Your roots are showing

MIKE SCHALIT

Three hours from our film shoot in Riga, 22 hours from home, but actually 87 light years away. My grandparents left Liepaja in 1927. And now a tiny speck of DNA was coming back.

Would I uncover things within myself from a place I’d never seen – even if my genes had?

A shiver ran down my back as I emerged from the shadows of the bus station that cheerless sunny afternoon, in March this year. I entered a long, desolate avenue, crisscrossed by tramlines. I could hear the hidden whispers …

A town named Libau/A journey back home/A step back in time/It’s not a straight road.

Desolation crosses shadows/Faded fences peel back truth/Will I find more than hard faces/Can I find more than roots?

The streets were empty of people, but I could feel the past, lurking behind the boarded-up windows and faded elegance.

I learned that my grandparents had not left out of desperation, but for the lure of adventure promised by visiting ships in the port, following the scent of heady dreams in faraway lands, like South Africa.

Aah, here’s some history, my Gran’s address, her home as a young girl, 30 Barinu. A newer, ‘60s apartment now stands in its place.

Where do I stand?

Hello Gran/What’s the plan/Am I meant to feel?

I’m upbeat in your old street,/although its kinda sad./There’s nothing left but a number,/ yet it’s also kinda gran

My grandfather left a badge; he’d been a sergeant in the Latvian army fighting for independence from the Russians in 1918. Indeed, the Jews of Liepaja in the 1920s were proud Liepajans (Libaers) before their Jewishness.

Over 7 000 strong in 1941, I could now barely read the Hebrew inscriptions of their names on the scattered gravestones amidst the unkempt cemetery. Neglected but not forgotten, an impressive memorial proudly guards the entrance – a stark monument to the 6 428 massacred.

Barely 10 Jewish families remain today, desperate to tell their tale to the odd returnee like myself. Ilana, a passionate mama, our guide, explains that assimilation is no longer an option but a reality. So few Jews now, and times were hard.

“Mishka, (Mishenka) I am so happy you have come back. Sorry, I can’t say Mike, you are a Liepajar (Libauer), you all eventually come back. Can I call you Mishenka? Ah, that’s better.”

How could I not embrace her joy in seeing some flesh and blood return, even if a lifetime away! We laughed and hugged. And Ilana implored me to get more South Africans to support the reunion in July.*

(* Please contact Ilana at ilaval39@gmail.com or Ethel Davis at ethdavis@netspace.net.au to help unveil the past and retain it for future generations.)

Ilana wasn’t just a guide with details, she was a living story. And she visibly paled when she told me her tale, about finding pictures in her father’s cupboard, after the war, that he wouldn’t talk about.

“It was a war, (you must not know what it is) things happened.”

She later learned that he’d found these horrific images when he was in Liepaja ghetto he was forced to repair some electric problems at the SD headquarters in Liepaja at 21 Kurmajas Prospect) an SS officer’s house during the Nazi occupation.

A series of photographs detailing a massacre on nearby Skede beach, that he managed to make copies of, before he was hidden away in a cellar with 10 fellow-Jews by a local Latvian family, Roberts and Johanna Seduls.

Emerging 19 months later, having evaded the final Jewish exterminations, he handed over the grisly reminders to the liberating Russian forces. They were the only proof that the dunes of Skede hid more than just sandcastles; evidence later used at the trials against the Nazis.

Visiting the striking Skede memorial, her personal story still stuck in my head, found me fighting back the tears. Oblivious of the crashing waves and golden beach, I quietly wept inside as the weak sun tried to warm me.

I now knew why Ilana waited in the car.

So where is my family/The woman asked as a girl/I was born after that war/But father what is it you saw?

Nothing for your eyes, young one/It was a war/But she glimpsed a shadow cross his wounded face/Just before he said no more, no more about this place

She saw those pictures/And she saw his eyes/Now I see those pictures/And I see her eyes

I feel their nakedness tear through my skin, hurting deep within/Baring the truth of the beasts who deny/The beauty of sea and sky.

Heavy stuff; an intense present masking a complex past. Sad tales I wasn’t expecting to hear. And yet the reality of my own grandparents’ childhood was unexpectedly rich with glamour and adventure. Some things so inspiring, others so pitiful. But I had found something special:  

Roots may be knotted and gnarled, yet no matter how deep or dark they grow, when you scrape away the layers they somehow emerge stronger, anchoring, yet giving direction.

It seems finding roots,/gives you routes.

As I left Liepaja and the bus rumbled off into the Latvian dusk, I wondered whether I’d ever return. I stared out of the glass and into the gloom, yet I all I saw was the twinkle of stars and I felt a wonderfully warm glow.