Poland -- My nytimes.com article on the Gwozdziec synagogue project

On site in Sanok. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

A 300-Year-Old Synagogue Comes Back to Life in Poland  

By RUTH ELLEN GRUBER  

Published: June 15, 2011


SANOK, POLAND — In the far southeast corner of Poland, the warm summer air is resounding with the rasp of old-fashioned iron saws and the satisfying twack-twack-twack of ax blades on wood.

Here, in the foothills of the Carpathians, an international crew of master timber craftsmen and students has been working on an intensely hands-on project that combines history, art and education. They are building a replica of the tall peaked roof and inner cupola of an ornate wooden synagogue that stood for 300 years in the town of Gwozdziec, now in Ukraine.

The replica, which will be 85 percent of the original size of the building, will be installed as one of the key components of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, currently under construction in Warsaw and scheduled to open in 2013.

Its elaborate structure and the intricate painted decoration on the cupola ceiling will reproduce a form of architectural and artistic expression that was wiped out in World War II, when the Nazis put the torch to some 200 wooden synagogues in Eastern Europe. Many of them, like that in Gwozdziec, were centuries old and extraordinarily elaborate, with tiered roofs and richly decorative interior painting.

The Gwozdziec Synagogue, built in the 17th and 18th centuries, was a “truly resplendent synagogue that exemplified a high point in Jewish architectural art and religious painting,” the architectural historian Thomas C. Hubka, an expert on the building, has written.

Constructing the replica is a joint project of the museum in Warsaw and the Handshouse Studio, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit organization that emphasizes learning by building, particularly the reconstruction of historical structures and other objects.

“There are certain things you can learn by making it that you can’t learn any other way,” said Rick Brown, who founded and directs Handshouse with his wife, Laura. “Every time you pick up a tool or start a process or use a certain material, embedded in that is a very rich, almost unlimited learning experience.”

The Browns conducted years of research on Eastern Europe’s lost wooden synagogues before embarking on construction of the Gwozdziec replica in Sanok in May. They studied prewar photographs, drawings and other documentation, built models and made on-site investigations of wooden churches and other buildings still found in Poland and Ukraine.

While wooden synagogues were destroyed, many towns and villages in this corner of Poland, and also across the border in Slovakia and Ukraine, still boast fine examples of wooden folk architecture. Dozens of evocative wooden churches dating back centuries are clearly signposted, both in Poland and Slovakia, as part of a “wooden architecture trail.”

There are also several impressive masonry synagogues within an easy drive of Sanok. The 18th-century synagogue in Lancut, now a museum, has beautifully restored interior painting and other decoration. One in Rymanow stood for decades as a ruin but has been partially rebuilt, with a tall peaked roof now protecting the vigorous but sadly fading frescoes of Biblical animals and Jerusalem that grace its walls.

In Lesko, the 17th-century synagogue was rebuilt in the 1960s and today houses a gallery of local arts and crafts. Lesko’s vast Jewish cemetery, just a short walk away, is one of the oldest in Poland, with massive tombstones dating to the 16th century.

“The Gwozdziec wooden synagogue represents the relationship between Polish vernacular architecture and Jewish liturgical architecture in one unit,” Mr. Brown explained. “They literally come together into one, very powerful, cultural statement.”

For the Gwozdziec project, an international team of nearly 30 master craftsmen from the Timber Framers Guild are being joined by groups of students from Massachusetts College of Art and Design, where the Browns teach.

Timber framers came from the U.S., Canada, Great Britain, Belgium and Japan to lend their skills, all on a volunteer basis.

All the work is being carried out using techniques and tools that the builders of the original synagogue would have used: axes, saws, mallets and other hand-held implements. The aim is to gain an understanding of just what went into the building of the synagogue and how its construction would have been envisaged and carried out — and also to lend authenticity to the replica.

“It brings back the lost story of the synagogue, the town, this culture,” said Patrick Goguen, a student at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

The project is occurring in several stages. Building the timber-framed roof and cupola is the first stage, running through June. Students and artists will hold workshops this summer and next summer to reproduce the intricate polychrome painting that adorned the ceiling of the cupola. These workshops will be held in eight Polish towns in masonry synagogues that still stand.

