Highlighting: “Where the Night Train Ends” by Anat Shmulovich. Basso Ostinato. 2022. 248 pages. ISBN-13: 979-8986612102.

Moving is a difficult task, even under the best of circumstances, such as moving into the house of one’s dreams. Psychologists consider it a traumatic event; its emotional impact is second only to the death of a loved one. Yet Jews have chosen (when not forced) to move since Abraham heeded God’s call. Despite its difficulties it has benefited us, broadened our worldview, enabled resilience and resourcefulness, and enriched us in a multitude of ways, as it enriched the foreign lands we lived in.

Leaving kith and kin is usually prompted by necessity or the promise of substantial opportunity. Leaving one’s home and some, if not all, possessions, including those that have only sentimental value, is trying enough. Leaving behind one’s native land, language, friends, neighbors and especially loved ones (even if the separation is expected to be temporary) is often heartbreaking.

What happens if one is compelled to leave one’s first love and abandon the dream of a lifetime together? Anat Schmulovich, a New Providence, New Jersey-based resident, explores these issues and much more in her recently published memoir, “Where The Night Train Ends.”

The author is a concert pianist and piano teacher, as well as a talented storyteller who has written a fast-paced memoir of her youth. This window into life in a miserable Ukrainian village, but also Odessa, Moscow, Latvia, Lithuania and Israel, helps explain why the Soviet Union failed yet produced so many brilliant musicians and other performing artists. We also learn of the strength it took to face with aplomb the many threats and troubles her loved ones and other refuseniks endured before they were allowed to leave the empire that despised but kept them semi-enslaved.

The daughter of physicians, enchanted by her mother’s piano playing and her father’s response to it, Anat always knew that she wanted to become a musician. At 13, she and her father spent two weeks touring Moscow. Dazzled by Russia’s capital and the chance to study music with top professionals, she was determined to move there. Her father was firmly opposed. When, at 15, she was ready to leave Horlivka, her mother, Frida, secreted her out of the village and put her on a train to Moscow because Anat was prepared to live in an orphanage to realize her dream.

Most children were not actually orphans but had parents unable to care for them. On weekends they stayed with relatives. Anat, self-sufficient, didn’t mind being alone and welcomed the opportunity to attend concerts and cultural events, visit museums and historical sites, none of which Horlivka offered. Her father soon forgave his wife because they wanted their child to experience the world beyond the shadow of the Kremlin and knew she could be trusted to excel in her endeavors and avoid trouble.

The separation was more difficult for her parents. Both were thoroughly devoted to their only child. Anat’s mother was willing to suffer her husband’s anger until he was convinced that their gifted daughter could fend for herself among strangers—and was thriving. (He had taught her to defend herself against both verbal and physical abuse.) Moreover, both understood that they were giving her an opportunity to rise above the circumstances that they, cultured physicians, were unable to provide in their backwater Ukrainian village. Many if not most of its inhabitants were released criminals who had served their sentences in the Gulag and were likely to end up back there. In time, Anat’s father came to appreciate becoming the sole recipient of his wife’s attention and affection, as he had been before parenthood. He especially loved to listen to Frida play the piano, and “swooned” when she did, according to Anat.

Of course, the couple were overjoyed to have their daughter back during school vacations, many of which were spent with Frida’s family in Odessa. Anat’s grandfather, a pediatrician, had built a small summer home where the Yershkoviches gathered and were joined by other relatives and friends, filling each bit of available space.

Anat’s memoir exposes the rampant antisemitism she experienced, and fought, as well as the physical and emotional toll exacted on those leaving family and friends. In her case, the young man she loved stayed behind. It also gives a sense of what it was like to study music seriously.

After completing eighth grade, she applied to and was accepted to the Gnessin State Music College, an institution established by three daughters, graduates of the Moscow Conservatory, of Rabbi Fabian Osopovich Gnessin. He and his wife had six children, all of them musical prodigies. Anat was thrilled with her instructors, who trained her not only to perform but to teach, an art in itself. This instruction produced practical benefits. Even the most famous pianists feel compelled to train students, if only to insure the future of excellent pianists. It also allows performers the ability to earn a steady income between concerts.

Not only did her school provide superior comprehensive training, it provided the opportunity to attend concerts, mostly as standees. Russia’s capital was a culture lover’s dream and a haven for students in all disciplines. While there, Anat met Tolik (later Natan) Sharansky, four years her senior, a chess prodigy, brilliant mathematician and student at the prestigious Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. Their relationship, innocent by contemporary standards, would last four years.

Natan and a brother two years his senior were born to parents who had been childless for decades before they unexpectedly conceived. Marrying Anat would have allowed him to emigrate with her family, a process they had already begun by moving to Latvia and then Lithuania in hope of hastening aliyah. He had come to visit them in Vilnius, ostensibly prepared to propose.

Natan’s mother, Ida Milgrom, followed, and spent the night, sharing his room while Anat slept in her parents’ room. It’s likely that she had arrived to dissuade him from marrying. There were practical reasons, He had not completed his studies and this could sabotage a promising career. In order for a family to receive emigration papers the members were required to live under one roof. Natan would have to transfer to Vilnius University, which did not have a department in his specialty, cybernetics.

