Everything Is Illuminated, Not!
Book distorts history by omitting crucial facts, including an important link to the Czech Republic
By Ivan Katchanovski
The Prague Post
(October 7, 2004)
As the recent controversy about The Passion of the Christ and the election of a movie star as governor of California show, movies are not only entertainment but also sources of negative and positive stereotypes. An upcoming Hollywood film, much of which was filmed in Prague this summer, promotes such negative stereotypes. Furthermore, the book on which it was based, Everything Is Illuminated, distorts history by omitting crucial facts.
Among the omissions in author Jonathan Safran Foer's tale is the mass execution of residents of a Ukrainian village in retaliation for having helped their Jewish neighbors. Ironically these Jewish neighbors quite possibly included Foer's grandfather. Furthermore, Foer also ignores an important link to the Czech Republic.
The best-selling book deals with a tragic chapter in Jewish history. It presents a fictional story based on a real trip undertaken by the young American author to Ukraine to locate a woman who possibly saved his Jewish grandfather during World War II.
Because my research on the politics of mass terror happened to deal with the area of Ukraine depicted in the movie and in the book, I decided to seek an answer to a question no one was asking: What did happen in real life as opposed to the fictional account given in the book and movie?
When Foer, who uses his real name and names of real places in Ukraine in his book, went to Ukraine to locate a rescuer of his grandfather, he found nothing. So he wrote the novel based on his imagination. It took me about the same amount of time as the author had spent researching to find published sources and to make a trip from the United States to a part of Ukraine portrayed in the book.
Trachimbrod, or Trochimbrod in Ukrainian, was a Jewish village in the Volyn region near the city of Lutsk. The village was also called Sofievka, after a German-born mother of a Russian czar who sanctioned the establishment of Jewish agricultural colonies, including Trochimbrod, in the beginning of the 19th century. Its population consisted of 1,500-2,000 Jews before the start of World War II, but it almost doubled when Nazis brought in Jews from nearby villages and small towns and established a ghetto after they occupied Ukraine.
The Nazis liquidated the Trochimbrod ghetto in August and September 1942, with a German killing squad executing several thousand Jews. The local police force, which at that time consisted primarily of Ukrainians, helped round up Jews. Fewer than 200 survivors managed to escape the massacres in the ghetto and in another nearby Jewish village.
The story of their rescue, pieced together from materials of the Klubochin village museum, eyewitness accounts and memoirs of Jewish, Ukrainian and Russian partisans is very different from the one depicted in the book. On Nov. 4, 1942, the Nazis with the help of the local police force executed 137 residents (including women, elderly people and 36 children) of Klubochin, a Ukrainian village located a couple of miles from Trochimbrod. Afterward they burned the village. As it turns out, this massacre was a reprisal for the actions of Ukrainian partisans who had helped Trochimbrod Jews. These partisans from Klubochin and neighboring villages took up arms against the Nazis and their collaborators, supplied weapons to a Jewish resistance group in Trochimbrod and executed a local peasant for killing Jews who escaped the Nazi massacres. The Klubochin partisans accepted Jewish partisans from Trochimbrod into their unit and provided protection to more than 150 Jewish survivors who escaped from the Nazi massacre in this village and nearby smaller Jewish settlements and were hiding in a forest near Klubochin. It's quite likely that Foer's grandfather was one of these survivors.
Many of these Jews later joined another Soviet/Ukrainian partisan unit in the region. Most were killed during combat with the Nazis. Only about 40 Jews from Trochimbrod survived until the end of the war.
Sharp contrast
This story stands in a sharp contrast to claims made in the book. The author finds no Ukrainian rescuers of his grandfather and implicates a fictional grandfather of the main Ukrainian hero, Ukrainian neighbors and a Ukrainian-speaking Nazi general in the massacre in Trochimbrod. The book even states, "Ukrainians back then were terrible to the Jews. They were almost as bad as the Nazis."
The entire ethnic group is put alongside an organization responsible for killing of tens of millions of people, including millions of Ukrainians. The Nazis executed not only whole Ukrainian families but also whole villages for rendering any aid, such as food or shelter, to partisans, Jews or Soviet prisoners of war. They intended to exterminate, enslave or expel to Siberia the absolute majority of Ukrainians, whom they considered racially inferior. Several million Ukrainians died fighting Nazi aggression. The number of Ukrainians who became victims of the Nazi genocidal policy or who fought the Nazis during World War II was several dozen times higher than the number of Ukrainians who collaborated with the Nazis.