The timber framing is taking place in a corner of Sanok’s Ethnographic Park, a sprawling open-air folk-architecture museum that displays wooden buildings — houses, barns, churches, chapels and even beehives — that have been transferred from a number of villages in the region.

Here, thick logs are being hewn by hand into flat-sided timbers — a process that can take two days per log — and then manually sawed into thinner pieces. The components are then shaped and joined without nails.

“We’re of the cult of woodworkers; our texts are the texts of geometry and are expressed in the iconography of all the religions of the world,” said Jackson DuBois, from Bellingham, Washington. “To us, this piece of Jewish culture is about hewing logs. That’s why we’re using tools of the day.”

See the story on the web site by clicking HERE

Ruthless Cosmopolitan -- Never Better in Krakow?

Visitors in the Izaak synagogue. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

My latest Ruthless Cosmopolitan column, on the revival of Jewish spirit in Krakow. I also posted about the Night of the Synagogues on my Jewish Heritage blog -- with lots more pictures.

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

June 15, 2011

KRAKOW, Poland (JTA) -- Jews in Krakow have a new slogan -- "Never Better."

The catchphrase is deliberately provocative, a blatant rejoinder to "Never Again," the slogan long associated with Holocaust memory and the fight against anti-Semitic prejudice.

It may be counterintuitive, acknowledges Jonathan Ornstein, the American-born director of Krakow's Jewish community center who helped come up with the slogan.

But it's aimed at rebranding Jewish Poland, or at least Jewish Krakow, shaking up conventional perceptions and radically shifting the focus of how the Jewish experience here is viewed.

"Because the Holocaust isn't subtle, then the rebranding, as a way to get people to understand the situation here now, also can't be subtle," Ornstein explained.

Only a few hundred Jews live in Krakow, but the community has been rebuilding in the past two decades, particularly since the JCC opened three years ago.

"When we say 'Never Better,' it's not in terms of numbers, or the amount of things in Jewish life, or the synagogues that are functioning and all that," Ornstein said.

However, he went on, "in terms of the way the Jewish community interacts with the non-Jewish community and the direction that things are going, I think that there's never been a more optimistic time to be Jewish in Krakow than there is now."

I spoke with Ornstein on a Sunday in June, the morning after an unprecedented event that in a way had been a public affirmation of the new Jewish spirit he described.

Organized by the JCC, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the Krakow Jewish communal organization, it was called 7@Night -- Seven at Night or the Night of the Synagogues.

Night of the Living synagogues may have been a better description.

From 10:30 p.m. until 2 a.m., all seven of the historic synagogues in Krakow's old Jewish quarter, Kazimierz, were open to the public.

It was part festival, part celebration and part didactic exercise. The aim was to foster Jewish pride, but also to educate non-Jewish Poles about contemporary Jewish life and culture.

An astonishing 5,000 or more people turned out, a constant flow of people that trooped from one synagogue to the next and patiently braved long, slow lines and bottlenecks at doorways. Almost all were young Cracovians.

Each synagogue hosted an exhibit, concert, talk or other activity that was produced by Jews and highlighted Jewish life and culture as lived today in Poland, Israel and elsewhere.

Events ranged from talks by Krakow Rabbi Boaz Pash on "the ABCs of Judaism" to a live concert by an Israeli rock band to a DJ sampling new Jewish music from a console set up on the bimah of the gothic Old Synagogue, now a Jewish museum, to a panel discussion about the role of women in Judaism.

All the events were free -- and all were full.

"It far, far exceeded our expectations," said Ornstein.

I've never seen anything quite like it, even though I've followed the development of Kazimierz for more than 20 years -- from the time when it was an empty, rundown slum to its position now as one of the liveliest spots in the city.

I've witnessed -- and chronicled -- the development of Jewish-themed tourism, retail, entertainment and educational infrastructure in Krakow, including the Jewish Culture Festival that draws thousands of people each summer. And I've written extensively about the interest of non-Jews in Jewish culture.

But Seven at Night was something different. For one thing, nostalgia seemed to play no role. And also, unlike many of the Jewish events and attractions in Kazimierz, this one was organized and promoted by Jews themselves.

