“How do you feel about joining my parents on a visit to Romania”, I asked Julie, my husband. It was the Spring of 1974, and my parents were planning a second trip to Romania to visit Isaac, my father’s brother, the only survivor of my father’s family that remained in Europe. I hoped he would agree. I saw it as an opportunity to meet family I didn’t know and couldn’t speak with because we lacked a common language. My uncle spoke Yiddish, Russian and Romanian, languages we didn’t speak. But we could speak with him through my parents.
Happily, Julie agreed that we, and our two children, 8 and 10 years old would join them. Having visited Romania five years earlier, my mother was reluctant to make another trip because she found the conditions in my uncle’s home- town in northern Romania too primitive. Their small house lacked running water, and had only intermittent electricity from wires that they had rigged up to connect to the central lines. Worst of all, my mother described, “the lack of public transportation“ and thus traveling by trucks. She wryly described, in her mid-60s climbing onto the backs of trucks for local trips. “Can you imagine” she said, “living in a place where there were no public buses, private cars or taxis. One such visit was enough for me.”
We thus planned to meet in Mamaia, a tourist resort on the Black Sea, developed by the Romanian government to generate foreign currency. Since our hotel was only for foreigners, my uncle and his family rented a room in a nearby private house, as my father’s guests. We saw them every day and we ate lunch and dinner together. Before they left their home, however, they requested permission from the local police to travel to Mamaia, and while in Mamaia they reported to the police each day.
A stopover in Prague, was booked, where we met my parents traveling from New York City. The trip was pre-paid, covering transportation, accommodations and meals. But, as we passed through customs we had to convert $200 into local currency, keep receipts for expenditures, and have the balance returned in dollars when we left. That was our introduction to tight and time consuming Communist government controls.
The Grand Hotel Prague, built in 1909, had the feel and bones of a once grand Central European hotel. The crystal chandelier, somewhat dull now with only a small proportion of its lights on, presided over the high ceilinged, large and once gracious formal dining room, where we ate our meals. Sadly, there were just a handful of tourists in a room originally designed for grand events and elegant high society banquets. The faded silk drapes framing the large windows hung limply, and the bored waiters and indifferent multi-course cuisine did not induce us to linger over our meals. But the hotel was perfectly situated near the main square of the old city, allowing us to wander freely to see the sites.
We spent two days in Prague. One day was rainy and the other overcast, lending a grey and gloomy feeling to run-down government buildings, chipped sidewalks, and untended facades, matching my general feeling about the city. After touring the historic center on the first day, we were taken to The Jewish Museum or more accurately the Warehouse of Jewish Ritual Objects, on the second day. The large drab brick building, which looked like an old warehouse, with a sign only in Czech, suggested it got few visitors. In fact, we were the only ones there that day.
As we entered the high-ceilinged interior, we saw glass enclosed cases that spanned the entire floor. The cases housed ritual objects; Kiddush cups, candelabras, torah pointers and breastplates. There were hundreds of them, and the cases displaying them, went as far as the eye could see. Many of the silver objects, carefully etched and lovingly designed, , were once used in family and synagogue celebrations. A number had names and dates on them, and I could picture families joyously celebrating the Shabbat and holidays. I had never seen so many sacred ritual objects in one place. The Nazis had gathered them from all over Czechoslovakia for a Museum they planned to build celebrating their destruction of Czech Jewry.
Then when we didn’t think we could be further shocked, our guide gently nudged us to another area of the building. She seated us and proceeded to display torah curtains on sliding hangars, which she pulled out one by one. Each was uniquely designed and embroidered with names, dates, occasions and places, and was dedicated to a deceased family member or celebrated a marriage, birth or other family milestone.
I tried to read the names. Who were these people, from communities all over Czechoslovakia who commissioned these objects as family celebrations and a testament to their faith. They provided the only proof that they had once lived, created families, worked hard, celebrated life and generously contributed to their communities. These museum pieces were all that remained of them, their celebrations and their once rich lives.
As the tour ended, we engaged Karolina, our guide, a short, energetic woman in her 40s, in conversation. She wore the ubiquitous and dated grey business suit, her English was excellent, and she was very knowledgeable about the history of the Jews in Czechoslovakia. Although she was circumspect about herself, we learned she had remained in Prague during the war and that her husband was half Jewish. But our curiosity about her personal story, what she did during the war and how she knew so much about the Czech Jewish story was never satisfied. There was a distance and reserve we could not penetrate.
