The Education of a Traitor: A Memoir of Growing Up in Cold War Russia

by Svetlana Grobman

  Grandmother, Sima, and Grandfather, 1951

  “The mother is not all, you know. Roma’s father Abraham is a Jew. Sima’s father is Russian, so she takes after him.”

  I gawk at Mom. “Sima’s father is Russian? I never knew that!”

  Mother winks but says nothing.

  “Didn’t you say that he was killed in the war?” I continue my investigation.

  “Well,” Mother stumbles. “Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t.” Then she quickly recovers and reaches for her habitual magic wand, “Did you do your homework?”

  “Mom, wait! Which one is it?”

  “Don’t tell anybody that you know,” Mother says and glances in the direction of our new wardrobe, as if somebody might be hiding there. “Raya and Sima’s father got divorced.”

  Divorced?! This is the first time I have heard about anybody in our family getting divorced. I had always thought that only bad people get divorced: incurable alcoholics, adulterers, people like that. What did Aunt Raya’s first husband do?

  “Well, our father would not allow Raya to marry a goy.”

  “Why?”

  “Because people should stick to their own kind. Those who don’t end up badly,” Mother says in an instructive tone of voice. “It’s not good for a Jewish woman to marry a Russian man. Even if things seem to be fine at first, his family hates her.” (Obviously, our family did not love that Russian husband either!) “So, eventually, they turn him against her, and they all treat her badly.” (As if Uncle Abraham always treats my aunt very well!) “Now, did you finish your homework?”

  “So, Sima is Russian?” I say, disregarding Mother’s question, fascinated with the fact that my own cousin Sima has a live Russian father and therefore may be Russian herself.

  “Well, she could’ve been registered as Russian. When she turned sixteen and went to get her passport (the most important document in our country), they expected her to register as Russian, but she said no.”

  “She did not!” I choke.

  “Yes, she did. The clerk in the passport office told her that she was making a big mistake and gave her a week to think it over. But she didn’t change her mind!” Mother says, and her face takes on the proud expression of a TV announcer reporting about the great achievements of Soviet agriculture. Then she pauses and the pride on her face melts away, “Well, it wouldn’t be good for her to displease Abraham. After all, he raised her.” With that, Mother turns around and heads to the kitchen, leaving me to ponder the news.

  Sima said no? She must be crazy! I always knew that she was vibrazhala (one who puts on airs)—all older girls are. But I never thought of her as stupid! What Jewish kid would pass up a once-in-a-life-time chance to be registered as Russian? Life would be so much easier. Nobody would scowl at you, nobody would call you names, not to mention that you would never hear “You Jew, go to your Israel!” thrown at your face.

  Of course, having a passport that reads “Nationality—Russian” would never work for somebody like me. But if blond, fair-skinned Sima had registered as Russian, nobody in the world would guess that she was tainted by anything Jewish. In fact, people must be surprised to learn otherwise.

  Time goes by, and, on May 9, our whole family gets together to celebrate Victory Day—the capitulation of Nazi Germany.

  “If not for our victory, you children wouldn’t have been born,” Mother says to Tanya and me when our loud argument begins drowning the sounds of a TV broadcast of the military parade from Red Square. “Sit down and watch the parade.”

  Mother says this every year while watching huge rocket launchers, missiles and tanks clattering over Red Square's cobblestones and hundreds of troops goose-stepping in front of Lenin's red-granite mausoleum, where high government officials wave at them and smile to shouts of "Slava!" (glory) from the crowd.

  I know Mother is right. If the Nazis had won the war, they would have killed all the Jews in our country and, possibly, everywhere in the world. Sometimes, I even try to imagine what life would be like with all of us gone. Who would live in our apartment, sit in my class, or play my piano? These thoughts make me feel invisible and also weightless, like a balloon torn from its thread and rising into the sky to its inevitable demise. Yet the parades are always the same, with deafening military machinery crawling through the Square, orchestras playing rousing marches, and solemn announcers reciting patriotic slogans over the loudspeakers.

  I sit down, but instead of watching TV, I watch my older cousin. Sima no longer takes part in our “childish” games. Her light eyelashes are colored black, her blond hair is pulled back and arranged into an elegant bun on top of her head, and her blue eyes are turned to the ceiling, as if she is praying to an invisible deity to get her out of this boring place ASAP.

