User:Jeffreybarrie

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My name is Jeffrey Barrie. My grand parents emigrated from Velizh in around 1905, and I visited there for the first time in 1993, where I found the description of Velizh, and a headstone with my family name (Ronkin) in the local Jewish cemetary. Here is the letter I wrote to my family about the visit:

9/23/1993

Just back from a fascinating trip into the past. With a business trip to Smolensk planned for Monday, I decided to take the train out on Friday evening, and use the weekend to do some exploring north of Smolensk around Wellis, or as it is called here -- Velizh (accent on the e -- VYElizh). We rented a van, which took us two hours north of Smolensk to this town.

First stop was the central market, where we found an old woman to ask if there were any Jews around. We came up with a real specimen, who told me while munching on an apple that the only Jews in town were in the Jewish cemetery. She told the driver how to get there, and we were off.

Five minutes later, we wound through a country lane, past the Russian Orthodox cemetery, to one of the starkest scenes I've seen here. Bordered on one side by a huge transformer station was a long field of headstones, most of which seemed to be scattered about in almost random fashion, almost all of which were canted at the same angle out of the ground. It looked like they had all been knocked over at the same angle. Perhaps ten of them had legible Hebrew letters on them, the rest almost seemed to have been erased.

We found a woman near the cemetery herding cows in the opposite direction and asked her how we might find more about this cemetery. She gave us the name of a school teacher who she told us know everything about the Jews, because his wife was Jewish. The street she named was the main road through town, and when we reached it we stopped the first man we saw for help. As I explained what we were looking for, he threw down the apple he was eating, and said he'd take us to the teacher himself -- his next door neighbor!!

Ten minutes later we were sitting inside of a traditional Russian house -- peasant hut -- with the teacher, his wife and daughter. He is in his early sixties, retired from teaching history in the town's single school, and his passion is the heritage of Velizh. He told us that between war veterans and family of those who perished in the war, he has entertained some 1500 people in his home over the last twenty years.

After I explained the family history I knew, and told him about Ilyino, he began pulling out maps and pictures and spinning an incredible story.

Velizh was a regional commercial center of some 16,000 persons in the middle of the last century, a real polyglot of nationalities and professions. Steamboats brought passengers up the Dvina from Vitebsk, and cargo barges were pushed further north past Ilyino. In those days, the road to Ilyino was only twenty miles long. Today, traveling by car, one has to follow roads through Veliky Luki on a two hour trip.

A large Jewish population grew up in Velizh, and by the end of the century there were six synagogues. We talked a lot about the pale of settlement, restrictions on Jewish travel, etc, and when I asked how or why our grandfather might have moved up to Ilyino, he said the most probable reason would have been marriage.

Of course I asked about Rankin -- and he immediately corrected me and said RONKIN, and began pulling things out of his shelves. First a file card of the only surviving Ronkin he knew about -- in Leningrad. Then a red bound book which he has lovingly been collecting on the victims of the war -- and especially of the Jewish ghetto in the town, and opened it to the R's. There were eight or so Ronkin entries, two born close enough to Abraham's to have been his brothers.

The day stretched on, filled with pictures of Velizh in the nineteenth century, but mostly of the war and its aftermath, which permanently removed almost all traces of the past and left a normal Soviet town in its place.

All on video, with promises on my side of return visits, help for his work, and the expectation of writing to the Leningrad Ronkin. Wish you were all with me. Please pass this letter along to the rest of the family. This looks like a rich vein that we can -- if we choose -- mine for several years to come.

Love and hugs,

Jeff