KARMELA BELINKI ORAL HISTORY

CHRISTA WHITNEY:This is Christa Whitney, and today is June 16th, 2018. I am here in Helsinki, Finland, and we are going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project. Could you say your name?

KARMELA BELINKI: Karmela Belinki.

CW:And do I have your permission to record?

KB:You do indeed.

CW:Thank you. Well, I'd like to start by talking a bit about your family background. Could you tell me where your family came from?

KB:Well, my mother's family came from Lithuania -- I'm a Litvak -- about five generations ago. My first ancestors in Finland were so-called "cantonists." And I don't know how to tell you what a cantonist is, and I'm not going to. My 1:00father's family came from Polotsk, which in those days, when they came -- after the pogroms in the beginning of the 1900s when the family was split and partly killed, some came to Finland because the borders were still open. Of course, Finland was still an autonomous part of Russia in those days. And they came from Polotsk, which is now Belarus, which in those days was part of -- well, the Russian Empire, and particularly Lithuania, and they settled in Viipuri, Viipuri -- Vyborg nowadays -- where they lived until the Russians occupied it, as I see it still, in 1939. My mother's family also were in Viipuri, in Viipuri, but my 2:00grandfather came to Turku, which was about to establish a synagogue and a community of its own. And he was one of the founders of both, as far as I know.

CW:And do you know where in Lithuania -- you mentioned one side was --

KB:Oh yes. My mother's family, the original family, came from what is now Utena. It was a shtetl [small Eastern European town with a Jewish community] then. And they always took their wives from the Old Country. So, that even my grandmother, Sore Shabashevitch, came from Kovne. But her family -- she had family also in 3:00Kelmė, Kelem, which was -- in those days. So, I'm Litvak through and through.

CW:And what do you know about the professions in the family historically?

KB:Well, in my father's family, they had to be -- they had to do handicrafts, of course. But they also had, as all Jews in those days had, they had a second profession. In my father's family, always books, Yiddish literature and culture, music. In my mother's family, they were misnagdim [Orthodox Jews opposed to Hasidism], as they say nowadays. They studied Jewish books. And I'm told that 4:00the first cantonist in my family was the one who read the teyres [Hasidic teachings].

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KB:It went in my family all the time that you have to know about Jewish literature, you have to know about Jewish religion, you have to know why.

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KB:From my father's side, music, literature, arts. My mother was very keen on theater. And when I was a child, I must have seen all the first nights here in Turku and in Helsinki. My mother loved theater. My father was very skilled in arts. And he probably would have become something within the arts without the war, of course. Destroyed many young people's dreams. My mother's family was 5:00mathematically talented, and so was my mother, but she was very good at languages as well. But I can tell you that one of my uncles was a very well-established businessman in Turku, (UNCLEAR). Where I grew up, I spent my thirteen first years because -- well, I was born here, but my father was a journalist and an academic teacher in Turku, so my thirteen first years were there. And my uncle, who by and by became very old and didn't see well and didn't hear well, but nothing wrong with his mind, so he went to the bank with his -- whatever he had to do, and whilst the lady, the bank lady, counted on all 6:00kinds of machines, he had already counted it in his head, and it was absolutely perfect. He never made a mistake. And that went in my mother's family very far. And so, I'm a very typical mixture of Jewish intellectualism and Jewish -- intellectual Judaism, if I may put it that way.

CW:Could you just explain why it had to be handicraft that was the profession?

KB:Well, first of all, in the -- the Russians did not allow Jews in those days to do -- to have any proper jobs. They actually weren't citizens, that's all. 7:00So, the only thing that the Jews could do were to manufacture and sell their own goods, handicraft, and then sell old clothes, and that's about that. And for instance, Saint Petersburg was forbidden -- no, Moscow -- was a forbidden city for many Jews, and there was only one person who could enter, a Jew, and that was the very famous musician Jascha Heifetz. All others were forbidden. But my grandfather, for some reason, was allowed to study in Saint Petersburg, and he was a very skilled violinist, but of course he couldn't -- he had many children 8:00and a family, so he had to earn his living. He became a manufacturer of hats and had a small factory in Viipuri. And altogether, there were eleven Jews in hats. And my father, my grandfather, my zeyde [grandfather], by and by got the monopoly of the uniform hats of the Finnish army. But (laughs) he never made any money on it because they never paid, the officers. And he was very angry. (laughs) That I've been told. He died in 1946, so I didn't meet any of my grandparents.

CW:And so, how long -- what is the first that you know of your family that was 9:00in Finland?

KB:I know about the cantonists. And I know about my father's family, what I've told you now. We've been here for a long time. And I have pictures somewhere in my archives of the first people who came to Finland, from my father's side and from my mother's side. Jews here in Finland are not considered Jews in Finland, but they are considered Finnish Jews. And that's quite a difference to most other European countries.

CW:Can you explain that a bit?

KB:Well, Jews in Finland would always have been sort of foreign people who 10:00settled in Finland. But due to all kind of circumstances, the Finns accepted the Jews as Finnish Jews. They are Finns, but they are Jews. And I think that came about through the war because the Finnish Jews served in the Finnish army, in both wars. And even when Finland had the military pact with Germany, they still served in the Finnish army. And there's something which was quite unique, I think, in the world, that the Finnish Jews -- there were lots of Finnish Jews in one part of Karelia, stationed there. And they even had a shul. And everybody came to see their shul. And everybody was friendly to them. And nobody thought 11:00it was anything special. The Jews have their own shul, it's all right. And when I was a little girl in Turku, people came from the countryside, and the bus station was very nearby. So, they passed the synagogue. And they always say that, Oh, that's the church -- the Jewish church. And there was never anything evil or ugly about it. They were just stating a fact and considering it interesting and had great respect for the Jews. And that's the difference: Jews in Finland cannot complain.

CW:So, could you describe the home that you grew up in?

KB:Oh, my goodness. I'm an --

CW:You can start first with the actual physical house, if you --

KB:Well, yes. First of all, I was -- I'm an only child. (sighs) And I had -- (laughs) I don't know if it was the fortune or the unfortune to be born a kind of vunderkind [child prodigy]. I learned to read and write when I was about two or three, in many languages, because everybody spoke different languages around me. And I was never interested in anything manual -- and besides, I was totally untalented in that too -- except that I'm a good cook. But otherwise, I'm the most unpractical person in the world. And if I hadn't been a Girl Guide most of my life, I probably wouldn't have acquired any skills in that department. But thankfully, I did. Some. I was born in a very Jewish home. And my father was so 13:00glad that I was a girl. And he always voted for women whenever there was anybody to vote for in his party. And he had the greatest respect for women. And he was very practical. He could sew and knit. He did it with great pleasure. And he was very skilled also with his hands, all kinds of artifacts. Very artistic. And my mother was -- in my youth or in my very young years, she was a businesswoman. And she was a businesswoman. But she was the kindest mother, the best mother. And I had a very happy childhood. I had also all kinds of family around me. So, 14:00I was very fortunate in that respect. And it was so natural to be Jewish, it was never questioned. Never. We were sort of normal Jews, no fanaticism. Respect for Jewish values, ethical and moral values, very important. But also modern intellectual Judaism from both sides.

CW:What were your parents' names?

KB:My mother was Ite, Itele, born Saks. My father was Chaim Zalman --- Sami Salomon -- Belinki.