  Ever since I learned about Sima’s true identity, I cannot decide if she is a hero like Alexander Matrosov, who sacrificed his life by throwing himself onto a German pill-box, or a crazy woman like the wife of Mr. Rochester from Jane Eyre. Also, my old doubts about my own identity surface with renewed intensity.

  If my family managed to hide the fact of Sima’s parentage for all these years, who knows what else they might be hiding. What if I am adopted? While I do look like my father, I don’t look at all like my mother. For all I know, I could be my father’s daughter from a previous marriage! Of course, if that is true, my parents will never tell me. My only chance to find out the truth is by talking to Grandma.

  The Victory Day parade is over and most of my family goes for a walk in the park. Under the pretense of helping to wash dishes, I stay behind with Grandma, who does not believe in walking for pleasure.

  “Grandma, what did Mom look like when she was little?” I say, drying off a porcelain tea cup with a flowery pattern, from a set of china that my grandma uses for festive occasions.

  “Oh, she was a tomboy. Short hair, very fast. Just like Tanya,” Grandma says, handing me another thoroughly washed cup.

  I carefully dry it off, put it on top of the first cup, and, trying to sound very casual, say, “Did she ever look like me?”

  “No.”

  “And she was always pretty,” I continue my line of questioning. “Right?”

  “Bubala, don’t get it into your head. You know what they say, ‘Ne rodis crasivoi a rodis schastlivoi.’ (Do not be born pretty, be born lucky, Russian proverb.) You’re good as you are,” Grandma says and picks up another dirty cup. Then she suddenly turns to me and, still holding the cup in one hand and a washcloth in the other, says, “My brother Pinchas had a fiancée, Dorka. She was so beautiful—tall, slender, eyes like violets, lips like red roses. All young men in her shtetl were crazy about her.”

  I wait for Grandma to continue, but she just stands there, staring at something above my head, as if expecting beautiful Dorka to appear somewhere behind me.

  “Did they get married?” I hurry Grandma.

  Grandma puts down the cup and the washcloth, and lowers herself heavily on a chair next to the kitchen table. “Just before the wedding, they drafted Pinchas to the Tsar’s Army. And while he was at the front (during the First World War), the Cossacks raided Dorka’s shtetl—a pogrom, you know. Killed and looted, and whatnot.”

  Memories cloud Grandma’s face and rain drops appear in her tired eyes, but she continues. “One Cossack chased after Dorka. She ran to the lake nearby, but he caught up with her and …” Here Grandma stops and gives me a strange look.

  “Did he kill her, Grandma?” I say, goose bumps tickling my skin.

  Grandma bites her lower lip, “No. But he … taunted her and left her there, unconscious.” Then she takes a long breath and continues. “It was in the winter, and she lay on the ice all night long. In the morning, people found her and brought her home. But she never fully recovered. Got tuberculosis on that lake.”

  Grandma puts her hand with fingers distorted by arthritis and life-long work on my head and strokes my hair, “So you see what her beauty brought her? Nothing but tsores (misery, Yiddish).”r />
  “Did she die?”

  “Not then,” Grandma sighs, getting up and picking up her washcloth. “Pinchas came back from the war and married her anyway. They moved to Kiev (capital of Ukraine). She was very sickly, though. He took her to doctors and sanatoriums, and she would be better for a while, and then worse again. Up and down all the time. They did have two daughters, though, Shura and Rosa … Well, genug, enough talking. Go read a book, bubala.”

  “Grandma, when did Dorka die?”

  “Soon as the war started, in 1941. But let’s not talk about that.”

  “Grandma, we studied that war in school. The battles, the generals, the war heroes—everything. You can tell me,” I say, feeling confident and worldly.

  The washcloth in my grandmother’s hand flies up as if she is about to strike me, “Heroes, you say? They’re only heroes if they’re Russians. We, Jews, don’t count. When we die, they don’t even put up a tombstone!”

  “What are you talking about, Grandma?” I say, shrinking back.

