Jewish Identity after the Holocaust. the precarious reconstruction of the Viennese Jewry from the point of view of three Generations

1991 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-106
Author(s):  
Sabine Pohoryles‐Drexel ◽  
Ronald J. Pohoryles
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Three Generations ◽  
The Holocaust

Ann Charney Dobryd

2002 ◽  
pp. 509-512
Author(s):  
Anna Petrov Bumble
Keyword(s):  
Family Members ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Jewish Family ◽  
Three Generations ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Inner World ◽  
Post War

This chapter considers Ann Charney’s Dobryd, a memoir with a profound treatment of the aftermath of the Holocaust. Reported from a child’s point of view, the narrative provides a glimpse into the deepest workings of Charney’s psyche from the age of 3 until the age of 10. Though not a feminist fable, Dobryd is a story in which all the protagonists — Charney, her mother, and her aunt — are women who struggle and succeed on their own during the war and in the chaos of post-war Poland. Named after a Polish town near Lviv, the memoir encompasses the lives of members of three generations of a Jewish family as they and their community suffer through the horrors of the Holocaust. The story follows family members over a period of about forty years, penetrating deep into their inner world.

scholarly journals On Becoming a Non-Jewish Holocaust Writer: Yann Martel’s Beatrice and Virgil

Humanities ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 12
Author(s):  
Rachel F. Brenner
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Personal Life ◽  
Holocaust Memory ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The World ◽  
Family Level ◽  
History Of ◽  
Religious Origins

To appraise Martel’s non-Jewish perspective of Holocaust thematic, it is important to assess it in the context of the Jewish relations with the Holocaust. Even though the Jewish claim to the uniqueness of the Holocaust has been disputed since the end of the war especially in Eastern Europe, the Jewish response determined to a large extent the reception of the disaster on the global scene. On a family level, the children of survivors have identified themselves as the legitimate heirs of the unknowable experience of their parents. On a collective level, the decree of Jewish annihilation constructed a Jewish identity that imposed an obligation to keep the Holocaust memory in the consciousness of the world. Martel proposes to supersede the history of the Holocaust with a story which would downplay the Jewish filiation with the Holocaust, elicit an affiliative response to the event of the non-Jewish writer and consequently integrate it into the memory of humanity at large. However, the Holocaust theme of Beatrice and Virgil refuses to assimilate within the general memory of humanity; rather, the consciousness of the event, which pervades the post-Holocaust world, insists on its constant presence. The omnipresence of the Holocaust blurs the distinctions between the filiative (Jewish) and affiliative (non-Jewish) attitudes toward the Jewish tragedy, gripping the writer in its transcendent horror. Disregarding his ethnic or religious origins, the Holocaust takes over the writer’s personal life and determines his story.

Concerto for Orchestra “The Yellow Stars” by Isaac Schwartz: In the Mirror of Ashkenazi’s Musical Culture

2021 ◽  
pp. 19-37
Author(s):  
И.Ф. Двужильная
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Folk Song ◽  
Huge Number ◽  
Musical Culture ◽  
Entire Life ◽  
The Holocaust

В статье предпринят анализ последнего произведения выдающегося петербургского композитора Исаака Шварца (1923–2009) — мемориального опуса памяти жертв Холокоста. Аргументированно доказывается, что ашкеназская культура, в том числе и музыкальная, была органичной частью всей жизни композитора. Об этом свидетельствуют сформировавшийся в детские годы этнослух И. Шварца, огромное количество песен на идиш, которые он мог играть наизусть часами и, безусловно, тематизм инструментального концерта «Желтые звезды», в котором наряду с цитатным материалом выявляются и многочисленные авторские темы, отмеченные знаком еврейской идентичности. В них прослеживаются традиции синагогальной молитвы, клезмерского музицирования, идишской народной песни. Вместе с тем в работе с тематическим материалом, с формой, с оркестровкой обнаруживается прочная связь И. Шварца с ленинградской-петербургской композиторской школой. The article analyzes the last work of the well-known Petersburg composer Isaac Schwartz (1923–2009) which is a memorial opus in memory of the victims of the Holocaust. It is argued that the Ashkenazi musical culture was a natural part of the composer’s entire life. This is evidenced by the ethnic rumor of Schwartz formed in his childhood, a huge number of songs in Yiddish that he could play by heart for hours and, of course, the themes of the instrumental concerto “The Yellow Stars”, which demonstrates, along with quotation material, numerous author’s themes, marked by Jewish identity. They trace the traditions of synagogue prayer, klezmer music, Yiddish folk song. At the same time, the work with thematic material, with form, and with orchestration, reveals Schwartz’s tight relationship with the Leningrad-Petersburg school of composition.