We needed some time to clear our heads and Karolina showed us where to catch the trolley back to our hotel. We were eager for some connection with the local people after this emotionally draining experience, and riding the trolley seemed like a perfect antidote. She helped us put together the exact fare and walked us to the trolley stop, where we said good-bye.
The interior of the trolley, probably built in the early part of the century had a quaint European feel to it. Wooden seats lined both sides of the car and after boarding, we found places to stand, directly in front of the seated passengers. We were four adults and two young children, an intergenerational family clearly identifiable, from the language we spoke, as either American or English. We stood across from the passengers and tried to make contact. We were eager to acknowledge and connect with them. But if they were curious, they held it in check. Some looked at their newspapers evasively, some looked blankly at us, and a few spoke to us only with their eyes and tentative smiles. There was a curtain we could not penetrate.
I visited Prague again after the Velvet Revolution, when the Czechs won their independence from Russian Communist domination. Twenty years had passed and Prague had been transformed into a vibrant and lively city that was a true visual delight. Grey was gone; replaced by newly painted buildings in a variety of pastel colors highlighting Romanesque and Gothic architectural details. The squares were bustling with tourists, accordionists entertained us for a few koruna, and we could attend daily organ concerts in historic 16th and 17th century churches. Prague had awakened from the deep slumber we experienced in 1974.
The next day we flew to Bucharest, Romania. Jonathan, my eldest son, who was 10 years old, remembers the old Czech plane where we sat across from each other, a table down the center. None of us had seen such a seat configuration, which Jonathan still remembers.
We spent two days in Bucharest touring historic buildings, museums and churches. Two sights stand out in my mind. One was an outdoor museum displaying various styles of mostly wooden houses, with decorous and colorful exterior painting. We walked in and out of the houses from all over Romania, and then into a rather simple unpainted wooden house where my father stopped in his tracks. It had a mud floor, which brought him back to his childhood. “This was the kind of house I lived in until the first World War”, my father said. “It had a mud floor. But when we returned after the war, we found a wooden floor and glass windows. The army had used our house and improved it for their comfort and ultimately for ours. “ My mother was so pleased to find our house still standing and in better condition than we left it.”
Then wandering the city streets we came upon a worker’s restaurant. It had clear glass windows so we could look in and see the long wooden tables where patrons sat, and servers ladling a yellow mush from huge three-foot high vats. “ That looks like mamaliga,” I shouted excitedly and we all drew closer to get a better look. Mamaliga, a corn meal mush and a Romanian staple eaten by peasants and noblemen alike, was one of my favorite childhood dishes. “We have to go in”, I said and by that time Jonathan and Jesse recognizing the dish, seconded my suggestion.
It was lunchtime and the restaurant was full. Men in grey workers caps and blue work clothes huddled on long wooden benches next to the tables. When we were spotted looking for a place to sit, some of the workers rose to leave and others pushed closer together. Waiters came by with fresh plates filled with mamaliga. We reached for the cheese and sour cream condiments on the table and soon we were engaged in non-verbal gestures, greetings and laughter. We were watched to see if we liked the food and when we held out our plates for seconds, the faces that surrounded lit up. “England”, one worker said, pointing to us, “No, America,” we answered which elicited pleasure and surprise. Then they struggled to speak the few words of English they knew. They reeled off the names of American cities, “Chicago, New York, Boston,” they inquired. “No, Washington,” I said pointing to my husband and children, and “New York” pointing to my parents as I said, “mama and papa”. They understood that and smiled appreciatively. My father made a little more progress with his limited and rusty Romanian mixed with German, and they were pleased to discover he was one of them, or once had been. When we rose to leave, our seatmates waved and said “good-bye” and “thank you” in a combination of English and Romanian, making our lunch one of our more memorable moments of connection.
Arriving at our Black Sea airport, we were met by Andrei, our Intourist Guide, accompanied by a car and driver to take us to our hotel. Andrei, a University student in Economics, about 5’8 with brown sandy hair, spoke excellent English and was correct and formal in his bearing. He was very bright and well versed ideologically, and we discovered during our week with him that he could articulately describe all the failures of the capitalist system. When we got to the hotel, he reviewed the services we had booked, and helped us check in.
Our hotel was one many facing the seashore and abutting a park. As I got my bearings I realized that unlike beachfront development in the U.S., the park was public providing local people the same access to the beach that we had. Thinking of how private hotel development has closed off much of Miami Beach, I was pleased to see that there are some things Communism gets right.
The hotel was modern, with non-descript but functional public rooms. The room we were given on the first floor was quite comfortable, except when I entered the bathroom I experienced a pervasive smell of sewage. That smell stayed with me long after I left Romania.
