“Against All Odds” by Jillian Rothwell

Back cover: “This dramatic story of hope and devotion is based entirely on the cache of letters and documents found in an old 1930s suitcase. They bear an extraordinary witness to these epic events. Intrigued by these family letters, Jillian Rothwell travelled half way across the world to trace generations of her family’s journey from the Hapsburg Empire’s Eastern provinces to occupied Vienna and beyond. Out of the carnage that was engulfing Europe, she uncovered the astonishing story of two courageous and remarkable Viennese who steered the family’s miraculous survival, astonishing luck, dramatic departures and last minute getaways, all the way to the safe haven of New Zealand. At first it was not all plain sailing, but eventually their new home provided hope, purpose and abundant opportunities for the family to finally ‘make it’.”

Review by George Heagney: Author recounts family’s escape from Nazi-occupied Vienna to New Zealand

Antschel • Documentary by Susanne Ayoub • Paul Celan and Klaus Demus

The premiere of the film in Ukraine took place on November 27th, 2020, on the occasion of the festival “Paul Celan Literature Days 2020” in Czernowitz, organized by the Paul Celan Literature Centre, Meridian Czernowitz and sponsored by the Austrian Cultural Forum Kyiv. The film (45:29 min.) is German with Ukrainian subtitles.

The documentary “Antschel” was shot in 2020 by the Austrian director and poet Susanne Ayoub. The narrator of the film is Paul Celan’s childhood friend Klaus Demus. The two young poets met in Vienna in 1948.

An Atmosphere of Hope and Confidence

Eine Atmosphäre von Hoffnung und Zuversicht • An Atmosphere of Hope and Confidence
Hilfe für verfolgte Juden in Rumänien, Transnistrien und Nordsiebenbürgen 1940-1944 •
Aid for Persecuted Jews in Romania, Transnistria and Northern Transylvania 1940-1944
296 pages, 170 x 240 mm, with numerous illustrations, hardcover, numerous partly colored illustrations September 2020 ISBN 978-3-86732-348-2 Lukas Verlag

During the Second World War, Romania was an ally of the German Reich. The spectrum of persecution of Jews in the Romanian territory was broad. It ranged from legislative measures to deprivation of rights and expropriation to pogroms, deportations, and mass murder. 
However, individual courageous individuals from various social strata came to the aid of the oppressed people. This book presents these often anonymous helpers who put their lives at risk for the first time to German readers. At the end of June 1941, for example, the twenty-one year old factory worker Elisabeta Nicopoi from Jassy hid several Jewish neighbors who thus escaped the pogrom. Since early 1943, staff members of the Romanian Red Cross had been bringing medicines collected in Bucharest to the hard-to-reach ghettos in the Romanian occupied territory of Transnistria in southern Ukraine. In the same year, financial aid from foreign Jewish organizations also reached the helper networks. Even while the Romanian army was still fighting alongside the Wehrmacht, Jewish survivors from Romania were able to emigrate by ship via Turkey to Palestine from 1944, among them many orphans. Only later were helpers honored. Many of them were imprisoned in communist prisons; only a few survived.

Gottes Mühlen in Berlin • Mills of God in Berlin
Ausgewählte Gedichte • Selected Poems
Herausgegeben und kommentiert von Andrei Corbea-Hoisie •
Published and Commented by Andrei Corbea-Hoisie

156 pages, paperback, 2020 ISBN 978-3-89086-393-1 Rimbaud Verlag

The present edition intends to reconstruct the book project entitled “Gottes Mühlen in Berlin” by Immanuel Weissglas, whose publication was stopped in Bucharest in 1947 for unclear reasons – be they political or economic – and never appeared again in the planned design. In the course of time, only individual poems were selected for publication; Weissglas himself revised numerous texts into new versions and incorporated them into the volume of poetry “Der Nobiskrug” (1972).

Leben und Tod in der Epoche des Holocaust in der Ukraine •
Life and Death in the Era of the Holocaust in Ukraine
Zeugnisse von Überlebenden • Testimonies of Survivors
December 2019 ISBN: 978-3-86331-475-0 Pages: 1152 METROPOL

For decades, the Holocaust in Ukraine received little attention. It is only since the 1990s that German crimes have increasingly attracted the interest of historians and the public, both in Germany and in Ukraine itself. Nevertheless, there is still little knowledge of what happened in the former Soviet Socialist Republic. The historian Boris Zabarko, himself a survivor of the Shargorod ghetto, was one of the first to systematically research the fate of Jews under German occupation in Ukraine. For more than 20 years he has been collecting survivors’ reports and interviewing those who were once persecuted. In 1999, a first publication in Russian appeared, followed by a multi-volume work. The present edition contains more than 180 reports of survivors. They are assigned to the respective crime scenes, for which introductory contextual information is given, and follow the chronology of the occupation. The result is a “Geography of the Holocaust” in the Ukraine.

