My mind can`t keep an understanding of how some people could methodically eliminate the others. This is a kind of terrible game: gas chambers, skinny, emaciated people are going to die, as if everything is not for real, soon this nightmare will be over, everybody will wake up alive. And the worst is that people, who betrayed and killed without a chance to survive were those, who belonged there.
After I`d read the essay of my dad, I decided to go to Sataniv. I wanted to see this place to shoot it.

So, let`s start. At first, we bought tickets to the wagon NE on the train to Khmelnitsky, what proved to be completely right, as it was crazy heat in Moscow, the same heat was waiting for us at once fraternal Ukraine and NE was the only air-conditioned wagon. In the carriage there were only four passengers.

Next, I was expecting an unforgettable meeting with customs officials, whom I`d never met before in my railway travelling. Friends eagerly told me a lot of horror stories about the night shakedown, grandmothers, planted with trains, etc. etc. But! Everything went well! Of course, waking up twice per night (first Russian custom, then Ukrainian) was not very nice, but everything went without incidents. I might shoot everything, and all the time I was too lazy or busy. So, the clever people are right: you should define the purpose clearly of either travel or history in photos. Thus, I got the first one. Now the idea, that I should go there again to SHOOT doesn`t leave me!

Neighbor in the coupe, going to visit relatives, enlightened me a little on Sataniv, she told me about the beautiful banks of the River Zbruch, healing mineral water and local health centers and coffee shop with mini zoo. My imagination conjured a fabulous picture.
At last, we reached Khmelnitsky. Ordinary city as a city, it is also inhabited.

Thanks God, we got a big good bus. The fare to the "Spa Sataniv" - 31 UAH. Oh, the exchange rate of hryvnia at the Kiev station was 4.5 rubles. The bus was good, indeed, but the sun was beating down mercilessly. I still went with the feeling that I was going behind enemy lines, my friends were having fun, so they are easy people, unlike me.

Had looked at the food, placed on the dining room table, I realized that I would not eat there, because it appetite hadn`t cause appetite, quite on the contrary.

Thus, all three days of our living - being in "Tovtry" I ate at the Cafe "Fortetsya" (I can be mistaken in the name, but who knows, understands). Normal cafe, according to my neighbor from the train, there was a mini - zoo. It was there, but it was consisted mostly of our little - brothers birds, and I am quite indifferent to them, so they didn`t impressed me at all. Fish, cooked in a tandoor (a fire in a stone pit, something like that),didn`t capture my imagination also. Tandoor is the feature of this restaurant. Dumplings with cherry pleased me much, deruny (potato pancakes), that is draniki (though I ate them in another cafe) - as well. But they were very lush and that was surprising for me. All, as Anya said, was a piece of cake: they put soda in to them. As for me, I prefer the flat draniki.
In addition to the cafe it was a small market there, which was located at the entrance of the resort complex.

Old ladies, aunties and guvs sold everything from their own gardens and very tasty buns, I remember, specially, the buns with poppy seeds, fresh-pressed apple juice (half a liter - 10 rubles) and currants with raspberries and blueberries. You can live!
Also the blouses with national Ukrainian embroidery and other "touristic" joys were sold there. In Lviv, where to I went later, the prices on these embroidered blouses were four times higher.

I decided to go to Sataniv - as everyone who usually goes there from the resort - by a passing car or a bus. While I was sitting at the bus stop, a local old woman started conversation with me - with her granddaughter, they were also going "to the city." From her story I realized that life in Sataniv was not sweet, all state factories and not only state were closed. It's very much connected with the Russian gas. People are getting divorced, leaving the village, there is nothing to do there, no jobs, except in resorts. A granddaughter of that old woman was very nice, small, but tricky, such a pretty angel. And that was just my first understanding, how beautiful the Ukrainian women were. Competitors, however!

I was hanging over the synagogue, photographed goats and trash on her background, and suddenly I got the same feeling as Andrew Mironov`s hero in the movie "The Diamond Arm".
I saw people in skull caps (such black hat worn by men), I heard the English language and I was grateful to God. For me, that people in the center of the deserted Sataniv were like that boy, walking on the water, to Mironov`s hero. Used to follow my old habbit (freebie, come to me) I joined this group of distinctly Jewish tourists. It was funny to do that, since there were nobody around, and it became clear, that I was not with them. Finally, they began to talk to me and told, that all of them came from Sweden, and were travelling through the places connected with Jewish history.

Thanks to that group, I was able to get inside the synagogue, I got to the abandoned old Jewish cemetery also with them. Hannah left two flowers for me, and that we said goodbye to each other. There was a special entrance behind the cemetery, but for some reason we climbed up by the separate steep path. The geese were passing it before us. The garden, enclosed by barbed wire, was laid out near the cemetery.

Maybe, a man, who sold the tomatoes in Sataniv and asked me to photograph him, was the sun of those, who condemned my relatives to death, I was thinking. But then lopked at the address, written on: "Ternopolskaya oblast", quite different place. For the expected picture of him he gave me a tomato, later, tied from the heat and impressions, I ate it as my dinner, saying "thanks" to him mentally.

Nothing has changed, from my point of view, since my grandfather camr here after the war. Judging by the tracks, the cows are still walking through the cemetery, tombstones «are walking away» into the forest. I was sitting n the cemetery under the birch and thinking… Why?? Why, if the God exists, he allowed and allow all the same to be?

I think it wasn`t right. People helped me without any problems to get there and back. But again, maybe I was just lucky. On the first day, I was tossed back free to the resort by the young guy. As he spoke, he worked in Sataniv under the contract as agronomist, he grew sugar beet there.

At night - and it was getting dark out there drastically and immediately - I was lying and feeling, probably, what my grandfather's relatives felt. Infinite anguish and incomprehensible fatality to death. A night that will never turn into the morning. People, just like you, who hate you for no reason and want you to disappear from the face of the earth. Fading hope, that maybe we`ll have time, break through, a miracle will happen, soon there will be the forest, we will hide, we will get to those who will help us, but it did not happen, life is over, ended. And to whom it was necessary here, your life . And people in the sanatorium treat kidneyss. Yes, the kidneyss hearts, but those people are alive. They especially do not want to think about what happened here a few decades ago. It does not concern them. They are - the normal, everyday people.
Maybe the rich Russian, who will build the new "Tovtry", will spend money for a monument to the dead Jews. And do locals responsible for their death need it? It was sad, yes, but our visit to Sataniv was over, it was time to go to the Lviv city ...