Showing papers in "East European Jewish Affairs in 2012"

Debating, obfuscating and disciplining the Holocaust: post-Soviet historical discourses on the OUN–UPA and other nationalist movements

Abstract: After the dissolution of the Soviet Union the archives of the former republics and satellite states of this multiethnic empire were opened. This allowed historians to investigate the history of nationalist and radical right organisations and armies that, during the Second World War, had been involved in the Holocaust and other atrocities. Among them was the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists. For a long time the history of these movements was unknown or distorted by Soviet propaganda and propagandist publications written during the Cold War by veterans of these movements living in the West and cooperating with Western intelligence services. The dissolution of the Soviet Union was simultaneously accompanied by the “rebirth” of nationalism that was not free from antisemitism and racism, and which triggered different types of nationalist distortions of history and obfuscations of the Holocaust. Post-Soviet historical discourses were shaped not only by journalists or political activists, but also by radic...

Haunting images: stereotypes of Jewishness among Russian Jewish immigrants in Germany

Abstract: Glancing at the Jewish spaces in contemporary Germany, an occasional observer would probably be startled. Since the Russian Jewish migration of the 1990s, Germany's Jewish community has come to be the third-largest in Europe. Synagogues, Jewish community centres, and Jewish cultural events have burgeoned. There is even talk about a “Jewish renaissance” in Germany. However, many immigrants claim that the resurrection of Jewish life in Germany is “only a myth,” “an illusion.” This paper is part of a project exploring the processes of the reconstruction of Jewish identities and Jewish communal life by Russian Jewish immigrants in Germany. The focus of this paper is on the stereotypes of Jews and Jewishness evident in immigrants' perceptions and imaginings of their physical gathering spaces – the Jewish community centres (Gemeinden). Focusing on the images that haunt a particular place, I seek to shed light upon the difficulties of re/creating Jewish identity and life among the Russian Jewish immigrants in co...

How small was a shtetl

Abstract: The purpose of this study was to apply the recently proposed definition of a shtetl (Samuel D. Kassow, “The Shtetl,” in The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, ed. Gershon D. Hundert, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), to the problem of determining the lower limit of shtetl size, if any, by relating the size of the Jewish population in a given site to the degree to which the site fits the definition. The definition of the shtetl used here is based on the presence of the five institutions needed for observance by an orthodox Jewish community, namely a free-standing synagogue, a heder, a mikveh, two or more charitable hevres, and a local Jewish cemetery. For each of 56 putative shtetl sites in Eastern Europe c.1845–1940, information on the presence or absence of these institutions was found in a memoir. The number of Jewish residents in these sites ranged from about 2600 to about 40. Each site was classified as either a shtetl, a potential shtetl, or a non-shtetl. The smallest shtetl had ...

Jewish epitaphs from Białystok, 1892–1902: embracing the spirit of Dubnow

Abstract: In the early twentieth century, Polish historian Mejer Balaban delivered a most telling condemnation of Jewish epitaphs as “blatantly baroque,” “overloaded with epithets” and difficult to understand In the late nineteenth century, the maskil Simon Dubnow had delivered a plea to the maskilim (intellectuals) and mithnagdim (traditionalists) of his day to engage in documenting and writing the woefully lacking past history of Yiddish civilisation as a means to unite past history with emerging nationalistic inclinations Dubnow specified gathering epitaphs as part of this documentation Despite Dubnow's plea it is Balaban's condemnation that has held sway in American and English-speaking European academies and which has not yet been fully reversed in the scholarship of the century since then In the spirit of Dubnow, the current paper examines the first decade of extant epitaphs from Bagnowka Beth Olam in Bialystok, Poland, dating from 1892 to 1902, as an example by which we can move towards establishing the

Twelve Jewish boys from the class of '47 of a Budapest grammar school – and their families: memories and reminiscences

Abstract: Based on personal memory and interviews with former classmates the author outlines the lives of 12 men from the professional middle class, who between 1939 and 1947 attended a segregated “Jewish class” of a renowned Budapest grammar school. The article follows their youth, education, survival of the Holocaust and their careers at home or abroad till the end of the twentieth century. Additionally, as far as it became known, one or two generations of ancestors, siblings, and spouses, and one or two generations of offspring are also presented. Finally, central issues of the lives of the “boys,” such as emigration, political conformism, and, above all, assimilation to the majority society will be discussed in separate chapters. These life and family histories may be regarded as typical of a not insignificant segment of Budapest Jewish society.

Oradea, Romania: a living Jewish memorial

Abstract: Oradea, once possessing the most active and important Jewish community in Hungary (the biggest in number, after Budapest), and then in Romania, is nowadays a true, silent witness of the immense impact of Jewish culture, in almost all aspects of society, and especially architecture. There is an important Jewish legacy to protect and to pass on to the heirs, in memory, of those approximately 25,000 Jews from Oradea who were exterminated in Auschwitz-Birkenau in May 1944. The article highlights the history and heritage of the Oradea Jews, from the beginning to the present day.

