Referendum


When I first glimpsed them, peering out through the dirty window glass of the no. 5 tram as it scraped its way along the embankment of the Vltava, I had trouble making sense of them. Were they really a series of propaganda posters agitating for the Czech annexation of Subcarpathia? Were they really prominently displayed in the stone frames that, before 1989, displayed Communist propaganda to the travelers along one of Prague’s busiest thoroughfares?

I blinked, twice. Yes, it seemed to be true.


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Is this evidence of some latent thread of Czech hope, a nostalgic longing for a mythic Slavic past, a yearning for reunification with Československo’s lost little brother, Podkarpatská Rus? Emboldened, perhaps, by Putin’s recent swallowing in a single bite the whole of Crimea, were there Czech irredentists on the march?

The whole thing struck me as maybe satirical, so I went to the internet to find out more. It is true that, prior to 1989, the six stone frames built into the wall that separates Letná hill from the embankments named after Edvard Beneš and Kapitán Otakar Jaroš, were used for socialist propaganda. After the change of regime, they fell into disuse. In 2005, they were again put to use as an outdoor public art gallery named Artwall.

The current exhibition, Verchovina, is by a group of Slovak artists, known as Kassaboys, who hail from Košice (Kassa in Hungarian). The posters act as the ephemera from a fictitious referendum to reunite Czechoslovakia, including Subcarpathia, which was an integral part of the republic in the interwar period 1918-1938. The artists themselves state that the work is a reaction to current events in Ukraine, where an implicitly fictitious referendum in real life has brought Crimea back under Russian rule. And their choice of the series of words: integration, connection, affiliation, annexation serves as a commentary on a possible future for Podkarpatská Rus (and, pars pro toto, of the whole of Ukraine) with regard to the EU.

referendum referendum referendum referendum referendum referendum referendum The original posters show that they were composed by adding the red slogans on the illustrations of a German-language travel brochure of Subcarpathia from the 1930s

You can find out more at the Artwall web site (in Slovak) and in this article of the Aktualně.cz site (in Czech).


Come with us! Maramureș, Bukovina and South-Eastern Poland


This year, the travel season starts late along Río Wang, but this also demonstrates the strength of the Wang river. After all, a full revolution and the intervention of a superpower was necessary to renounce the repetition of the Crimean tour, planned for this spring and awaited by so many of our readers, as well as the Lemberg Easter, which is especially painful, because this year, as a rare constellation, every denomination of Lemberg – Catholic Poles, Ukrainian Greek Catholics, Russian Orthodox, and Armenian Catholics – celebrated it in the same days in the countless churches of the city, on its streets and squares, as well as in the open-air museum of wooden churches.

Our first tour in this year, by popular demand, is the repetition and expansion of last year’s Maramureș-Bukovina journey. Between 25 and 29 June (Wednesday–Sunday) we leave from Budapest by bus, and arrive through the medieval city of Baia Mare/Nagybánya, the cradle of Hungarian Impressionism and the gate of historical Maramureș, to one of the most archaic regions of Transylvania. We visit its wooden churches included in the list of UNESCO World Heritage and its Hasidic cemeteries, Sighetul Marmației/Máramarossziget, the central town of the region, cut in two by the Tisza river and the Ukrainian-Romanian border, and the “merry cemetery” of Sapânța/Szaplonca. We climb up with the narrow-gauge forestry railway to the virgin forest in the border mountains, to return in the afternoon, along with the wagons loaded with wood, to the Rusyn village of Vișeu de Sus/Felsővisó. We walk to the Horses’ Waterfall and the pass of the Radna Mountains. We visit the Renaissance-style princely monasteries in Bukovina, painted both inside and out with the full symbolism of Orthodox icons, which also feature on the list of UNESCO World Heritage. Our accommodation will be in traditional peasant farms engaged in agroturism, and – if we manage to reserve in time – in the Bukovina monasteries. The participation fee for the five-day tour (accommodation with breakfast + bus from Budapest and back + guide) is about 270-300 euros, depending on the number of participants. If you are interested, please register by 31 May, after which we will publish, on the basis of the certain registrations, the final participation fee and send out the detailed program.

Our previous posts from the the former county of Maramureș (click for a full map), which will increase in the following weeks.