It was their show, kicking off with a public Havdalah ceremony celebrated by Rabbi Pash that saw hundreds of people singing and dancing in the JCC courtyard.

"Never Better" was a prominent theme.

Most explicitly, it was the title of a multimedia presentation that ran throughout the night, projected on the vaulted ceiling of the 16th century High Synagogue, which today is used as an exhibition hall. The presentation featured interviews with local Jews young and old, religious and secular, all expressing a confidence in their identity and future.

It's still anybody's guess whether or not demographic realities will enable the long-term survival of a Jewish community in Krakow. But Ornstein said that may not be the point.

A key message of the current activism, he said, was to help frame the context of Polish Jewish history and hammer home that however small their numbers, Jews in Poland are not a separate, exotic entity but part and parcel of 21st century Polish society.

"The powerful message is that Judaism isn't just an idea, it's not just something that belongs to the Polish past, but there are Jews living here," Ornstein said. "We're trying to say that you can be a Jewish Pole, not just a Jew in Poland, to turn 'Jew' into an adjective instead of a noun."

I hope he's right.

RUTHLESS COSMOPOLITAN -- Arson attack on synagogue in Crete

My latest Ruthless Cosmopolitan column riffs on the arson attack last week on the Etz Hayyim synagogue in Hania, Crete. Read the story at the JTA web site by clicking HERE.

RUTHLESS COSMOPOLITAN
Attack on Crete synagogue carries special meaning

By Ruth Ellen Gruber · January 13, 2010

ROME (JTA) -- The vandals who torched the historic Etz Hayyim synagogue in Hania, an ancient port on the Greek island of Crete, left no doubt about their motives.

After breaking into the building on the night of Jan. 5 and setting its interior alight, they threw a bar of soap against its outer wall.

A bar of soap? That's because, explains the synagogue's director, Nikos Stavroulakis, "I'll make you into a bar of soap" is a common anti-Semitic taunt in Greece. Since the Holocaust, there has been a persistent belief that the Nazis made soap from Jewish corpses.

Even though scholars have disproved the idea, bars of soap have been buried reverently in some European Jewish cemeteries under solemn memorials.

"In this place lie the remains of Jewish martyrs exterminated by German fascists and turned into soap," reads the inscription on an obelisk in Piatra Neamt, Romania.

The power of this belief was examined in "The Soap Myth," a play by Jeff Cohen that ran last summer in New York. Based on a true story, the play focused on the efforts of an elderly Holocaust survivor "on a one-man mission to get the 'soap myth' reclassified as fact," Marissa Brostoff wrote in Tablet magazine.

But at the heart of the story was something much more.

What was at stake, Brostoff wrote, was "the way we choose to see the past, a struggle between a dispassionate approach relying on facts and figures and another, much more subjective one that holds survivors' testimonies to be unarguably true and ultimately sacred."

Anti-Semitic violence is anything but dispassionate.

The bar of soap hurled against the desecrated synagogue in Hania was a diabolically mixed metaphor: Soap usually symbolizes purity and godliness, but in this twisted context it spelled hatred and death.

The attack on the Hania synagogue was not just an assault on a building. It was an assault on the ideals that had transformed the structure from a wrecked relic of Holocaust destruction to a new symbol of community and compassion.

This transformation was accomplished largely through the efforts of Stavroulakis, a remarkable man who has devoted much of the past two decades to restoring a Jewish presence to a city made "Judenrein" by the Nazis.

I met Stavroulakis when I visited Hania in 1996. An artist, author and scholar who had co-founded and directed the Jewish Museum in Athens, Stavroulakis had returned to live in his family's rambling house in Hania after many years away.

The synagogue, which dates back to the 15th century, was in ruin. But over the next three years Stavroulakis made it his mission to raise funds and, with the help of the World Monuments Fund and other donors, oversee the building's rebirth. His aim was to make it a living spiritual presence, not simply a restored reminder of the past.

The synagogue now functions as a museum, and it hosts exhibitions and cultural events.

It’s also an active house of worship. A small Havurah community whose members include Christians and some Muslims -- as well as Jews of all persuasions -- regularly assembles there to celebrate Shabbat and Jewish holidays.

Stavroulakis himself leads daily prayers each morning, whether a minyan is present or not.