CW:And where does your name come from?

KB:Well, actually, I should have been Zisle, after my grandmother, my father's 15:00mother. But my father objected. He said that, "We are about to enter a new period, a new era, in Jewish history, so I want my daughter --" -- he knew that I would be his only child -- "-- to be Karmela." And that's where it came from. Karem-El, the (UNCLEAR) god. Well, I hope I've stood for the name. Well, to go back to my physical surroundings, I was -- I grew up in Turku, which in those days was a very -- it's always been a very international city because of the harbor. And it was also the previous capital of Finland during the Swedish time. So, people were used to all kinds of nationalities and religions. I went to a 16:00normal Swedish primary school. It was fashionable then to put your children in a Swedish school, had been since the 1920s when people were afraid that Finnish nationalism would be stronger in Finnish schools than in Swedish schools. Not true at all. Not much difference. But anyway, so I was put in a Swedish -- or I -- actually, I could choose. But I chose the Swedish school because I knew that my parents would have gone to Swedish schools as well and that maths would be easier to teach in Swedish for them, (laughs) so I chose the Swedish school. I knew all kinds of languages by then. And --

CW:So, what kind of house was it?

KB:House?

CW:Um-hm.

KB:Jews in my days all lived in flats, what you called apartments. And it was after the war. Nobody had much because of the war. My father had lost everything because he left his home in Viipuri, and my mother lost her home in a bombardment, so -- bombings of her house. So, they had to start from scratch. But so did everybody else. But it was kind of -- very happy life. We always had guests; sometimes we even had guests overnight. And people came from all over Scandinavia to look for survivors. And I remember particularly a man who sat in 18:00an armchair in my home. He drank tea with salt and cried all the time. And I was amazed -- can't have been more than three or four -- why he was so sad, and why he -- particularly I was fascinated by the fact that he drank his tea with salt. But then, I learned that that was what the Baltic Jews did. That's the symbol for sorrow. Like we partly eat salt with eggs for Pesach. The same thing. Joy and sorrow and sorrow and joy. And then, my mother told me that he had come from Sweden, where he had probably been rescued after the war from -- with some 19:00horrible experiences behind him, and that he was looking for surviving family members. But of course he didn't find any. Another sad story. We had many like that because my father was very open to all this, and everybody knew him and my mother; a very respected family, I must say, my own was. And everybody also knew that they spoke Yiddish. My mother's mother tongue was actually German, because she came from Lithuania and part of her family was in Latvia.

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KB:But she spoke very good Yiddish, very, very good Yiddish, with a Lithuanian accent. Yes, I have to tell you a story from my childhood too, my Yiddish 20:00childhood. The only survivor from my mother's family was a man who had studied in Leipzig, my mother's cousin. And he had studied technology in Leipzig and was a specialist in the new invention called television. Well, he lived in Lithuania with his young family and his parents and the whole of my maternal bobe [grandmother]'s family, closest family -- and extended family. He was the only one who survived from that family. And he survived because he was taken to Dachau, the concentration camp, and the Germans could make use of his knowledge 21:00of the new invention. But he was in a very poor condition when he was saved and went to a -- and was taken to a DP camp in Germany, in Munich, near Dachau. Actually it was in the old camp of Dachau, because they didn't know what to do with him. He had lost his first wife and son -- and young son -- and he met another woman, a neighbor's daughter, much younger than himself, and they married and had two sons and went to Los Angeles. But from the DP camp, he wrote to the Jewish community in Turku because he knew, of course, that his cousin was his -- or his father's cousin -- no, actually, it was his father's -- it was his 22:00aunt lived in Finland, in Turku. So, he wrote in Yiddish to the community, which of course knew that my mother was -- that my mother's mother came from there. And the letter landed in our home and started a correspondence with that -- Aaron Shabashevitch in Los Angeles, who -- in Yiddish. And it continued in Yiddish. And my mother died very early, so she didn't see him, but he came to Finland, and my father and I went to Los Angeles. We always spoke Yiddish, always. And he died, of course, and his wife too, and my cousins, my second cousins, in Los Angeles, they have been here, and I have been there. But now we 23:00speak English because the boys don't speak Yiddish.

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CW:So, could you say a bit about what languages you heard and where and by whom?

KB:Everybody spoke different languages in my vicinity. My father's first language was Yiddish, and he was a keen Yiddishist all his life. His Yiddish was very kind of literary Yiddish. In his native town of Viipuri, Vyborg, he even wrote plays in Yiddish for the community. And he was a very skilled calligrapher, so that he made all kinds of public statements in his very nice 24:00hand. And the official language of the community in his native tongue -- actually, it was a city -- was Yiddish. And all the protocols and all the papers were in Yiddish. So, they all knew Yiddish in that city. He spoke perfect Finnish and Swedish, having gone to Swedish schools, and Viipuri being very Finnish. He spoke German, of course. He spoke some English and some French and very good Latin. And then, he had his brokhes [blessings] in Hebrew. My mother was even more skilled in languages. Her first language must have been German because of her mother, but Yiddish with her father. Swedish and Finnish: she went to a Swedish school, and she studied in Swedish too. And Finnish, because 25:00everybody spoke Finnish in Turku. In my father's family, a lot of Russian was spoken, but he, being (laughs) a child of the Finnish independence, refused to learn Russian in any form. But his two sisters spoke perfect Russian. And my oldest aunt was very -- a literary person, so her Russian was wonderful. And in my mother's family, they spoke Yiddish and German and Finnish and Swedish. My mother spoke good English, and her French wasn't bad. And she understood some Russian, but it wasn't the language of her family anymore. They had lived in Finland for too long. But they all knew more or less. But my father's family, 26:00Russian was still a natural language. Besides, my eldest aunt married a man who came as -- on the -- he walked with four other Jewish young men from Kronstadt in those days, in 1920, when he was stationed there as a recruit. And he came -- they just walked to Finland, to Viipuri. And he too was from Polotsk, so they spoke Russian and Yiddish together. And Finnish. And then, my eldest aunt was very interested -- (coughs) excuse me -- in all kinds of other languages. So, it was a very kind of international surround. And we had guests from all over all 27:00the time. When I was a little girl, my father worked as a journalist. He --

CW:What language did he write in?

KB:Finnish. And Swedish too, but he had a Finnish job, in "Turun Sanomat," what was the main paper -- still is -- in Turku. His specialty was foreign policy, foreign politics. And so, he had to use all his languages. And then, he was also a historian at the Åbo Akademi University, which is the Swedish university in Finland, in Turku. So, I had all these languages around me. And I suppose I knew about seven before I was seven. (laughs)

CW:And what language did you use with your parents? Or languages?

KB:I spoke a lot of Yiddish with my father, and I spoke a lot of German with my 28:00mother. With each other, they actually spoke Swedish and Finnish. But also Yiddish and German. It all depended on what it was all about and who was there. And I heard a lot of Russian, of course, from my father's family, which I -- it's not my mother tongue, but I can manage very well. And it was a good thing that I did, because as a journalist in Finland, it was important. But somehow Yiddish became -- oh yes, and then I went to a Hebrew day school after I had finished my primary school. I had about an hour in between, during which I got something to eat from my mother's family's housekeeper, who'd been in the family 29:00for years and years and knew everybody, very respected woman indeed. So, I went to her. She lived opposite the synagogue, together with my unmarried aunt and uncle. And I was her first grandchild, so she loved me very much. And she gave me something to eat. And then, I went to the kheyder [traditional religious school]. And all the teachers were from Israel, and everything was in Hebrew. So, I still speak fairly good Hebrew, on top of everything else. Then of course, I had to learn French, which was a very good thing I went to school in England partly, which explains my accent, of course, and studied partly also in England. And added French and a lot of Latin. In those days, for the humanists, 30:00mandatory. And then, I added Hungarian and Estonian, which in -- at the Helsinki University, where I took my master's degree --

CW:And those are both related to Finnish, sort of.