Images of Romania and America in early twentieth-century Romanian-Jewish immigrant life stories in the United States

Abstract: This paper focuses on ethnic life stories written by early twentieth-century Romanian-Jewish immigrants to the US, and attempts to determine to what extent these narratives correspond to the generalised pattern of ethnic life writing at the time, as well as what particularises their texts. I analyse the memoirs of M.E. Ravage, Konrad Bercovici, Maurice Samuel and Edward G. Robinson, all of them born at the close of the nineteenth century but publishing their memoirs at different moments in history. I first trace the images of Romania that spring from these texts, ranging from the legal and educational discrimination portrayed by M.E. Ravage and Edward G. Robinson, to the existence of pogroms and other anti-Jewish feelings foregrounded by Konrad Bercovici, and to the nostalgic shtetl atmosphere evoked in Maurice Samuel's books. I then consider the place of the US in these authors' writings, starting from its utopian image prior to emigration to its more complex image after settlement in the new location. F...

The fate of the archives of the Kiev Institute of Jewish Proletarian Culture: puzzles and discoveries

Abstract: The Kiev Institute of Jewish (from the early 1930s “Proletarian”) Culture (Institut Evreiskoi Proletarskoi Kul'tury, IEPK), based at the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (UAS), was one of two such organisations in the inter-war period. This article discusses the fate of its archive, a rich source that included material from Leningrad and elsewhere, in the wake of two interventions; firstly, its sudden closure in 1936 by the Soviet authorities and, secondly, the Nazi occupation of Kiev in the Second World War. As a consequence, the archive was scattered to the winds, ending up in two continents.

Jewish socialist parties during the 1905 Russian Revolution

Abstract: This short study discusses archival material related to Jewish socialist parties during the 1905 Russian Revolution which is held by the Lithuanian State Historical Archives in Vilnius. Although these organisations were short-lived, the evidence they have left behind provides insight into their ideology, and their attempts to take advantage of the revolutionary situation and draw the allegiance of the Jewish masses. Archival material also indicates the extent to which their activities were monitored by the Tsarist authorities. By 1907, all these organisations had been effectively suppressed by the regime. Yet, in spite of their fleeting presence on the Jewish political scene in the Russian Empire, these parties carried import for the future.

At the Mercy of Strangers. The Rescue of Jewish Children with Assumed Identities in Poland, by Nahum Bogner. Dividing Hearts. The Removal of Jewish Children from Gentile Families in Poland in the Immediate Post-Holocaust Years, by Emunah Nachmany Gafny

Abstract: The catalogue of scholarly works on the history of Jewish and non-Jewish children during and in the aftermath of World War II has been steadily growing over the last decade. Among the latest additions, revealing the broad scope of this relatively new but confidently growing field, are Patricia Heberer’s Children during the Holocaust, Vera K. Fast’s Children’s Exodus: A History of the Kindertransport, and Tara Zahra’s The Lost Children. Reconstructing Europe’s Families after World War II. The two books under review are a useful addition to this literature. These two monographs are English translations of the original Hebrew works by two Israeli scholars, Nachum Bogner, himself a child Holocaust survivor from Poland, and Emunah Nachmany Gafny, whose aunt, as the author relates, was forced to hand over her twin children to Christian Poles during the Holocaust. Bogner’s At the Mercy of Strangers is an impressive, pioneering synthetic social history of Jewish child survivors in Poland. What makes it an important achievement is that it encompasses the period of World War II and the early postwar years, 1945–50, and convincingly charts the key events and developments in the lives of Jewish children in Nazi-occupied Poland and in the early postwar period when Jewish and non-Jewish adults fought emotionally painful and dramatic battles over the social identity and national and cultural belonging of the young survivors. The first six chapters discuss the complexities of the rescue of Jewish children in wartime Poland, and carefully examine various social agents involved in rescue efforts, such as individual Christian Polish families, the underground organisation of the Council to Aid Jews (Zegota) with its special network dedicated to the aid of Jewish children, and individual priests, monks, and nuns who took in young Jewish fugitives and hid and protected them in their monasteries and convents. In Chapters 3 and 4, Bogner carefully outlines the history of young Jewish fugitives who survived the war thanks to their wits and survival skills, enabling them to master the challenging art of mimicking Christian Polish customs, traditions, and behaviour. These children, mainly of adolescent age and older, succeeded in passing as Christian Polish children and continually maintaining this false social identity – their ticket to life on the Aryan side. The majority of these children had an urban background but, in order to survive, many of them had to relocate to the countryside, where they were forced to adapt to peasant culture and carry out a heavy daily work routine as farmhands (parobki). Some peasants treated them

Life stories as testament and memorial: the short life of the Neqama Battalion, an independent Jewish partisan unit operating during the Second World War in the Narocz forest, Belarus

Abstract: By late 1942, as the ghettos in eastern Poland, Belarus and Lithuania were being gradually annihilated, large numbers of Jews began escaping into the woods. These were, generally, young men and women, some of them members of the ghetto underground movements, who sought to take part in the fighting against the Germans and regarded the woods as a path to potential survival. Jewish candidates wishing to join a partisan combat unit were required to prove themselves in battle, battle readiness and volunteering, in addition to the uniquely Jewish missions of revenge and survival. Out of this combination was born the Jewish partisans' wish to form independent Jewish units that would take revenge on the Germans and save Jews incarcerated in camps and ghettos. This paper will study the history of the Revenge (Neqama) Battalion – an independent Jewish partisan battalion that was formed in the Narocz woods in Belarus in July 1943. It will also address the question of whether an independent Jewish battalion could exi...

