I'm Not Ready to Applaud Ukraine

Have you been following the extraordinary, tingling news from Ukraine? Sounds like the good guys won, at least for now. Yet I am ambivalent. You see, the Ukrainians who have seemingly toppled a government are from the western portion of the country, the descendants of anti-Semitic beasts who aided the Nazi extermination of Jews, including my father’s family in Ottynia in the Galicia region, once considered a central concentration of Jewish life and culture in Eastern Europe.

According to Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, 1,200 Jews were killed by Ukrainians in the nearby Szeparowce Forest on July 7, 1941, just days after Germany occupied Ottynia on July 1. On August 3, Wiesenthal reported, 45 Jews were shot by Ukrainians in the town. 

Ingmar Oldberg, an associate researcher in the Russia program at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, wrote in August 2011, “According to Jewish scholars and organizations, the Ukrainian Nachtigall battalion, together with German troops and local Ukrainians, massacred Jews in the first days of July before continuing their march. At the end of the month a new pogrom was carried out in the city (of Lviv), known as the “Petliura Days”, named for the Ukrainian leader who instigated pogroms during the 1919 struggle for independence. Even after Nazi troops retreated toward the end of the war, incidents of persecution by the Ukrainians against the remaining Jews occurred throughout Galicia.”

He concluded his essay thusly: “The Holocaust of the Jews and Ukrainian complicity are still rarely addressed ... The world is still waiting for Ukrainian historians in general to admit that Ukrainians were not only victims, but also executioners. The Jews are waiting for their rightful place in Ukraine’s history and contemporary life” (http://balticworlds.com/ukraine%25E2%2580%2599s-problematic-relationship-to-the-holocaust/).

My Uncle Willy, a survivor of the extermination in Ottynia who hid from the Nazis for several years before being enlisted by the Russian army, related his own story of fear of Ukrainian anti-Semitism. When assigned to a battalion to be shipped out to fight the Germans, he asked for a transfer to a different unit. Why? Because, he told his commandant, his original unit was composed of Ukrainian soldiers. He feared being shot by them because he was Jewish. He asked for a transfer to a Russian battalion. His request was granted.

So no, I am not ready to stand up and cheer just now.

Speaking of Nazis: How’s that for a segue into my next topic, taking a small round of applause for correctly predicting Downtown Abbey’s Lady Edith’s lost-in-Munich-lover had a run-in with Brown Shirted bullies in the Bavarian capital. 

Okay, I suggested he embedded himself with the Nazis to get a scoop for his paper, instead of being assaulted or worse by them, as Lady Edith told her family, but let’s not quibble about small details, nor about my prediction he’d return in time for the birth of their love-child. 

More Kudos: For those who watch CBS Sunday Morning, yesterday’s edition featured a profile of an old-fashioned Colorado newspaper produced by Linotype machine, just as I explained to you the other day how my college newspaper, Calling Card, made it into print. 

Junior's, Brooklyn's Original Cheesecake Factory

News broke earlier this week that the iconic Junior’s restaurant in downtown Brooklyn will sell its location on Flatbush Avenue so a high rise condominium could be built. Junior’s hopes to lease back ground floor space in the building but in the interim also hopes to open a nearby restaurant for its signature cheesecake and other delectables (http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/junior-selling-flagship-location-brooklyn-article-1.1620413).

Junior’s opened in 1950, a year after I was born, but my experience with the restaurant didn't deepen until 20 years later when I was editor of Calling Card, a Brooklyn College newspaper published by the House Plan Association.

Calling Card came out every two weeks or so. We produced Calling Card the old fashioned way, through a hot lead process. Copy would be retyped by Linotype operators sitting in front of enormous clanking machines reminiscent of a Middle Ages torture chamber device complete with an arm suspending shiny lead bars slowly melting into a well that in turn were transformed into individual lines of words printed in reverse and then lined up on a page form based on a layout designed by one of our editors. 

Ink would be rolled over the hot lead to imprint a true version of a story or advertisement. But as anyone who worked in these pre-computer printing days could tell you, we didn't wait for the inked version to check copy. We all learned to read upside down in reverse, a skill that proved quite invaluable in the real world of reporting when one found oneself seated across from someone who was reluctant to talk, confident incriminating evidence on his or her desk was incomprehensible to prying eyes.

But I digress from Junior’s. The printer we used was located in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. About half a dozen editors would drive to the printer. We'd arrive around 6 pm, not finish until well past midnight. We didn't get paid for this work, but we did get a communal dinner allowance— $40, which worked out to a princely per person sum back then. Often we'd go to Junior’s around 11 pm before returning to the printing plant to put the paper to bed.

We'd order strip steaks or hamburgers and always dessert. I wasn't a big fan of cheesecake at the time, so I usually opted for a wedge of banana cream pie or nesselrode pie. Believe me when I say a “wedge.” Junior’s’ portions were gigantic.

Heading back to the printer one misty night I got my first traffic ticket. I made what I thought was a legal left turn from Flatbush Avenue onto Lafayette Avenue. A few blocks later I pulled over to let a police car with its rooftop bubble gum machine ablaze in rotating blue and red lights pass me. Only the cop car stopped right behind me. “No, officer, I did not see the ‘No Left Turn’ sign.”

A few months later our printer moved to Great Neck, just barely inside Nassau County. It was too far away to eat in Junior’s. We discovered the Scobee Diner on Northern Boulevard in Little Neck, Queens, another landmark eatery that no longer exists (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/04/nyregion/04metjournal.html?_r=1&).

When my kids were young they'd ask if I believed in god. I'd tell them about a ride home to Brooklyn from the printer in Great Neck one winter night when I experienced the invisible hand of good fortune or god, depending on your outlook. 

At 2 am I had the Belt Parkway all to myself. I must have been going at least 70 miles per hour, maybe closer to 80. With no one else on the road, I traveled in the middle lane. Around Pennsylvania Avenue I inexplicably switched lanes, moving to my left. No more than a few hundred yards later I passed a deep pothole in the center lane. Had I not changed lanes I surely would have hit that pothole, doing untold damage to my car and possibly to me. 

Karma or Jehovah? You tell me.