I don’t know why it was so gratifying—picking out the letters one by one to form the names of the streets and places that made up the landscape of my ancestors’ city—Lublin. Picking the letters out of an old typography box and then forming the names in Yiddish—backwards so that the visionary printer Robert Sawa could print them forwards. Forming names of streets that no longer exist. One that my great-great grandmother Nechama Borenszajn was born on— Nadstawna Street. One that my mother and grandmother were born on and many others were born, lived and worked on: Szeroka Street—an iconic street in Jewish Lublin.
Robert is preparing a poster that will feature these places written in Yiddish in the background. Memory workers from all over Europe coming to a Seminar we are holding at Brama will get a poster to take home but here in Lublin they will see the only poster with these streets embossed in the background—because they cannot take those streets with them. No one can because many don’t exist. Such a simple idea and yet someone had to think of it. That someone was Robert.
He asked me to help arrange the Yiddish letters because they are unfamiliar to him.
Today after I picked out all the letters and formed the names of the places, the poignant “Brama Żydowska” or Jewish Gate,” and the funny “Ferkakte Brom” or Shitty Gate, among them, and Robert made a print, he remarked, “I wonder how long they’ve been waiting.” At first I didn’t get it and thought maybe my confusion was because he had said it in Polish, but then he explained that he meant he wondered how long these letters had been waiting to be used. I said, “You should use them more.” He said he didn’t feel it was his place.
“But together we can.”
He agreed. I hope we’ll do more with them in the future. There’s something sacred in the act of physically putting the letters in place to form Yiddish words in a place where the Jewish culture was wiped out. They have not been together in those combinations for a long time. I wonder if they are grateful that someone remembers.
Me, searching for the letters. Some of the sets are incomplete and have no lamed or no dalet, for instance.
More searching (we do not have nikud-or diacritical marks-so had to go without).
The names as I was setting them up, before Robert took them away.
The letters, awaiting their first ink in decades.
The names printed as a test but on the poster they will be embossed, not printed, as many do not exist.