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On our second journey, between 13 and 17 August (Wednesday–Sunday) we will wander all over Western Galicia, today’s South-Eastern Poland, the richest region of the medieval and early Polish kingdom and the traditional center of Polish Jewry. Our road leads through Renaissance cities and castles, shtetls and beautifully carved Hasidic cemeteries. Leaving from Budapest by bus, we first stop in Krakow, where we visit the Renaissance old town, the Wawel and the Jewish suburb of Kazimierz, well off of the tourist routes. Through the medieval town of Sandomierz we arrive at Lublin, a second center of medieval Polish kingdom and formerly its largest Jewish center. From there we turn south to visit the most beautiful old towns along the modern Ukrainian border, the ideal Renaissance Zamość, Leżajsk, the Hasidic pilgrimage site and Jarosław, the seat of the former Jewish “parliament” of Poland, to Przemyśl at the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains, a former bulwark of the Austrian Empire, and to the Bieszczady, the most romantic mountains of present-day Poland, where we will also visit the ghost villages of the Rusyns displaced after WWII. Turning back to the west, we will pass through the Renaissance towns of Rzeszów, Tarnów and Nowy Sącz and come to the Dukla Pass, where we also stop at some of the soldiers’ cemeteries of the 1915 Gorlice breakthrough, and from where we will return, through Bardejov/Bártfa and Košice/Kassa to Budapest. Here you can find the planned route of the journey. The participation fee for the five-day tour (accommodation with breakfast + bus from Budapest and back + guide) is about 300-330 euros, depending on the number of participants. If you are interested, please register until 31 May, after which we will publish, on the basis of the certain registrations, the final participation fee and send out the detailed program.

Soon we will publish new plans of further journeys.


Dissolving: Europe from North to South

Lemberg/Lwów (Galicia, once Austrian Empire, then Poland, later Soviet Union, now Ukraine), c. 1900, from here

Rovinj/Rovigno (Istria, once Austrian Empire, then Italy, later Yugoslavia, now Croatia), 25 May 2014

So that's why “Poema” is hard to fit into a tanda...

El Garron and its downstairs cabaret hall Palermo, 6 rue Fontain, just off Pigalle (1925)

Most of of the practicing and aspiring Argentine tango DJs must have noticed that Francisco Canaro’s superb (and much overplayed) 1935 “Poema” doesn’t quite fit seamlessly into tandas (as sets of tango records played for the dancers, typically from the same orchestra and the same time, are called). “Poema” is quite singular in its gently melancholic, softly nostalgic flow, while other Canaro’s hits of the period tend to be more insistent and dramatic in quality, energetically driving rather than softly soothing.

One can’t help noticing a few more peculiarities about this hit. Its popularity peaks overseas, especially in Europe, and reaches the low point in Buenos Aires. And no other orchestras in Argentine recorded the piece.

Thanks to German Nemoljakin’s constant flow of stories from tango’s past, I got an intriguing glimpse of “Poema”’s special history, and couldn’t resist digging deeper into it. To sum it up:
The beautiful “Poema” isn’t quite an Argentine tango, it is as much a European tango, composed by the expat musicians who were singularly successful in transplanting tango to the musical scene of Paris.

Furthermore, “Poema”’s lack of acceptance in Buenos Aires wasn’t helped by the dark political undertones of its story, and the fact that its lyrics are a thinly veiled confession of a banished murderer.
“Poema” is undoubtedly the best composition of Eduardo Bianco, an Argentine who lived in Europe for nearly 20 years, and who mastered the art of making the tango of Argentina sound the Parisian way. The oft-retold story says that Bianco and Mario Melfi, aided by others in their band, composed it on a train during a 1932 tour of Germany. What is rarely mentioned is that Bianco’s lyrics tell his personal, and thoroughly suppressed, story from his final year in Buenos Aires. In 1924, Eduardo Bianco played the first violin in the orchestra of the famous Teatro Apolo at Avenida Corrientes. Bianco learned that his wife cheated on him with the pianist of the orchestra, and shot his rival to death in a fit of jealousy. As translated into English by Alberto Paz, Bianco’s stanzas tell us how a dream of sweet love ended up awakening the heart’s monsters, the chimeras which can never be fully grasped; the words “intenso mal” which Alberto Paz translated as “intense misfortune” may be better interpreted as “overpowering evil”:


Francisco Canaro - Roberto Maida, Poema (1935)

Fué un ensueño de dulce amor,
horas de dicha y de querer,
fué el poema de ayer,
que yo soñé,
de dorado color,
vanas quimeras del corazón,
no logrará descifrar jamás,
nido tan fugaz,
fue un ensueño de amor y adoración.

Cuando las flores de tu rosal,
vuelvan mas bellas a florecer,
recordarás mi querer,
y has de saber,
todo mi intenso mal.

De aquel poema embriagador,
ya nada queda entre los dos,
doy mi triste adiós,
sentiras la emoción,
de mi dolor…
It was a dream of sweet love,
hours of happiness and loving,
it was the poem of yesterday,
that I dreamed,
of gilded color,
vain chimeras of the heart,
it will not manage to never decipher,
so fleeting nest,
it was a dream of love and adoration.

When the flowers of your rose garden,
bloom again ever so beautiful,
you'll remember my love,
and you will come to know,
all my intense misfortune.

Of that one intoxicating poem,
nothing is left between us,
I say my sad goodbye,
you'll feel the emotion,
of my pain…

Eduardo Bianco was jailed and tried for murder, and acquitted - according to José María Otero, owing to political connections of Bianco’s influential rich friend, Martin “Macoco” Álzaga Unzué, a race driver, bon vivant, and night club owner whose circle included top entertainers, aristocrats, and mobsters. But the acquitted violinist had to leave Argentina. Soon, he sailed for France.


In Paris, Bianco with the bandoneonist Juan Bautista Deambroggio “Bachicha” assembled Orquesta Típica Bianco-Bachicha, which started to play in the downstairs cabaret of the famed Argentine-themed Montmartre boîte, “El Garron”, and toured Europe, the Americas, and Middle East. He continued cultivating relationships with the rich and powerful, even dedicating his tango compositions to kings and queens, and (twice) to Benito Mussolini, and boasting of praise from Stalin and Hitler. It was the 1926 “Plegaria”, dedicated to Spanish king Alfonso XIII, “symbol of Spanish democracy” (who fled after the electoral victory of the Republicans, and supported Franco with the outbreak of Spanish Civil War), which brought Bianco most infamy.



Orquesta Típica Argentina “Eduardo Bianco”: Plegaria. Span. Refraingesang: Mario Visconti. Telefunken, Die Deutsche Weltmarke, E 2861, March 1939

The most detailed account of Bianco’s European years has been provided in Enrique Cadícamo’s 1975 La historia del tango en París (and summarized in a recent El Litoral article). Cadícamo, who toured Europe with the already presented Gardel, advised his tango friends to avoid discussing politics with Eduardo Bianco because Bianco supposedly informed for Gestapo (the French police detained and investigated him in 1937, but released him). Bianco associated himself with Eduardo Labougle Carranza, Argentine ambassador in the Third Reich Berlin and an avowed antisemite. They supposedly convinced Goebbels that tango should take place of the “racially tainted” Jazz music, and were invited to perform in Berlin’s “La scala”. Then, at an Argentine asado reception at the Embassy, Bianco’s orchestra got to entertain Hitler himself (even with a bandoneon player personally grilling meats for him), and the Führer asked for an encore performance of “Plegaria” (“Prayer” in Spanish). The sentimental monster must have enjoyed the play between the solemn sound of the piece and the frivolous, erotic perception of the word “tango”, because soon, he found a horrible use for Bianco’s score. In a short time, “Plegaria” would be dubbed “Tango of Death”, as the death camp prisoner bands were ordered to play it when the camp prisoners were led to execution. The horror of “Tango of Death” has been immortalized in the verses of Paul Celan under his post-war impressions of Lwów’s Janówska death camp (here it is read by himself in German). Although the Romanian translation of the poem, published before the German original, still had “tangul” in its title, in the final German version “Plegaria” turned into “Todesfuge”, “The Death Fugue”!

(A personal side note here … this is how I got to understand another allusion in Psoy Korolenko’s Ilimsky Ostrog, an amalgamation of quotes and allusions of three centuries of Russian and foreign classic poetry, folk song, pop and rock, where peeling off the layers of meaning never ends … “Meine Todesfuge” is heard near 4:55 in this concert record)

The Jewish members of the Lwów Philharmonics playing the “Tango of Death” in Lwów’s Janówska death camp (more about it here)

Mauthausen, 30. June 1942. Yad Vashem Archive, 2AO7


The WWII broke out, and Ambassador Labougle returned to Argentina to champion the cause of South American neutrality in the war, the cause which must have been largely anti-American and anti-Brazilian, rather than pro-Axis, in Argentina, since it traditionally allied itself with Great Britain, its main export market, and, after the Great Depression-era unfair trade treaties went into effect, also Argentina’s main supplier of manufactured goods. The United States, in the meantime, practiced the ideology of continental domination, the Manifest Destiny, and armed Argentina’s regional arch-rival, Brazil. Although truth be said, Argentine leaders sought to emulate many aspects of the Axis, from nationalist fervor to regional expansion plans (Argentina even covertly installed a friendly, pro-fascist government in Bolivia in a 1943 coup). But time was running out for the open sympathizers of the Reich, and in January 1944, Argentina had to break relations with Nazi Germany (although it didn’t declare war until a year later). In the meantime, Bianco played across occupied Europe for the Nazi troops, and on the Third Reich radio stations. As it’s become clear that Argentina will sever relations with the Reich soon, he left on a Spanish visa from King Alfonso’s times, and faced a lengthy investigation by the British intelligence services – Bianco himself wrote that he was only cleared owing to his investigator’s appreciation of the music of tango. He finally returned to Buenos Aires in 1943, at the peak of Tango’s Golden age, amid insane richness of tango orchestras. Bianco tried hard but has never succeeded in competing against the local talent; his remained a purely export version of Argentine tango.

Baron Tsunayoshi Megata, son of famed Japanese diplomat Tanetaro Megata, came to Paris in 1920 to cure a disfiguring blood vessel tumor on his face, and stayed until 1926. “El Barón” Megata, a playboy and accomplished ballroom dancer, first discovered El Garron, when Manuel Pizarro’s tango orchestra was paying here. Soon Megata has become a regular, and learned to dance. On return to Japan, he packed cases of tango records from Paris – Pizarro, Bachicha, Bianco… – and organized a dance school for the aristocracy, who were taught that tango was a Parisian dance.
Before we return to 1935, and to Canaro, let me mention that “Poema” has been recorded by one more Parisian band, the Orquesta Típica Auguste-Jean Pesenti du Coliseum de Paris (A.-J. Pesenti was a bandoneonist from Colombia known to us largely owing to the Japanese collectors; in fact pre-WWII tango dancers and listeners in Japan played French tango records of Bianco, Bachicha, Pizzarro, and others, and generally believed that tango was a genre of French music)

Canaro, of course, also famously chose Paris to be his base after 1925 (embarking on tours to New York, Berlin, Hamburg, and Madrid, and to a family roots discovery trip to Italy, from France). Sometimes people say that Canaro stayed abroad for a whole decade, and supposedly didn’t make a comeback to Buenos Aires until 1935! Technically, it’s very untrue, and yet in terms of Francisco Canaro’s legacy and influence, it may be true that the decade between 1925 and 1934 was the low-key part of his tango carrier. He tried diversifying into other genres – rancheras, maxixe, foxtrot, jazz, and even recorded such Americana pieces as “Red Red Robin” as “Francisco Canaro Jazz Band”. He toured the provincial towns, played a lot for the radio stations, launched a series of comedy musicals, and appeared in a movie with Gardel, all to regain his fame and to secure the grand dance halls of BsAs for himself again. Perhaps it was the chilling effect of the Great Depression on the porteño party scene. Or Canaro’s affiliation with the recording company Nacional Odeon, which pitted him against the more prominent RCA Victor. Or it could have been the continuing echo from yet another fatal gunshot story which may have played a role in Canaro’s departure to Paris in the first place.

This is a story which began almost exactly 100 years ago, in September 1914. Francisco Canaro’s lucky break into the ranks of most-listened-to tango orchestras was catalyzed by his invitation to highlight Primero Baile del Internado, the First Ball of Medical Interns, which marked the end of the spring break in the School of Medicine. The interns of Buenos Aires found their inspiration in Paris, in traditional medical students Bal de L’Internat held at Bullier Hall. To this rancorous celebration at the famous Palais de Glace, Canaro premiered a tango titled Matasano, “The Slayer of the Healthy” (as the medical students were humorously called), dedicated to Hospital Durand in Caballito neighborhood. The following year, Canaro premiered tango “El Internado”, “The Intern”, at the Intern’s Ball.

The tradition continued for 11 years, with many pranks and with tango titles such as “Aquí se vacuna” (”Immunizations shots here”, dedicated to Public Health Office), “Anatomia”, “Cloroformo”, “El termómetro”, “La biblioteca” (”The Medical Library”), “Hospital Durand”, “Mano Brava” and “Qué muñeca” (dedicated to outstanding surgeons’ hands), “La inyección” and “El microbio” (continued with tangos about specific pathogens, “El dengue” and “Ae. Aegypti”), even “Paraiso Artificial” (”Artificial Paradise”, obviously a tango about drugs). The tango which premiered in 1924 was titled “El once: el divertismento” – “The 11th: let’s have fun”.