KB:They are related to Finnish, but remotely. Particularly Hungarian. You don't understand it, but you see from the structure of the language that they are related. You think that you understand Estonian, but you don't, because they too are remotely -- it's a language you have to learn because there're so many words which sound alike and look alike but mean something else. For instance, "surra" in Finnish means "to mourn." "Surra" in Estonian means "to die." So, unless you 31:00know -- terrible mix-ups if you don't know exactly what you are talking about. (laughs) But I -- it was mandatory in my days, so -- but they were languages which were more sort of not used because they were under Russian occupation. Particularly Estonian. Who spoke Estonian in those days? But I never thought that any language which I learned would have been in vain. On the contrary. All the languages that I knew, I knew that first of all, they would open the culture and the people to me, and secondly they would also enwiden my horizons. And that they have indeed. And when -- well, that was that. But I can tell you something, that when I was working in my basic profession, my -- the Finnish broadcasting 32:00company was always very pleased when I got an assignment somewhere, who knows where, because they knew that they never needed to pay for an interpreter. (laughs)

CW:So, looking back on your -- when you were young, I'm curious what you thought of Yiddish.

KB:Yiddish was always the language of my heart. It was my Jewish language, I must say, like Golda Meir, ole-hasholem [may she rest in peace], said that Yiddish -- English she learned because she was in America, Hebrew she learned because she went to Israel, but Yiddish, that was her basic language. It was the language of her heart. That was the language she felt in. And I must say the same. I have all these other languages, but Yiddish is the language of my heart. 33:00And my soul, and my Jewish identity. I'm a Yiddish Jew.

CW:And what was the Yiddish around in the home? In terms of physical culture, theater, radio, those kinds of things?

KB:Well, first of all, we listened to Yiddish radio, which came from different countries when I was little, particularly from Israel. It was very, very good. So, we had all the news in Yiddish, and my father read it always -- and then we had a lot of correspondence in Yiddish with all the world. And when Jews came or wanted something, Yiddish was always spoken. For instance, there was a captain with the first ship that came to Turku with grapefruit -- juice. It was juice in those days. Tins of -- you would say cans of grapefruit juice. And of course, my 34:00father went to the harbor and took me with him. And I was in his lap, and he -- and the captain, who had children probably my own age, was so delighted that he invited my father to the ship and gave him lots of (laughs) cans of grapefruit juice, which was not at all something that you used for your everyday morning meals. It simply didn't exist yet. It was after the war. And they spoke Yiddish. Because he came -- I think he came from Czernowitz, (UNCLEAR) -- I still remember after seventy years. And he didn't speak very good Hebrew, and my 35:00father's Hebrew was ancient Hebrew, so they spoke Yiddish. And he came home to us, and everybody spoke Yiddish, and the whole family was invited, and everybody came, and half the community came, and -- we had a tiny apartment like everybody else in those days, but there was always room. And we always had food for everybody. And it was so delightful. And Yiddish -- we were Yiddish Jews. We were Jews. Hebrew was the language of the Israelis, but we as Jews in Europe, Ashkenazic Jews with Eastern European descendants, we were Yiddish Jews. And I was brought up as a Yiddish Jew. I speak Hebrew, of course, but it's not my -- really my -- it's a foreign language to me. And it's not because I don't know, 36:00but I don't feel the same thing. My emotions are in Yiddish. Many times, I still wake up -- that I must have dreamt something in Yiddish. I can't remember what it was, but I just have the -- the tam [flavor], the Yiddish tam. And so, I must have dreamt something, probably from my childhood.

CW:And these books behind you are from your father?

KB:They're my father's. They had lots of books in my father's home in Viipuri. And I'm told that my grandfather had a kind of private library, lending library, to the Jews in Viipuri, some of -- they weren't rich, and they -- and you 37:00couldn't get that many books in those days. They were very dear in many ways. And so, he had lots of -- this is about five percent. For some reason, he could save about five percent of their library. But he couldn't choose; he just took some of the books, and that was that. And then he added, because he had a good friend of his in the academic bookshop in Helsinki -- it was the biggest in Europe in those days -- who supervised the Russian department. It was very big here. Everybody came from all over Europe to look at the Russian books in Finland because they weren't free in the Soviet Union. And must have been a Jew who actually put the books in the parcels. Because he always put one Yiddish 38:00book every year. One Yiddish book was allowed. But the Yiddish was so bad. It was absolutely awful. And I've got them here. And I think that that's a treasure.

CW:And they're bad because --

KB:Oh, the language was so bad. I mean, all Hebrew words were written phonetically. And they tried to erase all traces of Jewish culture and history and religion and everything. And then, they're literally also bad. They're novels, but -- yes, well -- but they are -- they are part of Jewish history. And 39:00I think they're very important.

CW:I'd like to know a bit about Viipuri.

KB:Viipuri, yes. Well, in those days, it was said that there were three Jewish communities in Finland, all very different. Why three? Because in -- during the Swedish times, Jews were allowed to be only in three cities in Sweden. And when the Russians took over, the Finns adopted the same principle as in the Swedish -- during the Swedish realm. And Jews were allowed only in three cities -- except, of course, for the Jewish soldiers, who were wherever they were stationed. But civilians were allowed only in Turku, in Viipuri, and in 40:00Helsinki. And they all turned out very differently. It was always said that Turku is the most religious city, Jewish city, in Finland. It was not that religious, but it was very keen on tradition, and also -- keeping kosher was something very natural for every Jewish family. And keeping your stores closed for Shabbos was also something. And Viipuri, Viipuri, was the most cultural city, where Yiddish was spoken until the very end. And Helsinki was the city of the narinkes [fools]. They were small kind of shops open where Jews sold their 41:00own goods, very -- these Jews were very poor because they weren't allowed to do anything else in there -- and certain places in Helsinki. And there's still something called "Narinkkatori" in the very center of Helsinki. And --

CW:Did your father talk about his childhood, his life in Viipuri?

KB:Oh, he told me -- he talked a lot about the community in Viipuri. And he always considered that when he had to move to Turku, it was kind of downgrading of his whole Jewish life because he didn't like (laughs) the people there. He thought that they were too narrow-minded, having -- I mean, he was brought up in 42:00a -- in the most international city in Finland, with the whole world open, and particularly the Jewish world in the Baltics and even in Russia and all of Europe, particularly Eastern Europe. So, he thought that the narrow-mindedness of the Turku Jews was something that he didn't quite accept.

CW:Did he talk about when he was forced to leave and that experience?

