I came across this essay on BBC’s website concerning the border country between Poland and Ukraine.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/direct/ukraine/9405579.stm

As the article points out, it is a borderland that has shifted over time between sovereignties. Sometimes parts of it have been Imperial Russian, Polish, Imperial Austrian, Soviet or Ukrainian. I was interested in a personal way, because both sides of my family come from the region. We are Polish-Ukrainian Jews. So far as I know I am the first Catholic, but, for all I know, perhaps not. There has probably been more inter-marriage than one might imagine, and there may well have been cultural and religious cross-influences as well.

My father’s family came from that borderland, although it’s been a hundred years or more since they left. As for my mother’s family, the geographic facts are hard to pin down. My maternal grandmother was always referred to as a “Galician”, although I have no idea where in Galicia that might be. Her father was a fur trapper (sic!) and apparently illiterate. I once had a look at his Imperial Russian passport, wherein he was described as “analphabet”, illiterate.

When my grandmother was six years old she began field work, and when she came to America she worked in a factory, although for a few years she also ran a boardinghouse in New York. She never went to school, and could not read in any language.

As far as I know, the entire maternal side of my family that remained in Europe was murdered at Treblinka. In New York, my grandmother would sit and gaze at photographs, and silent tears would roll down her face.

Her name—God bless her soul—was Malka, Molly in America.

 

BORDERLAND

When your name was Malka

You grew up in the borderland

Galicia

Between white Poland and Ukraine

 

Afterward, when you were Molly

Old woman you recalled

Inside a sheaf of photographs

Love-searchable

 

White memories

Not murdered at Treblinka

Ageless tears

And you again were Malka

 

Weeping silently

To search the faces of the dead

Beloved family

Living in the borderland

 

Soundless are the tears

White drops

Like seeds

To nourish souls

 

Pavel

March 8, 2011