Prayers were held as usual at 9 a.m. Jan. 6, the morning after the arson attack. The fire had gutted a stairway, wreaked havoc on the synagogue library, and covered walls and precious furnishings with a thick layer of soot.

"Fortunately," Stavroulakis said, "the fabric of the synagogue was and is intact."

He was referring to the physical structure of the building, but I think he also meant that the symbolic identity of the synagogue also had survived -- and would be maintained.

"We must be angry over what has happened to our synagogue," he told the small group of worshipers gathered for prayers amid the soot. "If we were not, it would be an indication that we were either indifferent or morally numb."

But, Stavroulakis asked, just where should the anger be directed? Local indifference and the ignorance that promotes racism had to be addressed.

"We have tried at Etz Hayyim to be a small presence in the midst of what is at times almost aggressive ignorance," he wrote on the synagogue blog. "We have done this to such a degree that our doors are open from early in the morning until late in the day so that the synagogue assumes its role as a place of prayer, recollection and reconciliation."

There is, Stavroulakis wrote, little if any sign of overt security.

"This character of the synagogue must not change and the doors must remain open," he wrote. If not, that means "we have given in to the ignorance that has perpetrated this desecration."

A week after the attack, the Etz Hayyim blog posted pictures showing that thanks in large part to volunteers, the walls of the sanctuary already had been painted and other clean-up work was well under way.

"The impact of this [attack] will be wider than simply an act of terrorism against Jews," Stavroulakis told me. "Already it is being seen in a much wider social context that has to do with civic responsibility and care."

RUTHLESS COSMOPOLITAN - A Tale of Two Synagogues

Dohany St. Synagogue, 150 years (young). Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

My latest Ruthless Cosmopolitan column is about the big birthdays of the great synagogues in Budapest and Sofia.

RUTHLESS COSMOPOLITAN

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Sept. 7, 2009

BUDAPEST, Hungary (JTA) -- This year marks a number of momentous anniversaries: the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II; the 40th anniversary of Woodstock; the 20th anniversary of the fall of communism.

We use anniversaries like these to stop, step back and evaluate not just the event that's being commemorated, but also the passage of time since it happened and the changes wrought with that passage.

In this context, two significant Jewish anniversaries are taking place in September.

The Dohany Street Synagogue in Budapest -- the largest synagogue in Europe -- turns 150 years old. And the Great Synagogue in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia turns 100.

OK, they are buildings, not earth-shaking events. But given the impact that some of the other "big" anniversaries had on these synagogues and on what they represent, it's only fitting to highlight their birthdays on the roster of celebrations.

For one, both are magnificent buildings that stand out architecturally as important city landmarks. Partly because of this, both have undergone recent renovations that restored them to opulent glory after decades of postwar neglect.

Both also are flagships of faith, or at least of Jewish identity, and are survivors, too. Witnesses to the pendulum swing of tragedy and triumph that has marked Jewish history in the region, they are potent physical symbols of a proud and enduring Jewish presence.

"The Dohany Synagogue is still the main synagogue of all the Jews of Hungary, the main identity place where we gather, whether we are religious or not," said architectural historian Rudolf Klein, author of the 2008 book about the synagogue, “The Great Synagogue of Budapest.”

As many as 90,000 Jews are believed to live in Budapest, but most are unaffiliated or totally secular.

With its red-and-yellow striped facade, sumptuous decor and two tall spires topped by gilded onion domes, the Dohany is, in fact, one of the most distinctive buildings in the city and was recognized as such from the outset.

Designed by the Viennese architect Ludwig von Forster, it was inaugurated on Sept. 6, 1859. Old engravings show dignitaries in shiny top hats gathered in front of its enormous ark, a domed and gilded structure that itself is the size of a small chapel.

At the time, Jews had not yet achieved full civil rights in Austro-Hungary. Yet the synagogue was the largest house of worship in Budapest and probably the biggest synagogue in the world. One local newspaper called it "a gorgeous piece of architecture."

"I like it as a Jew and as an architect," Klein told JTA. "In both areas it was a breakthrough."

The synagogue's Moorish style launched a genre and set the pattern for hundreds of synagogues built in later years throughout Central Europe and beyond.

