Searching for a Lost Odessa — and a Deaf Childhood

An article about Russian speaking Odessa that omits the fact that, in February, 2014, the American government engineered a CIA coup that ousted the elected government of Ukraine and installed the present fascist, anti-Russian regime is, in effect, a cover up. Unfortunately there is no "hearing aid" that your readers can turn on to reveal the aggressive plans for conquest behind the current US frantic military build up on Russia's borders. Instead we will hear every day about the "Russian threat"--the US media as always cheerleaders for the Pentagon's next war.

Profound and overwhelming - thank you.

Yay to the new York times for publishing Ilya Kaminsky's wonderful and nuanced memoir. Ilya is a treasure, his poetry and translations a gift and a reminder of the need for much more of this. We are humanized by the stories of our myriad, rich diasporas, it's an antidote to the atavistic scourge running wild in the US.

I feel profound gratitude to the righteous Ukrainian stranger who saved the life of 4 year old Victor. That courageous act gave life to Ilya and consequently this truly magnificent essay.

Such a beautiful, evocative piece that created echos and stirred up feelings about the stories my father told of his family's journey here from the Polish shtetl. Thank you, Ilya, for your wonderful writing.

I am moved to tears by this evocative essay. It exquisitely portrays a unique story that touches on our shared human experience of grappling with the past, despite the many missing and broken threads lost to time and distance. Resonant, haunting, and beautifully written.

"Fragments are my wholes" too. Every few years I drive to the block I grew up on and park across the street from the two story brick apartment building I grew up in. I leave the engine running and the radio on and run my eyes from the top of the living room window down the fire escape over the metal cellar door embedded in the sidewalk and across to the squat stoop looking for pieces of myself. I am not as brave as the poet. I do not touch the walls. I have dreamed about going back inside for the last 45 years. But I do not leave the car. I drive slowly away, seeing no one and no one seeing me. He is an inspiration to me to see the beauty in the fragments.

One of the most beautifully written and touching pieces I have read in a long time. Also, I am hearing-impaired, and have never read anything that begins to touch on that experience as does Kaminsky's prose. I will carry this in my heart for a very long time.

I read this transfixed at the vision, the vibrant images that Kaminsky conjures up. Kudos to the fragments of photographs accompanying this article. I am still stunned; I am still in Odessa.

This is just outstanding in every respect. Thank you for sharing this beautiful, intimate story. I felt I was there, experiencing it with you.

Ilya Kaminsky's writing is more than beautiful. It is a reminder that our immigrants who lived with totalitarianism, war, and holocausts are true heroes. They should be welcomed, honored, and embraced by all of us.

Life was always precarious for Odessa's Jews.My mothers parents left after the 1905 pogrom. None of those who stayed behind survived World War 2.

Deep and so lyrical. Thank you for sharing your writing.

Incredibly beautiful both in sentiment & writing style.

This is amazing. This is why I subscribe.

Is it far fetched to say evocative of Isaac Babel's Odessa, or maybe haunted by his ghost? A beautiful piece, the kind of thing, maybe, that can only be written by a poet who finds only prose is adequate to the task.

Thank you for sharing these words and images! The writing works on several levels and that is rare. I teach a course called Art and War in which students view/read/listen to global work that artists have made through the centuries about war. The syllabus will be updated with a link to this poetic essay to be required reading after students listen to excerpts of Shostakovich, view and discuss War Memorials from around the world, and venture into geo-politics examining the Karelian Wars and the Helsinki Accords - the one from the 1970's, not the one from 2018........ Also, as a person with very strong hearing aids in both ears, the piece has an added resonance (yes, I am aware of the full meaning of this word, as I slowly drift into sonic isolation). Finally, my paternal grandfather left Odessa around 1910 and made his way to the US. There are a couple of photos of he and his family, and his revolutionary cell (who didn't oppose the czar??). Writing on the back of these is in Cyrillic but from right to left, showing that he was not educated in a Russian School, but learned to write through Hebrew.

This beautiful essay about generations of human histories and miseries soundlessly conflate love and pain into art that will touch more generations. The work of a language master.

Ilya thanks for writing this. It's by far the most powerful and moving piece I've read this year. It'll stay with me for a long time to come. Many, many thanks from a new admirer from Brazil

Ilya, beautifully written, very moving story.

I lost my father 16 years ago and my mother last year. At the end, I felt like I understood you profoundly. Everything made sense in a new light.

This story moved me to tears and left me with so many emotions. Thank you for sharing.

I have read the NYTs for years now. It has been a frustrating exercise of late given the paper's apparent obsession with all things Trump. It is however by presenting grand moments of brilliant writing and insight such as this piece that I am kept firmly on their journalistic hook.