But soon after the 1924 celebration, the medical students took part in a prank gone horribly wrong, and an intern Ernesto O’Farrel was shot and killed by an administrator at Hospital Piñero, triggering a physician strike at all municipal hospitals. The Baile del Internado was never held again. And Canaro’s memoirs mourn the things tango lost after 1924...

Yet Canaro’s tango also gained from being exposed to the music of the European expats, and he kept returning to the scores from Paris, starting from a 1928 recording, with Charlo, of “Bandoneón arrabalero”, a tango Canaro re-recorded several times. The 1925 score is signed by Juan Bautista Deambrogio Bachicha himself, although Enrique Cadícamo says in La historia del tango en París that it was Horacio Petorossi, a guitar player in Bianchi-Bachicha orchestra, who sold the score to Bachicha for a thousand franks. The 1935 recording of Bianco’s Poema continued the trend of cross-fertilization of Parisian and BsAs tango music, but failed to impress the listeners in Argentina.
The most powerful admission of Parisian influences Canaro himself made is his 1938 record of “El Garron”, “Tango Criollo-Parisian”:


Quinteto Don Pancho (Francisco Canaro), El Garron (Tango Criollo-Parisian) (1938)

Layers of time / Escrito en el tiempo


Ghost inscriptions of restaurateurs following each other in the same place, in Abbazia, the most elegant resort place of the former Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Who knows more about them?   Letras fantasmas que se resisten a desaparecer y emergen unas sobre otras en Abbazia, el lugar de descanso más elegante de la antigua Monarquía Austro-Húngara. ¿Quién sabe alguna historia de esta esquina de Europa?

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Still a villa suburbana at the turn of the century (enlarge here), today at the corner of Veprinački put and ulica Joakima Rakovca.   Era aún una villa suburbana a la vuelta del siglo (ampliar plano), hoy languidece en la esquina del camino de Veprinac con la calle Joakim Rakovec.

Diluvio


El cuadradito amarillo que vemos en la frente del desvaído rostro de esta bruja es Bobowa, al sureste de Polonia, en las estribaciones de los Cárpatos. Aquí estamos, justo en el ojo más pequeño del ciclón que nos ha rondado por dos días vertiendo agua sin parar sobre la zona del Diluvio de Sienkiewicz. Nos dirigimos a este antiguo shtetl que alberga uno de los más hermosos cementerios judíos intactos de Polonia. Las tumbas miran desde lo alto de la colina elevada sobre el pueblo hacia el valle de Biala, por lo que ni la Wehrmacht, ni la población local tuvieron ánimo bastante para ponerse a destruir o reciclar las lápidas, como sí hicieron en tantísimos otros cementerios.


Pasado Gromnik la carretera gira hacia el valle por donde corre el río. En ambas riberas ya apilan sacos de arena, las bombas de achique están en funcionamiento y el tramo inferior del camino empieza a inundarse. Tenemos que apresurarnos a cruzar el cementerio antes de que el camino de vuelta quede completamente cortado.


Al parar en Ciężkowice para fotografiar el cementerio militar austro-húngaro, truena con violencia por Gorlice, detrás de Bobowa, como el cañoneo en la Ofensiva de  Gorlice de 1915, donde cayeron el Capitán de Caballería Oswald Richthofen y sus sesenta y tres húsares húngaros. Algunos de los caídos no pudieron ser identificados y en sus tumbas solo se lee: Ein tapferer ungarischer Krieger: un valiente guerrero húngaro.


La tormenta nos pilla justo antes de llegar a Bobowa. Con el aguacero descargando sobre el parabrisas avanzamos más despacio que si fuéramos a pie. A lo largo de la calle principal del pueblo, por donde una vez galoparon los jinetes jasídicos para saludar al gran tzadík Ben Zion Halberstam, baja ahora un torrente.


Para cuando llegamos al final del pueblo, desde donde se discierne el blanco del ohel del tzadik y el punteado negro de las pequeñas lápidas en la cima de la colina, la riada se ha vuelto amarillenta y arrastra piedras. De todas partes, desde los bordes de los jardines, las calles laterales, el camino de montaña que lleva al cementerio, desde ambos lados del valle, la turbia avalancha parduzca vierte agua sobre la carretera. Tenemos que volver atrás, antes de quedar atrapados en el pueblo inundado, como nos ocurrió hace muchos años en el Csíkmenaság transilvano. Dejando el valle Biała a nuestras espaldas y volviendo la vista desde la orilla del río Dunajec que ruge con fuerza, vemos que la tormenta ha comenzado a descargar de nuevo por encima de las montañas de Bobowa.


