventures in Moldova, "MAMALIGA BLUES".

Stay tuned for more news.

LIKE SHELLS ON A SHORE

I recently received the latest book from my Swiss friend Simon Geissbuhler, "Like Shells on a Shore". It briefly covers abandoned cemeteries in Bessarabia, including Botosani, Bucecea, Dorohoi, Rezina, Vadul Rascov and others. Although it's a short book (107 pages), it is at the same time deep, sad, beautiful and contains very nice pictures. I was particularly interested in the Vadul Rascov segment, with pictures and description I haven't seen before.

But more than just a research and collection of abandoned Jewish cemeteries, Simon wanders in a past that is slowly disappearing, as its monuments that attest the passage of time and are the proof of a big Jewish existence in these areas, are in decay.

He writes: "The Jewish cemeteries and the synagogues are often the sole testimonies of what once was. They are powerful memorials to a civilization that was wiped out in the Holocaust, fragments of a shattered world, and reminders of an enterprising Jewish existence."

VADUL RASCOV AND A SWISS DIPLOMAT

Sometime in March this year I received an e-mail from a Swiss diplomat posted in Bucharest who is extremely interested in Eastern European Jewish history, especially old abandoned Jewish cemeteries. Simon Geissbühler even published books about the subject. He had found this blog and contacted me with a few questions about Moldova, his next destination. It was then that we initiated our e-mail exchange about, amongst many other things, Vadul Rascov.

Simon heard of the city for the first time in this blog and ended up going there. His descriptions just made me more curious about it, since it’s the place where my great-grandparents are buried.

Here are a few words from Simon:
"I'm back from Moldova. We enjoyed the stay there a lot. The highlight of our visit was the Jewish cemetery of Vadul-Rascov. I have visited dozens of Jewish cemeteries before for my research, but Vadul-Rascov beat everything.
…we turned onto to terrible dirt roads to Vadul-Rascov. I have a good car, otherwise it is not advisable to drive there... A villager showed us the cemetery. The villager told us that there are almost never visitors who come to see the cemetery in Vadul-Rascov. Between October and March it is almost impossible to even reach the village. (If you have a horse, you can make it...). As it was already quite late (approximately 5 PM), we couldn't stay for a long time. I just tried to take as many pictures as possible and suck up the unique atmosphere."

And here are excerpts of his very well written paper "Rediscovering Yiddishland in Romania: Bucecea, Mihăileni, Vadul-Rashkov, Carei", presented at the Yiddish(er)Velt Festival 2010 in Bucharest on September 3 2010:

There is only scarce information about Jewish Vadul-Raşcov. Vadul-Rashkov was “a typical Bessarabian shtetl” with a majority Jewish population. In 1930, there were nearly 2,000 Jews living here. The Yiddish writer Ikhil Shraibman was born here. Aged 93, he died in 2005 in Chişinau, “obscure and underappreciated.” Shraibman created the literary Vadul-Raşcov, a poor Jewish shtetl, “unlucky in everything”, and a powerful “symbolic landscape.”

I was unable to find any definite information about Vadul-Rashkov during the Holocaust. But it is certain that a few Jews survived and settled again in Vadul-Raşcov. However, there are no Jews left in the village today. The Jewish cemetery is one of the most impressive you can find in Eastern Europe. It is incredible that it is neither on the list of the International Jewish Cemetery Project nor on the one of Lo Tishkach.

Conclusion:
Like in other regions of Eastern Europe, the picture of Yiddishland in Moldavia, Bessarabia and Northern Transylvania is one of death and extinction. The preservation of what small evidence of the Jewish presence in these parts of Romania and the Republic of Moldova is left must be the highest priority. Not everything is lost yet; there are still wonderful, magical places of Jewish heritage. These synagogues and Jewish cemeteries form together with the Yiddish language, the literature and the music the last traces of Yiddishland. We do not need to build new, costly, architecturally sophisticated memorials. The memorials are already there: the
Jewish cemeteries and the synagogues. They are powerful and real.

GRAVE RESTORATION IN MOLDOVA

Beginning on January 2009, about 6 months after our trip to Moldova, I started to receive occasional e-mails from a certain Pavel Tuev, up to this day. The only thing was that all e-mails are written in Russian, but with help of some people, I was able to find out that the main subject was grave restoration in Moldova.

It made sense, after our guide Natasha discovered the partially destroyed grave of my great-grandparents in Vadul Rascov. Restoration was something that never occurred to me, until I started to get e-mails from Pavel.