There were also personal considerations. It would have been extremely risky, if not altogether impossible, for Natan’s parents to emigrate as his father was a journalist (a profession that required KGB vetting). Leaving the Soviet Union was considered an insult, as well as a threat because it would encourage others to emigrate. Even if they could leave, Natan’s older brother would stay behind with his new, non-Jewish wife. He would be harassed for Natan’s departure. Additionally, even if the elderly couple were allowed to make aliyah, they would have to face the challenges of becoming dependent on Natan and his bride, as they struggled to adjust to entirely new lives in Israel.

Undoubtedly, all these hurdles seemed daunting. Thus, Natan relinquished the opportunity to emigrate with Anat and her parents. Whether his decision was prompted by filial love and duty, which he claimed, or for a host of other reasons he himself didn’t fully understand, including the possibility that he somehow sensed that Anat was not his bashert, the die was cast.

Freedom is costly but oppression is costlier. None of them could imagine how costly Natan’s decision would be. Anat was heartbroken. She was leaving him and also her beloved and devoted grandfather. A widower, he had remarried. His wife, with children and grandchildren from her prior marriage, refused to make aliyah and leave her offspring behind. However, Anat and her parents’ pain was milder than the suffering the Sharanskys would have to endure in the coming years.

There were probably times Ida rued her night in Vilnius. Her son became an active Zionist. Arrested for treason and espionage, he was sentenced to 13 years in a labor camp. To her everlasting credit, Ida, along with Avital, whom Natan married in 1974, became unrelenting activists, determined to free Natan from the Soviet version of a Nazi concentration camp. The two women received tremendous support from Haredi rabbis and Orthodox Jews, as well as the larger Jewish community and their non-Jewish supporters. These combined efforts succeeded in getting Natan released. By that time he had spent nearly 10 years as a slave laborer. Continuously mocked and threatened by his jailors, he resorted to mental chess to save his sanity.

Meanwhile Anat and her parents had fulfilled their dream of making aliyah. They lived in freedom in the Jewish homeland, changing their names to Hebrew ones. Born Liuba Yershkovich, she became Anat Yaron. She continued her studies at the Tel Aviv Academy of Music and began her career as a professional pianist. At 22 she married a fellow emigre from Lithuania, Joseph Schmulovich. They moved to Jerusalem, where he did his post-graduate studies in physics at Hebrew University. Eventually, they emigrated to New Jersey, where he worked for Bell Labs in Murray Hill. The Schmuloviches had three children, and she taught piano and performed.

Her memoir of desires, discipline, determination, disappointment, courage, perseverance, tribulations and triumph in the struggle to endure and escape antisemitism and totalitarianism, has all the elements of an award-winning film and/or television series. She dedicated it to “my selfless parents.” To some extent, all parents make sacrifices for their children but how many have the fortitude to deprive themselves of the company of an adored only child? Clearly, Anat was blessed with two very special people who encouraged and enabled her.

The book ends with a list of Jewish-Russian jokes about the Soviet Union. Her father, an ardent Zionist, recorded them in a notebook, perhaps as a soporific for himself and trusted friends who also hoped to make aliyah. Dr. Yershkovich also wanted to document, in a roundabout way, the failures, hypocrisies and corruptions that communism bred.

Not all his friends proved trustworthy, and the booklet was not a joking matter to the Soviets. An informer denounced Anat’s papa. He was arrested and threatened with the Gulag but remained stalwart, outwitted his interrogators, and was released after a few harrowing days. His booklet was confiscated.

The jokes, as they appear at the end of the memoir, were those that were remembered. They make for a satisfying conclusion as they poke fun at a cruel absurdities of an inept regime that was doomed to fail, in large part because of the sheer stupidity of its antisemitic rulers and their lackeys. They scapegoated and tormented Jews in a variety of ways that compelled them to leave. The Soviet Union’s loss of Jews proved enormous gains for Israel, the United States and other Western nations, and led to the demise of that evil empire and the rise of yet another corrupt successor.

Because taking along their medical school diplomas was forbidden Anat’s mother had glued their medical school diplomas inside a box of laundry detergent. Fortunately, these valuable documents that would allow the couple to practice medicine in Israel were not discovered and the family was allowed to depart Vilnius on their journey to Israel. What was discovered was the packet of Sharansky’s love letters to Anat. The woman who found them insisted they were Russian property. Anat refused to relinquish them and both women’s obstinance threatened the family’s departure. Her father stepped in and saved the day. Using charm and wit, he convinced the matron to allow his foolish daughter to keep the letters.

Anat realized her lifelong dream of becoming a professional pianist. She had the great fortune to know both young and mature love, marriage and motherhood. Now widowed, she is enjoying grandmotherhood, music and writing. She has begun to work on a screenplay, determined to bring her fascinating and inspiring story to wider audiences.

Natan Sharansky’s story also ended happily. He survived his brutal imprisonment, made aliyah and went on to become an inspiring hero and leader. The mathematician not only became the director of the Jewish Agency, he served as a deputy prime minister of Israel and is the current chair of ISGAP (the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy) a nonpartisan institute and think tank dedicated to fighting antisemitism through a multi-pronged approach. He and Avital have two daughters as well as grandchildren.

Living in freedom allowed Anat Schmulovich and her husband to bring three children into the world, a privilege and joy denied most people of their parents’ generation because they simply could not afford to house, raise and educate large families in the miserable conditions, akin to slavery, that life in the Soviet Union provided, even for highly educated, cultured professional Jews. In view of how much refuseniks and their descendants have and continue to contribute to Israel and the world, it’s heartbreaking to consider what was lost forever. Quite a few refuseniks, however, have become Haredi and are having many children, and, where there’s life, there’s hope.