Two months ago I was standing on a single dirt road in a tiny village in Ukraine. No cars were in sight; horse-drawn wagons passed by. People were pumping water from wells in front of their homes. Horses were pulling plows in the fields. The town was Maydan, where my father grew up. My sister and I had returned to our roots.
My father, Meyer Tannenbaum, who died nine years ago at the age of 93, told many stories of the old country. Maydan, at that time, was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Although my father was not a romantic, the cherries were sweeter, the forests were thicker, the water was purer than anything we had experienced.
These stories were supplemented by Chana (my Tanta Anna), three years younger than my father, who will, God willing, celebrate her 100th birthday on July 7.
My dream was always to return to my father’s birthplace.
My father was the youngest son in a family of five boys and two girls in Maydan. They were one of three Jewish families in a village of 65 Ukrainian and Polish homes. His parents operated a tavern, which had been leased to the family for generations by the government. In addition to the tavern, they owned rich farmland, fruit trees, livestock, and were quite comfortable. Running the tavern required hard work and long hours.
In recounting stories, my father would invariably touch upon the benevolent Franz Josef, emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire for more than 60 years. Much beloved by the Jews, Franz Josef provided them with unusual protection against the growing forces of anti-Semitism in the region. He began his rule in 1848, and continued until his death in 1916.
The family’s favorite story about Franz Josef is told by my aunt. Prior to our trip, my husband and I spent hours visiting with my aunt and videotaping her memories. She speaks Yiddish, Polish, Ukrainian and English, and sand to us and recited poetry in all those languages. Her most memorable even occurred when she was six years old and the emperor visited the town.
How extraordinary it must have been for the people of Maydan to have had Franz Josef come to their tiny village. Chana was given the honor of offering him a cup of water from the well that made the town famous. Franz Josef drank the water, bent down, and kissed my aunt on her cheek.
The nearby village of Gologory had a Baron Hirsch School that my father attended between the ages of six and ten. He walked three kilometers every Sunday afternoon to the school with a loaf of his mother’s home-baked bread, boarded for the week with the rabbi, returning Friday afternoon for Shabbat.
He always spoke fondly of those early school years, as he was one of the brightest pupils and the family talked about sending him to the university to study medicine.
At school he learned German, Polish, mathematics, literature, as well as all the Hebrew subjects. But the school closed at the start of World War I, effectively ending my father’s very promising formal education.
My aunt Chana went to the local Ukrainian school across the street from her house. She knew all the stories of the local population, was very well liked by her teachers, and worked hard in the tavern to help her mother. She was famous for making the best potato pancakes in Galicia, something I can confirm because years later she disclosed her secret and taught me to make them, crisp on the outside and fluffy on the inside.
Then there were the hushed-up stories, the ones that were supposed to stay within the family confines. Now, almost 100 years after the incident, I still tell this one in a whisper; it was to dramatically alter the fate of the family:
