Traveling Notes: My Road to Krasnostav
Roadside notes about traveling to Volhynia in May 2015
By Leonid Vayn
By Leonid Vayn
INTRODUCTION
I spent the first half of my life in the USSR, being born right before World War II engulfed the Soviet territories. My father, Nathan Vaynshelboym, was drafted into the Red Army while my mother and I, a three-month old baby at the time, were evacuated on a ship slowly moving along the Volga river to the capital of the Tatar Republic, Kazan.
I spent the first half of my life in the USSR, being born right before World War II engulfed the Soviet territories. My father, Nathan Vaynshelboym, was drafted into the Red Army while my mother and I, a three-month old baby at the time, were evacuated on a ship slowly moving along the Volga river to the capital of the Tatar Republic, Kazan.
My parents and me, 1950
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We returned back to Moscow in 1944, and my father rejoined us after the end of the war.
My grandfather on my mother's side, Moshe Kaplun, had 8 children. But I only knew one aunt named Esfir. My grandparents and the rest of my uncles and aunts, along with many of their children, were killed during the war. Aunt Nekhama actually became sick and died while being evacuated to the Ural region. My family was fortunate enough not only to survive the war but to live in Moscow, the hub of the Soviet Empire. Even though we occupied only one 130 sq. foot room in a three-room apartment, many relatives from Ukraine and other parts of the country stayed with us while visiting Moscow. |
We have always been a tight-knit extended family. My mother Khana Kaplun and her sister Esfir Levin, who lived in Leningrad with her family, talked often about our family Holocaust stories and life in the small shtetl of Krasnostav, where my mother and her sister were born.
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Sisters Khana and Esfir, years 1937, 1944 and 1997
Moyshe's family.Krasnostav 1927
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My great grandfather Tsal and my grandfather Moshe Kaplun, one of Tsal's 11 children, were prominent people in the Krasnostav Jewish community, which numbered 1,100 people before World War 1. They were wise, religious people of substance. Tsal died around the year 1908. Moshe was an entrepreneur, who owned a food store, drug store, and a grain mill.
My mother's family lived on the second floor of a brick house on the central square; it was the only brick house in Krasnostav, and the family store occupied the ground floor. |
Moshe survived the pogroms, a tour of duty as a Russian soldier during World War I, the Revolution and the Russian Civil War. Before the Revolution, when Jews emigrated to the US in large numbers, Moshe said «Why I should go to America? Here, in Krasnostav, I have America ». Unfortunately, his statement would be proven wrong in short order. After the Revolution the new government appropriated all of Moshe's properties and money, and from 1928-1929 Moshe was constantly interrogated by the local authorities in an attempt to extort more gold coins from him. In 1930 Moshe and his wife Kreinza/Kroyna moved to Izyaslav, a larger town, where he was not as well known.
Obelisk near Zaslav, Ukraine
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In beginning of the war, in summer of 1941 German Special SS Command and local Ukrainian policemen gather Jews of Izyaslav including our grandparents Moyshe and Kreinza, our aunt Klara and her two children and lead hundreds people on a death march to wooden area in few kilometers from Izyaslav Jewish cemetery.
Every few years in the 1950s and 1960s my mother and aunt Esfir would travel with other relatives to Krasnostav and Slavuta to pay tribute to the Holocaust victims. |
My mother told me many emotional stories about life in Krasnostav and the Holocaust; few of the stories had a happy ending.
But I never had any desire to go Krasnostav and touch the past; I was more interested in the present and wanted to go on vacation to more interesting and exciting places. And then, in May 2015, at the age of 74, I and my cousin Michael Levin decided to visit Krasnostav. It was exactly 74 years after those tragic mass killing of August 1941.
But I never had any desire to go Krasnostav and touch the past; I was more interested in the present and wanted to go on vacation to more interesting and exciting places. And then, in May 2015, at the age of 74, I and my cousin Michael Levin decided to visit Krasnostav. It was exactly 74 years after those tragic mass killing of August 1941.
The Road to Krasnostav was long and twisted for me. In January 1979, I landed in JFK airport in New York with my then-wife Vera and son Nick, and a new life began. One good omen was that the my cousin Ida, her husband Alex Rubinstein, and their son Igor emigrated from Lviv on the same Rome-New York flight as I did. My mother would join us 2 years later. In 1982, we moved to Philadelphia because I obtained an engineering job there.
And in …we invited the few relatives we knew in the US to our house for a get-together. In the second half of the 1980s many more relatives decided to leave the Soviet Union, so our reunions became larger. My mother, as the oldest person, became the Matriarch of the extended family. She had a good relationship with everyone, and knew how people were related to us and each other. And so yearly family reunions became a tradition in our family, an event where we could see each other and discuss the changes in our lives. Those gatherings wound up being instrumental in arousing my interest in the history of the Kaplun family.
And in …we invited the few relatives we knew in the US to our house for a get-together. In the second half of the 1980s many more relatives decided to leave the Soviet Union, so our reunions became larger. My mother, as the oldest person, became the Matriarch of the extended family. She had a good relationship with everyone, and knew how people were related to us and each other. And so yearly family reunions became a tradition in our family, an event where we could see each other and discuss the changes in our lives. Those gatherings wound up being instrumental in arousing my interest in the history of the Kaplun family.