The building's monumental scale, its prominent location and its opulent ornamentation, Klein said, epitomized "the optimism of 19th-century Jewry and the tolerant attitude of the gentile world which prevailed in the capital" at the time.

Things, of course, changed later. During World War II the synagogue was used as a concentration camp, where Jews were massed before their deportation to Auschwitz. The graves of Holocaust victims fill the courtyard.

After the war, under communism, the building languished for decades in a sorry state of disrepair. I vividly remember how its ceiling, held up by cables and plastic sheeting, sagged perilously over the congregation that would pack the sanctuary on Yom Kippur simply to make a statement of identity in the face of the regime’s religious suppression.

In 1996, it was officially reopened following a five-year restoration that was financed largely by the newly democratic Hungarian state.

"This building symbolizes the survival and the continuity of the Jewish people," Gusztav Zoltai, chairman of the Association of Hungarian Jewish Communities, declared at the time.

The Sofia synagogue was inaugurated in September 1909, nearly 50 years to the day after the Dohany, and fulfilled a similar role.

Czar Ferdinand himself cut a ribbon to formally inaugurate the building, whose huge dome, slim turrets and lavish, Byzantine-Moorish style fit in with many other grand buildings in downtown Sofia. The prime minister, other government VIPs and local bishops were in the crowd, too, and a procession of rabbis bore Torah scrolls into the sanctuary and placed them in the ark.

"This synagogue will connect us with the past generations and will tell of us to the future ones," the chief rabbi proudly told the congregation 100 years ago. "May God bless this land which we love dearly, for the good of all Bulgarians, in whose sufferings and joys we take an active part."

Bulgaria's 50,000 Jews were saved during World War II by the heroic action of some of the country's leaders, and most of them moved to Israel.

The Great Synagogue, damaged in 1944 by Allied bombing, stood neglected for decades, as Communist authorities unsuccessfully tried to turn it into a concert hall.

Still, recalled Robert Djerassi, one of the chairmen of the synagogue centenary celebrations, "It was an enormous domed building that awed me with its magnificence each time I stepped inside. Such a huge void: fearsome, lofty, dark and mysterious!"

Only a few thousand Jews live in Bulgaria today, but as in Budapest, restoration of the synagogue was a priority after the fall of communism as a public demonstration of both Jewish renewal and Jewish presence in the city.

The first stage of work was completed in 1996, the final one this year, just in time for September's five-day birthday bash.

Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov served as honorary chairman of the gala events, echoing the high-profile participation in the synagogue's original dedication a century ago. I'm not sure if I found this moving or ironic, but I'm rather glad he chose to do so.

Read Full Story at JTA

RUTHLESS COSMOPOLITAN -- Jewish Heritage

Samorin synagogue, At H0me Gallery, 2009. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

My latest Ruthless Cosmopolitan column is from the milestone Bratislava seminar on the care, conservation and maintenance of historic Jewish property.

March 26, 2009

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

BRATISLAVA, Slovakia (JTA) – The restitution of Jewish communal property in Central and Eastern Europe has been a hot-button issue since the Iron Curtain fell nearly 20 years ago.

But often forgotten amid the slow and painful legal battles to get back historic Jewish properties that were seized by the Nazis or nationalized by postwar Communist regimes is the practical and urgent need to care for, conserve and maintain the properties once they’ve been recovered.

For two decades and more, I've documented, written about and photographed these sites, which include many yeshivas and synagogues.

Many are huge. Many are dilapidated. Some are recognized as historic monuments. Most stand in towns where few, if any, Jews now live. Even basic maintenance can stretch already strapped communal resources.

In March, I joined Jewish community representatives from 15 countries who gathered to address these concerns at a seminar held in the Slovak capital, Bratislava.

The aim of the meeting was to foster networking and cross-border consultation and spark creative strategic thinking. Many participants had never met before and had little awareness of how colleagues in other countries were confronting similar challenges. Some knew little about the variety of Jewish heritage sites in other countries.

The meeting dealt with issues ranging from fundraising to roof repair to what Jewish law says about synagogue re-use.

During the seminar, which was organized by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, the International Survey of Jewish Monuments and the Slovak Jewish Heritage Center, we visited several sites in the Bratislava area to see how some best-practice solutions had been implemented.