  “When the war started, they never told us that the Germans were exterminating Jews—not in the newspapers, not on the radio. They knew about that, but we didn’t. You see, in the first war (World War I) the Germans treated everybody the same, no matter Jews, Ukrainians, or Russians. So when they began advancing toward Ukraine, the Jews didn’t leave immediately. But then it was too late.”

  “How did the Germans know who the Jews were?”

  “They always knew. We’re ‘noticeable,’” Grandma says with a crooked smile. “And Ukrainian ‘volunteers’ helped them, too.”

  Here she stops, but not for long, “As the war started, Pinchas and Rosa’s husband were drafted in the army, so Rosa moved in with her mother Dorka. When the Fritzes burst into their house, Dorka lay in bed, sick, and Rosa had just given birth to a baby boy. They pulled Dorka outside on her blanket and dragged Rosa out by the hair with her baby in her arms. Dorka couldn’t walk, just lay on the ground and moaned. They shot her in the head.”

  Grandma’s face looks like a ravaged stetl, but I cannot stop. “What happened then?”

  “They rounded up all the Jews and marched them to a ravine,” Grandma says. “Made them dig their own graves and then shot them with machine guns. They were very economical, you know. Put people in double rows, so they could kill two with one bullet. And those who did not die, the soldiers and the Ukrainian police buried alive."

  “What about Rosa?” I say, squeezing my cold hands.

  “Oh, Rosa was very patriotic. Shouted that the Soviet Army and Stalin would avenge their deaths. Sure they did!

  Bitterness in Grandma’s voice floods the apartment and splashes outside through a half-open window. “So many Jews were killed and buried in that ravine, just like stray dogs. But Stalin didn’t allow a monument to their memory. Who cares about dead Jews.”

  “How do you know this, Grandma?”

  “Several people survived and told others. We’re all survivors, bubala, our ancestors before us, those who escaped death during the war, and even those who are being born now. We have to be. Nobody cares about us, nobody defends us.”

  At that, Grandma turns around and heads to the other room, leaving unwashed cups on the kitchen table.

  Back row: Grandfather and Grandmother (far left); Dorka and Pinchas (far right). Front row: my uncle, my mom, and my aunt; Rosa (far right), 1929.

  I stay behind, feeling small and lonely, the way I felt a long time ago, when I got lost in the wintery Sokolniki park. But there was a woman who helped me then, who took me to my grandfather. She did care.

  There are some good Russian people! I want to tell Grandma. But the door is closed and, who knows, maybe I just got lucky. As they say, “Do not be born pretty, be born lucky.” And I am not pretty.

  The next day, Mother and I sit beside each other darning my cotton stockings. Mother’s fingers quickly fly over a damaged heel, leaving behind neatly intersecting rows of threads. I try to mimic Mother’s precise movements, but my fingers are awkward and my mind is wandering.

  “Mom, is it true what Grandma told me about her Ukrainian relatives?”

  “What did she tell you?”

  “She said that the Fascists shot them and buried them in a ravine, together with other Jews and their babies.”

  Mother glances at me. “That’s true, but don’t talk about that in school, okay?”

  “Why? They were victims of Fascism!” I say, studiously repeating the words from my history textbook.

  Mother says nothing, but her fingers begin moving even more quickly, like bees buzzing around their hive.

  “How many people did the Fascists kill there, Mom?”

  “Tens of thousands. In just a few days.”

  In my mind, I try to envision how many people that is. Is it like the crowds at the Victory Day parade?

  “Do we have any relatives left in the Ukraine?”

  “They are all there. In Babi Yar.”

  “Where is that?”

  “Babi Yar is the name of that ravine,” Mother says and adds, “Let’s talk about something else.”

  At night, I have a hard time falling asleep. I toss and turn in my bed, and listen to the wind howling outside the window as if mourning the terrible fate of the people I never knew.

  “They are all there,” sounds in my head, and when I close my eyes, I see skulls and bones—large and small—sticking out from the black earth like worm-eaten mushrooms in the deep woods, and I hear the muffled cries of invisible children.

