A Memorial Day to Remember

May 30-Monday

Odessa Ukraine

Today is Memorial Day in the United States, but the chilling memories we will bring home with us of Odessa will never be forgotten.

After a small buffet breakfast, including traditional blintzes and yogurt, we met Natalya, our tour guide and our taxi driver, Sergei, in the lobby. We have been corresponding with Natalya for many months and we had been looking forward to the 4 hour tour that we had hired her to provide for us. She is a native of the city and very knowledgeable about the area, especially the Jewish history of Odessa. She said that her family has lived in this area for six generations. She is a local historian and an English professor so we had no difficulty understanding her.

Sergei drove us around this lovely historic city as Natalya provided the narration. We walked in some of the areas that we had read about and visited many buildings including the magnificent opera house and oldest synagogue left in Odessa as she relayed so many facts about the famous people in their history. Our heads were spinning by the end the 4 hours. Natalya continually tied in the Jewish history with each of the places we visited as she was aware of Donna’s family connection with this area through her grandfather.

The most touching part of the tour was near the end when she brought both of us to tears at the Holocaust memorial when she relayed the story of how 250,000 Jews were rounded up from Odessa and marched to their deaths early in WWII by the Nazis. We were touched by her personal account of her own family as she told how they escaped Odessa and the Nazis and also how many of the non-Jews in this beautiful city risked their own lives by hiding Jewish friends. It was truly a sobering story related to us by this Ukrainian woman.

After our four hours with Natalya and Sergei, we decided to venture out on our own in the city to view many of the areas that we had driven through for a closer first hand look. We walked for about 6 miles and stopped in one of the parks to buy something to eat. We had a wonderful experience with an older lady who was selling sandwiches that she had obviously baked herself. She knew no English and we knew no Ukrainian except for the alphabet so it was fun to see if we could communicate with her and buy her wares. We were successful and we each enjoyed what we bought. John’s was a large roll with an interesting cheese baked inside and Donna’s was a roll with poppy seeds baked inside. Donna was able to explain, in broken Ukrainian, that her grandfather was born in Odessa and this brought a smile to her wrinkles.

Rule for today: familiarize and practice the Cyrillic alphabet when visiting countries using this as it has helped us tremendously in a number of these countries. We had enjoyed reading the signs on the stores and streets and sounding them out loud has helped us many times even though we don’t speak the language.

Donna had a real closeness with the people of this cosmopolitan city and felt that her grandfather would be proud that she took the extra few days to visit his Odessa. She has finally had the chance to walk in the area of part of her heritage.

Photos: 

Donna & John at sculpture garden

Odessa Opera House

Holocaust Memorial - fountain of Tears