A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka: A Memoir

by Lev Golinkin

  “Bin-der? I Binder!” The short bald man who’d been handing out room keys earlier scampered outside. “I Binder,” he repeated. “Hotel,” he gestured toward the upstairs floors; “Restaurant,” he moved down to the lobby; “Binder!” he ended with a flourish that clearly indicated he saved the best for last. “Inside food. Come.”

  While we munched on ham sandwiches and fruit salad, Binder gathered the forty heads of the newly arrived families in a circle inside the hotel’s meeting hall. Waiting to address them was the pudgy man from the train station. He was seated next to a thick stack of forms, still wore the same rumpled navy blazer, and looked as tired as the migrants.

  “Dear gentlemen, ex-citizens of the USSR, you are currently located in the town of Nondorf, which is two hours to the northwest of Vienna. My name is Oswald Prager, and I shall be the liaison person between you, Joint—which is the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee—and HIAS, which is the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. Joint and HIAS are American-Jewish organizations. Joint will be providing sustenance for you while you are stationed in Austria and Italy, and HIAS will be overseeing your resettlement process.”

  Mr. Prager spoke in broken English, every so often reverting to German. Although none of the refugees knew regular German, some were fluent in Yiddish, an Eastern European Jewish dialect roughly equivalent to medieval German. Yiddish had been spoken in yeshivas and shtetls before Communism made such things obsolete. Afterward it was secretly passed down from father to son, and while diligent persecution greatly diminished its number of speakers, the language had survived among the older generation. The conversation with Mr. Prager was choppy: he’d utter a few sentences, the English and Yiddish speakers would translate, a short discourse over the meaning would ensue, and Mr. Prager would continue.

  “I require you to take these forms. Please fill them out today because tomorrow morning, at six o’clock, there will be buses waiting to convey you and your families to the Israeli embassy in Vienna. Please understand that each of you was permitted to leave the Soviet Union and enter Austria at the request of the Israeli government. As of right now, each of your visas designates Israel as your final destination. Those who desire to be admitted to a country other than Israel will have to first approach the Israeli embassy and officially refuse its offer of asylum. That shall be step number one.”

  Mr. Prager didn’t need to address what would happen to families who actually wanted to go to Israel. Those had already been pulled aside and put on a plane to Tel Aviv.

  “Following that, the buses shall convey you to the Australian, Canadian, and American embassies. You will go to the embassy of the country you would desire to emigrate to and apply for political asylum. HIAS representatives will assist you with communication and paperwork. That will be step number two.”

  Questions erupted, just as at the train station. Russians are notorious fretters, and for good reason: they’ve been conditioned by their past to worry about the future. “How long will we be here? How will we eat? Will we get any spending money? Will America take us? How do you know for sure?”

  “Live, you will live here,” Mr. Prager ticked off the answers. “Your next transfer point shall be Rome, where you will receive linguistic, financial, and cultural training from HIAS and Joint. Due to such a large spike in refugees, there is currently no room in Rome, and so you will remain here until space clears up or more space is created. I do not know when that will happen. In the meantime, please know that while you are in Austria, you are not permitted to work or to travel anywhere outside a fifteen-kilometer radius of where you’re staying. Food, you shall receive twice a day. Additionally, everyone in your family shall receive a stipend of two and a half schillings per day.”

  “Only two schillings? People before us got ten!” A family friend stationed in Vienna just six months prior to us even stocked up enough money to buy a fur coat … or so he averred in a postcard mailed from Naples. The postcard gingerly made the rounds of Kharkov’s Jewish communities, and the fur coat dominated the talk of the neighborhood for a week.

  Mr. Prager spread his hands. “That was before the numbers of refugees went up. We no longer have the budget for ten a person. Dear gentlemen, I apologize, but I must do several more stops. Please fill the forms and be ready at six.”

  The questions only got louder. “But how long before we go to America?”

  “You will stay until the appropriate agencies make the decision about your refugee status.”

  “What agencies?”

  “The agencies whose job it is to make the decision will be deciding.”

  And on that philosophical note, Mr. Prager buttoned up his jacket, excused himself, and left.