One was the former synagogue in Samorin, a small town southeast of Bratislava, built in 1912.

Back in the early 1990s, it was a derelict shell standing silent and empty on the outskirts of the shabby city center. Its lonely position and crumbling façade underscored its poignancy as a surviving relic of the devastated past.

Since then, it has undergone a dramatic transformation.

Owned by the Union of Slovak Jewish Communities, it is now held on a long-term lease by a couple who took over the building in 1995, restored it and transformed it into the At Home Gallery, a center for contemporary art.

The synagogue is used for cultural purposes aimed at the public at large. It even once hosted the Dalai Lama.

It also now forms part of a new tourism and educational trail called the Slovak Route of Jewish Heritage, which links about 20 historic Jewish sites around the country.

In restoring the building, Csaba Kiss and his Canadian-born wife, Suzanne, deliberately chose to retain evidence that the interior had been desecrated. The walls still bear painted decoration, but the paintings are faded and patchy; they have not been retouched or prettied up.

"Our idea was not to touch the walls," Kiss once told me. "They have memories; we can see them. It's special."

At the seminar's conclusion, participants agreed on a set of pragmatic guidelines with best-practice principles and procedures for the Jewish properties.

Jewish heritage, the guidelines state, "is the legacy of all aspects of Jewish history – religious and secular." At the same time, "Jewish history and art are part of every nation’s history and art. Jewish heritage is part of national heritage, too."

These assertions may appear to state the obvious, but given contentious internal Jewish politics and the taboos and prejudice that historically applied to Jewish culture in Europe, they actually articulate crucial basic concepts. And the guidelines as a whole, while non-binding, represent a milestone when it comes to restituted Jewish properties.

Addressing a frequently heard criticism of Jewish communal management style, the guidelines state, "Honesty and transparency are Jewish values and should be especially apparent in the handling of all matters concerning Jewish property." The guidelines urge detailed documentation of Jewish communal properties and heritage sites and underscore the need for openness and collaboration among Jewish and non-Jewish institutions.

Will these guidelines be followed? Probably not to the letter. Financial considerations, legal obstacles, local conditions and human nature, among other things, prevent adherence to ideals.

Still, they form a framework that can influence practice and, perhaps, finally bring these sites the maintenance and preservation they – and the Jewish people – need.

My new column -- in Italian

Monument to the Holocaust, Buehl. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

I've started writing a brief commentary/column for the web site of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities -- moked.it.

The editor asked me to "read" or "read into" one of my photographs -- or another image -- each week.

I started with a picture I took last month in Buehl, Germany (when I was there for a conference on Bluegrass Music) of the monument marking the spot where the synagogue stood before it was destroyed on Kristallnacht. Today, an Italian ice cream parlor stands there. I used the picture as a peg to discuss (very briefly) German commemoration of the Shoah.

Nel cuore di Buehl, una piccola città tedesca non lontano da Baden-Baden, si gusta gelato italiano sul posto dove per più di 110 anni sorgeva la sinagoga. Fra i tavolini davanti al "Eis-cafe Italia", così come in tante altre città e cittadine tedesche, un monumento molto semplice fa parte ormai dell'arredo urbano, che segna e forma il tessuto vivente del luogo. Memoria quotidiana, dunque. Memoria di oggigiorno (come i monumenti ai caduti di guerra che sono disseminati in ogni cittadina italiana). Per i curiosi, per chi si ferma a leggere, il monumento informa che fino al 10 novembre 1938, la famigerata Notte dei Cristalli, si trovava lì una sinagoga costruita in 1823. Sul suo sito web, lo Yad Vashem ha un filmato che mostra la sua distruzione. Il filmato fu girato da un pompiere, un vigile del fuoco, un amatore che girava i film per hobby. Secondo lo Yad Vashem, voleva "catturare il lavoro dei suoi collegi", mostrali mentre controllavano il fuoco in modo che distruggesse soltanto la sinagoga e non gli altri palazzi intorno. Un anno fa, parlando i occasione del Giorno della Memoria in Germania, l'ex ambasciatore di Israele Avi Primor si è posto una domanda: "Dove nel mondo si è mai vista una nazione che costruisce monumenti alla sua propria vergogna?".