scholarly journals Śmierć porwana. O terezińskiej sztuce Hledáme strašidlo Hanuša Hachenburga z 1943 roku

2019 ◽  
Vol 168 ◽  
pp. 327-335
Author(s):  
Agata Firlej
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Fairy Tales ◽  
Fairy Tale ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Zygmunt Bauman ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
Puppet Theatre ◽  
East And West

The stolen death: About the play Hledáme strašidlo by Hanuš Hachenburg from 1943The puppet theatre play Hledame strašidlo by Hanuš Hachenburg was written in the Terezín/Theresienstadt ghetto in 1943 and over 50 years was hidden in the archive until it was presented to readers and viewers in the 1990s — but it turned out to be still surprisingly valid and cogent. The author, a 14-year-old prisoner of the ghetto, used the conventions of the puppet theatre, the carnival and the fairy tales. The mythical or fairy-tale-like “timelessness” allowed him to show the absurdity of Nazism and — yet unnamed — the Holocaust. The main character of the play, the King, captures Death itself, which soon becomes so ordinary and kitschy that no one is afraid of her. The confinement of Death — a motif known, among others, from the myth of Sisyphus — is an important theme of the theatre in Terezín; it appears also in the German-speaking opera by Peter Kien and Viktor Ullmann, Der Keiser von Atlantis Emperor of Atlantis. In this article, I show how the old themes of enslaved Death and the dance macabre between extasy and destruction become the symbols of the war, and indeed of the 20th century, which culminates in the devastating forces of the great ideologies and in which there can be found the origins of retrotopia, which is now, according to Zygmunt Bauman, the dominating point of view in East- and West-European and in American discourse.  Únos smrti. O terezίnske divadelnί hře Hledáme strašidlo Hanuše Hachenburga z roku 1943Divadelní hra Hledáme strašidlo od Hanuše Hachenburga byla napsána v ghettu Terezín / Theresienstadt v roce 1943 a více než padesát let byla ukryta v archivu, aby v 90. letech si našla cestu pro své čtenáře a diváky — a ukázalo se, že je překvapivě platná a přitažlivá. Autor, čtrnáctiletý vězeň ghetta, využil konvencí loutkového divadla, karnevalu a pohádek. Mýtická nebo pohádková „nadčasovost“ mu umožnila ukázat absurditu nacismu a — tehdy ještĕ nemenovaného — holocaustu. Hlavní postava hry, Král, zachytí samotnou Smrt, která se brzy stane tak obyčejnou a kyčovitou, že se ji nikdo nebude bát. Únos smrti — motiv známý mimo jiné i z mýtu Sisyfa — je důležitým tématem divadla v Terezíně; objevuje se také v německojazyčné operě Petera Kiena a Viktora Ullmanna Der Keizer von Atlantis Císař Atlantidy. V tomto textu ukazuji, jak se staré motivy zotročené Smrti a danse macabre mezi extázi a zničení stávají symbolem války a celého dvacátého století, v který vyvrcholily ničivými sily velké ideologie a kde lze nalézt počátky retrotopie, která je podle Zygmunta Baumana dominantním hlediskem ve východním, západoevropským a americkým diskurzu.

