NEW DISCOVERIES!

My dad just called yesterday at midnight: “I found it, I found it!” he said.

He basically called me to say that he was organizing some papers and suddenly found a bunch of important documents and photographs of my grandparents. My grandfather’s naturalization document, marriage certificate, many photos and the original picture of the Vadul Raskov grave.

Needless to say I’m very excited. I’ll be going to Brazil in June and will see all this material in person. Could I wait till then??

MAMALIGA BLUES - THE DOCUMENTARY

New link to the documentary video promo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I08Su-q_a30

Enjoy it!

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.