KB:Yes, but he never talked about the war years, never. There were two kinds of Finnish soldiers: those who always talked about it, and those who didn't, who said nothing. And my father said nothing. The only thing that he said that he was in a regiment with people, boys from the very Finnish countryside. "I never met a Jew. I never met anybody who had actually had higher education." And he 43:00was not so skilled in forestry and that sort of thing. And so, they helped each other. He wrote the letters to their families, (laughs) particularly love letters to their wives, and they helped him with cutting wood and that sort of thing. And he said that they were the best friends that he had ever had. But nothing at all about what he had exper-- I can just imagine, it wasn't easy, for a city boy from -- a Jewish city boy -- from Viipuri. And that's what all Jewish soldiers said. It had nothing to do with the atmosphere within the regiment or within the groups or anything like that. It just had to do with the war. And all 44:00Jewish men served in the army. And some women served in the women's auxiliary -- whatever it could be called, auxiliary troops, Lotta, actually, Lotta Svärd. Lotta Svärd was like Mutter Courage in the Finnish world. And -- yes. He was somehow too intellectual for Turku. And he most certainly didn't feel at home here either, because he -- they were all -- in those days, they were mostly in business, and that was not his lifestyle at all. And they had forgotten their 45:00Yiddish background, and he could never accept that. Herman Wouk wrote a very good novel, "Marjorie Morningstar," about the Jewish climbing -- well, the same thing here. I wrote an academic essay about it. If I find it, I'll send it to you. It was in English.

CW:That's one of my favorite books. (laughs)

KB:Mine too.

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CW:So, what was it like for you to grow up in Turku?

KB:I liked it. I had lots of friends and a very close Jewish community. And then, I went to a Swedish school, where -- with a lot of people belonging to different minorities in Turku. There were so-called Hindenburg Germans who had 46:00come before Hitler and who had nothing to do with them. They were Catholics. Then, there were the Tatars, a small minority in Finland, who were Muslims. We had Russians, who were descendants of the people who fled from the revolution, so-called White Russians. And we had Swedish people from the city but also from the islands, small islands, around -- towards Sweden, who spoke only Swedish, didn't know any Finnish at all. And they were mostly very poor. And then, around, I had Finnish people, real Finns, all -- many friends, and my father's, 47:00my mother's friends. And of course, we were the very big generation, so that there were lots of us. And everybody had small children. I'll tell you a story. We had to -- when I went to primary school, I had a Jewish boy who lived opposite. And he came every morning to (UNCLEAR) -- he said, "Is Karmela ready for school?" and we went together, hand in hand. And we came to a corner of the street, and we had to cross it, because it was a very -- it was one of the main streets. And there was always a policeman, called Seppa. And he was a big man, 48:00at least in my eyes. And we always went to him every morning, and we said, Could Uncle Seppa just stop the traffic so that we could cross? And he took him by a pocket, and then he took me, and we went together. And how come that he was there every morning, he had children in the same age, and he wanted to make sure that all the children who came from that direction went safely across the street. It wouldn't be possible today, but in those days, this was the atmosphere. You had to rebuild the country, and you couldn't afford -- you had different views, of course. And there was everything from left to right. But there was still the spirit of rebuilding the country, of doing it together, so that everybody helped each other with whatever it was. If you needed somebody to 49:00do something manually and you weren't able to, you said, "Well, I can write your letters, or I could take care of your paper, or --" and that was that. Wouldn't be possible today. I don't know if times were better or worse, but there was that hopeful atmosphere. Nobody had anything, anyway, so -- (laughs)

CW:And did you know about the war? Did you --

KB:Oh yes, of course. From the very beginning. And remember, I was a vunderkind. I had read through the whole city library in Turku before I was ten. The children's department and the adult department and everything in many languages. But I was very small. I'm not -- I never grew very much, but at least normal 50:00size, but when I was little I was very little. And I didn't have -- (laughs) I didn't have the manual strength to carry my books which I lent from (UNCLEAR). I always had either my father or somebody else carry my books. And when we went to the library, there was Feivel Stee, who was the librarian in the adult department, and he took me in his lap and he said that, "Now you have -- just choose your books, and I'll take them down one, and I'll take you to the -- to your dad." And that was the spirit. And nobody wondered (laughs) why I just read everything in all languages and everything. I was like an encyclopedia.

CW:Were there particular things you were interested at that age as you remember?

KB:Everything. Just everything. There were things in -- let's say, in the 51:00(pauses) -- in the novel department which I still didn't understand very well, but I had a very wise and modern mother, who told me about birds and bees and the other things that she thought that I was -- I should know because they would -- I would meet them, encounter them at one point anyway. Better do it as early as possible. And she did it in such a way that I -- she would have been a very good teacher. But she --- it wasn't her profession at all, not her vocation either.

CW:She had a business?

KB:She had a business. When I was a little girl, she had a business, an import 52:00business -- actually, she was an agent for nice fabrics from -- material -- from Switzerland. People were craving for nice things after the war, and there was nothing. And so, she went all through Europe. She never went through Germany. But she went through Sweden and Denmark and Paris, and she took the Orient Express to somewhere, and then she changed and went to Switzerland to choose the -- her fabrics. And she said that sometimes -- I asked her later, "Weren't you afraid? It was after the war, and times were not exactly what they should have been." And she said that -- she was a young woman, very good-looking -- and she 53:00said sometimes it was very good to be a young woman. You could get certain things done which you wouldn't have if you had been a middle-aged, married woman. She was a married woman, but she wasn't middle-aged. And then, she said that sometimes she was wearing kind of attire which wasn't hers in order to shield the fact that she was a young woman. So, she said she had to use all kinds of tricks. Trains were very full. She always got a place to sit, and she always got where she wanted to. But it took her sometimes weeks. But I had people taking care of me, so I was never alone.

CW:When did you start writing?

KB:Writing how? Manual writing or just writing as a writer?

CW:Writing as a writer.

KB:Always. (laughs) Always. I didn't want to become one. I didn't want to become a journalist, and I didn't want to become a writer.

CW:Why not?

KB:And I didn't want to become an academic in the fields that I did. I actually wanted to become a doctor. But then, life wanted something else, and that's how it went. But I -- my debut as a writer was in 1972. I was twenty-five years old.

CW:And you mentioned that your mother was interested in theater.

KB:Yes.

CW:Had there been or was there a Yiddish theater in Turku?

KB:There was a Yiddish theater, not in Turku. There were too few Jews. But in Viipuri, there had been a Yiddish theater group, and it had even toured in Europe. And there was also a small orchestra in Viipuri. And the Konzertmeister [German: concertmaster] of that orchestra -- later became a very famous violinist -- came from Viipuri. He was then the Konzertmeister in Lahti and very famous all over northern Europe. And then, there was a very strange character. His name actually was Boris -- Boris Sirpo. No, Sirob, Boris Sirob. He was a Jew. And he changed his name to Boris Sirpo, which was easier, of course. And he founded the school of music in Viipuri. And he was the teacher of many, many 56:00musicians afterwards. Viipuri was the cultural city. Turku was the religious city. And Helsinki was business.

CW:And you mentioned the Hebrew school already --

KB:Yes.

CW:-- but what were the Jewish youth activities when you were growing up?

