
Switkes and Tartakower Families of Czernowitz

Original text by Emanuel Hacken, edited by Ruth Glasberg Gold
Dear Czernowitzians and all List members,
This photo Hardy sent to me on 5 July 2017 — Hardy and Rachel in better times – both gone now — all too soon.
Jerome
From Ruth Levin, an article from the “Ost-Yiddishe Zeitung”, 2.6.1935:
“…Dr. Landau introduced to the audience a young man whose name
should not be forgotten. Probably, we’ll hear from him again and again.
Levin isn’t a singer, rather he’s an artistic reader. He’s not a reader, rather
he’s an actor. As a matter of fact he’s all in one: singer, artistic reader, actor
and poet. Why also poet? He reads to us only the poems of others, does he not?
That being so, this is the secret of his art. He reveals what is hidden between the lines.
He brings the poet to completion. He draws from the poet’s soul riches the poet himself
did not know of, riches that were hidden in his sub-conscious…
Frequently the words of the text in his mouth serve solely as a stimulus that awakens –
just for a passing moment – the poetic spiritual inheritance of his own, and that has
always to be born anew, like the music.
The art of Leibu Levin needs not only to be heard, though, but also to be seen. He himself
one has to hear and see, how he breathes into the dim hall, into the pearls of strangers’
poetry, his young burning soul, the creative, sometimes ecstatic, and sometimes weeping
soul… His profound understanding drew one deeply into the fables of
Eliezer Steinbarg and the ballads of Itzik Manger.
From time to time the reader becomes singer, and only when he was seen as well as heard,
did I finally understand the meaning of the old expression “to sing and to say”
regarding troubadours and minnesingers. When his spoken word passes to song, it reminds me
of a flying ship hovering above the earth and taking off to the blue heavens…
Talent is as rare as gold. From the gold it is possible to forge a holiday crown for
priests who serve gods and it is possible to pay with it the penance for sinful impurity…
Talent can be refined to capture surpassing art, or can descend to cheap popular
entertainment. It seems to me that all in Leibu Levin aspires toward and is uplifted to the
shining heights of noble art .”
Dr. Meyer Ebner
The newspaper “Ost-Yiddishe Zeitung”, 2.6.1935
‘Flyer’ for a conference to be held in Berlin on March 14, 15 and 16, 2016.
On 16 March, Dr.Dana Mihăilescu will be presenting a paper entitled:
“Shifts in Testimony Focus Depending on Medium and Temporal Context:
On Ruth Glasberg Gold’s Holocaust Experiences in Transnistria”
You can read the entire paper to be presented at:
mihailescu
Posted for Ruth Glasberg Gold
On 05/23/1961 Perla Mark, the wife of Dr. Abraham Jakob Mark, testified in Jerusalem at the Adolf Eichmann Trial. Session 48 begins with the testimony from Perla Mark who describes the burning of the main synagogue in Czernowitz and the murder of Jews including her husband, the town’s chief rabbi. The testimony from Theodor Löwenstein follows. Löwenstein describes the physical measures against the Jews in Romania including the pogroms in Jassy, Bessarabia, and Bukovina. Löwenstein gives an account of the deportations from Czernowitz to the Transnistria and Bogdanovka camps. He also gives an estimate of the number of Romanian Jews that were exterminated.