Tuvimos que dar media vuelta antes de llegar a nuestra meta pero esperamos que en cosa de un mes, cuando estemos aquí de nuevo, el tiempo en Bobowa será mejor. Con todo, la conducción a lo largo del Dunajec bajo la lluvia nos proporcionó una recompensa inesperada. En el pueblo de Zakliczyn, en una tranquila calle secundaria, dimos con un pequeño cementerio militar de la época de la Ofensiva de Gorlice. Es el único cementerio militar judío del país. Yacen aquí once judíos que lucharon del lado austro-húngaro y uno del lado ruso. No sabemos en cuál descansa cada uno pues las doce tumbas son anónimas.

bobowa bobowa bobowa bobowa bobowa bobowa bobowa bobowa bobowa bobowa bobowa bobowa bobowa bobowa

Sobre el cementerio militar nr. 293, diseñado al igual que otros varios cementerios de la Primera Gran Guerra en esta región por el arquitecto militar austríaco, teniente Robert Motka, nos informa Két Sheng de que también dan noticias algunas postales contemporáneas en yídish (o más bien en alemán, escrito en carácteres hebraicos). Una de ellas, publicada por el Kriegsgräberfürsorge de Viena, nos ofrece la lista de nombres de las unidades militares de los soldados judíos caídos.

«Vestgalitsisher kriegsfriedhof / Izraelitisher friedhof Zaklitshin»



Deluge


The yellow square on the forehead of the witch-face turned aside is Bobowa in southeastern Poland, at the Carpathian foothills. Here we are, just in the smaller eye of the cyclone, which has been rotating around for two days, incessantly pouring rain on the site of Sienkiewicz’s Deluge. We are heading to the former shtetl, one of the most beautiful intact Jewish graveyards of Poland. The graves look down from a high hilltop over the village to the valley of Biała, so that neither the Wehrmacht, nor the local people were later in any mood to mess with the removal and recycling of the stones, as they did in many other cemeteries.


After Gromnik, the road turns down to the river valley. On its two sides they are already piling up the sandbags, pumps are running, and at its lowest point, the road is already half-flooded by the river. We must rush through the cemetery, before the way back is completely closed to us.


As I stop in Ciężkowice to photograph the Austro-Hungarian military cemetery, it is already thundering forcefully from Gorlice beyond Bobowa, like the guns of the 1915 Gorlice breakthrough, where Cavalry Captain Oswald Richthofen and his sixty-three Hungarian hussars fell. Some of the fallen were no longer recognizable, and so their graves bear only this much: Ein tapferer ungarischer Krieger, a valiant Hungarian warrior.


The storm meets us just before Bobowa. We can only move forward at walking speed, with the rain pouring onto the windshield. Along the main street of the village, where once Hassidic riders galloped to greet the great Tsaddik Ben Zion Halberstam, now water is running deep.


By the time we get to the end of the village, from where one can already discern the whitewashed ohel of the Tsaddik and the first, tiny black gravestones on the hilltop, the flood has become yellowish and rolls stones. All around, from the edges of the gardens, the side streets, the mountain road leading to the cemetery, from both sides of the valley, the troubled yellow river is pouring onto the road. We have to turn back, before we become trapped in the flooded village, as happened many years ago in the Transylvanian Csíkmenaság. Leaving the Biała valley behind us, and looking back from the bank of the loudly roaring Dunajec river, we see that the storm has begun again above the mountains of Bobowa.


We had to turn back before the our goal, but we hope that in a month, when we come here again, the weather will be better in Bobowa. However, driving along the Dunajec in the pouring rain, we have an unexpected compensation. In the village of Zakliczyn, a small military cemetery appears on a quiet side street, dating from the time of the Gorlice breakthrough. It is the only Jewish military cemetery in the country. Buried here are eleven Jews, who fought for the Austro-Hungarian side, and one for the Russian side. We do not know which of them lay where, as all twelve graves are anonymous.

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About the military cemetery nr. 293, planned, similarly to several other WWI cemeteries of the region, by the Austrian military architect Lieutenant Robert Motka, writes Két Sheng, some contemporary Yiddish-language postcards (or rather German-language ones in Hebrew letters) also gave news. One of them, published by the Kriegsgräberfürsorge of Vienna, also lists the names of the military units of the fallen Jewish soldiers.

“Vestgalitsisher kriegsfriedhof / Izraelitisher friedhof Zaklitshin”