KB:Oh, yes. Both in Turku and in Hels-- there were lots of children, of course. And something that I liked very much that we had -- every other summer, we visited Helsinki and Helsinki visited us, and we had sports together, all kinds of sports. I wasn't much -- I was asthmatic -- still am -- so I couldn't run 57:00very far and not very fast. But I was very -- fairly good in Ping-Pong. And then later, (laughs) very much later, I had an eye which was slightly going in the wrong direction. And my doctor told me that, "Why don't you try shooting? 'Cause that's good concentration for your eyes." Which I did, and I became fairly good in pistol. Still am. And then, I got interested in women's boxing when I was still -- I was already a very mature age. And it was good for my back, which was -- is still bothering me. It was even more then, in those days. And I was one of 58:00the first women boxers in the field. (laughs) At a very mature age. So, I never competed. (laughs) I had to choose sports which I could do. I was no good in sports which meant that I had to use my lungs too much. I could ski, of course; who couldn't? And I could skate. But I didn't have the lungs for skiing, actually. But shooting didn't much harm my physical skills, which were nonexistent, anyway. But I was very concentrated, and somehow I had that talent 59:00to concentrate and to shoot at the target. Would have been a fair soldier in the Israeli army. (laughs)

CW:And so, what was the Zionist atmosphere in those days?

KB:Well, the Zionist atmosphere in Viipuri was manifold. First of all, there were, of course, the Ben-Gurionists, the socialists. But there were also those who -- the Ahad Ha'amists, they were no longer there. And then, there were those who wanted Yiddish. But then, of course, there were no Bundists, because there were no Polish Jews. And my father was a kind of Yiddish Zionist. And he 60:00actually wrote the first -- I think the first thesis in the world about the birth year of the State of Israel, in Swedish, at the university in Turku, Åbo Akademi University.

CW:And what were you involved in growing up?

KB:I wasn't involved in much other than those mandatory sporting things. I read a lot. And I corresponded a lot with people my own age in Israel. But I didn't visit Israel until 1967. I had my English years, and then, of course --

CW:And that was for your master or --

KB:No, that was later.

CW:Later. Okay.

KB:Yes. I went to school in England too.

CW:Yeah, and what -- how old were you when you were in England first?

KB:I was fourteen and then for a couple of years. I had my first school exam from England, and then I took the Finnish matriculation a year after. Still a year ahead of my own class. (laughs)

CW:What was it like for you to move to England at that age?

KB:I needed a challenge, because I knew everything already. And I was a menace. Of course I was. Because I was bored. I was a menace because I interrupted my teachers. I knew more than they. Did it most -- particularly in (UNCLEAR). We didn't have Google in those days, remember? And I needed a challenge. And I got 62:00a full scholarship to a boarding school, very nice boarding -- non-Jewish boarding school in England. And I liked it very much. The first year was a bit difficult because I had to share my room with five other girls, not being used to it as an only child, which was good education. And it was academically of a very high standard, so I really did -- I did well, if I may say so. (laughs) But there, I realized that my skills were more towards the writing and reading than anything else. And I was encouraged. I wrote a lot in English; I still do. And 63:00then, when I came back to Finland, I continued in Finnish and Swedish. Kept my English, of course. Wrote in Yiddish too. My correspondence with my father in those days was in Yiddish for the simple reason that I wanted to keep up my Yiddish skills. I didn't have any chance to do that in England, because the English Jews were so English that they anglicized their names in the second generation. And I had lots of Jewish friends -- I still do -- whose name is Preston and -- and what -- and Mason and Conway and very English first names as well, so --

CW:And in this period, or maybe earlier, that you describe reading everything, was Yiddish among the books that you read?

KB:Absolutely. Oh, yes. My father gave me many Yiddish books to read. Said, "You 64:00have to read this, and you have to read this, and you have to know who's Mendele and you have to know who is this and that and whatnot."

CW:Any writer that, growing up, you felt affinity to among the Yiddish?

KB:They were all men. But later, I wonder why I never wrote that book. I collected from different sources -- it must have been in the '70s or '80s -- lots of writings by women. In Yiddish. I wonder why I didn't write that book. I should have. Well, it's --

CW:Well, you still can.

KB:I still can. Yes. It's still somewhere. And particularly Esther Kreitman was one of my very favorites. I felt very sorry for her. And actually, I also felt a 65:00bit sorry for Israel Yoshua Singer. I interviewed his famous brother twice.

CW:What was that like?

KB:Delightful. Oh, it was delightful. You know, he said that "Ikh bin a peylish yid, ikh redt heymish yidish. Ober ir redt aza fayn yidish, ober nit -- dos iz nit heymish yidish. Dos iz inteligenter yidish. [I'm a Polish Jew, I speak a Yiddish from the home. But you speak quite a distinguished Yiddish, but not -- it's not a homey Yiddish. It's an intellectual Yiddish.]" So, "Yes, but if I could write like you in my literary Yiddish, I would be very glad, and I'm so glad that you write in your heymish [homey] Yiddish." And it was the first time that he was interviewed for the broadcasting in Yiddish. And immediately, of 66:00course, recognized my Litvak [Lithuanian] accent. He said, "Oy, a Litvak, a mitnag [Oh, a Lithuanian Jew, an opponent of Hasidism]." (laughs)

CW:And where was this?

KB:In Sweden. First time was when he received his Nobel Prize. And I told the broadcasting director, "You have to send me. I'm the only one in the whole Scandinavia who speaks his language." "Yes, of course. You go ahead." I went, with my fourteen kilos of tape recorder.

CW:Audio. (laughs)

KB:Yes. (laughs) In those days. And then, the second time was when he visited Stockholm. I can't remember what it was, some kind of occasion. And his publisher, Dorotea Bromberg, a Polish Jewish woman, a refugee from 1968, Sweden, 67:00called me and said, "Karmela, you have to come. He's here again -- or, "He will come again. And I'll give you a whole day with him." That was something. And you know, he was well past eighty, and he was a vegetarian, and he ate like a bird, literally like a bird. And then, he came with a whole entourage of people with him. He had his wife, Alma. And then, he had his so-called secretary. (laughs) Well, threesome, kind of trio. And Alma was a drag. I can't describe her (laughs) in any other fashion. And his secretary wasn't that young anymore, must've been in her sixties, was his -- well, whatever. Never asked, never told, 68:00but he knew I knew that he knew that he -- yes. And so on. And I spent a whole day with him. We went everywhere, speaking Yiddish. And he was so delighted. And then, we sat down, and I said, "Could I have about an hour with you without your whole entourage and Dorotea and things?" And said, "Yes, of course." And we went in the publishing office. Dorotea gave her office to us, and we sat there. And then, I -- we discussed Jewish Poland then -- which didn't exist in the 1980s. And we discussed his childhood and his writings. And then, I said, "How do you 69:00write?" "Ikh hob holt tsu dertseyln a yidishe mayse. A mayse. A yidishe mayse. [I like telling a Jewish story. A story. A Jewish story.]" And I said -- and I told myself that that would be my device too. I too like to tell a yidishe mayse, which I do in my writings. My very modest writings compared to his master.

CW:So --

KB:But we had a kind of rapport and liked each other. And he had the bluest eyes, and no wonder he had Alma, who was a drag but who was obviously a very good wife. And then, he had his secretary. I'm (laughs) sure he had many 70:00secretaries, with those blue eyes. And Alma I think was his second or third wife too, so --

CW:And when in your work were you able to use Yiddish in interviewing?

