Abstract: As one of the most visited museums in Germany’s capital city, the Jewish Museum Berlin is a key site for understanding not only German-Jewish history, but also German identity in an era of unprecedented ethnic and religious diversity. Visitors to the House of Memory is an intimate exploration of how young Berliners experience the Museum. How do modern students relate to the museum’s evocative architecture, its cultural-political context, and its narrative of Jewish history? By accompanying a range of high school history students before, during, and after their visits to the museum, this book offers an illuminating exploration of political education, affect, remembrance, and belonging.
Abstract: Looking at different perspectives and practices regarding Hebrew’s use or place of use, this chapter seeks to find connections between perceptions of diasporic Hebrew as they are envisioned and practiced in contemporary Berlin. What are the various events and activities taking place with regards to Hebrew in contemporary Berlin? How do Hebrew texts written today in Berlin correspond to the work of Scholem, Rosenzweig and others? Who are the people behind these activities and texts, and what is the political significance of their activities?
The article will open with a description of important notions of Zionist ideology. Then, I will describe briefly main aspects relevant to Israeli emigration. I will explain the importance of the city of Berlin to the Hebrew culture starting from the 18th century, as well as a Zionist center in the first half of the 20st century. The last two sections of this article will explore two figures of Israeli emigrants and their activities in contemporary Berlin. I will follow the activist Tal Hever-Chybowski, who claims to have established the first literary journal to be published in Hebrew in Europe since 1944 (entitled: Mikan Va'eilah - “from here and onwards”). Hever- Chybowski describes his motivation in the following words: “The goal of the journal is to become a literary cultural platform for non-hegemonic and non-sovereign Hebrew, a Hebrew that is free from the shackles of nationality and territory.” I say “claim to have established,” because this journal is not yet published, even though Hever-Chybowski describes it as if it is.
I will also follow the work of Mati Shemoeluf, a Hebrew author working in Berlin, who described the wonders of a Hebrew Library in Berlin. Shemoeluf, just like Hever-Chybowski, can be criticized for his embellishments of reality, since the Hebrew library – at least as Shemoeluf describes it - does not really exist. What are their political motivations, and what form of political activity are they practicing, are the questions I address in this chapter.
Abstract: The robbery and restitution of Jewish property are two inextricably linked social processes. It is not possible to understand the lawsuits and international agreements on the restoration of Jewish property of the late 1990s without examining what was robbed and by whom. In this volume distinguished historians first outline the mechanisms and scope of the European-wide program of plunder and then assess the effectiveness and historical implications of post-war restitution efforts. Everywhere the solution of legal and material problems was intertwined with changing national myths about the war and conflicting interpretations of justice. Even those countries that pursued extensive restitution programs using rigorous legal means were unable to compensate or fully comprehend the scale of Jewish loss. Especially in Eastern Europe, it was not until the collapse of communism that the concept of restoring some Jewish property rights even became a viable option. Integrating the abundance of new research on the material effects of the Holocaust and its aftermath, this comparative perspective examines the developments in Germany, Poland, Italy, France, Belgium, Hungary and the Czech Republic.
CONTENTS
List of Abbreviations
Preface
Part I: Introduction
Introduction: A History without Boundaries: The Robbery and Restitution of Jewish Property in Europe
Constantin Goschler and Philipp Ther
Part II: The Robbery of Jewish Property in Comparative Perspective
Chapter 1. The Seizure of Jewish Property in Europe: Comparative Aspects of Nazi Methods and Local Responses
Martin Dean
Chapter 2. Aryanization and Restitution in Germany
Frank Bajohr
Chapter 3. The Looting of Jewish Property in Occupied Western Europe: A Comparative Study of Belgium, France, and the Netherlands
Jean-Marc Dreyfus
Chapter 4. The Robbery of Jewish Property in Eastern Europe under German Occupation, 1939–1942
Dieter Pohl
Chapter 5. The Robbery of Jewish Property in Eastern European States Allied with Nazi Germany
Tatjana Tönsmeyer
Part III: The Restitution of Jewish Property in Comparative Perspective
Chapter 6. West Germany and the Restitution of Jewish Property in Europe
Jürgen Lillteicher
Chapter 7. Jewish Property and the Politics of Restitution in Germany after 1945
Constantin Goschler
Chapter 8. Two Approaches to Compensation in France: Restitution and Reparation
Claire Andrieu
Chapter 9. The Expropriation of Jewish Property and Restitution in Belgium
Rudi van Doorslaer
Chapter 10. Indifference and Forgetting: Italy and its Jewish Community, 1938–1970
Ilaria Pavan
Chapter 11. “Why Switzerland?” – Remarks on a Neutral’s Role in the Nazi Program of Robbery and Allied Postwar Restitution Policy
Regula Ludi
Chapter 12. The Hungarian Gold Train: Fantasies of Wealth and the Madness of Genocide
Ronald W. Zweig
Chapter 13. Reluctant Restitution: The Restitution of Jewish Property in the Bohemian Lands after the Second World War
Eduard Kubu and Jan Kuklík Jr.