  Later, much later, experience taught me that Mr. Prager and the other human rights workers we encountered weren’t being facetious; they weren’t lying or being evasive about dates, estimates, and explanations. They were in the refugee business, an occupation whose very nature was defined and governed by chaos. And the small percentage of those who didn’t burn out or succumb to cynicism had been forced to learn to, as the adage goes, accept what they couldn’t change and concentrate on what they could. What more could we have asked from them? But ask we did. We asked and we griped and we grumbled, and every fielded question spawned several more. Human nature, I guess.

  As promised, the buses were waiting at six the next morning, and as promised, the first stop was the Israeli embassy in Vienna, and it was awkward. The Israeli clerks were well aware that we did not want to go to Israel, but they still extended the offer. “Israel is where Jews belong. Why live in crammed rooms in Austria and Italy? You could be in Israel in two days! We’ll find you a place.” Everyone rattled off their excuses: we couldn’t deal with the hot climate, we’ve already started learning English, we had a friend in America who promised to get us a job, etcetera, etcetera, but valid or not, an ungrateful undertone seeped into the reasoning. Israel was a country bleeding on the front lines in the battle for Jewish rights, a nation without whose efforts we wouldn’t have been able to leave Russia, yet there we stood, beggars choosing, telling Israel “Thanks, but no thanks.”

  Then it was our turn.

  “We considered this extensively, and we want to go to America,” my father avowed.

  “Aren’t you Jews?” prodded the young official.

  Dad grew irritated. “Yes, we are Jews, and believe me, the Soviet government made sure that we were aware of that. Still, we would really prefer to go to America.”

  “Sign your denial here.”

  Once everyone endorsed the denials, Mr. Prager marched the group to the U.S. embassy, where he handed us over to his colleagues in HIAS. Mr. Prager instructed us to meet him by the buses at five, and amicably recommended that we enjoy Vienna’s downtown after the diplomats were finished with us. An imposing array of clerks and tables waited inside the embassy, but we did little talking; HIAS representatives shepherded each family around the room. Although the U.S. government was familiar with the plight of Soviet Jewry, applicants still had to chronicle the specific abuses suffered under the Soviet regime in order to qualify for political asylum. HIAS knew the majority of families did not speak English; they also recognized that some were too proud to ask for help, and that others were not prepared to disclose humiliation and pain to complete strangers. This reticence could easily lead to trouble, since all an impatient clerk had to do was scribble “no evidence for asylum provided” and the shy family would be denied. HIAS workers hovered over us, acting as envoys between the two worlds, clarifying, encouraging, and ensuring that everyone got an opportunity to present their case to America.

  My family was fortunate to be processed early, which left us plenty of time to heed Mr. Prager’s suggestion and explore the heart of Vienna. Pillars and fountains decorated each wayward street and every plaza. Around one corner, we ran smack into a gorgeous imperial palace with seafoam-green domes and incredible statues, and Dad had to drag me away because I wanted to exami
ne each one. In the center of it all rose the majestic St. Stephen’s Cathedral, an enormous Gothic monolith whose spires soared over the downtown. The shops around the cathedral were overwhelming. Christmas was over, but the holiday spirit had not left the city. We saw bright decorations, shoppers with bags, and window displays brimming with everything. To people accustomed to waiting in lines and trying to predict which common staple would be the next to vanish from the shelves, this was another planet, a cornucopia, albeit with a hefty price tag. Someone quickly dubbed the area Millionaire Street, because from our perspective, anyone who could afford to shop there must surely be a millionaire. But then Lina and Mom stumbled upon an alley shoe store with winter boots on post-holiday clearance. My sister began to woo Mom, and shortly thereafter, a very happy Lina strutted down the cobblestones with a package of boots under her arms. She was trailed by my less-than-enthused father, who was shooting Mom dirty stares. Five minutes later we ran into the Zhislins, Vicki spied the package, and five minutes after that our party had doubled to two pairs of boots, two grinning twenty-year-olds, and two sets of accusing stares.