KB:In the most curious circumstances. I remember that I went by boat -- I think it was from Portugal to Israel. Because I wanted to -- I had a crew with me filming that how the refugees went to Palestine in those days. I just wanted to reconstruct it. And there was a lady who tried to -- something with the captain, who didn't know any -- he knew English, but he didn't know any other languages 71:00except Portuguese. And I saw that she was Jewish. Well, she looked at me, and she said, "Oy, mir kenen reydn yidish [Oh, we can speak Yiddish]!" And I said, "Then can I explain to the captain what you wanted?" I can't remember what she was -- some minor thing. And I said that -- she came from Argentine. And she went to a Yiddish school in Argentine. And so, it was her language. And her family had come from Kiev, I think. And she had been there for -- she was born there, but their parents were refugees, so that -- and then, of course, when every other language was impossible -- so for instance, in -- I was once doing 72:00something in what is now Georgia, in Tbilisi. And it was then under Russian rule. And I had a so-called guide from the KGB, of course, and her name was Bertrice Weiner. And she was so scared --- she didn't dare -- she spoke excellent Swedish. And so, she didn't dare to say anything. But then, when we were outdoors, and then I asked it, "Bertrice, I'm sure you know if there's a synagogue here." And she said, "Shh, ober ikh vel dertseyln af yidish [but I'll tell you in Yiddish]." And she explained to me how to get there. And she said 73:00that, "When you step out of the hotel, just tell the porter that you're going to the opera and that you have a ticket already and you're so much looking forward, and then you go to shul." I said, "Thank you, Bertrice." So, I did go to shul in Tbilisi. And I had one of these mini-siddurim, in Hebrew, and a por [a couple] -- Ashkenaz, and I -- that was something. When I came to -- I had the same experience that Golda Meir had when she went as the ambassador of Israel to -- I think it was in Moscow. And I had the same experience. People surrounded me. They just wanted to touch me because I came from the Western world and I was Jewish. And then, there was a couple. I saw that they were not local, real 74:00local. And she came to me, asked if I spoke Yiddish, said yes. They were -- they had fled from the Shoah to Tbilisi in 1938 because they knew that things were turning bad. And they came from -- I think it was Romania. They spoke wonderful Yiddish (UNCLEAR) strange accent. And they literally saved me from the crowd. And then, I thanked them, I said, "I had to thank you." It was a service with a young rabbi. He was a local man, and he was very nice. And then, afterwards I 75:00went to the lady -- they were both doctors -- and I said that, "I can't give you anything, but I can give you this," and I gave my little siddur. And she was so happy. She said, "I shall cherish this because we don't have enough siddurim. And this is a small thing; I can put it in my bag or even in my brassiere so that nobody will see." And that's exactly what she did. So. (laughs)

CW:And can you tell the story of Golda Meir?

KB:Oh, yes! I met her twice. Once when she was here in Finland. She was delegate of Israel to the Socialist International, which had a -- I don't know what kind of meeting they had, but they -- it was the '70s, early '70s. And she died in 76:00'75, so it must have been before that. Well, anyway -- and she came to -- I've never seen the community house so packed. I mean, everybody came who could and even those who couldn't. And mostly elderly people. And then, she asked what language she would -- and she looked at the people, and she said, "Ikh vel redn yidish [I will speak in Yiddish]." And she puts her hand on the desk like this (mimicks putting her forearm on a desk), and she spoke the most beautiful Yiddish, most beautiful Yiddish. And the second time was not --

CW:What did she speak about, do you remember?

KB:I can't remember, but she spoke about Israel, and she spoke about the Shoah, and she spoke about how she appreciated the fact that the Finnish Jews had, I think in those days, the biggest aliyah to Israel. Because we lost -- lost and 77:00lost -- whole generations of people from the Jewish school all went to Israel on aliyah, so it's -- I can't say -- well, to us it was a loss, which was a gain, actually. It was aliyah; it was not yeridah [Hebrew: emigration from Israel, lit. "descent"]. And anyway --

CW:Then you interviewed her.

KB:Yeah, then I -- not really an interview. She had just -- it was after the Yom Kippur War, 1973. And she had resigned from her office as prime minister. And I asked if I could meet her. She remembered me from Helsinki. She remembered everything always. Said, "You're most wel--" -- and she said -- I mean, we spoke English on the phone. And I said, "Could I have an hour?" Said, "Yes, of course. 78:00I'm not that occupied anymore." But she was very ill. So, I went to her apartment. And it was actually a house.

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

KB:Her son lived next door and kept an eye on his mother, and she of course watched her son like a hawk. (laughs) And then I came, and we sat on her terrace or balcony or something. And she said that. And I asked her, "How do I call you now that you're not prime minister anymore?" "Doda [Hebrew: Aunt] Golda, auntie Golda." "Everybody else in your age calls me auntie Golda." I said, "It's a great honor." And then, we tried in all kinds of language. She tried in English 79:00first, was a bit stiff. And then, we tried in Hebrew, which wasn't her language -- it wasn't my language either. And then, we spoke Yiddish. And that was something. (inhales loudly) It was -- I think that next to Bashevis, speaking Yiddish with Golda Meir was the greatest experience in my whole life. And I spent -- we had tea. But I saw that she was tired. And I asked her, "Are you ill, doda Golda?" She said, "Yes, I am very ill." I said, "I can see that." And she said that, "I'm sure that I resigned in time." And I said that, "It's a 80:00great loss to the whole Jewish people," that, "you have been our mother and our bobe for so long. And myself included." And then, she put her arm, a big, big arm, around me, and she said, "All Jewish children are my children -- ale yidishe kinder zenen mayne kinder." Oh, it was beautiful. Yes. I never published that interview. I told her, "This is between you and me. I'm not going to publish it." She said, "You can publish it. I didn't say anything that I didn't want to say." Very typical Golda. I said, "Yes, but I said some things that I wouldn't like to have published." "No, you're a nice girl, you wouldn't say things that you don't want to get published." I said, "Well, anyway, I'm shy." 81:00And she laughed. (laughs) So, I've met people in Yiddish. I've made I think tens of interviews in Yiddish in the Baltic countries with survivors.

CW:And how did that project come around?

KB:I wanted to go back to my roots, and I knew that I didn't have anybody left anymore, but I wanted to find out whether I had at least some written material or headstones, tombstones, something. So, I asked for a big sum of money -- and I got it, somehow, in the end. And I had a technician with me who took care of 82:00sound and film. And that was the first time. The second time I had only my sound man with me, because this was for the radio. And --

CW:And what was the project?

KB:The project was how they have coped and how their life has changed with liberation, so-called liberation, if there is anti-Semitism, and how the survivors survived after the war in these countries. And then, I interviewed some young people. There weren't many of them. They had all left for somewhere: America, Israel. Many in Israel. I had a second cousin -- somehow had survived. 83:00She was born, I think, in 1942 after the Germans had -- in 1941 -- she was from Riga. And they had immediately killed her father, who was my father's cousin. Another Salomon Belinki. I had a third one, I'll tell you about it. And she fled to, I don't know, Kazakhstan or something like that, in -- with her mother. And they survived somehow. And they went back to Riga after the war. They had no other choice. And in 1975, she made aliyah to Israel because there was this sudden lap in the -- relaxation. And she took her -- she's a pianist -- took her 84:00grand piano and her mother -- her father wasn't there, of course. She never met him, actually. She was a baby -- and they went to Israel. And she became a pianist to the BBC Asia and Africa. Very good pianist. She used to -- we look alike too. Very small, both of us. But she has big hands.

CW:And you met her in Riga?