The first e-mail was a list of services and prices. The following ones were just happy holidays’ e-mails, until the last one, which was an update on their services. Unfortunately my understanding of written Russian is zero, so I’m not able here to describe it here in detail. However, they have a website: www.pavetex.md

Who knows, maybe in the near future I will be able to go back and besides visit this grave, make an attempt to restore it to its past.

A DOCUMENTARY SHOT IN MOLDOVA

When my father, my sister and I went to Moldova 2 years ago, I already had the intention of documenting the trip and turning it into a film (given my filmmaking background). I didn’t have any idea of what the outcome would be, but even though I took a camera, a bunch of tapes, 2 microphones and a few other paraphernalia.

I came back from Moldova with about 20 hours of footage and still no idea of what kind of footage I had and what I would be able to turn this into. This is because although I contemplated the idea, I did not hire any cameramen or anybody to help me. So I spent the whole trip with the camera in my hands, and experiencing it through its lenses. The camera was basically my eye. A very difficult task, to pay attention to your surroundings, to the framing and audio quality and at the same time understand what’s happening and be able to interact with it. And 5 languages were in place: Portuguese, English, Romanian, Russian and Yiddish.
Although I loved the trip, it was a lot of hard work. I must acknowledge my sister helped me with the second microphone, getting images’ authorizations/release and so forth. But in any case, I didn’t have any idea of the material I had. In my mind, I thought I was going to be able to edit a 5 or 10 minute promo to try to get some funding and go back with a proper crew and shoot a “real” documentary.

Two years later, two years of editing, I have to admit I have much more than a promo. I’m still putting pieces together, combining this puzzle into a film that can entertain people other than my own family, but much more confident that I have an almost completed documentary here.

There is still a lot of work to do: finishing the editing, composing the music, creating all the subtitles for the multiple languages, tightening the narrative/structure, etc. But after having directed a few shorts, this could finally be my first feature-length film. And I’m very excited for all that it represents, for everything I care, rediscovering the past, investigating your identity, feelings and perceptions of memory, possibilities for the future, understanding history and its consequences.

When the documentary is more put together, I should post some clips here. Stay tuned!

Next: Grave restoration in Moldova.

WHO IS JANKEL TOLPOLAR? (A VISIT TO THE LIBRARY)

It was a few years ago when somebody told me one could go to any library in the US and access their genealogy database – for free. It was only a few weeks ago I did that. On a Saturday morning I walked in the building and went to the computer that was booked for me. I sat down and looked for Tolpolar, Nusinkis, Fleck, Fishman and Leizarov. The most relevant result I got was for Jankel Tolpolar.

Jankel Tolpolar was the brother of my grandfather, the first of one his family to come to Brazil. For some reason, he moved back to Moldova and died there during the war. And that is the only information we ever had of him. No pictures, no other stories, nothing. When was he born, was he married, had kids, why did he go back to Europe, where did he die, how? Jankel Tolpolar was almost an unknown to us.

But that day at the library, the genealogy website shared a little bit more of this mysterious Tolpolar. In the database there was a passenger list of a ship named Konig Friedrich August, that left Hamburg in 1913, in Germany, and went to Boulogne, Southampton and then Rio de Janeiro. And in this passenger list there was the name of Jankel Tolpolar.

But it says more. Jankel was Russian, born in 1889 in Olishkany; he was single, was a businessman and travelled in a “zwischendeck” accommodation type. I asked a friend who speaks German what this word meant and he explained “between decks – probably not the best accommodation”.

This little piece of information was more than we ever had. Jankel was 24 years old when he decided to move to Brazil. He had to go to Rio de Janeiro by ship and then from there went to Porto Alegre (where my grandfather moved to in 1930). From there, he called on the other Tolpolars, probably said “this is fine, come over”. And then, one by one, advised by Jankel, some brothers and sisters moved to Brazil. And then Jankel moved back to Europe to die there, most likely single and with no kids.

The same list had another piece of information that puzzled me. It also said that in 1912, a year earlier than Jankel, another Tolpolar took the same ship but this time to Buenos Aires. His name was Herschel Tolpolar, Russian, born in 1893 in Palenesky.

I have never heard of this man before. My first inclination was to research Palenesky, but this location is nowhere to be found in the Internet. I tried different spellings, Talenesky, Palanasky, etc. but nothing.

A research always leads to another research, and there we go, endlessly looking for information that can explain more about our family and about ourselves.

Herschel Tolpolar, who were you?

NEXT: A documentary shot in Moldova.