In this Sunday Nov. 11, 2012 photo Geda Rozina, 100,
poses at their apartment in Moscow. The four generations of Zimanenko-
Rozin's family embody the history of Jews in Russia over the past
century, from the restrictions of czarist times to the revival of Jewish
culture in Russia today.
MOSCOW (AP) — In czarist times, Geda Zimanenko watched her mother
offer the local police officer a shot of vodka on a plate and five
rubles every Sunday to overlook the fact that their family lived outside
the area where Jews were allowed to live.
Then came the Bolshevik Revolution and Zimanenko became a
good Communist, raising her own son to believe in ideals that strove to
stamp out distinctions of race and religion. Her grandson, born after
the death of dictator Josef Stalin, was more cynical of Communism and
felt the heat of growing Soviet anti-Semitism.
Now the
100-year-old matriarch's great-grandson, brought up after the fall of
the Soviet Union and in a spirit of freedom of conscience, is fully
embracing his Jewish roots: He works at Moscow's new Jewish museum,
Europe's largest and Russia's first major attempt to tell the story of
its Jewish community. The four generations of Zimanenko's family are a
microcosm of the history of Jews in Russia over the past century, from
the restrictions of imperial times through Soviet hardship to today's
revival of Jewish culture in Russia, a trajectory that is put on vivid
display at the Jewish Museum and Center of Tolerance.
The museum,
which opened this week, tells the history of Jewry through people's
stories, which come alive in video interviews and interactive displays.
The journeys of people like the Zimanenko-Rozin family are traced from
czarist Russia through the demise of the Soviet Union. The $50 million
museum was built under the patronage of President Vladimir Putin, who in
a symbolic move in 2007 donated a month of his salary — about $5,600 —
to its creation.
Putin has promoted Russia as a country that
welcomes Russian emigrants back into its fold. Early in his presidency,
he encouraged the repatriation of Russians who left in the wake of the
1917 Revolution as well as ethnic Russians left stranded in former
Soviet republics, now independent states.
In Poland, which is
undergoing a similar revival of Jewish culture, the Museum of the
History of Polish Jews is due to open next year in the heart of the
former Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw.
The Moscow museum's portrayal of
Russia as a safe and welcoming place for Jews today may run counter to
the beliefs of some emigres and their descendants who were raised on
dark stories about pogroms and discrimination in Russia. And while
there's no doubt that anti-Semitism has declined dramatically in Russia,
there remains a strong strand of far-right sentiment that expresses
itself in acts against Jews, as well as against dark-skinned foreigners.
To
Borukh Gorin, chairman of the museum's board, the history of Russian
Jews is much more complex than the stark narrative of anti-Jewish
oppression. The museum does not dwell on the "victimization of Jewish
history," he said.
"It's about what actually happened," said
Gorin. "And what happened was complicated. There were pogroms, but there
was also an active role of Jews in Russian public life — scientists,
writers, journalists, Jews awarded with the country's highest honors."
By
1917, the Russian Empire had the largest Jewish community in the world,
more than 5 million people. Most of the Jews were confined to the Pale
of Settlement, the area of the Russian Empire stretching across what are
now western Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Poland, beyond which Jews were
not allowed to live. Today, only about 150,000 people who identify
themselves as Jews live in Russia.
Zimanenko, feisty and talkative
even at 100, was the daughter of Marxists and the granddaughter of
pious Jews. Most of her life, she was true to Communist ideals and never
thought much about her Jewish identity.
"If somebody asked me
about my nationality then, it'd take me a while to remember that I was
Jewish," she said. "We were all Soviet people."
But like other
Soviet Jews, Zimanenko was reminded of her roots when Stalin's
repressive regime "foiled" the so-called Doctors' Plot in 1952, accusing
a group of prominent Moscow doctors, predominantly Jews, of conspiring
to kill Soviet leaders. Their trial unleashed the first major wave of
anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union, triggering dismissals, arrests and
executions among Jews.
Zimanenko's son, physicist Anatoly Rozin,
said the family had such a strong faith in Communism and Stalin that
they genuinely believed in the plot: "No one could doubt it. We were a
Communist family." In 1956, three years after Stalin's death, the
authorities admitted that the doctors had been framed.
Anatoly
Rozin, now 78, is still an atheist and does not feel much affinity for
his Jewish heritage, although he remembers being exposed to "everyday"
anti-Semitism since childhood when neighborhood children called him and
his brother names.
Anti-Semitism in the final decades of the
Soviet Union was never official policy, but Jews had greater difficulty
winning admission to university and traveling abroad.
Anatoly's
nephew and Zimanenko's grandson, 47-year-old Mark Rozin, was also
brought up in a family that was very "distant" from Jewish traditions
and Judaism. Although he had no firsthand experience of the
discrimination that led hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews to emigrate
in the 1970s and '80s, he said that the shared burden of inequality and
suspicion allowed him to relate to other Jews.
There was a
certain bond based "on the assumption that you faced some restrictions,
you were not allowed to do what others did, that's why you had to study
harder than others, for example," said Mark Rozin, a psychologist. In
that sense, "you were always reminded of your nationality, but that
didn't bring you closer to the traditions."
Scores of his friends
and distant relatives took advantage of their Jewish roots to secure
permission to leave the Soviet Union for Israel, but he said most left
for "freedom and opportunity," and not because of the Jewish faith.
Mark Rozin and his uncle also were allowed to emigrate, but decided against it.
"I'm a man of this culture," said Anatoly Rozin, referring to the Soviet Union. "Leaving seemed impossible at the time."
These
days, Zimanenko falters when she tries to pronounce the words "bar
mitzvah," only to be corrected by her 24-year-old great-grandson, Lev
Rozin. For him, having to get permission to travel or being barred from
university for being Jewish is something from another planet.
Russia
in recent years has seen a dramatic decrease in displays of
anti-Semitism, down to isolated cases of violence and vandalism. In a
survey conducted last year by the respected Levada Center, 8 percent of
those polled said they believed Jews should be barred from living in
Russia, down from 15 percent in 2004.
Members of the
Zimanenko-Rozin family said they felt no anti-Semitism in Russia today,
but only members of the youngest generation have been eager to explore
their roots. Lev Rozin, who works in the museum's children's center,
said he began to identify himself as a Jew in his teens after attending a
Jewish youth camp in Hungary. His two younger siblings attended the
same camp.
The revival of Jewish culture in Russia has been driven
predominantly by young people, which is reflected in the staff of the
Jewish Museum. The museum's development director, Natalya Fishman, is
just 22.
"In our family, it's the younger generation that is
trying to rediscover our roots," Lev Rozin said. "I try to keep my
Friday nights free, I don't eat pork and try to observe some Kashrut
(Jewish dietary) rules."
For his father, Jewish identity is more than religion or customs.
"It
stems from a feeling of belonging to your family, its roots, Grandma's
stories," Mark Rozin said. "By talking to Grandma and learning about her
life, we're getting closer to the Jewish culture."
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