Chapter 14. The Polish Debate on the Holocaust and the Restitution of Property
Dariusz Stola
Part IV: Concluding Remarks
Conclusion: Reflections on the Restitution and Compensation of Holocaust Theft: Past, Present, and Future
Gerald D. Feldman
Notes on Contributors
Select Bibliography
Index
Abstract: Far from being a blank space on the Jewish map, or a void in the Jewish cultural world, post-Shoah Europe is a place where Jewry has continued to develop, even though it is facing different challenges and opportunities than elsewhere. Living on a continent characterized by highly diverse patterns of culture, language, history, and relations to Jews, European Jewry mirrors that kaleidoscopic diversity. This volume explores such key questions as the new roles for Jews in Europe; models of Jewish community organization in Europe; concepts of diaspora and galut; a European-Jewish way of life in the era of globalization; and European Jews' relationship to Israel and to non-Jews. Some contributions highlight experiences of Jews in Britain, Sweden, Norway, Hungary, Austria, Germany, and the Netherlands. Helping us to understand the special and common characteristics of European Jewry, this collection offers a valuable contribution to the continued rebuilding of Jewish life in the postwar era.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Sandra Lustig and Ian Leveson
PART I: OVERARCHING QUESTIONS
Chapter 1. A New Role for Jews in Europe: Challenges and Responsibilities
Diana Pinto
Chapter 2. European Models of Community: Can Ambiguity Help?
Clive A. Lawton
Chapter 3. Concepts of Diaspora and Galut
Michael Galchinsky
Chapter 4. ‘Homo Zappiens’: A European-Jewish Way of Life in the Era of Globalisation
Lars Dencik
Chapter 5. Israel and Diaspora: From Solution to Problem
Göran Rosenberg
PART II: INNER-JEWISH CONCERNS: REBUILDING AND CONTINUITY
Chapter 6. Left Over – Living after the Shoah: (Re-)building Jewish Life in Europe. A Panel Discussion
Sandra Lustig
Chapter 7. Debora’s Disciples: AWomen’s Movement as an Expression of Renewing Jewish Life in Europe
Lara Dämmig and Elisa Klapheck
Chapter 8. A Jewish Cultural Renascence in Germany?
Y. Michal Bodemann
PART III: THE JEWISH SPACE IN EUROPE
Chapter 9. The Jewish Space in Europe
Diana Pinto
Chapter 10. Caught between Civil Society and the Cultural Market: Jewry and the Jewish Space in Europe. A Response to Diana Pinto
Ian Leveson and Sandra Lustig
Chapter 11. ‘The Germans Will Never Forgive the Jews for Auschwitz’. When Things Go Wrong in the Jewish Space: The Case of the Walser-Bubis Debate
Sandra Lustig
Notes on Contributors
Index
Abstract: Israeli youth voyages to Poland are one of the most popular and influential forms of transmission of Holocaust memory in Israeli society. Through intensive participant observation, group discussions, student diaries, and questionnaires, the author demonstrates how the State shapes Poland into a living deathscape of Diaspora Jewry. In the course of the voyage, students undergo a rite de passage, in which they are transformed into victims, victorious survivors, and finally witnesses of the witnesses. By viewing, touching, and smelling Holocaust-period ruins and remains, by accompanying the survivors on the sites of their suffering and survival, crying together and performing commemorative ceremonies at the death sites, students from a wide variety of family backgrounds become carriers of Shoah memory. They come to see the State and its defense as the romanticized answer to the Shoah. These voyages are a bureaucratic response to uncertainty and fluidity of identity in an increasingly globalized and fragmented society. This study adds a measured and compassionate ethical voice to ideological debates surrounding educational and cultural forms of encountering the past in contemporary Israel, and raises further questions about the representation of the Holocaust after the demise of the last living witnesses.
