just a heads up to let you know that i have posted my first song for this project on the ’song’ page: ‘in the sea.’ i recorded it with jay sherman-godfrey in greenpoint and queens. jay engineered/ mixed and played bass and rhodes and electric guitar. i sang and played electric and acoustic guitars. tony leone played drums. jay’s friend kieran engineered the drums. plug your headphones into your computer so you can fully appreciate the ambient sounds thrown in - recordings from my trip to eastern europe last summer . . .

http://clareburson.muxtape.com/

in my family, we did not wax nostalgic about things german. case in point, my grandmother, helga. she has spent the past 70 years downplaying the fact that she was even born in germany – not to mention the fact that she lived there until she was 19. when asked where she’s from, she replies, without a second thought, “memphis.”

of course, certain things were unavoidable growing up. my great aunt rita, for instance. married to helga’s brother, axel, she never missed an opportunity to romanticize her german heritage. (she was born in the united states and grew up in a jewish household, so her attachment to germany still flumoxes me – despite the fact that she’s from missouri.)

and certain things were undeniable, like my grandfather eric’s german accent.

one of my earliest memories of him is of his coming to speak to my violin class about one of the pieces we were learning – the two grenediers, which was based on a heinrich heine poem. (granddaddy loved heinrich heine – a jewish german poet from the early 19^th century, heine’s lyrical poetry was often set to music by composers like strauss, brahms, schubert, mendelssohn, and even wagner.

he sounded so different from my teachers with their thick southern drawls. my classmates didn’t know what to make of him. “what is he saying?” they asked repeatedly.

i loved it. i loved the gutteral sounds of his ‘r’s. i loved to hear him pronounce the names of german composers. i loved his handwriting.

i loved that it was different, that he was different. this difference represented a lost world to me. and granddaddy was my link to this lost, magical place – strange for a school kid to think of pre-war, weimar berlin as a glittering fantasy world, but that’s what it was for me. his germany was so storied and full of music and thought and word. perhaps most compelling for me was that it was a place and time impossible to recover.

when i was 13 and he was 84, he died of bone cancer. his last words were from the robert frost poem, stopping by woods on a snowy evening:

and miles to go before i sleep . . .

*******

what i know of my grandfather’s life in germany comes from black and white photos of a young leder-hosen-clad boy posing with his zuckertuete (the candy filled cone that german children receive on the first day of school) and long dead austere-looking 19^th century relatives, stories filtered through my aunt and my mother, a handwritten poem from 1928 on the occasion of eric’s older sister hella’s marriage, and his memoir, entitled, the lord is my shepherd. (a highly assimilated german jew from berlin, granddaddy changed his last name from cohen to cornell when he settled in the united states. that said, the great appreciation he had for life here eventually led him to a deep attachment to his judaism. for as long as i knew him, he was the loudest voice in the temple choir, a friend of the rabbi, and quick to quote psalms whenever the opportunity arose.)

i know that eric’s family had been in germany for generations – from the northwestern region of the country, if i’m remembering correctly. his father, levi/ leo, was a banker who died in 1932 and is buried in the weisensee friedhof (cemetery) on the outskirts of berlin. granddaddy had a little boat named ping-pong that he sailed along berlin’s river spree. he always regretted not having had a proper education, as his school days were interruped by the first world war, when all of his teachers left for the front.

when my grandfather was old enough, he began to work as a salesman. clothes, i think. this was an occupation that ended up facilitating his escape from nazi germany. on a buying trip in switzerland in the mid-thirties, he was able to view the goings-on in his country from a different vantage point. he surmised correctly that the situation in his beloved homeland was only worsening, so he began making plans to leave.

he took the train to rotterdam and back again to berlin countless times, on ‘buying’ trips. (incidentally, my cousin does a hilarious impersonation of granddaddy saying, ‘i took ze train to rotterdam.’ emphasis on the ‘r’s, of course.) on weekends, eric carted luggage full of his belongings to holland, where he left the contents with friends. he then would return to germany with empty suitcases. a dangerous proposition, what with nazi soldiers monitoring travel. these trips stopped when he was approached by a hostile officer inquiring as to why he was returning to berlin with an empty suitcase. somehow, granddaddy talked his way out of a potentially damning situation and decided to get out while he still could.

of course, there were complications with obtaining a visa. there was waiting. but eventually, in 1938, he made it out. and from new york, where his sister hella and her family had settled in kew gardens, he was able to arrange for his mother’s escape as well.