Sopravvivenza e ripresa: riflessioni psicoanalitiche

GRUPPI ◽  
2009 ◽  
pp. 11-30
Author(s):  
Anna Ornstein
Keyword(s):  
Opportunity To Learn ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Traumatic Memory ◽  
Traumatic Memories ◽  
Psychological Mechanisms ◽  
Therapeutic Dialogue ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Empathic Listening ◽  
Psychological Organization ◽  
The Impact

- In response to a concern that the impact of the Holocaust will not be recognized by psychotherapists treating survivors, several psychoanalysts who were refugees from Nazi Germany devoted a great deal of time and effort to detailing the psychopathological consequences of the Holocaust trauma. Considering the magnitude of the trauma, it was not difficult to find evidence of psychopathology. However, because of their almost exclusive emphasis on psychopathology, most of these researchers failed to recognize the particular manner in which survivors mourned their enormous losses and made an effort to integrate their painful memories into the rest of their personality. This meant the loss of an opportunity to learn about the process of recovery following severe traumatization. The paper also described a hypothesis regarding the psychological mechanisms involved in adaptations to extreme conditions. From the author's point of view, this constituted a link in the survivors' effort to establish psychic continuity between their pre-Holocaust psychological organization and adaptations to a new life. Unlike her colleagues, the author believes that integration of traumatic memories was possible as long as the survivors encountered an empathic listening perspective and their effort to recover was validated. Survivors of trauma have every reason to expect that their stories will evoke fear, confusion, horror and disbelief and that therapists will protect themselves from these affects by resorting to generalizations or praise for the survivor's heroism or special qualities. Such responses however make it impossible for survivors to proceed, and the affects associated with the traumatic memory may never, or only partially, enter the therapeutic dialogue. Once recovered and articulated, the memories are accompanied by grief and anger, indicating that an increase in self-cohesion, a healing of the vertical split, has allowed the previously feared affects to enter consciousness. From the author's viewpoint, feeling anger is an expectable and healthy response in this context. Justified anger is not to be confused with chronic narcissistic rage, which can constitute the nucleus of severe personality disorders.Key words: Holocaust, trauma, traumatic memories, adaptation, integration, empathic listening.Parole chiave: Olocausto, trauma, ricordi traumatici, adattamento, integrazione, ascolto empatico.

Post-Holocaust Heritage of Trauma

2018 ◽  
pp. 70-84
Author(s):  
Liat Steir-Livny
Keyword(s):  
Three Generations ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Family Secret ◽  
Close Contacts

In the 1930s, after the Nazis came to power in Germany, tens of thousands of Jews immigrated to Eretz-Israel. Many of them kept on missing their former homeland and culture, while simultaneously despising Germany. This chapter analyzes the complex identity of these Jews, who had to leave Germany, but could not really detach themselves from the homeland that betrayed them, as reflected in the film The Flat (2011). In the film, Director Arnon Goldfinger reveals a family secret: his grandparents, Kurt and Gerda Tuchler, maintained close contacts with a Nazi couple, the Von Mildensteins, before and after the Holocaust. In a world of post-Holocaust, the analysis of the film tells the story of a transgenerational transfer of the trauma, and its different effect on three generations.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Michael Geheran
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Masculine Identity ◽  
The Holocaust

This chapter gives a vivid picture of what the Jews had to go through at the hand of the Nazis. It discusses what some Jewish veterans had to do to prove their “Germaness.” The chapter tries to understand the motives of the Jewish victims and what they did in order to cope with the circumstance they were in. It argues that Jewish veterans needed to orient themselves towards normative masculine identity, and and cultivated a distinctive manner of thinking and behaving, where courage, self-assertion, and endurance became the measure against which ideal manhood was evaluated. The chapter raises the question of the complexity of the Jewish identity during the time of the holocaust.

Jewish Liturgical Memory and the Non-Jew

2012 ◽  
pp. 167-186
Author(s):  
Ruth Langer
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Biblical Narratives ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Religious Other ◽  
Jewish Liturgy ◽  
The Temple ◽  
The Middle Ages

This chapter examines the power and construction of Jewish memory as well as the image of the religious Other in Jewish liturgy, which has been so heavily conditioned by adversarial biblical narratives and the experience of historical persecution. In the memory shaped by Jewish liturgy — be it the daily Amidah, the High Holiday prayers, Passover and Purim texts, or the Ninth of Av piyutim (liturgical poems) memorializing the destruction of the Temple, the tragedies of the Middle Ages, and the Holocaust — the religious or political Other is portrayed as almost universally negative. The non-Jew — usually considered in the impersonal abstract, rather than the particular other — is a threat to Jewish uniqueness. It disrupts God's covenantal plan for Israel. The chapter then looks at the ongoing tension between making historical memory part of Jewish identity and an openness to allowing history to unfold into a future that may move beyond tragedy.

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