  A month later, we are invited to my Aunt Raya’s birthday. When we appear on her threshold, the table is already set, but my aunt and her daughter are still in the kitchen. Aunt Raya, red in the face, is delivering a monologue about Sima’s “impossible absent-mindedness,” while Sima silently crawls around the floor, wiping up bits and pieces of multicolored vegetables—an expression on her face like that of St. Sebastian shot with arrows.

  “Raya, let me help her,” Mom says, quickly assessing the situation. The pride and joy of any Russian party, olivje salad, made of boiled potatoes, eggs, dill pickles, green peas, and finely chopped bologna—all liberally doused with mayonnaise—is scattered across the kitchen floor.

  “No,” Aunt Raya says, in the tone of a nun who won’t give in to the temptations of the world. “She dropped it, she should clean it up! You just go in and enjoy yourselves.” And as my aunt directs us to the dining table, she turns around and says to her daughter, “Don’t you leave the kitchen until you fix the salad!”

  I look at Sima. Her eyes are glistening suspiciously, her lips are quivering, and her usually meticulous hair-do has shifted off center and looks disheveled. Whatever her ‘impossible’ faults are—besides not paying attention to me, that is—she is a sorry sight.

  I let my relatives get ahead and approach my cousin. “Sima,” I say quietly. “Your hair is tousled. Do you want me to bring you a comb?”

  “No.” Sima says abruptly, but as I turn around to leave, she softens her voice and says, “Wait, bring me a couple of hair-pins. They’re in our room, in the top drawer. Thanks.”

  Flattered to be of help, I dash to the room that nineteen-year-old Sima still shares with her sixteen-year-old brother. There is no mistake about which chest-of-drawers belongs to her and which to Roma. I approach the one with balls of wool and knitting needles on top and pull the top drawer open: a comb, mascara, lipstick, eye liners, and other items from a young woman’s treasure box reveal themselves. I grab two hair-pins and close the drawer. Then curiosity gets the best of me, and, instead of turning back to the kitchen, I pull out the next drawer.

  There I see a thin pile of official-looking papers and, next to them, a small red-colored leather book with the word “Passport” on it. Without hesitation, I reach for Sima’s passport, open it, and read.

  Name: Seraphima (Sima’s full name); date of birth: November 19, 1945; Father: Nikolai Podberezov, Russian; Mother: Raisa (Aunt Raya’s full name) Podberezova, Jewish. T
hen my eyes jump to the ubiquitous fifth line—Nationality: Jewish.

  So, it is true that half-Russian Sima chose to be registered as Jewish. Mad, isn’t she? I shake my head, put Sima’s passport back, and keep looking. The third drawer reveals a stack of knitting patterns and a fashion magazine in a language I do not recognize. I open it up. Pretty, well-dressed coquettes stare seductively at me from every page, manifesting a life that my school teachers would never approve of.

  I want to put the magazine back, but something falls out of it and lands on the floor. I pick it up. It is a hand-written paper. The words “Babi Yar” appear on the top of the page followed by a name—Yevgeny Yevtushenko. I have never heard of Yevtushen-ko, but he must be a poet, for underneath his name runs a column of short uneven lines:

  “No monument stands over Babi Yar.

  A drop sheer as a crude gravestone.

  I am afraid.

  Today I am as old in years

  As all the Jewish people.”

  How strange! This is the second time I have heard about Babi Yar in a month, and in a poem, of all places!

  “I seem to be Dreyfus …”

  I stumble over the unfamiliar name but keep reading.

  “Beat the Yids (kikes). Save Russia!”

  This, unfortunately, sounds too familiar.

  “I seemed to be Anne Frank …”

  Another name I do not recognize, but I hurry forward. Finally, the conclusion:

  “In my blood there is no Jewish blood.

  In their callous rage, all anti-Semites

  Must hate me now as a Jew.

  For that reason

  I am a true Russian!”

  I finish the last verse and turn the page over, trying to find an explanation for what I just read. The back page is blank—no comments and no dates. Is this really poetry? The rhyme is different and the rhythm, too. Not at all like Pushkin or Lermontov or Esenin, not even like the famous Soviet-era poet Mayakovski, all of whom we study in school. As for the subject, I have never read poems about Jews. In fact, I have never read anything about Jews that does not portray them as conniving or greedy, or worse.