Like the information about the Jewish Holocaust that was suppressed by the Soviet government, however, the Ukrainian side of World War II remained largely unknown in the United States because of Cold War politics. Only in 1992, when Ukraine became independent, was a memorial sign erected on the site of the massacre in Trochimbrod, now just a historical name because the village was razed during the war. Similarly, the stories of the massacres in Klubochin and many other Ukrainian villages, such as nearby Kortelisy, where the Nazis executed nearly 3,000 residents in a single September 1942 day, remain completely unknown in the United States. On average, Ukrainians suffered death and destruction on the level of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks every day for more than two years during the Nazi occupation of Ukraine.
While the book describes Ukrainians as very unhelpful and even obstructive, the local people whom I met during my trip to Ukraine were ready to lend a hand and provide information about Trochimbrod. The director of the museum in Klubochin, Vasily Matsuyk, told me about Nazi massacres in his village and in nearby Trochimbrod, as well as a story of a Ukrainian family murdered by the Nazis for hiding Jews in Klubochin. Ivan Filuyk, an elderly survivor of the massacre in Klubochin, vividly remembered how he attended school in Trochimbrod along with several other Ukrainian children. Valentina Shtinko, a journalist for Volyn, the main newspaper in the region, published an article on the Trochimbroad memorial. I saw two documentary films on regional television about a Jewish woman who survived the massacre in Trochimbrod and was hidden by a peasant family and then was rescued by Ukrainian partisans. She immigrated to Israel but later returned to Ukraine and now lives in Lutsk.
Czech links?
There is even a possibility that the woman who helped to rescue the author's grandfather was a Czech. Augustina, the name of the women in the book and the film, sounds more Central European than Ukrainian. Thousands of Czechs lived in the Volyn region before the Soviet government expelled them to Czechoslovakia in the aftermath of World War II. The Volyn Czechs were more closely linked and faced less-severe punishment than their Ukrainian neighbors for hiding Jews during the war.
In the house in which I grew up in the Volyn region, a Czech family had a concealed underground shelter used for hiding Jews. The real-life hero of the movie might be actually found in the Czech Republic.
Many people will read Everything Is Illuminated and many more are likely to see the film version, directed by Liev Schreiber and starring Elijah Wood of "Lord of the Rings" fame. Sadly, they would remain utterly in the dark about the real events as opposed to their fictional stereotypical portrayal. Similarly, they would remain ignorant about the Czech link to the events depicted in the movie, which ironically was filmed in the Czech Republic.
-- The author, a visiting scholar at the Centennial Center of the American Political Association in Washington, D.C., is working on a book-length manuscript on politics and terror in the Soviet Union. He currently is conducting field research in Ukraine.
Reader's Comments:
[13/04/2007] : Thank you for this article. I can understand your frustration or at least your disagreement with what you believe to be an inaccurate portrayal of Ukrainian (and Eastern European) people. But just to put in MY perspective of the movie (haven't read the book), I did not come away with the belief that Ukrainian people were anti-Semitist. And just to let you know, I have no ties to Europe except for the Spanish, considering that I am from Latin America (prior Spanish Colony) so I have no strong feelings for either side of this story (just an observer).
Well, I just wanted to say, that this movie in NO WAY made me think less of Ukrainians. It was only after reading this article that I started seeing what you were talking about (the Jewish remembrance/taxi/tourist business that Grandpa started, unhelpfulness of the Ukrainian workers, and Grandpa's dislike for Foer in the beginning), but even taking those aspects into consideration, they pose no threat to my belief that the people from Ukraine, ARE GOOD PEOPLE...... thank you again for your perspective....
Pico West
Seattle, WA. USA | [15/03/2007] : I'm very pleased to read that someone disagree with the image of Ukraine shown in the novel and film. I also was there one year ago, because "I just wanted to see where my Grandfather grew up", like Jonathan, and the people that I found in the villages near Lutsk and L'viv where very gentle and ready to help us, happy to receive "tourists" and very open to explain you every detail about their towns and history. My grand-grand father was a partisan too, and he was hanged in his town; there are not j
Jews in my family and I never heard about anti-semitism in Ukraine, other than Nazi's occupation or Soviet oppression, before seeing the film. Yes, I've heard about Ukrainians that helped the Nazis from my grandparents, like I heard similar stories in north Italy, about people that did that because they where afraid from the Nazis, or because simple empathy with fascists.
Sorry, I didn't read the book, and beside the distorted (not just un-accurate as tim sned said) I liked the film.
