December 20: Jewish Kyiv, Part 1
Thursday, March 16th, 2006The day before, Lilia had received a call from an English teacher who offered to show me around the city. Normally I wouldn’t have accepted such an offer because I’ve been to Kyiv many times, but I was very much interested in seeing Babi Yar, the site of the massacre of the Jews by the Nazis in 1941. I didn’t think I’d be able to find it or understand it on my own. I’m glad I got the help I did.
I met my guide, Raisa, at the embassy at 10:00 a.m. We took the Metro one stop to Dorohozhychi. We exited the Metro out one side and walked to the site of a large, wide ditch. Coming out of the ditch was a large wall that had a statue of people attached to it. This was the first memorial we saw to Babi Yar, which Raisa told me was a memorial to the “murdered Soviet citizens”.
I must not have been the only Jew who felt there was something not quite right about the first memorial, because on the other side of the Metro station Raisa and I saw two more memorials. One was shaped like a menorah. The other was a touching monument to the children who died at Babi Yar: three broken toys.
After this moving experience, we took the metro one stop to Golden Gate, where we saw the remnants of one of the original gates of the city. From there we walked down Volodomyrskaya past the St. Sophia Cathedral, past the statue of Bogdan Khmelnytsky (who himself killed several Jews in his time but is still considered a national hero) and past St. Michael’s Cathedral to Andrisky Uzviz.
Andrisky Uzviz is a narrow, hilly, cobblestoned street with arts and crafts from around Ukraine. It’s a beautiful street with beautiful crafts, but I have to admit it is not a pretty walk when it’s –5 Celsius (24 degrees F) and steep stone steps are covered with snow and ice. It’s moments like this when I remember that Victor told me the Russian word for translator—perevodchik—is very close to another word that means “someone who helps another person cross the street”.
Raisa was both my translator and my walking guide, and she received what I hope was a reward for her at the bottom of the hill. We were now in Kontraktova Ploscha, a square in the Podil neighborhood of Kyiv. We were very close to Kyiv Mohyla Academy, where I would be giving a presentation in a while. Before going there, I invited Raisa to a new café, Double Coffee. According to the In Your Pocket city guide, it’s a Latvian chain. It’s hard to describe the colors and textures of the walls, seats, and menus now (the shande of waiting three months to write a journal), but it felt as clean, colorful, and solid as any Western European café. It had the prices to match too—about $3-4 each for our cups of coffee and tea, and another $3 for a croissant. I’m still not sure if Raisa was completely comfortable in this environment, but the Embassy was giving me money for per diem and since she had taken the time to show me around and paid for my Metro tokens, I felt glad I could at least give her the chance to think about it.
My seminar at the university went fine. After the seminar, Lilia offered to go out to dinner with me. My first thought was Mimino, a Georgian restaurant. However, it’s a little expensive, Lilia goes there a lot, and it’s more fun with a group of people. Ironically, I was more familiar with other restaurants in Podil than she was. I suggested Black-Orange, a small café I had been to years ago. The food was as good as I remember it. More importantly, Lilia said the Ukrainian food was excellent. She said their derunye (potato pancakes) were the best she’d had in years.
After dinner, we took the Metro to Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Maiden). We walked along Khreschatyk (the main street in Kyiv). There was a wooden kiosk with women selling hot spiced wine. In retrospect, I can say that hot wine sold on the street out of a large steel pot for 60 cents is not a good buy.
We ended the evening at the Globus mall under Maidan Nezalezhnosti (I’ve seen the Maidan and her entourage of TV screens many times, so there was no need to stop and look at that really). I had fun looking at Hallmark cards in Russian, though the prices were pretty hefty.
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