Medals and Memories for Jewish Veterans From Russia By BENJAMIN MUELLERMAY 9, 2015
Leonid Rozenberg sat on his walker, his wrists draped over its aluminum arms and his suit lapels dripping with war medals, as a crush of Russians of all ages jostled to get closer. Some offered red carnations, which he slipped into spaces in the frame of the walker. Others carried cameras, or pointed at his gold-and-silver chest, trying to elicit a story.
He indulged each visitor and, then, with a viselike handshake or a kiss on the cheek, sent them off, leaning back into his rolling throne as another tier of people pushed closer.
In Brooklyn on Saturday, the 70th anniversary of the Allied victory over the Nazis in World War II was celebrated as one of the last chances to pay tribute to a group that is becoming increasingly rare: Jewish veterans of the Russian Red Army.
Once hundreds strong in heavily Russian sections of Brooklyn, these veterans are now a shrinking club. But for the throngs of supporters who turned out on a drizzly Saturday morning, declining numbers became a cause for renewed attention to this segment of the Allied forces, who many feel have taken a back seat in history to American and British soldiers.
“People are not taught about the role of soldiers on the other side of the Eastern Front,” Mr. Rozenberg, 93, said through a translator. “They are not told this.”
May 9, he continued, is a chance to fight back against a tide of forgetfulness, a “holy day” for him and the few dozen other veterans who donned old medals for a slow march on the boardwalk in Brighton Beach.
Mr. Rozenberg said: “For people to learn, you have to talk about it, the sacrifice that happened in the Soviet Union.”
In 1939, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed a nonaggression pact. But by 1941, some historians say, the Soviet Union was bearing a large part of the burden. Many on Saturday cited the estimate by some historians that for every American soldier who died fighting Germany, 80 Soviet soldiers were killed.
Of the 500,000 Jews who fought for the Red Army, about 200,000 are thought to have died on the battlefield or in German captivity.
Boris Yezersky, whose grandfather escaped execution at the hands of the Germans by fleeing into the woods at age 15 before earning 27 orders and medals for his military service, said he attends every anniversary celebration to tell his grandfather’s story. He carried red carnations, the same kind he remembered placing at a memorial in Minsk as a child, and passed handfuls to his two children to give to veterans.
His son Lawrence, 10, lifted a sign, drawn in colored pencils and attached to a small branch, depicting the orange and black ribbon of the Order of Saint George, a symbol of victory.
“He tells his teachers the story,” Mr. Yezersky said of his son, named after Mr. Yezersky’s grandfather Lev. “If it wasn’t for the Soviet army, what would have happened during World War II?”
(In a reminder of the way political tensions can complicate such celebrations, someone on Saturday was handing out fliers urging people to put away their ribbons, citing the way pro-Russian separatists have brandished them during the recent crisis in Ukraine.)
Mr. Yezersky said he cherished the chance to be at the boardwalk for one of the last big remembrances. “This is one of the last few years to see them alive,” he said.
After holding court outside the Shorefront YM-YWCA, Mr. Rozenberg lifted himself from his seat and led a row of veterans down the boardwalk, some of them carrying pillows affixed with additional medals. Mr. Rozenberg was separated from his family when he left for the Kiev School of Artillery in 1939, according to an account preserved by the Blavatnik Archive, which has collected the stories of Jewish Red Army veterans. Five years later, near Bialystok, he encountered his father, a captain in a bomber regiment, who told him his mother, brother and sister had been killed by the Nazis.
He said in an interview that he remembered the days veterans like him walked in stronger numbers, but saw this anniversary as a chance to “spread the truth.”
Hidden in recollections of the war’s destruction were moments of serendipity. Asya Gindina, 89, served as a medic and recalled tending to a badly burned soldier who had been left for dead. “If I survive, I’ll find you,” she recalled him telling her, and he did: Several years later, they married.
Waiters from restaurants along the boardwalk lined the parade. A brass band played songs from the postwar Soviet Union.
Gene Rubinshteyn, 44, held aloft a red Soviet flag, not as an ideological symbol, he said, but rather as a reminder of the sacrifice soldiers like his grandfather made.
Leon Geyer opened a binder that held photos of his two grandfathers beside a page of medals, pointing to each in turn and explaining the history they held. As the drizzle turned into a steady rain on the boardwalk, his mother Yeva took out a tissue and wiped the plastic photo covers clean.
Click for Full Text!