KB:Noemi Belinka. I --

CW:Where did you meet her, in --

KB:Well, I -- actually, my father listened a lot to the BBC. And then, he listened to a concert. And he liked the pianist very much. And then, he heard that the pianist was Noemi Belinka, as she said. Must be our kin because 85:00Belinki's not that common a name. She said that, "Why don't you find out? Call me in my office at the broadcasting." I said, "You have all the means, why don't you find out who she is?" Well, I wrote to the BBC, to my friends there, and it didn't take more than a few days, and they gave all the details about her. And then, I wrote to her, and she immediately wrote back. And then, after the liberation, she gave a concert in Riga. And she came through Finland. And she met my father and me, and I met her in Israel before that many times. And she looked so much like my father it could have been my sister. And so, my father was delighted, of course, and said that he didn't know that anybody in his Riga 86:00family had survived. Well, obviously, one did. She's now a bit older than I am.

CW:And so, back to this work in the Baltics --

KB:Yes.

CW:So, just to explain, you were going around and interviewing survivors as well as younger people?

KB:Yes.

CW:And --

KB:How did I find them?

CW:Yeah.

KB:I had been a journalist for quite a few decades before that. And I have my tricks. And I have a special technique with people of Jewish descent or Jews in general. In Estonia, I had been already, and I knew people there. And I said that, "Do you know if there are any Jews left in Tartu?" And I still had a 87:00distant cousin in Estonia who had survived by -- somehow. His name was (UNCLEAR). And he was the historian of the Italian community. Spoke Yiddish. And he said that he knows somebody in Tartu who knows all about the Shoah, and he's a survivor himself. And I said, "Well, I'll go to Tartu." And he said, "I can call him for you." I said, "Please." Well, he did. And then, he -- I said, "Well, you know anybody in Riga"? "Yes!" I said, "Do you know anybody in Vilna, in Kovno?" "Yes." And he called the right people. And he said that I'm family from Finland, and kosher, (laughs) in many ways. And it opened doors. But then, 88:00I had to, of course -- I had people. And with Jews, it's easier, much easier. Because once they heard my accent, once they knew I came from Finland, once I was family, I was family. I was mishpokhe [family]. You could talk to me. And all -- most of my interviews I made in Yiddish. I don't know -- I know -- I can cope in Estonian because of my university years, but Yiddish is my -- was the language that I used. I don't know any Latvian or Lithuanian, so Yiddish was the natural language. They didn't know any English; why should I paynikn [torture] myself with English with people who don't want to speak it? So, we spoke Yiddish.

CW:And what did you find out, in terms of your big questions?

KB:Nothing. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not a trace of any documentation. The only thing that I found out, which I had sort of known already, was the Green Pharmacy in Kovno. Because Asya, who was then the director of the small community in Kovno, showed me a phone book from 1938 or '39. And she said "Shabashevitch." Yes, she knows that there was many Shabashevitches in Kovno, very good family, she said. And she said that one owned the Green Pharmacy, which was the best pharmacy in Kovno, where also non-Jews came. And I said, "Is 90:00it still there?" "Yes, it's still there." And the phonebook. But there was absolutely no other documentation, no tombstones, not anything. And I went there, and I didn't go indoors. For some reason, I just couldn't. It wasn't a very professional thing to do. But I just couldn't. Something said that you don't go there. I didn't. But now -- and I looked in the streets surrounding. It was the beginning of the Jewish quarters in Kovno. They all had Jewish names. And I knew that my family had lived in the green course around the Green Pharmacy. And there were many ruins in the yard; I thought that the whole 91:00extended family must have been there. Yes.

CW:How did you feel?

KB:I had very mixed feelings. I had my journalist ego, but I also had my own. And you know, when I crossed the sort of -- big -- yard -- it wasn't even a yard, it was more -- the market in Kovno -- I had a strange feeling that somebody was -- a man's voice, very agitated and scared, called, "Sore, Sore." I had to look around. Sora was my grandmother, my bobe. "Sore, Sore." Several times. And then, I knew that it came from somewhere, and must have been the -- 92:00her brother in the Green Pharmacy. I don't believe in that sort of thing, but I do. (laughs) And it made me -- my whole first visit to Kovno was -- it was very mixed. But then, I learned to push backwards my feelings and be my journalist. But I couldn't completely and I didn't want to do it completely, because I had to meet the people as a Jew, not only as a journalist from somewhere.

CW:And so, what were these interviews like?

KB:All kinds. People were very open. Some had survived but hadn't lived after 93:00the war. Some had survived and lived after the war. Some had made a new life. Some hadn't. On the whole, there was a certain sadness everywhere, because the years after the war until the liberation hadn't been easy years at all, for obvious reasons. And then, when I met these young people in different countries there, some spoke Yiddish, oddly enough. Some had learned Yiddish in Vilna. And some spoke excellent English, quite, quite excellent English. So, I coped. 94:00Nobody wanted to speak Russian, and I didn't insist. That would have closed all the doors. And I'll tell you; I had a very strange experience. It was in Vilna, in the community house. I was waiting for a man, an elderly man, from -- who was an expert on Jewish stamps. And he had a special room there with his exhibition of Jewish stamps from before the war. And I was -- I had a me-- and I sat down on a chair, and I watched people coming and going. It was lunch time, and it -- the poor old people got their only meal there at that time. Then came an elderly lady, and she came to me, and she asked in Yiddish, "Zayt ir a yid [Are you a 95:00Jew]?" I said, "Yo, gevis bin ikh a yid [Yes, certainly I am a Jew]." "Fun vanet [From where]?" "Ikh bin fun finland [I'm from Finland]." "Oy, fun finland [Oh, from Finland]!" And then, she said that she had been with the Russian army later, but in her youth she had been a dancer in the Yiddish theater in Vilna, and she had actually been to Viipuri with a troupe, dancing troupe, from Vilna in those days. It was Polish. Her name was Dvora, and she was a happy one. She said, Yes, later on when the Russians came, she was an entertainer in the Russian army, in Russian and in Yiddish. And then, she married -- I can't remember where he came from, but he was a Jew. And I said, "Was he a nice man?" 96:00He was a very nice man, but they couldn't get any children because she had danced during very cold days and couldn't have children anymore after that. She got cold in places where she shouldn't have. Well, anyway, yes, she was a joy. And then came that elderly gentleman. He said, "Yes, hello, hello." And he said that he had been an officer in the Free Lithuanian Army during the war -- before the -- I said, "How could you be free?" I said, "Well, there was a troop of Jewish soldiers in Kovno. And they didn't want to join the Russians when they came in '39, and they most certainly couldn't join the Germans in '41. So, between '40 and '41 they had a kind of Jewish army. I didn't know that. And 97:00then, he said that, "What was your mother's name?" I said "Saks." "Are they -- are the men in your family very small and bald?" I said, "Yes." "Well, I had a young officer, his name was Saks. I'm sure he was related to you. But unfortunately -- well, you know what happened to most." I said, "Yes, but how did you survive?" Well, he was wounded when the Germans came and was in a hospital. And they had to -- the staff had hid him somewhere in a cellar and said that he has tuberculosis, that he must be isolated. And they were scared, so that they left him alone. So, he survived. And he said, "No, I don't -- I 98:00never forget that young man, Saks." Said, "Yes. Well, that was again from somewhere." Well, let me tell you another story. Later, after my trips to the Baltic cities and Baltic countries, I have made a lot of other trips to -- because there have been all kinds of findings of Jewish books, hidden and in caves and underneath synagogue walls and whatnot. And so, I was sent by -- Jewish organization, I don't want to say which -- to many places in the -- in Eastern Europe, because of my linguistic knowledge. And so, I came to a cave. 99:00But I have to start from the beginning. Years and years and years ago, I was very hot in Netanya, I think it was. Yeah, it must have been Netanya. And there was a park with a lot of shade. And I said, "I have to go and sit down -- I can't continue -- and have a drink or something." And I sat there for quite a while, and then an old lady came. There was a -- I think an old people's home. There was new buildings all over. That must have been in the '60s. And lots of trees. Very nice place. She came and sat next to me, and she looked at me, and she asked me for my name, and she asked me where I come from. And I said, "From 100:00--" "Yes, but where do you come from?" I said, I come from this and that and that. Then, she said that -- "And what was your father's name?" I said, What a Jewish question. Father, mother, bobe, zeyde. And I said, "My father was Chaim Zalman Belinki." She said (putting her hand to her cheek), "Oy va voy!" She was from Polotsk. She had been a nurse in a children's hospital in Polotsk with mostly Jewish children before the war. And there was a young doctor whose name was Chaim Zalman Belinki. I said, "My goodness." And then, I said that, "What was his father's name?" And he told me his father. But his zeyde's name was Chaim Zalman, and he had got his name from name from (UNCLEAR) and so did my father. And then, I told her that this Chaim Zalman was probably my father's 101:00cousin. And he was still left in Polotsk when everybody else -- his grandparents and great-grandparents had left for whatever place in the world. And she said, "Yes, he was a wonderful man. His hair was very white. But he wasn't even forty in those days. And he took care of the children. And he told the staff that they should go away because the Germans would annihilate all of them. But he couldn't leave the children. He couldn't leave the children, so he stayed. And he perished with the children." Well, I said, "Well, that's very interesting," and so on. And then, I don't know, thirty years, forty years went by. And I was in 102:00one of those caves, with all kinds of Jewish paraphernalia, including books. And I looked into one of the makhzorim [prayer books for the Jewish holidays] or sidurim, and I saw "Chaim Zalman Belinki." And it was that man -- you know, to see my father's name in a book like that -- and I said, "Well, this was a message from somewhere." And that was that Chaim Zalman Belinki from Polotsk. You see, you never know. You never know. And we spoke Yiddish, of course, with that lady, in Netanya. She knew a little Hebrew, but she had come too late to Israel to learn properly.