He would have been 105 years old today, April 13, 2008.

by all accounts, my great grandmother, malka/ manya/ mary tarschiss, was petite, blonde, and always impeccably dressed. she was the quintessential bourgeoise german woman. she sent her daughter helga, not to the jewish carlebach school but to the hoere maedchen schule for quintessential bourgeoise german girls. her home was beautifully appointed, but conventional for the time, filled with heavy mahogany furniture and thick dark curtains. (as a stark contrast to this, my grandmother recalls with delight a makeshift swing/ hammock hanging in the foyer – something even my decidedly not uptight parents did not dream up for me and my sister.)

most importantly, malka spoke flawless german, unlike the rest of her relatives from eastern europe who spent nights pouring over their books, copying and re-copying german words from the dictionary. (they spoke yiddish and a heavily accented german that belied their background.)

despite all of this, malka was not german born. she too had come from eastern europe.

malka was born in berdichev, a shtetl (little town) in what is now the ukraine. in nineteenth and early twentieth century russian and jewish literature and folklore, berdichev epitomized the typical jewish town. around the time my great grandmother was born, there were around 40,000 jews living there, making up 80% of the population. (it still blows my mind to think about a european town inhabited by so many jews.)

a flourishing shtetl during the first half of the nineteenth century, berdichev’s fortunes (along with its jewish population) decreased towards the end of the century. perhaps this was why, after malka’s father died of a weak heart when she was a baby, my great great grandmother left berdichev with her three young daughters and moved to leipzig, germany.

100+ years later, in june 2007, i returned . . .

on the road from kiev to berdichev, my driver (zeev – a youngish orthodox jewish man who spoke russian and hebrew but no english or yiddish) and i sat in relative silence. (his eyes were on the road. mine were on the makeshift roadside stands selling brightly colored stuffed animals or jars of forest berries. i was particularly intrigued by the bunches of branches and arrows pointing into the forest where you could presumably receive a sauna and beating - to go!)

when we finally arrived in berdichev, i was disappointed (but not surprised) to find few remnants of a jewish shtetl. we were greeted by soviet-style architecture, paved streets, neon, street cars, gas stations. (of course. what was i thinking? this is the 21st century, not the 19th.)

entering the synagogue, however, provided at least some semblance of continuity between my imagining of the past and the starkness of the recognizable present.

it was late afternoon. there were 3 old men waiting around for a minyan. (in the jewish tradition, 10 men – no, women don’t count – are needed in order to have a community service in the synagogue.)

before they began to pray, zeev introduced me. the men excitedly began talking to me – in yiddish. with my background in german and my limited knowledge in yiddish were were actually able to have a conversation.

i listened to their stories:
they were all born in berdichev. one had hidden with his family in the cellar of the synagogue during the war. another had survived a shot in the head by a nazi soldier. another told me that he had a grandchild living in lakewood, nj. did i know him?

they listened to me:
i told them that i was the great granddaughter of malka tarschiss. her parents had grown up in berdichev. did they know anyone with that last name?

i was comforted to hear them all murmur in recognition. they remembered a family named tarschiss in berdichev before the war. malka must have left behind cousins, aunts, uncles . . .

as the men prayed, i waited dutifully upstairs in the women’s gallery. (6 more men must have shown up at some point . . . maybe a rabbi too? all i remember is having to go upstairs.)

before heading back to kiev, zeev took me to berdichev’s jewish cemetery: a sprawling expanse, overgrown with robust green weeds, littered with countless gravestones - inscribed with hebrew letters – some standing, some toppled.

november 9, 1998

my mother was invited by a friend to a krystallnacht memorial concert at the library of congress. the piece being performed that night had been commissioned by the library and the german consulate.  the composer was present that evening: a jewish pianist/ composer from leipzig who fled germany in 1934 and was living in washington, d.c.

after the concert, my mother went up to the composer, congratulated him on his piece, and told him that her mother was also from leipzig. he asked my mother for my grandmother’s maiden name. helga rabinowitz. did he know her?

before he could respond, other admirers surrounded him, begging for his attention, and his conversation with my mother ended.

the next day, my mom spoke to my grandmother on the phone:

‘mom, i went to a wonderful concert last night, and the composer was a man from leipzig. have you heard of him? his name is herman berlinski.’
‘well, did you meet his wife?’
‘no.  why?’
‘she’s my cousin.’

my mom was floored. as far as she had ever known, the only family members to make it out of leipzig were my grandmother, her brother, their grandmother and two aunts (and their young families). now there was a cousin too! and she lived practically around the corner from my parents!

my mother looked up the berlinskis in the phone book, called them up, introduced herself, and invited them to thanksgiving dinner.

apparently, when my grandmother’s cousin walked in the door, she took one look at my sister, turned to my grandmother and said, ‘your mother! she is the spitting image of your mother!’

my great grandmother, malka, mary.

i missed out on thanksgiving that year. i was in germany, encountering my great grandmother’s ghost in a different context. but upon hearing the story, i was struck by the idea that my sister could find pieces of herself in someone else’s face. i was envious. i imagined that, in seeing herself in malka’s cheekbones, my sister could access a solid sense of place and belonging – something i yearn for. i imagined that my sister could locate herself within some kind of almost tangible historical trajectory.