Hi Ilya, My name is Elina Mer (I am commenting through my husband's NYT account) and you and I were classmates in Odessa at School #107. My family and I left Odessa in 1988 -- a few years ahead of yours. After reading your feature, I pulled out our school photo from third grade, taken right after we received our red pioneer ties. Like you, I have a part of my heart where I keep my Odessa memories. But unlike you, I have not been brave enough to return there. I just want to say that I remember you and that I own your "Dancing in Odessa" book. And I want to thank for writing this beautiful piece.

I am dumb-struck by this magnificent piece. Thank you, Ilya Kaminsky, for all this, for which words fail me. If you turn off your hearing aids, you will register the applause from all your readers.

thank you for writing this. really unusual and beautiful.

Breathtakingly beautiful. Thank you.

My paternal grandparents were jewish immigrants from small towns near Kiev, arriving in 1905. I am thankful for their courage.

This is beautifully written. I do want to encourage the writer to record his mother's messages onto a permanent storage medium -- I treasure the messages I have from late family members, but voice mail systems aren't dependable for long-term storage and can be wiped out anytime. I recorded them as digital files and have them backed up on my computer, CDs, an external hard drive. They are priceless.

Thank you so much for writing this piece, for preserving the memories of horrors long gone, for reminding us about the depth of human kindness even in the midst of absolute darkness. Few Americans know the torturous history of Russian Jews in the former Soviet Union. The author's story reminds me of my own family's journey in the 1940s Moscow. My Russian grandmother's two brothers and father died during World World II. After the war her husband, a Jew, could not find work since being Jewish was a fireable offense. Her sister was imprisoned for many years as punishment for surrendering to German forces during the war. My family moved to the United States in 1998 and never looked back. My grandmother is 92 now, a survivor of those terrible times, a reminder to stay vigilant lest the horrors of the past resurrect themselves in our new homeland.

Lovely, mysterious, and haunting.

Beautiful, sad, wonderful. I will read it again and again. Thank you

This is the best thing I've read in a long time. It reminded me of an incident from my childhood. Brezhnev died on my 9th birthday. My grandmother and I were riding a bus in Moscow. Through the bus window, I saw black ribbons tied to flag poles. "Why did they hang electrical tape from the flags?" I asked, and my grandmother - normally a gentle person - quickly reached over and covered my mouth with her hand. She was of the same generation as Shura and Natalia, a Jew from Kiev.

This was a beautiful story, thank you so much for sharing.

This was beautiful. It made me remember my own dear parents, long gone, yet their voices still echo in my memory. We never really know our parents, only their stories.

I have been a hearing person weaving my way with the Deaf community for decades. This captures and places in the heart much of what I have witnessed and known to be true. A gift to all...

I've met him a couple of times and been present when he's read his poetry. He is an extraordinary writer and a very warm person.

Beautiful

In a word - remarkable.

I had no idea I was about to read this whole piece; no idea my morning would stop until I got the whole story of these generations. Beautiful. Grateful.

My family came from Odessa. I was born in 1984, a third generation American. My great grandparents spoke little of their past. Thank you for this. It is a gift greater than you know.

Thank you. The best piece I've read, all year.

Simply wonderful. Thank you.

I love this. I have read Ilya Kaminsky’s poetry. His prose, like his poetry, is spell binding. I will buy his latest book. I wear hearing aids. I also turn them off.

The quiet affection in this piece is beyond moving; it makes the unfamiliar--Odessa, the war, deprivation--real, palpable. It takes our hand and gently leads us, and we see.

This is one of the most beautiful stories I have ever read. It brings tears to my eyes. The writer has transported me over the decades into a world he inhabited. I feel his emotions. As an individual who works in a field supporting civil rights for minorities and the disabled, this piece touched my soul. Beautiful. Thank you for sharing this story with us.

Kaminsky’s great gift of humanity resides in his ability to teach hearing-readers how to participate in the act of full-bodied listening. He shares the secret of communication that swells beyond the bounds of simple speech and takes its place as a capacity to resurrect the lived moment. He requires us to grow good at empathy, to feel how it works in our hearts and minds. He lets us witness how love works. I thank him. He’s just great.

I have two questions. One, does the author read these comments. Two, does he know that his words move unprepared morning commuters - especially those with sons who have hearing aids - to tears. I hope the answers are yes; and yes, now he does.

Wonderful reflection on deafness and memory. Deafness is a theater, undeniably so, and only because sound obscures motion, human movement. The hearing are placed on stage by the deaf who are pushed back into the audience.