  Oswald Prager was leaning against a pillar across from St. Stephen’s Cathedral, squinting at the spires and sipping on a Vienna iced coffee—cold coffee with no ice and a dollop of ice cream floating on top. It was an unseasonably warm day, and my family and the Zhislins joined him in the afternoon sun. “Why were those people in the Israeli embassy so … not nice?” Vicki asked the Joint worker.

  “Nobody likes ‘no,’ ” he answered. “Besides, Israel requires men. There are many people, even in America, who want to get Jews out of Russia so they can make Israel become stronger. Some of those people apply pressure on Joint and HIAS because they think that you should have to go to Israel.”

  “And what do you think?” Dad inquired.

  “I do not think much on that,” Mr. Prager admitted. “Two more trains of refugees came last night. More trains will be tonight. American Congress just voted to continue accepting Jews in the next year. When Soviet Jews hear about this, more will come, and more. I will meet them, and work with them, find food and place. That is what I think. But if you ask me personally, if you desire to go to America, and if America desires to take you, there is no problem.”

  “Yes, yes, I agree!” Yura jumped in. “And if all those concerned Jews in America want people to go to Israel so much, they can always move there themselves. You’re good at this.” He gestured at the paperwork tucked under Mr. Prager’s arm. “Maybe you can help those nice American Jews move to Israel.”

  “That is an interesting idea,” yawned Mr. Prager, and a tired smile crossed his fleshy face.

  * * *

  * Why were Palestinian terror groups expending men and resources to target homeless migrant families in Austria? Well, if ten Soviet Jews moved to Israel, Israel gained ten soldiers, ten workers, ten more oppressors and occupiers, as the jihadists saw it. And in 1989, the Soviet Union didn’t just have ten Jews—it had 1.4 million. We weren’t homeless families; we were an army waiting to be unleashed. And, as we found out, the terrorists weren’t the only ones who saw us that way.

  WHERE PEOPLE HAVE NO NAMES

  Nondorf, Niederösterreich (Lower Austria), Late December 1989

  Aside from eating and sleeping, there was little to do in the tiny village of Nondorf, and it was only natural for two hundred bored and penniless Russians to turn to the only available pastime: selling everything they had to curious Austrian locals. Back in Russia this activity was known as peddling, but we were in the West now, and to celebrate the new milieu, peddling was bestowed with a more dignified, Western name: “business.” Business could be anything or anyone. One of our neighbors had brought a dog out of the USSR. It was a little white fluffball, a Maltese or a similar breed. The family treated the dog like one of their own, refusing to go anywhere without it, even toting it down to the cafeteria, and they quickly became known as the Dog People. The dog was pregnant, and Dog Man proudly told envious listeners that as soon as she whelped he was going to sell both the dog and the puppies and “make some business.” That was the Soviet mind-set. The dog was more than a beloved family pet: it was an investment. It was business.

  Word of the refugee-merchants spread through the area. Every night, Binder’s foyer converted into a bazaar and the hotel became a hot spot, drawing Austrians from local mountain hamlets and as far away as Vienna. Some made getaways out of it, skiing during the day and shopping at night. They pulled up, had a few drinks in the lounge, and strolled around, inspecting both the goods and the merchants. After all, we were denizens of the dreaded USSR, the Evil Empire, a land as forbidden and unknown to everyday Austrians as the West was to us. The Westerners were mesmerized by all things Soviet, even products of dubious value, such as Belomorkanalki, our cheap, noxious cigarettes that were basically filterless garbage with a few tobacco shavings tossed in for flavor. But the red stars and Cyrillic characters on the wrapper transformed their acrid smoke into a testament to the rustic hardiness of the Russian people. The Austrians choked them down with gusto. Belomorkanalki sales were so profitable that many businessmen sold them by the cigarette, to ensure maximum yield.

  Austrian women bought matryoshki (the famous Russian nesting dolls), decorative plates, and spoons splashed with mushrooms, leaves, and berries in the bright reds and yellows that define Russian folk art. Others purchased hand-knit shawls as well as brooches, pendants, and ornate jewelry boxes lacquered with fanciful renderings of bogatyri, firebirds, snow maidens, and troiki of Slavic folklore. The men were drawn to Soviet military paraphernalia, especially the prized officer’s watches awarded to various ranks of the Red Army and the KGB. The buyers brandished these like trophies of a feared adversary, lion fangs safely extracted from the jaws of their original owner and set in a benign bracelet.