Ricardo Stepaniuk
Madrid | [14/03/2007] : I found this article to be not only interesting but alos informative.
That said, the book is written to be a work of fiction, and claims to be such. More problematically, it is a work of meta fiction.
Thus, Jonathan Safron Foer (Character) is not Jonathan Safron Foer (author). The magical-realist "historical" chapters are supposed to be written by Jonathan Safron Foer (character), which is why they are entirely historically inaccurate. I can understand why some Ukrainians may be upset by the portrayals of their culture, but it is not intended to be a work of historical fiction.
And while some Ukranians DID help the Jews, Eastern Europe DOES have a long history of violent anti-semitism.
Mason Schaefer
Metro East. | [12/03/2007] : Are you honestly attacking JSF for the masterpiece that he has written? He never once claimed in the book that the events were absolutely historically correct, and I doubt that he intended to deceive anyone! The facts of the narrative are artistically blurred and exaggerated throughout the entire book. No one will read this book or watch the movie and be convinced that it's entirely historically accurate. It's fiction for God's sakes!
Foer has illuminated countless human truths in his book. He hasn't plagiarized and butchered Ukrainian history. He's told a fictional story that carries such momentous, timeless truth that readers won't consider what he said about Ukraine, but rather what he says and DOESN'T say about war, life, love, family, happiness, beauty, and Truth.
You cannot fault him for imagining this story. It's not a commentary on Ukrainian values, nor a racial slur, nor a history book. It is fiction and it is beautiful. If you truly believe what you have written, then not everything has been illuminated for you. Perhaps you should give it another read.
tim sned
arkansas | [24/02/2007] : I am happy that I found your article which illuminated me about some of the details about the movie and the book. I enjoyed the movie and figured that it was an exaggeration of the actual facts. The idea that all Ukranians were evil and assisted in the deaths of jews at that time obviously simplifies the history of the groups that aided the Jews. However, the amount of general anti-semitism in Eastern Europe and Russia fueled the holocaust and the groups that protected the Jews were far from the dominant force.
My mother's family lived in Latvia and only my grandmother and her two kids escaped on the last train from Riga. The rest of my family was liquiditated by the Nazis. Most people also thought that Nazis would be an improvement from Stalin. My parent's description of anti semitism that existed in Russia for them after the war cleary indicated the reality of living as a Jew in Russia. Good luck with your research!
Jim Groper
Boston USA | [19/02/2007] : Ivan, děkuji. I must agree with anonymous B, in that the illumination, for me, began with the film and later curiosity about the history brought me to your article. The illumination continues. Not all of us can be scholars on everything, and sometimes a little fiction can lead to even more truths. I also agree with the other comments that I do not come away with a negative view of Ukraine or Ukrainians after seeing the movie. Best wishes in your continued research.
D Gilly
USA | [11/01/2007] : To be fair, the author has cited the book as being fictional. While these criticisms are certianly valid, I think that we should look at the book as it was written: a fictionalized, beautifully written account of an author's coming of age. The Holocaust figures importantly into the story, but it's not the centerpiece.
Justin Bergin
Lawrence, KS | [27/12/2006] : Thank you for this article. It was enlightening. However, I still love this movie. I love the music, the scenery, the characters, and the story. Furthermore, I did not get the idea of "Ukranians are bad" from this movie.... I was much more involved with the psychology of the characters and the plot. Although I understand how the issue is different for people who lived through the events and are from the region.
The film may have many flaws, but without it, I would not be searching for "Trachimbrod" on the internet, nor would my search have led me to the Prague Post and your article within it. I look forward to better movies in the future, but I think Everything is Illuminated is not so bad.
anonymous b
oklahoma | [01/07/2006] : I am unable to comment on the book, as I have not read it, but if your appraisal of it is true, then the movie is much kinder to Ukranians. Alex and his grandfather are indeed portrayed as having some dislike and condescension towards Jews (often using the word 'zhid'), but as someone from Ukraine I can tell you that this is not uncommon in both Ukraine and Russia and does not really amount to anti-semitism. In fact, Alex is at one point shocked to hear that many Ukranians before the war were anti-semitic. As for the quote about Ukranians being terrible to the Jews (which, if the movie is faithful to the book, comes from Jonathan's grandmother), I believe it refers to the pogroms that took place in the early part of the 20th century. Of course, as a factual statement it is an exaggeration, but it's certainly not an unreasonable thing for one of the characters in the work to say.
Alex Gendler
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