Here Haim Mudrik met Pearl, an elderly, graceful and lonely Jewish woman who lives in Bialik’s former home. She was happy to talk to Haim in Yiddish — a language she says she cannot use in Zhytomyr, because there’s no one left to talk to.
I see Pearl often and she usually invites visitors into her home; this time, she would only speak to us through her ground floor window — in fear, she said, of her neighbours who object to visitors entering the common yard of her building complex.
Over a decade ago one antisemitic resident tore down a commemorative plaque to Bialik that had been installed by the local council on the poet’s former home.
The nearest big town to Klesov is Sarny, the site of a ghetto during the war. Ida Shustik, an activist from the local Jewish community, took us to the pits where the bodies were left after the 1942 massacre.
The 65-year-old has been guiding tours in the area for many years and had a particularly exciting anecdote to share: while guiding a group of Israelis through the Sarny ghetto in the 1990s, one of the visitors revealed he was a survivor. A small crowd of locals gathered around to hear his story.
“One day, the Ukrainian girl who brought us water every day also brought us a pair of scissors,” the survivor recounted. “Then the gypsies who were with us started singing and dancing to distract the German guards, while we cut the wires.”
At that moment, one of the older locals yelled out: “I was the one who brought who brought the scissors.”
That was how, after decades of exploitation, they reunited in Sarny, Ida said.
The mass graves at Sarny are located next to a Ukrainian army base. The ongoing war in the east of the country means military personnel are on alert and suspicious of anyone approaching, so we walked along a barbed wire fence under the gaze of a tower guard holding a weapon in his hands.
He gave the impression he was prepared to open fire. It only added to haunting mood of the place.
“In 2014, when the war in eastern Ukraine began, the soldiers arrested me with a group of tourists and held us for long hours until they found out who we were,” Ida said.
But this time we were not stopped on our way to the last tombstone of the site, where Haim read kaddish.
The following morning we left for Klesov, the village of his birth, where Jews have not lived for many years.
For Haim, the return to his native village evoked a litany of memories: he remembered the location of the bathhouse, the quarries, and the place where his home stood.
We were greeted by mayor Vasil Greenik, who was elected after being released by the Ukrainian army three years ago. He was wounded during the fighting at Donetsk Airport.
He introduced us to 85-year-old Anatoly Saluta, the village elder. He was a child during the war and said he did not remember the Mudrik family, but he did have one vivid memory that he has probably wanted to release all these years.
He witnessed the mass killing of Klesov’s Jews and remembers what they did with their property.
“I remember there was a Jew who owned a toy store. After he left the store, we took a bunch of toy guns from there,” he said.
“We went into an apartment that the Jews left and the teapot on the table was still warm.”
Our group drove to the spot near the railway where Anatoly said the executions happened.
“We were hiding in the field,” he said. “When the Germans opened fire, we started to run away. There were three other friends with me. All three of them are no longer alive.”
All there is to see at the spot are a few Israeli flags hanging on the railway signals.
The village chief promised that, if Israel requested it, he would do everything he could to fence off and sanctify the mass grave.
Edward Doks is a Ukraine-based correspondent for Yedioth Ahronoth
