Monday 01 January 2024
I don’t walk the dog. Laska walks me.
Sure, she benefits from our daily walks: exercise, stress relief, joy. She glories in nature’s splendor. The curious and familiar smells charm her. The plushness and sensation of green grass delight her. All these joys of nature improve her well-being, but I must admit that the same treasures of the outdoors replenish me, too. During the dawn hours, she patiently waits—more like sleeping atop my feet—while I write. This first, early morning writing session has become our routine. If Laska isn’t sleeping atop my feet, making sure I am indeed writing, she then is awake sitting on the threshold of the sliding door, which is next to my writing desk, pretending not to watch me, but her alert ears are listening to the tapping noises of my keyboard. Laska is as important a presence as are my wife, children, or book editor, King Arthur, during my writing sessions. She is my taskmaster, a worthy and inspirational one. If I’m not busy typing, she stares, as if judging me, puzzled (is she annoyed? Disappointed?) by the silence—no clacking of keyboard buttons.
Before Laska joined our pack, I didn’t purposely go on walks. I wasn’t necessarily lethargic, but I didn’t see the value of long walks. Walking to just walk didn’t seem appealing. I mean… walking around the block; why would I do that? What would I see that I didn’t notice before? Before Laska’s arrival, I didn’t consider walking as an effective form of exercise. Before our daily walks, I failed to value the significance of non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT), the energy you consume while doing other activities besides exercise, sleeping, eating, or simply existing. Laska certainly has schooled me on many lessons on living. She changed my perspectives on everything, including thinking and writing.
During our walks, Laska could simply be trotting down the sidewalk, but suddenly an alluring and new smell attracts her attention. I, too become fascinated by this unexpected curiosity. What is it? What animal left this marking? How should I respond to it? Laska’s nose then investigates. What seems like hours, she sniffs quickly then deliberately; the time she devotes to the unique scent consumes her. Marveling at her concentration, I stand, examining my surroundings. “Oh, look! The neighbor has a new garden gnome; the houseowner down the street planted an entire garden bed of foxglove flowers; the homeowner five blocks north is adding a dormer.”
Satisfied with her investigation of the new smell, Laska guides me onward, and we discover more intriguing and engaging scents and sights. For me, I am drawn to the house with the large “Happy Birthday” X sign, which the homeowners decorated on their front lawn. Each letter of “Happy Birthday” X is pink, glittered by shiny silver sparkles. I smile, but quickly my attention goes to the large bay window, and I see the poster. The poster reads: “Your smile is forever embedded in our hearts. In loving memory of” X. To the right of the written text is a picture of a girl, 4 or 5 years old. This family is commemorating X’s birthday. The memorial in fact is an yearly event, lasting an entire week. Tears well up in my eyes, and thoughts of my own losses… losing my twins… immediately overwhelm me. I normally don’t drive down this street; therefore, I wouldn’t have ever noticed this remembrance ritual.
Although painful, I’m glad I found this house and their solemn and heartfelt dedication to their child. For years, I chose to mourn the loss of my twins privately. Only when I began writing my Katyn book did I venture to write about their passing publicly. And perhaps this family’s example of commemoration in some small way influenced my artistic memorialization for Ariel and Jacob. Damn the people who question “why are they bringing up such a terrible memory? Why are they holding a birthday in heaven celebration?” My responses are: “Why not?” “How does their tribute to their daughter bother you?” If their honoring of the child who once lived so briefly helps them cope with her loss, I consider that act as a loving and precious custom, one that I gladly would join in. Their affection for the lost child isn’t idolatry or something profane. Directly experiencing that appalling and evil loss of a child—the kind that, as Dostoevsky writes, makes you stop believing in God—I curse the people who say celebrating this child’s birthday in heaven is inappropriate or excessive. For those people, I also say, “You just don’t know that kind of agony.”
Another day, and another walk takes Laska and me to another street and other sights. This time, the date is Friday 4 March 2022, days after Russia’s immoral and illegal full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In the distance, I notice the blue and yellow flag of Ukraine. “What a beautiful hue of blue! And that yellow; it reminds me of a field of wheat. It is a pretty flag,” I exclaimed to myself. The family must be Ukrainian. I wondered if they have relatives there. I sympathized with their plight. To this day, I support all financial, military, and moral aid the world had provided and has continued to offer President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his fellow Ukrainians. Seeing the blue and yellow flag during the walk, I developed another reason to detest Vladimir Putin.
As I approached to admire the colors, I shuddered. I stopped walking. Confused, Laska looked up at me. “Laska, wait,” I said. There was another flag, a tiny red and black one perched beneath the large blue and yellow banner. At first, I thought I imagined seeing this red and black flag; I supposed that my mind, consumed with World War II history and imagery from working on the Katyn book project, conjured this vision of a red and black flag. What a horrible flag to emerge from my unconscious! Did I really see it? My goosebumps didn’t go away. I was afraid. I mean, how could someone hang such a flag? In that moment, I chose to stop staring at it because I didn’t want to bring attention to myself and Laska. The scene of me staring at the red and black flag would have indicated to this particular Ukrainian family, if they were to come outside and notice me staring at their flag, that I knew what that flag represented. Still terrified, I convinced myself that the flag wasn’t real. I told myself that I am dreaming it—what a horrible nightmare if I were dreaming it. “Walk this way tomorrow, and see if that flag is still there,” I confided to myself. The dread of having seen that flag continued to unnerve me. I quickened my walking pace, immediately relieved that I was away from this house.
