„Nikomu to nehovor“: Rodinné tajomstvá, pocit neistoty a navigovanie „odlišnosti“ u židovskej minority na Slovensku
Translated Title
“Don’t Tell Anyone”: Family Secrets, Sense of Uncertainty, and Navigating “Otherness” Among the Jewish Minority in Slovakia
Author(s)
Publication Name
Publication Date
Abstract
Many young Slovak Jews, belonging to the third post-war generation, learned about their Jewishness only later in their lives, when outer triggers – whether a classmate’s comment or a history lesson about the Holocaust – raised questions to which they received unexpected answers at home. This study focuses on family secrets and their productivity, and on social taboos on information about Jewish descent, in the context of perceived insecurity across three generations of Slovak Jews. Exploring how young people discovered their Jewishness and how it was presented to them by their closest kin – who had previously kept it secret from them – along with the warning not to tell anyone about it, this study shows the formative power of this information for a sense of self, as well as for their relations to others. Based on ethnographic fieldwork among the Jewish community in Bratislava, the author shows how contemporary young Jews – the grandchildren of Holocaust survivors – navigate their uncovered family secret, and how they negotiate the disruption in the continuity of their life stories and the intergenerational transmission of uncertainty and mistrust, which encourages the use of strategies of careful concealment of “otherness”, affecting their everyday life and relationships.
Topics
Family and Household Age and Generational Issues Holocaust Survivors: Grandchildren of Holocaust Survivors Holocaust Survivors: Children of Jewish Identity Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial Ethnography
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Geographic Coverage
Original Language
Volume/Issue
32(1)
Page Number / Article Number
22-31
Bibliographic Information
„Nikomu to nehovor“: Rodinné tajomstvá, pocit neistoty a navigovanie „odlišnosti“ u židovskej minority na Slovensku. 2022: 22-31. https://archive.jpr.org.uk/object-4580