it felt like time travel. or something even more extraordinary, like my sister was more than just my sister – a beautiful composite existing in a dimension of time far more expansive than the one we know.

i flew down to memphis last spring to interview my grandmothers. we did a lot of talking. we did a lot of driving, visiting old haunts.

i asked jojo a question i somehow had never asked before:

“jojo, where did the cheese come from?”
“oh, some little podunk town in lithuania. it probably doesn’t even exist any more.”
“well, did it have a name?”
“yes. pushville.”
“pushville? that doesn’t sound lithuanian – or yiddish.”
“well, clare, that’s what papa always said – he came from pushville. pushville in kovne guberniia.”

i was in the midst of planning a trip to eastern europe, so i scoured the internet for any mention of ‘pushville.’ there is a pushville road in greenwood, indiana. but no pushville of note in eastern europe.

i went anyway. i started in kiev, where my paternal grandfather’s family was from. i took a day trip to berdichev, where mimi’s mother was born. i made my way up to vilnius. my last stop was riga, latvia.

while i was in vilnius, i started feeling guilty for not having made more of an effort to find my great grandfather’s shtetl. i was so close. not to find the home of the cheese and go there seemed almost like adolescent irresponsibility on my part. there had to be another name.

so i started asking around.

it wasn’t long until i found the town of poswohl/ posvol on a map in the jewish history museum in vilnius. the lithuanian name is pasvalys. the next day, i boarded a soviet era bus bound for kovne guberniia.

i arrived at dusk in the middle of a rain storm. no one spoke a word of english. there was one room left at the only inn in town. i had to leave for riga the following afternoon.

when i awoke the next morning, i stumbled upon the town’s agricultural museum. there, i found some english speakers who took me on a tour of pushville (small town, short tour) and informed me that the main industry of their town is: CHEESE!

this is what i saw:

the bus to pushville

the oldest road in pushville - of course, it wasn’t paved when my great grandfather lived there . . .

the synagogue of pushville used to stand on this spot. if you can read lithuanian, you can tell me what the current building houses . . .

the stone wall of this building is the only structure remaining from the time my great grandfather lived in pushville.

i think this is the beginning of the svalia river - seen with my back to the stone wall

mailboxes - no relevance - i just liked the way they looked

pushville cheese! being lactose intolerant, i didn’t buy both - just the processed version. it was tasty - nutty - something of a cheddar/ havarti blend.

pushville logo/ mascot/ town seal

in november 1938 my maternal grandmother (in the leopard-y coat) and her brother (far right) left their home in leipzig, germany for the united states. after a presumably long journey, they arrived in new york city, spent a week in far rockaway with distant relatives, and boarded a train to memphis, tn. 

in pictures of them from their trip across the ocean, they are young and smiling. my grandmother in particular looks to be quite the catch - impeccably stylish and constantly canoodling with one or another dapper looking fellow . . .

my great grandparents eventually left germany as well. however, as it was too late for them to escape to the west, they headed east to riga, latvia. in 1940 the soviet army invaded latvia. the wehrmacht followed one year later. my great grandparents did not survive the war.

my childhood was marked by an uneasy silence surrounding my grandmother’s escape. it was a silence that eventually led me to pick up and move to germany on two separate occasions in the late 1990s. while there, i lived in munich, frankfurt, berlin, and cologne. i did a lot of digging. i filled in the spaces as best i could.

my experiences from this time could constitute an entire blog’s worth of reflections on their own that aren’t worth going into now. however, i will mention, that while i was there, i had the opportunity to visit leipzig with my grandmother, mother, aunt, uncle and cousin. we walked through the market square and by the town hall. we stopped in the rain at the empty lot where the old synagogue had been. we found my grandmother’s old neighborhood, amazingly still intact. as was the apartment building where she had lived with her parents and brother. we rang the doorbell of the apartment, hoping for a glimpse inside. no one was home.

seven years later, in november 2003, 65 years after my grandmother left leipzig for the first time, i returned again. i was on a two week tour of germany, and one of my shows was at a club in leipzig. i remembered the address. i also remembered that the building was not too far from the train station. when i arrived, i asked my driver to take me there.

to make a longish story somewhat shorter, someone was home this time. a single mother with two daughters welcomed me into her home, where i spent close to an hour in the rooms my great grandparents had shared with their children generations ago.

the next day, i wrote the following song:

magpies

here where the cold wind blows across the fields and the magpies gather all that glitter - here where the old men speak of long lost things in a language that never seems to matter - i think of you - here where your white walls color in the past and the windows are looking in on yesterday - i hear your voices quiet like the night - i picture you in everything - i think of you - sometimes i think that you might have been something like rainbows on water - sometimes i think of how life must have been for you here - what life could have been like for you here - what life should have been like here with you