With determination on the following day, Laska and I walked to the block where this house flying the red and black flag was located. “Will I see the red and black flag today?” I asked myself. As I made my way down the street, I noticed more flags. In a show of solidarity for this Ukrainian family, the surrounding neighbors purchased and displayed on their properties small blue and yellow Ukrainian flags. What heartwarming gestures of neighborliness! I admired such supportive friends that this Ukrainian family had living next to them.
Regrettably, the glow of good nature I experienced evaporated promptly because the small red and black flag was still there. I wasn’t hallucinating it. Yesterday’s experience of seeing that flag was real. Therefore, I recognized and understood immediately what I was seeing. The red and black flag was the banner for the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). Formed during 1942 under Nazi occupation, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army was an ultra-nationalist para-military organization whose goal was to create an independent Ukraine, and their methods to achieve that independence were savagely brutal. They targeted Soviet communists but others as well. They committed various barbaric, merciless, and callous atrocities, including the ethnic cleansing of both Poles and Jews. Their crimes include: crucifixions, splitting open pregnant women, butchering individuals, and other gruesome acts of savagery. Although the anti-communistic UPA did resist and kill the invading Nazi forces, UPA members did collaborate with the Nazis.
Yes, the number of UPA members was small, and their actions DO NOT represent the ethos or conduct of all Ukrainians, past or present. And Putin’s outrageous and false claim that the current Ukrainian leadership is made up of UPA members—in other words, Nazis—must be emphasized to be wrong. And we must be reminded that, after all, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Jewish Ukrainian family were murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust. Zelenskyy isn’t a Nazi.
At the same time—and I do hesitate now to write something to the effect… “in spite of this logical reference to the whole truth about Ukraine’s World War II history, and that the UPA was, again, a tiny minority in the Ukrainian population…”—seeing that red and black UPA flag in my sleepy-eyed neighborhood, in which my fellow other neighbors also see it, and may not be aware of what this red and black flag means, I do worry about my neighborhood, and wonder what else may be beneath the surface of my neighborhood. For me, walking the dog became even more dangerous. I have seen anti-Semitic graffiti in my neighborhood, and both outrage and tears burned within me. Like the reaction I experienced when I saw the red and black flag, when I saw anti-Jewish vandalism spray-painted on a neighbor’s car, I felt as though the racist defacement was an attack on me; although I am not Jewish, antisemitism affects me, all of us.
I never imagined EVER seeing that red and black UPA flag in the United States, in my neighborhood, around my home! And yet, as I have learned after this episode, there is at least one cemetery in a neighboring state’s cemetery that commemorates UPA soldiers. In America! There is no obscure history. This history isn’t just European, and it certainly isn’t old history. History is all around us. And what walking with Laska has taught me is to be vigilant, and keep looking out for history, even history that may not necessarily be “American” or about “New York,” even in my own neighborhood. We import and export history. And hatred and violence aren’t local manifestations. Lamentably and tragically, we have engrained them into our families, homes, and even neighborhoods.
Something as mundane as walking with the dog is never uneventful. For Laska and me, walking the streets of our neighborhood now can never be boring or innocent. My neighborhood no longer looks or feels the same after experiencing this new shocking event. I wonder now what other seemingly hidden, unknown history of hatred and genocide could be lurking behind those front doors in the neighborhood. Did John Demjanjuk’s Ohio neighbors or fellow auto factory workers ever suspect that they were living next door to or working alongside with “Ivan the Terrible,’ the infamous Ukrainian collaborator Nazi guard from the Treblinka death camp?
What motivated that UPA family to fly the red and black flag? I often wonder what a conversation would sound like if I ever struck one up with them. One day, a family member was outside tending to the garden. I thought, “here’s my chance. I’ll play the dumb American. First, I will say, ‘Ugh, it’s terrible what Putin is doing to Ukraine. The Ukrainians are so heroic. Do you have any family still there? My thoughts and prayers. The Ukrainian flag is so pretty; that blue is so beautiful. By the way… what’s that other flag you have there?” However, I don’t speak those lines. Her neighbors are outside, too. And I don’t want to cause a scene, one that her neighbors wouldn’t understand, if the topic of the UPA would come up. So, Laska walks me away from the UPA house.
I still get goosebumps when I walk down that street. Right now, the UPA red and black flag isn’t displayed by the family. I, too, wonder what motivated them to remove it. Honestly, I don’t know how to finish this blog. Including the birthday in heaven girl and the UPA red and black flag weren’t vignettes I planned to write about for this blog. The blog was to celebrate how vital my walks with Laska were for the completion of my Katyn book manuscript; instead, it eventually became about something else, something darker and troubling. I can’t escape from the legacy of the Katyn Massacres—hatred, violence, tragedy, concealment… all the unfortunate motifs I explored in the manuscript have creeped up here into this blog.
On the other hand, I thank Laska for walking with me and for walking past this house of UPA animosity. I marvel at and find relief in Laska’s sheer joy of walking. Her tongue sticking out while trotting down the sidewalk, her total obliviousness to the red and black flag, her complete emersion into the joie de vivre… these little, indispensable acts of living teach me that they, too, are part of history, mine. And these treasured moments of history are the ones I, too, need to record. And these chronicles of everyday existence are ones that you, too, should read about. Remembering these accounts of the not-so ordinary are as important as the monumental ones we study in the classroom. Ask your dog if they would like to take you out for a walk; I’m sure they would love to walk you!