Daughter of Israeli Novelist Amos Oz Retraces Family Roots in Ukraine
Lviv, Ukraine – Professor Fania Oz-Salzberger, the daughter of well-known Israeli novelist Amoz Oz, retraced the footsteps of her father’s best-selling memoir A Tale of Love and Darkness this week in the western Ukrainian city of Rivne, as part of the four-day conference Limmud FSU Ukraine in Lviv.
Oz-Salzberger, an author, historian and professor at Haifa University, visited the childhood home of her great-grandparents on Tuesday, November 12. During the trip, Oz-Salzberger used her father’s book, which has sold over a million copies worldwide, as a guide about their family and Jewish life in Rivne, or Rovno in Russian.
Earlier this year in February, Oscar-winning Hollywood actress, Natalie Portman was in Israel, directing and shooting scenes for her movie, A Tale of Love and Darkness, based on Amos Oz’s novel.
Oz-Salzberger’s tour included a visit to the Mussman family home, on 31 Dubinska Street, which still stands. The city’s Mayor, Volodymyr Khomko, made a welcome speech, while Oz-Salzberger read a passage from her father’s memoir and unveiled a special memorial plaque prepared by Limmud FSU.
The Mussman family left Rovno for pre-state Palestine in 1933. Fania Mussman, one of the family’s daughters, was the mother of Amos Oz and grandmother of Oz-Salzberger, who is named after her.
Oz-Salzberger also visited the former site of the Tarbut School, where her grandmother Fania and her two sisters studied. A nearby synagogue caters to the 600 Jews still living in the community. Oz-Salzberger said her father finds it hard to visit Rovno because of his mother’s memories, and he doesn’t want to color the memories with reality. Still, she added she was very touched to see this part of the puzzle of her family’s history.
Rovno was overrun by the Nazis in 1941 and thousands of Jews were shot. The remaining Jews from Rovno and the vicinity were herded to the nearby Sosenki Forest, which is marked by ravines within a dense birch forest. There, on the edge of the ravines, some 22,000 Jews were shot, bringing to a close the 600-year history of the city’s Jewish community. Oz-Salzberger and her group listened to Kaddish, the Jewish prayer of mourning, recited by the local Chabad rabbi in memory of the victims, including members of her own family.
The sold-out Limmud FSU Ukraine opened Nov. 6 in Lviv (Lvov in Russian), with a moment of silence for Ukrainians who have fallen in the country’s ongoing civil conflict. Limmud FSU, the highly regarded global educational and cultural conference for Russian-speaking Jews, is being held at the Hotel Dnister.
Chaim Chesler, founder of Limmud FSU, commented that he was thrilled with the recent event. “The success of an event like this, which is organized and run purely by volunteers, is so heart-warming that we will seriously consider holding a Limmud FSU conference in Lviv on an annual basis,” he said.
Limmud FSU is a nonprofit organization founded eight years ago by Chaim Chesler, former treasurer of the Jewish Agency, and Sandra Cahn, philanthropist from New York, to serve young Russian-speaking Jews around the world. Limmud FSU brings together and empowers young Russian-Jewish adults who are revitalizing Jewish communities and culture in the countries of the former Soviet Union, as well as in countries with Russian speakers around the world.
The organization operates in the Russian Federation, Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, the U.S., Canada, Israel and soon in Australia. Some 27,000 participants have taken part in Limmud conferences, projects and festivals.
By Anav Silverman
Tazpit News Agency