"The Gold of Ophir”: NPR, Ophira Eisenberg, and an Arabian Mare Named Ofirka

By Tobi Lopez Taylor

As the owner and caretaker of four horses, I’ve long divided my work life and social life into five-hour increments. I feed at 7 AM, at noon, and at 5 PM, and I do what I call a “bed check” at 10 PM. In the summer, I ride for part of the first increment, and write or edit until 5 PM, and in the fall, winter, and spring, I tend to work during the first increment and ride in the afternoon. Somewhere in between the writing and the riding is the daily ritual of mucking stalls while listening to NPR.

I should pause here to say that in general, I find cleaning stalls to be a rather meditative activity, provided the stall hasn’t been completely trashed, like your typical frat house bathroom. Three of my horses are what I call “tidy cats” — they inhabit stalls with outside runs, and clearly view the stalls as places to eat and sleep, with the runs functioning as open-air outhouses. However…my fourth horse, the lovely Rose, is as piggish as she is beautiful. She can turn a freshly bedded stall into an ASPCA horse-care nightmare in mere hours.

Rose is Arabian horse royalty, and she knows it. She’s one of the last granddaughters of the Polish stallion Orzel (“eagle,” in Polish)—who was nicknamed the “Arabian Secretariat” for his exploits on the racetrack, his large size (nearly 16 hands), his chestnut coat and flashy white markings, and his undeniable charisma. Unlike the many descendants of Orzel who inherited his size, color, and speed, Rose appears to be a throwback to a previous generation—she resembles Orzel’s dam, Ofirka, a small bay mare who also happened to be a witness to some of the worst days of World War II.

Ofirka was foaled at Poland’s Janow Podlaski Stud in the spring of 1939, a pivotal year that would see Poland ransacked first by Germany and then by the Soviet Union.

In September 1939, when word reached Janow that the German army had moved westward into Poland, hundreds of horses were evacuated. The stallions, such as Ofirka's sire Ofir and her half brother Pamir, left first, followed the next day by about 100 broodmares, 150 young horses (including Ofirka), and 19 horse-drawn wagons. During this harrowing journey toward the east, scores of horses escaped from their handlers, and others were hurt, some mortally. When the much-diminished group of men and horses finally arrived in Kowel, Volynhia (now Kovel, Ukraine), they met refugees headed west, fleeing the Soviet army. The dispirited group’s leaders decided it was most practical to turn around and go back to Janow. However, numerous horses, particularly the younger ones, were so exhausted by the trek that they had to be left behind.

Ofirka—at that time an unnamed filly—was part of the young stock thought to be lost during that evacuation. The “loss” of Ofirka was actually a stroke of luck for Polish breeders, however. Upon the group’s return to Janow, many of the horses were confiscated by the Soviets, to be used in the breeding program at Tersk Stud. These included Ofirka’s sire, her dam Fryga II, her full sister Wesola, and her two half sisters Maskota and Nirwana. Ofirka herself was not located until 1941, when she was finally found on a farm in Volynhia. It’s said that when the Polish inspector Adam Sosnowski finally rediscovered this small, malnourished filly, he exclaimed “Ofirka!”— meaning “Ofir’s daughter!”—since she so greatly resembled her famous sire, and that epithet became her registered name.

In late October 1939, the Germans wrested control of Janow from the Soviets, and the stud’s breeding program recommenced in 1940. Ofirka’s first foal was born in 1944, when she was five years old. That summer, during the Soviet offensive, the Janow horses were evacuated west, to southern Saxony, in Germany. Then, in early February 1945, the horses were scheduled to be moved again, this time to Torgau, in northern Saxony. The route they were slated to take happened to go directly through the city of Dresden. On February 13, 80 stallions from Janow were led into Dresden and were walking through the middle of the city when the first firebombing began. Although most of the stallions died or were lost, among the survivors were Ofirka’s paternal half brothers Witraz and Wielki Szlem, whose groom, Jan Ziniewicz, held tight to their lead ropes as incendiary bombs exploded around them.  

Ofirka and the other mares, as well as their foals and young stock, spent the night on the road outside Dresden, in the driving snow. They were marched through the city the next day. What was left of Janow’s horses trekked to Tornau, and then to Holstein, where they stayed until the fall of 1946. That year, the horses finally returned to Janow, where the stud began a new chapter in its Arabian breeding program, in which Ofirka would play an important role.

Roman Pankiewicz, former manager of Poland’s Albigowa Stud, wrote this about Ofirka: “[She] was small (probably as a result of her wartime rearing), but had a strikingly handsome head and great refinement. Her spectacular Arabian type and golden-bay colour clearly showed the stamp of her sire, the celebrated Ofir.” Ofirka’s great-granddaughter Rose is herself a bay of a particularly golden hue, especially in the summertime.

But back to NPR and cleaning stalls. One weekend, I was cleaning Rose’s stall a bit later than usual, so I caught a show I don’t normally hear, Ask Me Another. Listening to the show's hosts, including Ophira Eisenberg, I wondered, what kind of name is Ophira, anyway? And does it have anything to do with Ofir and Ofirka? After a bit of research, I can say that the answer is a qualified yes. The name Ophira is related to the Biblical place name Ophir, known as place of riches; there are said to be several references in the Bible to “the gold of Ophir.” In addition, the translation of the Polish name Ofir is, not surprisingly, Ophir. Was the name of Ofirka’s father a play on words? For a stallion as golden as Ofir, the name makes eminent sense. After all, the Poles surely know the Gypsy expression that a horseman’s gold does not clink and glitter; it gleams in the sun and neighs in the dark. It also, I might add, needs its stall cleaned every day, preferably while listening to NPR.