VADUL RASKOV - reminiscences

Our main goal in this trip was to get to Vadul Raskov and see the long lost grave of my great-grandparents Meyer and Ene Tolpolar. After 4 days and 5 planes we couldn't wait any longer. We arrived at Chisinau on April 6th at 5:30PM and the next morning were in our way to the abandoned cemetery. Our guide Natasha coordinated everything, and together with the grave restorer Pavel Tuev we were also accompanied by Marina Shraibman. Marina is the widow of the last Yiddish writer in Moldova, Ihil Shraibman, who was originally from Vadul Raskov. We were glad to have her company not only in this day, but on the next days in Chisinau as well. Marina cherished us with her passion and sympathy. She automatically bonded with Melina as well.

The 3 hour trip was good to catch up with Natasha and coordinate the next 3 days. We have missed 2 days in Frankfurt and now there was a lot to do.

The weather channel showed rain for all days we were in Moldova. Luckily this first day it didn't rain. Had it rained, we would not be able to reach or leave Vadul Raskov (at least for a day). At some point, the paved road gives place to sand, and once we get to the village, there are windy tiny roads made of rocks and gravel, going up and down. The cemetery is a difficult place to get to, but once you see the graves from the distance, it's touching. I felt like we were in the corner of the world, isolated from everything, in the brink of the Dniestr river. The cemetery is indeed completely abandoned. We got off the van and a few goats followed us. We could see horses and cows in the distance, and a few locals.

Natasha could not remember where the grave was, so we started on the top of the slope, going down towards the river. However, from the top, I saw it. It was right there, easy to spot as it is much bigger than the others and the last one before the river.
I cannot express how tough it was to coordinate and shoot the scenes we wanted, plus take care of Melina, plus absorb everything that was happening. I only was able to digest what happened on this day before going to sleep, hours later. It was then I understood it. For the first time I understood a feeling that my grandfather had when his parents died. It's a big grave, where a couple is buried, a rarity at that time. Most graves were for singles only. Being at Vadul Raskov I understood that my grandfather and his siblings loved their parents and tried to honor them the best way they could, and more than that, they wanted this monument to be remembered.
The last Jewish presence in Vadul Raskov was in 1957.

I will save more thoughts about this day for the documentary, but the feeling of being there, knowing that my ancestors had been there as well, was indescribable.

I can't thank enough this wonderful group of people who made this day so unforgettably special. I wanted to acknowledge the police officer from Soldanesti Vladimir Drutsa, who, after Natasha, found the grave as well. And Melina was also fantastic. I think she knew that place was sacred. Before we left, she bowed down and picked up two rocks. As I did it when on Oliscani in 2008, we brought these rocks back with us. They are part of our reminiscences.

THE DALLAS TORNADO AND US - (trying to get) BACK TO MOLDOVA

If the flap of a butterfly's wings might create atmospheric changes on the other side of the world, what to say of a tornado in Dallas? It created big changes for my wife, daughter and I.

It all started on April 3rd, 2012, the beginning of our trip to Moldova. We were supposed to catch a plane from LAX to Dallas at 6AM. When we get to the airport we find out the flight had changed to 9AM! Better safe than sorry, but we could have used a couple more hours of sleep.

Still at LAX

The flight to Dallas eventually happened, and everything was going well until the pilot announced that a severe tornado had hit the city, destroyed part of the airport and some aircrafts. We were then rerouted to San Antonio and had to wait in the plane for an hour. Nobody knew if we would continue our flight to Dallas or had to stay in San Antonio. We finally were authorized to get off the plane to soon learn that actually we were boarding again - now finally to Dallas. Needless to say that the airport was chaotic, many flights were delayed, people were nervous, shouting, families with babies like ours were also exhausted - not an easy situation for anybody.

It took us 9 hours to get to Dallas, we missed all of our subsequent connections, causing unforeseen consequences to us.

First, there were no more flights to Frankfurt that evening. We had to fly to London and then Frankfurt. That alone was tiring. When we got to London, the security officials took out all of Melina's medicine, saying we couldn't had those, but we could buy substitutes in the local drugstore. It so happened that the local drugstore didn't have the medicine we needed!

We arrive at Frankfurt in the evening of the 4th, missing our flight to Moldova. I was getting ready for that, but to my surprise our luggage was nowhere to be found. Being unable to book a next flight to Moldova and needing to wait for the luggage to arrive, we were forced to go to a hotel. To make things worse, Melina had threw up on us during the flight to London, so we were stinking and unable to change clothes. But glad to have a bed to lay down.


Next day, the 5th: we find out the next possible flight to Moldova is only on the 6th and that our luggage may be coming to the hotel by 4PM. Great, we now just need to wait, relax, eat some real food, etc. But at 4PM, nothing came. 5PM, not a word from British Airways. I called them and the lovely lady says: "your luggage was sent to Moldova" No!!!! And then she said "let me actually try to contact them and see if they can still retrieve your bags and send it over to the hotel".

"Where is our luggage???"

To make a long story short, the 5th was not all about relaxing, but a lot about waiting for a response on our luggage - that finally came at 10:30PM! I felt utterly happy, almost crying. Now we had everything and we knew we were going to Moldova.

Need some hot coffee!!!

Several times during the flight to London, and especially when Melina got sick, I thought of returning to our home in LA. "Maybe it's not this time", "What was I thinking, taking a baby in this crazy long journey?" But no, it was meant to be. All of our misfortune were meant to happen - it was only because we had to stay 2 days in Frankfurt that we got to meet for the first time our long distance cousin Alla Malamoud, who lives in Frankfurt and whose mother was a Tolpolar. It was an amazing meeting of two generations of Tolpolars that finally got together after 85 years.

