Expedition diary: July 12, 2021

In fact, the real expeditionary adventures began for the Belarusian part of the group on the second day. Field research, interviews with informants and the first cross-border online event were waiting for us. Both activities concerned the location we were going to explore, Zembin.

A part of the group went for a walk in Zembin with Ales Pantsyaley – Barysaw blacksmith, artist and local historian. He researched this town and has many documents from the archives.

The most interesting building is the former Zembin mikvah. There is a sign on it that informs that it is a historical value and is protected by the state. And here we started one of our traditions. We decided that we would play Jewish tunes at sites and remnants of Jewish heritage that today stand abandoned or transformed into something else. Look for the photo fact in the Expedition Archive, Zembin location.

Then we walked through the streets of Zembin. We were interested in the place where Izi Kharik’s house once stood. There are several opinions of local historians on this matter. According to some information, the house was demolished. But the inhabitants of Zembin say that Kharik lived in another place and the house remained. Mentions of the poet from Zembin, executed by the Soviet authorities, as well as about his family and the town’s well-known badchen (Jewish marshal or toastmaster) are mentioned in the book by Geoff Sifrin. We were ones of the few readers of this book, the only copy of which is kept in the Zembin library. The book was published in Africa, where Sifrin’s relatives emigrated, and written in English. We have translated several pages.

Finding the Zembin Jewish cemetery was easier than finding Izi Kharik’s house.

While working “in the field”, we unexpectedly got caught in a downpour. Here is that epic episode.

While we were researching the current state of the former town, the other part of our group was scanning pre-war and post-war photographs of Zembin residents  that had never been published before.

After lunch, we held a cross-border meeting with colleagues from Poland, for whom it was the first day of the expedition. During the streaming we discussed with our local historian Ales Pantsyaleyhow many Izi Khariks lived in Zembin and whether Izi Kharik really lived in the house where Izi Kharik lived.

Having returned to Barysaw, we had another online meeting with experts Wolf Rubinchik and Andrei Dubinin. Together with the Polish part of the Shtetlfest team, we listened to the translation of Izi Kharik’s poem “At someone else’s wedding”.

From the second day’s impresssions of Belarusian participants of the expedition:

“I managed to see Zembin and Belarusian towns from another angle – through Yiddish poetry. I was struck by the play of words in Yiddish.”

“This was my first experience of translating a literary text immediately, without preparation. It helped that I had previously translated Polish poetry.”

“The rain symbolically washed away the heat and “dust of oblivion” as the group was on its way back from the field trip.”