Benjamin Stark & Boris Starikov

Title: A Long Way to Freedom
Author: Benjamin Stark
Publisher: Self-Published
Place of publication: Melbourne
Year of Publication: 2010
Location of Book: Lamm Jewish Library
Cities/town/camps: Ukraine: Tomashpol, Ternovka, Tulchin, Lviv; Austria: Vienna; Italy: Rome, Ladispol; Australia: Melbourne.
Note: those cities/towns/camps underlined are those which are most central to the narrative
Genre: Memoir
Key events/experiences: Romanian occupation; Tomashpol ghetto; child survivor

A Long Way to Freedom is the memoir of Benjamin Stark who, as a young boy, survived the occupation of Ukraine by Nazi Germany and its ally, the Kingdom of Romania, subsequently living under communist rule until his emigration to Melbourne in 1980 with his wife and son.

The memoir is divided into two parts. Part One recounts the author’s childhood and the war period in his hometown Tomashpol, with Part Two describing his life in post-war Soviet Ukraine until his emigration to Australia. Pages 1-8 provide the author’s preface with pages 9-52 detailing his family history and childhood. Pages 53-102 describe the war years following Nazi and Romanian occupation of Tomashpol in July 1941 until liberation in March 1944. Pages 103-150 recount Boris’ adolescence and education in post-war Tomashpol between 1945-1954, with pages 151-197 describing his conscription into the Soviet army in 1954 and service until 1957. Pages 197-255 detail his studies in and teaching appointments at Lviv from 1957 to 1974 as well as his marriage and the birth of his son. Pages 256-313 describe rising antisemitism in the Soviet Union, the family’s struggle to obtain an exit visa, and their eventual emigration to Melbourne in 1980.

Benjamin Stark was born Boris Starikov on 5 February 1935 in the village of Tomashpol (now Tomashpil), in the Vinnytsia Oblast region of central Ukraine near the border of modern-day Moldova. Boris was the third, and youngest, child of Rosa Gurvits and Usher Starikov, and had a sister Riva and brother, Sulya, who were 11 and 12 years his senior. Both Boris’ parents were factory workers, and the family was considered middle-class. For the first six years of his life, Boris lived under Soviet rule and spoke Ukrainian and Russian at school although his family spoke Yiddish at home. Despite communist repression of religion, the Starikovs were moderately religious and attended synagogue.

On 22 June 1941, when Boris was six-years-old, Nazi Germany broke the non-aggression pact and invaded the Soviet Union. At the same time, nearby Romania seized the territories formerly lost to the USSR, as well as the region of Transnistria, which included Vinnytsia Oblast, and the area split between German and Romanian occupation. In July, the war reached Tomashpol, and the Starikov family fled further east. However, on the way they were subject to a raid by German bombers which wreaked destruction, killing many civilians. They then obtained refuge with another Jewish family in the shtetl of Ternovka. Within the hour, however, German soldiers took the town, bringing with them a column of Soviet POWs.

As rumours of killings and deportations to concentration camps circulated, the family left Ternovka and made their way to Tulchin, staying with relatives. But after a violent round-up they decided to return Tomashpol on the morning of 15 August. The family scouted the town whilst hiding in the bushes at the town perimeter; there, they heard gunshots and fled back to Tulchin. That day, approximately 350 Jews were rounded up and shot in Tomashpol. The Starikovs remained in Tulchin for a time but after receiving word that the killings had ceased, they returned to Tomashpol which was under the control of a Romanian garrison.

In October 1941, the Romanians established the Pechora concentration camp in Vinnytsia Oblast and Boris, his father and brother were all forced to perform hard labour on a Romanian controlled dairy farm to avoid deportation whilst Riva was sent to the country to work in the fields. In the summer of 1942, when Boris was seven-years-old, the Jewish population of Tomashpol was forced into the newly established ghetto which was enclosed by barbed wire. The Starikovs remained in the ghetto for two years. During that time the family was subjected to numerous round-ups but managed to evade capture and deportation. However, sometime in 1943, Boris’ father was sent to a labour camp. Sulya and Boris were able to obtain work at the German commandant’s office, allowing them to avoid deportation.

On the morning of 16 March 1944, the German and Romanian troops fled Tomashpol as the Russian army closed in, liberating the town later that day. His father returned alive from the camps - the Starikov family miraculously survived. However, Boris lost 49 members of his extended family, most of whom perished in  Pechora. In May, a Soviet Special Commission arrived to record the wartime atrocities committed in Tomashpol. The town’s surviving Jewish residents travelled to a mass grave in the Jewish cemetery, armed with spades, where the nine-year-old Boris watched in horror as the remains of the victims were excavated – including his 18-year-old cousin whose spotted dress was recognised by her inconsolable mother.

In September 1944, then aged nine, Boris returned to school and life slowly returned to ‘normal’. However, in 1953 Boris’ father died. In August 1954, Boris finished secondary school and enrolled in a technical College in Odessa but was conscripted into the Soviet army. From 1954 to 1957 he served as a soldier, reaching the rank of sergeant. In 1957, he enrolled at the Pedagogical Institute in Lvov where he studied Russian language, literature, and music. There, he met his future wife, Tamara, and the couple married in 1959. In 1961, Tamara and Boris both received teaching positions at the same school in Lviv, where Tamara taught maths and physics and Boris taught music. Though antisemitism in the Soviet Union remained prevalent, Boris was able to obtain his second degree in German language and began teaching German at a local school. In 1970, his son Zhenya was born.

Boris and Tamara spent many years attempting to emigrate, however, to do so they needed to apply for an exit visa with the KGB. Amidst rising antisemitism, Sulya emigrated to Israel in 1979, ultimately settling in Australia. As life grew increasingly unbearable, Boris and Tamara applied for an exit visa in late 1979. The school was informed, leading to Boris and Tamara being subjected to antisemitic abuse and the loss of their jobs. Finally, after waiting approximately nine months, the family’s exit visa was approved, and they travelled to Vienna by train before travelling onto Rome where they sought assistance from the JOINT and HIAS.

They remained in Rome for 2 months whilst awaiting their visas, in which time Boris worked for HIAS to earn money for accommodation and travel. Eventually, their visa to Australia arrived from Sulya and the family boarded a flight to Melbourne, arriving to “freedom” on 12 November 1980. In Melbourne, Boris changed his name to Benjamin Stark. From 1981 until his retirement in 1999, he worked as a teacher of music and German. Tamara also worked as a teacher’s aide as well as teaching Russian at Saturday school. In 1984, Boris was granted Australian citizenship. As president of an association of Holocaust survivors from the former Soviet Union from 1999-2005, he was the editor of an anthology Not to be Forgotten (see entry).

A Long Way to Freedom is a unique and comprehensive account of the Holocaust in Tomashpol and central Ukraine as well as of Jewish life and antisemitism in the region both before and after the cataclysmic events of WWII. As the memoir is self-published and thus not subject to rigorous editing, there are some errors in spelling and dates, and some background details, such as the experiences of his family and the timeline of events are either unclear or missing. However, it is nonetheless a remarkably detailed narrative, particularly given the young age of the author at the time of the events. To generate a clear and complete account, the author has incorporated the stories of several of his surviving family and friends from Tomashpol.

Approximately two-thirds of the memoir is devoted to the author’s experiences of post-war Tomashpol and communist Ukraine. It is therefore not merely a chronicle of the author’s Holocaust experiences, but also a rich portrait of Jewish life in the region from 1945 until 1980. In particular, the memoir focuses on the difficulties of everyday life in Soviet Ukraine and the family’s struggle to emigrate amid rising antisemitism. It does not discuss the author’s life in Australia.