Alla and Melina

Next day, the 6th: we boarded the plane to Moldova. During the check in, I see what it looked like a convicted man being escorted by two policemen. I pointed it out to Lara. And what were the odds? The prisoner sat next to me in the plane to Chisinau! It was all fine, but I was so exhausted by then that imagined him sticking a knife into my neck, and could not relax during the flight.

It took us 4 days and 5 planes to get to Moldova. I will tell everything about our time there. But needed this big intro so you can understand that this was no usual trip. Much more was yet to come.

THE MONTE SARMIENTO - PART II

After speaking to my dad, he said he thinks the Monte Sarmiento arrived either in the port of Rio de Janeiro or Rio Grande, he wasn't completely sure. But he was sure that my grandparents, from one of those places, took another ship to Porto Alegre. This ship's name was supposed to start with "Ita" , as with all ships used to within Brazil.

I just found it on my grandfather's passport a stamp of the Rio Grande's port. So I guess he arrived in Brazil through Rio Grande indeed.


As a funny story, my dad told me that while in this ship, his mom ate for the first time the famous Brazilian "feijoada". This traditional meal is served with a kind of yucca flour that is supposed to go with the beans, the "farinha". But his mom didn't know and put pure farinha in the spoon, and then in her mouth. The result was disastrous, as she thought it was sand, and spat the whole thing out. For those who don't know, farinha's looks and texture do resemble sand.

Later on, my dad attested, she became a big fan of feijoada - and farinha.

THE MONTE SARMIENTO SHIP

My grandparents moved from Bessarabia to Brazil on a German ship that left Hamburg in 1931. The name of the ship was Monte Sarmiento. I found some interesting information about it:

The first ship of its class, the 13,625 GRT Monte Sarmiento was commissioned in 1924 and used by Hamburg-Süd for service to South America. At its maiden voyage it was the largest motor vessel of the world. It could carry 1328 second class passengers and 1142 in the third class. It had two dining-halls and a smoking-room as well as a writing-room. As there was less than expected demand to Brazil and Argentina, the Monte Sarmiento and other ships of its class offered "one-class" low-priced cruises to Norway, Cairo and many other places. These popular cruises pioneered seafaring vacations for the masses, and in many ways created a foundation for the cruise program of the Nazi leisure and tourism organization Kraft durch Freude (KdF) after 1935. After the outbreak of war, she was stationed at Kiel and used as an accommodation ship. On February 26, 1942, she was sunk during an Allied bombing raid and was eventually scrapped in Hamburg in 1943.

Ironically they traveled on a ship that would be used a few years later by the Nazi regime.

The Hamburg-Süd company still exists and has renamed one of its ships with the same name. The new Monte Sarmiento is a cargo ship only, but it still travels south to Brazil. I contacted them asking for the ship's itinerary and passenger list for 1931, but according to their corporate communications representative, they lost their complete archives in the Hamburg tidal surge of 1962.

A SPECIAL BOTTLE

One of these days I opened a cabinet in my kitchen and saw it: a Moldovan plastic bottle. Inside of it there was wine, homemade wine from Orhei.

For some reason I kept this bottle that was given to us from a local during our 2008 trip. Moldovan homemade wine is delicious and I had brought some back to the US, but a week went by and I forgot to drink it. It was then I decided to open it and offered some to a friend. She made a face and said "it's good" - but very unconvincingly. I tasted some and it was already almost vinegar.

It was unfortunate that I forgot to drink it while it was good. But I never threw it away. Three years went by and I kept is as a hidden secret, a kind of souvenir. Maybe I was waiting to write about it, so I wouldn't forget it. In any case, maybe it's now time to let go.

REVISITING FIMA

It was just now in December 2011 that I read only for the second time some of the translation of the letters my father's first cousin from Moldova, Fima, sent to him in Brazil in 1991. The first time I read them I didn't have any notion of family ancestry as I was about 15 years-old. Fima was still alive with much information about the Tolpolars. Some he shared with us, some I believed were buried with him.

Fima was the last direct family member to leave the Soviet Republic of Moldova and move to Israel. Because of that, much of the recent information we find about our ancestors are related to him and his impressive life story. He fought in World War II in the Soviet army, got hurt and was taken to a Moscow hospital, that's how he survived the war. He returned to Moldova to find all of his family killed, and it is said he was set to find some of the killers. We don't know for sure what happened on his journey, but that in the 90's he was exchanging letters with my father. He would write in Hebrew/Yiddish and my dad in English. I'm sure some was lost in the translation on both sides.

What caught my attention was that Fima wrote the 8 Tolpolar brothers and sisters loved and cared about each other. That my grandfather taught him Yiddish, that he had raised a fortune working for 45 years as a high ranking lawyer but had to leave everything to the Russians when he moved to Israel. The letters reveal a sad and nostalgic Fima, but incredibly excited to connect with my father. In his words, he and my dad were the last of the Bessarabian (male) Tolpolars.


These two men finally met in 1994 for a few hours only, in Israel. I dare to say this meeting was historic, a meeting between cousins who never met but were always so close. Unfortunately I was not there. Fima passed in 2000. At that point, Israel, Bessarabia, immigration, and my own ancestry were things I could not completely comprehend. It was beyond my reach.

I never met Fima, but I still have my father's memories and Fima's direct family in Israel. I'm sure that, in different levels, Fima lives in all of us.

HONORING THOSE FROM BESSARABIA

We are looking for old pictures from people and shtletls in Moldova/Bessarabia to put in the end of Mamaliga Blues as a way to honor other families with the same origin as ours. Footage from these places are also very welcome. I understand this kind of material may be very emotional/personal, especially when releasing it to third parties. So if you are interested in sharing these and have any questions/concerns on the usage of such, please let me know.

Thank you!