We spent our days with Uncle Isaac, Aunt Shelley and their daughter Liliana, strolling around the parks and seashore, and at the pool, which was a pleasant hang-out. I was lounging there one sunny morning, watching the kids while reading Solzhenitsyn’s, The Gulag Archipelago. It had appeared in paperback shortly before we left and it seemed perfect for a vacation involving a lot of airplane travel. I didn’t think at all about the wisdom of bringing an anti-communist book into a communist country, but fortunately there was no problem. When, Liliana arrived, I turned the book, cover down on the table to hold my place, so we could chat.
Liliana, a tall, thin, fair-haired teenager, had taught herself English which made it possible to communicate around simple topics. She said her parents were with mine in the park and that she had come to join me at the pool. Just before she sat down on the chair next to mine, she picked up the book, looked at the title and the place I had marked, and after a moment of studying the book, returned it to the table. I wondered whether she had heard of it, an indictment of the vast Russian prison system for dissidents. I waited for her to say something, but she quickly asked where Jonathan and Jesse were. I was disappointed, but somehow, I felt the subject was not closed. I didn’t know, however, whether or when the book would come up again.
One evening we decided to stroll into the town of Mamaia, a 15 minute walk from our hotel. New and fairly attractive 3-4 story stone buildings lined the main street, about four blocks long. Older peasant women, bent and wrinkled, their heads covered by kerchiefs, sat on overturned boxes with fruits and vegetables lined up on the street in front of them. One woman, with shriveled vein protruding hands had 4 onions to sell, another, three potatoes, a third maybe 20 stringbeans and dried up carrots. I felt their desperation and sadness, and wondered where they came from, whether they had families and other means of support. I suspected, however, that they lived alone, a not uncommon effect of the losses of World War II.
Then we walked down a side street and the view of those nice stone buildings disappeared, replaced by shacks and garbage strewn empty lots. ‘It was all a facade, I said, “one block deep.” “That’s what a Potemkin Village is,” my husband replied.
Another day, we took a trip to Constanza, a major port city, about an hour away. For security reasons, we could not get close to the port, but could see it very clearly from an overview. “I left from that port fifty three years ago,” my father said. His statement hovered in the air. We were all quiet, pondering how his life turned out, and what his life might have been had he stayed. We thought about the family he had lost; parents, two sisters and a brother and I wondered what was going through his mind. He soon revealed that he was thinking about the trip to America and shared some details about who he traveled with, the layover s in Bremerhaven where he transferred to a ship bound for America, and how long he was at sea. He stopped for a moment, and in his most inimitable manner, said, “I was sea sick a lot and then someone told me to suck on lemons, which believe it or not, helped.” My mouth puckers whenever I think of him sucking on a lemon.
The week went quickly and soon it was our last day in Romania. Julie and I would be leaving with Jonathan and Jesse for Dubrovnik and the Adriatic coast, while my parents would continue their visit for another week. We had spent the afternoon in my parent’s hotel room, nibbling pieces of cheese and crackers and downing plum and peach liquors, home-brewed by my uncle. There was lots of laughter and shared stories, which kept my parents busy translating. There was a warm feeling in the room; happiness that we had met and promises that we would stay in touch.
The afternoon passed quickly and looking at the clock I realized it was time to say our good-byes. We gathered our luggage, and we were walking together down the long corridor to the elevator, when Shelley pulled Julie and me aside. Leaning close, she asked in a whisper whether we could get her a copy of the Gulag in French, which she read. I was stunned. “We will try,” I said and then asked, “How do you know about it? “We have our ways. People talk quietly,” she said, “ I have known about it for awhile.” I didn’t share my doubts about the feasibility of getting the book to her or my concerns about the possible risks, but said, “ We will try to find a traveler to Romania, who could bring it to you.” Unfortunately, we were not successful.
As I replayed the scene in my head, I realized that Shelley waited until we were in the hallway to mention the book. She probably considered that safer than the room, because in her mind, it could have been bugged. It never occurred to me and I don’t know that it was.
We left Romania on August 8, 1974, the day Nixon resigned the U.S. presidency. Arriving at the airport, we saw the headlines in French and German. I gave out a joyous squeal and my husband and I spoke excitedly about this development. The expression on Andrei’s face was sour and clearly disapproving. “He was your leader, and leaders do not step down. It is their job to lead the people. That would never happen in my country,” he said triumphantly. He was living at that time under the Ceausescu regime.
As the plane rose in the air, I looked out at the landscape and found it more attractive from a distance than close-up.