CW:So, I'm curious about Yiddish here, now, here in Helsinki. Where --

KB:Well, there is a kind of revival for the third and fourth generation. Like everywhere else, including Israel. It's not the same thing. In my generation, no one speaks Yiddish as a -- in shtub [at home]. And the generation before my generation, they probably did speak Yiddish, but particularly here in Helsinki, it was the "Marjorie Morningstar" syndrome. Like in England. I saw it when I was there. And now it's coming back again, but it's not the same thing. You can't revive something that hasn't really developed. I mean, Yiddish is not nostalgia. 104:00It's a living language. The fact -- there were two things that actually killed the development. One was the Shoah. That is something we couldn't help. The other thing was Israel. If Ben-Gurion had not been so fundamentalistic, he would have recognized that Yiddish was the main Jewish language of the Jews coming to Palestine and Israel, and he would have made it the second language. Could have added Ladino later, of course, why not? And Arabic too, and any other language. Language is language. But Yiddish was the soul of the Jewish people. You can't 105:00revive a soul which doesn't exist anymore. You can revive the language. The language is a language. And you can be nostalgic about the Jewish culture in the language. But Yiddish was so much more. And to me, Yiddish still is a lot more. It will always be my language, my Jewish language, the language of my soul and my mind. If I have my Jewish roots and my Jewish present -- and presence. (laughs) That too.

CW:And -- vu ken men hern a yidish vort haynt [where can one hear Yiddish spoken today]?

KB:Here, in Helsinki? You can't here. Yiddish would -- you can -- the young 106:00people who are studying Jewish, who even perform Yiddish theater, it's learnt Yiddish, it's not experienced Yiddish. And they can't speak it. It's like -- I heard Jewish theater in Warsaw without a single Jew. And there's a Jewish theater in Krakow, I think, too, without a single Jew. In Yiddish. I mean, no comment.

CW:What would you want people to know about the Jewish community here, in Finland?

KB:I would like people to know that we have a very vivid Jewish life. And we 107:00have very strong ties to Israel and to the Jewish world in many -- very many ways. And we haven't lost our Jewish souls. We are Jews. How long we shall remain Jews, with all these mixed marriages and people not knowing whether they should celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah or both -- it's like America. I think that there will always be a core -- always -- I'm not saying all -- but there will be a core of Judaism, not just religious Judaism, cultural Judaism as well. And at least in this generation, the young generation, they go to the Jewish 108:00school. (sighs) But you can't become a Jew in the Jewish school. It's something -- the Jewishness, the Jewish culture, the Jewish -- I mean, it's very difficult if you marry into the community. And the only roots that you have is through your spouse. And you can say that "Yes, my husband's mother said so-and-so, and she cooks so-and-so," or something like that. But you can't -- you don't have any other connections from your ancestry. I mean, of course you can become a Jew religiously. But do you become a yid? That's different. And I was fortunate to 109:00become a yid. And if you ask me what is my primary identity, I usually answer that -- I've written it many times -- that you can deprive me of my Finnish identity with Nuremberg laws or some kind, but you can never deprive me of my Jewish identity. Either it'll be a good thing for me or it will be a bad thing for others. But I should always remain a Jew. Always. Have done so for seventy-one years. I have for a few more years, with my heart and soul and my mind still working.

CW:Biz hundert un tsvantsik [May you live to be 120].

KB:No, I don't want hundert tsvantsik [120], no. But you know -- for as long as 110:00rabeyne-sheloylim [the Almighty] sees it fit. (laughs)

CW:Great. Well, a groysn dank [thank you very much].

KB:A groysn dank aykh [A great thanks to you].

CW:S'iz geven a fargenign [It's been a pleasure].

KB:I'm so glad that you came.

CW:Me too.

KB:Yes. And if you want anything from me, just let me know.

CW:Could you just hold this up and explain what this book is, before we turn off the camera?

KB:Sure. This is a book in English called "The Green Pharmacy," in Swedish called "Det Gröna Apoteket," which I wrote based on the interviews that I made in the Baltic countries. These interviews were originally broadcast in Finnish, but I thought that the Scandinavian communities, Jewish and non-Jewish, would 111:00also be interested in what I experienced in the Baltic countries, in Yiddish, mostly. So, I wrote this book in Swedish. With the special niche, as my publisher calls it, and not that many Jews in Scandinavia, I was surprised that this book sold out in three months, Swedish and all. Only one other book of mine has sold out, and that was my novel, "Mischa," about a Jewish gentleman and how he lives in Helsinki. And that was also a surprise. But "Det Gröna Apoteket," "The Green Pharmacy," of course, goes back to the pharmacy in Kovno, owned and 112:00run by my family, the Shabashevitch family, the family of my maternal grandmother, my bobe. Bobe Sore, Shabashevitch. Married Saks.

CW:Great. Thank you.

KB:Thank you.

[END OF INTERVIEW]