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The Heavens Are Empty - Avrom Bendavid-Val [78]

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Olya Smolyanova, who helped with Russian-to-English and Ukrainian-to-English translation;

Gary Sokolow, who shared Trochenbrod-related photographic and print material;

Sam Steinberg, who helped with Yiddish-to-English translation;

Anne Weiner, who provided Trochenbrod-related family photos;

Olga Zachary, who helped with Ukrainian-to-English translation;

Agnieszka Zieminska, who helped with Polish-to-English translation; and

Eliana Zuckermann, who hosted me and coordinated interviews in Rio de Janeiro.

In Ukraine, Russia, and Poland there was:

Mikhailo Demchuk, who shared his memories of Trochenbrod and the war years;

Ustyma Denysivna, Ljubov Ivanivna, and Sofia Panasivna, who as a group in Horodiche shared their memories of Trochenbrod;

Alexander Dunai, who for ten years was my devoted driver, translator, researcher, guide, friend, and fellow adventurer in Ukraine—I could not have managed without him in that period;

Anatoliy Hrytsiuk, head of the Volyn Regional Council, and staff for their hospitality and their administrative and logistical support during field activities;

Ivan Kovalchuk, who shared his memories of Trochenbrod and the war years;

Anna, Eva, and Ivan Kurnyev, warm and generous Lutsk friends, who helped with field research, photography, research facilitation, and local communication in Ukraine;

Ryszard Lubinski, who with great generosity, openness, and warmth shared his memories and photos of Trochenbrod during lengthy interview sessions in Radom, Poland;

Panas Mudrak, who shared his memories of Trochenbrod and the war years;

Loiko Mykytivna (Eva Kurnyeva’s mother), who shared her memories of Trochenbrod and the war years;

Vladislav Nakonieczny, who shared his memories and thoughts about Ukraine in the war years, the Communist era, and the early post-Communist era;

Vira Shuliak, who shared her memories of Trochenbrod and the war years;

Sergiy Omelchuk, a native of Lutsk, who helped with field research, photography, local communication, transportation, and logistical arrangements, who provided local representation for this project in the Lutsk-Trochenbrod area and has been a dear, reliable, and trusted friend since 2006;

Ivan and Nina Podziubanchuk, who together with their children Maria and Bogdan (most recently joined by new arrival Illya) have been taking me by tractor-wagon to the site of Trochenbrod, arranging interviews with old-timers in the villages of Domashiv and Yaromel, showing me villages and special places in the Trochenbrod region, connecting me with local officials, acquiring Trochenbrod artifacts and giving them to me as gifts, feeding me scrumptious rural Ukrainian meals topped off with homemade vodka, and generally being great friends for well over a decade;

Yale J. Reisner, who, from his position as Director of Research and Archives at the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation Genealogy Project at the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland, in Warsaw, generously provided me with my first Trochenbrod documents, documents that helped fire my imagination and interest;

Nikolai Romanov, who helped with Russian-to-English translation;

Meylakh Sheykhet, who in Lviv helped me understand Jewish prewar and wartime life in eastern Poland, now Ukraine, and the present-day complexities of trying to recapture elements of it;

Evgenia Shvardovskaya, who at the site of Trochenbrod, in Israel, and in Lutsk shared her memories of Trochenbrod; and

Yankel Szyc, who on my repeated visits to Poland served as my driver, guide, and translator.

TOP: Trochenbrod today, looking south. BOTTOM: Spot near the site of Trochenbrod where tractors and horse carts ford the creek even today. This could be Trochim Ford, but there is no way to know for certain. Photos by the author.

OPPOSITE TOP: A field near the site of Trochenbrod today. The reeds mark a creek. Though the area is now drained, this photo hints of what the first settlers at Trochim Ford found at the site. Photo by the author. OPPOSITE BOTTOM: Segment of a map of Mennonite settlements in western Ukraine in the 1800s, from the Mennonite

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