The first thing I noticed after passing through customs control into the Kiev airport was the number of very large black leather-jacketed men standing around as if waiting for something or someone. Most of them had buzz-cuts, and some had visible scars and tattoos. They all had cell phones and every so often one would put it to his ear, say one or two words, and hang up. I had heard that Ukraine was another country run by the Mafia, but could an organization, even as rich and powerful as the Mafia, afford to have so many men on their payroll? Their HR costs must be huge. And what will happen when, like baby-boomers, they all want to retire at the same time? More about the Mafia later.

Why Ukraine (other than the desire to go everywhere)? My father’s father was born in Zhytomyr, Ukraine, about 120km west of Kiev, as was his father and his father before him. So, we go way back. I would never want to cast aspersions on the wonderful people of Ukraine (at least not in this sentence), but after spending five days wandering around the country, I am grateful to my ancestors for deciding to make the incredibly difficult trip to the US and spend a life working in the sweatshops of the Lower East Side of Manhattan. I’ve got it good, really good.

Central Kiev is actually quite nice, and the five-star Intercontinental has a great location within a very short walk of all the major attractions and street life. The backdrop of the city center is filled with the golden onion domes of some pretty impressive churches in bright blues and whites. On Sundays, just around the corner from the hotel is a street lined with painters. I would like to have been able to say what hidden treasures I found (it was all amazingly banal), but I did enjoy watching the Kievians (I just made that word up) silently contemplating the art, or in deep discussions with the artist about the meaning of it all.

On my second day in the country, I hired a driver and an English-speaking guide to take me out to Zhytomyr, home of my ancestors. Within a few minutes it became clear that neither of them had ever been there and knew nothing about the city or its history. As it turns out the guide did not know that much about Ukrainian or Russian history in general since they tend not to teach the truth, or even anything approximating the truth, in their schools. I ended up telling her a few of the things I knew and she was at first confused, and then shrugged it off as just another thing that would happen in Ukraine. She was nice though.

Rather than have these two follow me around, I had them drop me off in what appeared to be the center of the oldest part of the town, and I walked around by myself for a few hours. During my stroll I had a small personal revelation.

I do not now think of myself as Jewish, although my ancestors were all Eastern European Jews. I was not raised in the Jewish faith and do not know much about it, but because of the family history, there was this sense of being Jewish, whatever that meant. When I asked my mother what it actually meant, she said, “Just remember, you’re different than everyone else.” Oh. Thanks, Ma.

Anywho… back in Zhytomyr I realized that I was not Ukrainian. I was Jewish. The ancestors of the people here had, for centuries, gleefully beaten, robbed and killed my ancestors. This town had once been home of a large Jewish community, but no more. If they were not killed during the czarist pogroms of the 19^th century, or fled from them like my grandfather’s family, they did not survive the multiple calamities of the 20^th century. As an aside, many Ukrainians sided with the Germans because they hated the Russians more. Getting rid of the Jews was an added bonus.

As I walked around the town where many generations of Kramers had lived, loved, and died, I actually became self-conscious about my heritage and was afraid to ask any of the current inhabitants where the Old Jewish Quarter might be. I doubt anyone would have known the answer because like my guide, they knew nothing about anything, but I hesitated, not wanting to call attention to the fact that I was different than everyone else. Weird, but there it was.

I took a six-hour train ride from Kiev, east to Dnepropetrovsk. The further east you go, the poorer the country gets, and I can only describe what I saw through my train window as grinding third-world rural poverty punctuated by urban-industrial hell-scapes of belching smokestacks and abandoned factories. It was common to see a lone figure in the middle of either version of Hell, often an old woman or man, holding a plastic sack in each hand. They were either walking from nowhere to anywhere, or just standing, staring at the ground as if they too forgot why they were there or where they were going.

The train itself was interesting. I had one of the window seats in a compartment that held six. Six really bigheaded, wide-bodied Ukrainians who dozed and snored during the entire trip and never seemed to have to go to the toilet. I did the best I could, but every couple for hours I had to excuse myself and climb over a mountain range of snorting, bleary-eyed Ukrainians to go to the bathroom. Ditto on the way back. The dining car was interesting. You had a choice of potato chips or an apple. One apple.

After my train experience, I thought it would be clever of me to hire a driver for the three and a half hour drive to Donetsk, near the Russian border. Ha-ha. Should have taken the train. Picture one lane each way, enormous potholes in the road. Everyone, including huge overloaded trucks, driving really fast, bumper to bumper, weaving in and out to avoid the potholes, and still everyone is trying to pass everyone else in both directions. My driver, aka A Crazy Person, had four cell phones and was talking on at least two of them the entire trip while holding the wheel with his knees when he had to shift with his left hand while yelling on the phone. This was all taking place at 70mph six inches from the guy in front of us.

I figured, oh well… nothing I could do about it. Might as well try and enjoy it, especially if it’s the last thing I do. Apparently, I survived, so it makes a good story. After all, what is the purpose of life other than to survive and have some good stories?

Donetsk is pretty bleak. It was very cold, with occasional snow flurries, and in the middle of it all, the Donbass Palace, a 5-Star Leading Hotel. My kind of place. I noticed that there was a meeting of Shell Oil Executives going on. Everyone else was definitely Mafia or ex-KGB, which is kind of the same thing. I was able to luxuriate in my little criminally financed hotel room with occasional forays into what the 99.9% of regular Donetskians (I made that word up too) experienced day to day. I liked my room.

A brief word about Ukraine and the Mafia/government; they control everything. A university student told me they have to bribe their professors to get good grades. The professors in turn have to pay the Mafia a part of their salary to get and keep their jobs, as does just about everyone else. One consequence of this is that the children of the rich get good grades and advance degrees, and in Ukraine, the rich, by definition, are the Mafia and ex-KGB.

Unfortunately, these “educated” people did not have to earn their degree. Their parents bought them. As these people move into positions of responsibility it becomes apparent they know nothing. They are corrupt, and the infrastructure of what used to be a country falls apart.

Another person I met said that under the Communists the Party Bosses and KGB lived better than most people. They had a nicer apartment, a car, a summer dacha, but the difference between them and everyone else was not obvious. They took a lot, but not everything, so people could lead what passed for a normal life. Not any more. The Mafia takes everything, leaves nothing. If you want to start a business you have to pay bribes to the government and protection money to the Mafia. The people, used to oppression, decide that this is the way it is and will always be, and in their hopelessness, do the best they can. The churches are always full.

I was waiting in a long line to check in for my flight at the Donetsk airport out of the country. I felt pretty far out there in the sense that although the people around me looked somewhat European, I could not figure out why they were doing what they were doing, and the rule book was in Cyrillic. Just when I was about to step up to the counter, two well-dressed Ukrainians and their children, with a zillion pieces of luggage, cut in front of me, and everyone else behind me. Their check-in took a very long time. No one objected.

When I got to the counter I asked the one person in the entire airport who spoke English about it. I said, “Sorry, I do not know your customs here, but why was it OK for these people to cut in line?” I thought at first it was because they had children and that was a nice gesture, until I realized that many of the people behind me had children. “Could you explain it to me?” She looked embarrassed, and said in a quiet voice, “It is very difficult to explain our customs here.”

For pictures of my trip to Ukraine visit my page on Facebook at www.facebook.com/thecramercollection.