  But there was more than knickknacks to be had at Binder’s, because the little mountain hotel housed two kinds of refugees. The first, like my family, came from Russian cities like Moscow and Leningrad or from eastern Ukrainian industrial centers, such as Kiev and Kharkov. The second group hailed from the towns and villages that dotted the enormous expanse of western Ukraine. Life on the periphery of the Soviet empire granted these Zapodentsi, as we called them, a certain degree of independence.*1 The Party’s authority waned the farther one got from the cities, because its tools of control—surveillance, informants, the secret police—operated best in dense, urban environments and were less suited for remote outposts. The Zapodentsi were, simply put, more Jewish than us: they spoke with flavorful Yiddish accents, bandied about little Jewish anecdotes, and were familiar with customs which for us, city dwellers, had already become faint memories. Most of the Zapodentsi were blue-collar workers, smiths and seamstresses, but what they lacked in formal education they made up for in other ways.

  The little chachki that we, city folk, brought to the marketplace paled in comparison with the mind-boggling selections of the rural Jews. Some Zapodentsi families huddled in crammed rooms, the floors hidden by rolls of antique rugs. A woman in her thirties whom everyone called the Hat Lady (her dream was to open a hat boutique in Brooklyn) boasted a vast array of paintings, some dating back to tsarist Russia. Comrade Diamonds, the Hat Lady’s fiercest rival, advertised a Zales-sized inventory of the gems, loose, set, fake, and real.*2 Of course, jewelry, artwork, and rugs weren’t permitted to leave the Motherland, but that didn’t deter the Zapodentsi. Their proximity to the border gave them years of practice smuggling contraband from Czechoslovakia and Romania into Russia, and when the time came to emigrate, they drew upon that expertise to move product in the opposite direction, out west. They did what their background and resources enabled them to do, and while Dad memorized English and bribed clerks to create his microfilms, the Zapodentsi hoarded antiques and paid border guards to look the other way.

  Some of the younger Austrians ventured to Nondorf to meet and greet the Slavic girls. My mom remembers one particular affair between a Leningr
adi teenager waiting to rejoin distant relatives in San Francisco and a Viennese fellow who took such a liking to her that he vowed to get her Austrian citizenship, even if he had to personally lobby the federal chancellor. The admirer clearly was a millionaire, because he drove a Mercedes, and to us, the model automatically indicated a seven-digit income. The infatuated couple held hands and wandered around our tiny hamlet or necked among the snow-covered evergreens that ringed the hotel. The girl beamed, and for good reason: she’d nabbed herself a foreigner. Everyone was awfully jealous and thought that it was all very romantic.

  The girl’s father was ecstatic—he had fled Russia with two daughters and now he strutted around the halls telling anyone who’d listen, “Well, I’m going to have one girl established in Austria, and when we get moved to Italy I hope to find a nice Italian millionaire for the other one, and then the wife and I will fly to San Francisco with no baggage!”

  He was the happiest businessman in all of Nondorf.

  * * *

  On New Year’s Eve, Binder threw a party. It wasn’t much of a party, but there were three meals instead of two, and part of the cafeteria was cleared away to make a dance floor. Someone wheeled in an old tape deck with speakers, and the lobby Christmas tree was converted into a New Year’s tree (aside from the name change, no other conversion efforts were required). Almost everyone danced. They danced because they were penniless, homeless, and out of Russia, and out of Russia was good. The Hat Lady danced because she was going to open up a hat store in Brooklyn. Some of the Zapodentsi danced old Jewish country jigs left over from the days of the shtetls. Sergei Kantler danced with Gera Zhislin, the aftermath of the tamozhnya temporarily forgotten. Dog Man danced with Mom, Lina, Gera, and Vicki, fortified himself with bread rolls and mineral water, and came back for round two. The babushki did what babushki always do—monitored the activity from the fringes of the dance floor with the dignified and somewhat disapproving expressions of chaperones at a middle school formal.