We meet Boris, who recently began receiving support through the CSI sponsorship program , at the Jewish community center in Sumy, in the far north of Ukraine. Our first encounter immediately establishes a heartfelt connection.
When I tell Boris where I'm from, he says, "I get goosebumps!" For five years, he was stationed in the Magdeburg Börde region as a young Jewish officer in the Red Army. "I have such wonderful memories from that time... I talked a lot with the Germans at our regular table at the pub. One of them rolled up his trouser leg and showed me his war wound. They were sent to the front just like us..."
His name is Boris Solomonov, a reserve colonel. When he tells me how his grandmother survived the German occupation of Sumy, I ask him about it. “It happened like this: When the Germans marched in, an officer came to my grandmother’s house. He immediately noticed the Singer sewing machine. ‘Sew me a smock and some trousers,’ he demanded. My grandmother was the best seamstress in town. But she refused; she was quite self-assured. So he sent her to the barn, moved into the house himself, and fired a few shots into the air in the yard. Finally, she gave in. She took his measurements and sewed him new clothes. In the evening, he brought a loaf of bread, some bacon, and a can of chicken and said, ‘Here, Mother, for you.’ That’s how she survived the war; the officer protected her.”
Boris's second grandmother was also very special. His father's family came from the shtetl of Kobeljaki near Poltava. "Her name was Ester. I remember visiting her as a little boy," Boris continues, his eyes reddening. "She made the very best forshmak (herring salad). I still make it today just the way she did. She had studied medicine in St. Petersburg. Then, at the beginning of the war, she was sent as a medic to a military hospital in Stalingrad. Once, they brought in a severely wounded German officer. There was a huge uproar. But she said, 'Of course I will operate on him. I swore the Hippocratic Oath. He is first and foremost a human being, and he needs help. That's all that matters to me.'"
I rummaged through my suitcase again and left a packet of coffee from the Magdeburg roastery with a postcard for Boris.