Ze'ev Jabotinsky Falsified

Abstract: Recently, the word “falsified” has recurred frequently in the contemporary Russian media. Thus, in a way, this article follows a wider trend. Except, as the title indicates, it will not discuss the...

Isaac Euchel. Architekt der Haskala, by Andreas Kennecke

Abstract: Isaac Euchel. Architekt der Haskala, by Andreas Kennecke, Gottingen, Wallstein 2007, 453 pp., €49, ISBN 978-3-8353-0200-6 In recent years it has become widely accepted that the eighteenth-century J...

If there had been no synagogue there, they would have had to invent it: the case of the Birobidzhan “religious community of the Judaic creed” on the threshold of perestroika

Abstract: The Birobidzhan Jewish religious community, officially registered on 15 December 1946, was the only one recognised by the Soviet authorities in the USSR's Far East. During the first years of its activity the community represented a unique case – perhaps the only case in the country – of linkage between a synagogue and the Soviet party and economic establishment on the local level. However, the persecutions of the early 1950s and several anti-religious campaigns later resulted in the Birobidzhan religious community falling into to a very sorry condition. At the beginning of the 1980s, the Regional Executive Committee even decided to cancel the registration of the community and remove it from the books. At the same time, after the 1984 large-scale celebration of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Jewish Autonomous Region (JAR), the central Soviet authorities found that Birobidzhan “clericals” could serve the purposes of the Soviet agitation and propaganda apparatus, as confirmation of the absence o...

The Stranger at Hand: Antisemitic Prejudices in Post-Communist Hungary, by András Kovács

Abstract: Revised and updated from a Hungarian-language monograph first published in 2005, The Stranger at Hand is a meticulous, cross-disciplinary and indispensable study of the tenacity and metamorphoses of antisemitism in Hungary since the system changes of 1989. Given the recent flurry of international headlines warning of the demise of Hungarian democracy, coupled with reports of an unparalleled rise in antisemitism and racism, András Kovács’s volume represents a particularly timely contribution to a complex and often emotional debate. Since a “large part of Hungarian society – both Jewish and non-Jewish – is convinced that antisemitism has increased in Hungary since the fall of communism,” Kovács asks, “are the fears legitimate? Do our observations since 1989 provide grounds for such anxiety? And has antisemitism already reached an alarming level in Hungary?” (181). The fact that he provides no simplistic or easy answers only testifies to the singular quality and relevance of this work. The Stranger at Hand collates the findings of empirical studies conducted over the past two decades, and presents them in-between two historical essays. The first chapter maps out where and how antisemitic discourse emerged after the fall of Communism, using careful content analysis of literature published by smaller, hardcore groups often linked to international neo-Nazi organisations, as well as that by mainstream intellectuals, such as the poet Sándor Csoóri and the playwright István Csurka. In the latter category, traditional antisemitic motifs and linguistic codes were revived and reactivated in order to delineate categories of “us” and “them,” and to interpret the regime changes of 1989/90 and all subsequent conflicts with reference to a powerful, alien minority. Crucially, Kovács emphasises that during the Communist decades the language of the “Jewish question” remained in constant, albeit codified use in certain intellectual and party circles, even though it was officially and publicly taboo. Thus the reemergence of overt antisemitic language after 1989 signified political “struggles for transforming historical memory” (22) among the elite, rather than a groundswell of popular anti-Jewish sentiment. In the 1990s, the mainstream revival of interwar debates, including the “populist– urbanist” dispute that took place during the 1930s (and not the entire interwar period, as is claimed on p. 6), opened up a “linguistic space available for antisemitic discourse” (30), in which committed antisemites took the opportunity to present their views as legitimate. Great care is taken to point out that various conservative understandings of Hungarian history – that external forces “derailed” the country’s organic path, that Hungary was forced onto the wrong side of the First World War and then punished

The crux in the Russian short story and its evolution in Hebrew literature

Abstract: In studies of the short story, relatively little attention has been devoted to the role therein of the crux, even though it is one of the critical elements in its fashioning. In the present study I have noted for the first time that, on the basis of the location of the crux within the overall complex of composition of the short story, we are able to draw a distinction among four sub-genres of the short story which differ from one another in their composition, general atmosphere, and meaning. The unique formulations of the crux were accepted in Russian literature of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, and are particularly discernible in the work of Chekhov, who exerted great influence upon the Hebrew short story. These means of formulations found their way from Russian literature into Hebrew literature, as is particularly striking in the works of those authors who grew up and were educated in the Russian milieu and culture and began to write in that language even before they began to write in Hebrew.