Yulchi's House / An Israeli Story / A Jewish story
September 24th, 2024, Tuesday evening, I call my sister, she answers:
– Hi, and immediately adds – Oi!
– Can you decide? I giggle, Hi or Oi?
– Yulchi's house took a direct hit.
– What?
– Yulchi's house took a direct hit and was destroyed. Shosha just wrote it.
I close the phone and open on WhatsApp our group of cousins - Isidore and Sheindel, named after our grandparents. We knew our grandfather, Isidor, the sweetest man on earth, who called us Zisel'e and Devashel'e (sweet &honey, in Yiddish) when he kissed us on the eyes. Grandma Sherry Scheindel was murdered in Auschwitz with her three little sons – Dioriko, Miklosh and Tibi.
This is the picture I see.
Our hearts may have turned rough at the sight of such a picture, the likes of which we have seen a lot in the past year. But no, this is the dining room in my aunt's house, the heart of the house (the kitchen was completely destroyed), a place of giving and love, stories and memories. A place where we shared makosh testa (poppy cake), diosh testa (walnut cake), dobush cakes, cherige wafers, fried and crunchy Hungarian pastry that is soft in the mouth, yeast and cinnamon rolls, and countless birthday cakes. My cousin Rivka and I used to share the sweets and cakes equally, half and half. Somehow her half always stuck to me, she was a thin girl, and I – chubby, it remains so to this day.
Uri wrote – lucky that the house was empty. But the house was not empty, it was full of memories. And yet it was good that it was empty of living people. In the destruction, my eyes caught the work of Maty G. that remained hanging on the wall undamaged, "Sun's Eye Tulip / Holy or Milk Thistle", next to it is a photo of my aunt, smiling – Happy 90th birthday!
My aunt, called by some people – Yulchi, and by others – Ita, was my father's younger sister, two years after her Irchi was born, and then Be'be'. My three aunts survived a series of concentration camps. Their younger sister – Rozhika, remained "there" in Auschwitz. My father and his father, my grandfather Isidore, survived labor camps. The survivors immigrated to Israel in 1946.
The survivors.
The work "Sun's Eye Tulip / Holy or Milk Thistle" is part of a series created by Maty Grunberg, and it deals with the wild plants around the city of Jerusalem, which sits on the watershed. The artist brought together upright and thorny plants coming from the desert with crawling and fleshy plants coming from the lowlands. The work describes a series of meetings of wild plants between two populations. These meetings sometimes appear as mutual explorations that stem from curiosity, sometimes as a kind of peace talks, or an attempt to establish coexistence, and sometimes as an endless struggle between the survivors. A metaphor for the relations between the different populations living in Jerusalem. Maty G. chose the wild plants, the anti-heroes that do not attract our attention, growing on the sides of the roads, inside fence stones, inside the walls, fighting for their lives – these are the real survivors who survived wars, fires, floods, goats, etc.
And look, the work survived, and next to it, a photo of my smiling aunt.
My aunt was a strong, brave and incredibly sober woman. When the Nazis entered Hungary, she suggested that they all flee to Israel. My grandfather, who was a man of faith, said that the rabbi said that whoever immigrates to the Land of Israel, his daughters will become prostitutes. So they stayed there.
Yulchi met her husband Dovl'e on the refugees (ma'apilim) ship that brought them to Israel. Dovl'e was the ship's commander. (By the way, he was the only one in the whole family with a "normal" name, the others were called – Yukli, Heki, Dundi, Miklosh, Yuzhi, and so on, nicknames that you pronounced with cheerful ripples in your mouth.)
Yulchi and Devel'e established their home in Moshav Betzet, an agricultural settlement, in the Western Galilee region in the north of the country, at the foot of the mountain at the top of which runs the border with Lebanon, an area that has been in the headlines every day for the past year. When I was a child the high mountain ridge was shrouded in mystery and threat, along with the frightening word – border. It filled me with dread.
Yulchi and Devel'e's home became the mythical family center, where the whole family gathered several times a year. In the summer, they would send me alone by train to Nahariya, a small city nearby Betzet, I was ten years old. My uncle Devel'e would come with a wooden cart to which the horse Vashka was harnessed, and take me to Betzet. I stayed there for two or three weeks, usually with another cousin. It was a small house, we slept in the bedding box, the toilets were in the yard. It was fun. My aunt and uncle worked in the cowshed, or in the chicken coop, or in the greenhouse. They didn't fuss around us, they didn't entertain us, they were busy and just let us be, we just were there, immersed in laughter and love and adventures. These were the most beautiful days of my childhood.
As befits a family where the founding generation holds such funny names, the family possessed a fine sense of humor. About a year ago, on the holiday of Sukkot, we met, all cousins, at my sister Orna's house. After a few hours Maty G. said – you are a really strange family. Usually at a family gathering, people bring up forgotten fights, annoyances, mutual accusations – and you sat and laughed the whole time. A few days after this meeting, on October 7th, we stopped laughing.
My aunt, who was approaching 98 years old, lived in her house in Betzet with the wonderful care giver Irene. She was not healthy, but most of the time she was clear and drew unbelievable life forces from her family whom she called – my elixir of life. Although in the last years of her life her existence was loose, her presence instilled a sense of continuity and stability for the whole family. My cousin Micah and his wife Etti, worth their weight in gold (they lost a lot of weight, but still…), built their house next to hers. They, their children, and the grandchildren treated her like a precious Etrog kept in a box of cotton wool.
After October 7 massacre in the settlements near Gaza strip and in Nova dance party, with the increase in Hezbollah attacks at the North of Israel, the evacuation of residents from the north began. Everyone was required to evacuate. A suitable place had to be found for Yulchi. After several weeks of searching, she was transferred to a nursing geriatric institution in the Druze settlement of Yarka . Cut off from her lifeblood, within a few weeks she passed away. We couldn't make it to the funeral, which was held in the limited family circle. The area was declared a war zone, there was no going out and no coming. My cousin Micha, who was the head of security of the area for decades, and his wife Etti, did not evacuate. The stayed in Moshav, Micah is a member of the emergency squad that goes out to put out fires in the plantations. Etti have been working for decades at the hospital in Nahariya. The most dangerous part of the day is her journey to work and back under rockets and missiles fired from Lebanon . And now, Yulchi's house, which was empty of its inhabitants, was destroyed.
I think about Israeli fate. I think about Jewish fate.
It's a small story, but it's my family's story. It's an Israeli story. It's a Jewish story. We must write a new story.
My aunts & uncles: standing from right to left- Borika, Dovel'e, Yulchi (in blue shirt), Yukli, my mom Kati. Sitting, from right to left – my dad, Bandi, Bebe & Irchi – may she have a long life.
I ascend to the sky, sitting by my aunt's side, together we look at the farmyard, here is the horse Vashka standing in the shade of the big tree, shaking the annoying flies with her tail, not far from her are sitting Micah and my sister Orna, she sends him to buy a kilo of cockroach wings to cook for lunch , my older cousin Moty, harvests the corn with a scythe, I am beside him, harvesting with great joy and with complete inefficiency, the smell of manure, the scent of hay and yeast dough rising in the oven – a bubble of well-preserved memory.
The cover of my documentary film "A Jew from Hungary", designed by my Canadian cousin, the artist Rachel Rubinstein Kaplan.
attached is a link to the documentary film – "A Jew from Hungary" , English subtitles, some scenes were shot in my aunt's house in Betzet, years ago, in better times.
https://youtu.be/XJfWE1fcTQ8
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