Unser Überlebenswill war stark • Our Will To Survive Was Strong
Gespräche mit M. Bartfeld-Feller über Czernowitz, die sibirische Verbannung und Israel •
Discussions with M. Bartfeld-Feller about Czernowitz, the Siberian Banishment and Israel
1st edition 2020, 68 pages, ISBN 978-3-86628-678-8 Hartung-Gorre Verlag

1. Erhard Roy Wiehn: From Czernowitz through Siberia to Israel – Tel Aviv 1996
2. Christel Wollmann-Fiedler: 50 Years of Siberian Exile – Tel Aviv 2012

Todefuge Gedichte und Prosa 1952-1967 • Deathfugue Poems and Prose 1952-1967
Audio Book CD, 2 CDs, running time: 1h 59min ISBN: 978-3-8445-3919-6
Published on September 14, 2020 Random House

Paul Celan: One of the most important German-language poets in original language. His poetry is world literature full of musicality and form, which puts the utmost of human experience into words. Paul Celan was famous for the very special way he recited his poems. Between his scandalous reading in 1952 in front of Gruppe 47 and his death as a celebrated poet, there are almost two decades in which Celan presented his poems in numerous radio and public readings and gradually changed his style. In this new compilation, these original recordings can be heard for the first time.

Commemorative Medal for Emanuel A. Ziffer, “Father of the Bukovinian Railroad System”

It is due to the great commitment and tenacity of Paul Brașcanu that the Romanian State Mint has coined a commemorative medal in honour of Emanuel Alois Ziffer, the “Father of the Bukovinian Railroad System”, in an edition of only 23 pieces (3 silver / 17 copper alloy). More details about the project can be found in the (Romanian) project description just here. In due consideration of his engagement related to the acknowledgement of Emanuel Alois Ziffer’s role as the “Father of the Bukovinian Railroad System”, the Federation of Jewish Communities of Romania decorated Paul Brașcanu by the Medal for Friends of Jewish Communities of Romania in 2014.

Links:
http://ehpes.com/blog1/?p=7242
http://hauster.blogspot.de/2013/10/the-honorary-citizen-of-czernowitz-from.html
http://www.monitorulsv.ro/Local/2014-01-22/Parintele-Cailor-Ferate-din-Bucovina-onorat-la-Vatra-Dornei
http://de.scribd.com/doc/180469996/Ziffer-parintele-cailor-ferate-din-BUKOWINA-pdf
http://hauster.blogspot.de/2012/06/end-of-route-diversion-in-vatra-dornei.html

Spanish Flu or Influenza?

Czernowitzer Allgemeine Zeitung, 7-Jul-1918

Spanish flu or Influenza?
The mysterious disease with its many names is on everyone’s lips, or better, in everyone’s – noses, because it is probably only about influenza and sniffles, as is only too understandable in this strange summer. Admittedly, one can almost speak of an epidemic, if not in Czernowitz, where influenza is circulating too, but in many other cities: in Vienna it is on the rise, and there are also reports from Germany, namely Berlin, Munich, Dresden, Mannheim and Karlsruhe, of an increase in “Spanish flu”. The epidemic, whose name and origin has not been properly identified, seems to have originated in Spain and from there it has spread to the whole of Europe. No matter how the disease is called, whether it is flu or influenza or a “Spanish disease”, there is no reason for concern. You can call it annoying, but it is not dangerous. Probably the bacillus that causes so much turmoil all over the world is an old acquaintance, the influenza bacillus, and one may, without fear, if it applies, answer the question “Have you got it yet?” by a liberating Achoo!

[Spanische Grippe oder Influenza?
Die rätselhafte Krankheit mit den vielen Namen ist in aller Munde, oder bessergesagt, in aller – Nasen, denn es handelt sich wohl nur um Influenza und Schnupfen, wie dies bei dem merkwürdigen aller Sommer nur zu begreiflich ist. Freilich kann man beinahe von einer Epidemie sprechen, wenn auch nicht in Czernowitz, wo allerdings auch die Influenza umgeht, so doch in vielen anderen Städten: in Wien nimmt sie an Umfang zu und auch aus Deutschland, namentlich Berlin, München, Dresden, Mannheim, Karlsruhe wird von der Zunahme der „spanischen Grippe“ berichtet. Die Epidemie, deren Name und Ursprung nicht einwandfrei festgestellt ist, scheint ihren Ursprung in Spanien und von dort den Weg nach ganz Europa genommen zu haben. Wie die Krankheit nun heißt, ob es eine Grippe oder Influenza oder eine „spanische Krankheit“ ist, Grund zu Besorgnissen ist jedenfalls nicht vorhanden. Mann kann sie lästig nennen, aber gefährlich ist sie nicht. Wahrscheinlich ist der Bazillus, der die Welt in so viel Aufruhr versetzt, ein alter Bekannter, der Influenzabazillus, und man darf, ohne Angst, wenn’s zutrifft, die Frage „Haben Sie sie schon?“ mit einem befreienden Haptschüh! beantworten.]

NEW BOOK: Resettlers & Survivors

About the Author:
Gaëlle Fisher is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Center for Holocaust Studies at the Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History in Munich, Germany. She holds a doctorate in history from University College London and has published articles in a range of journals, including German History, The Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, and East European Politics and Societies.

Reviews:
“By establishing a new approach for Bukovina research, Resettlers and Survivors makes the reverberations of World War II visible for Europe as a whole and particularly for Bukovina Germans and Jews. It offers answers to how and why their experiences effected new conceptualizations of the past, of identity, and of home.” • Markus Winkler, LMU Munich

“Gaëlle Fisher manages, on the one hand, to provide insight into a lesser-known episode in the history of World War II. At the same time, through her own interpretation of the historical record, she illustrates through this special case a theoretical issue relevant to the concepts essential for a sociopolitical understanding of modernity and postmodernity: identity, alterity, difference, space, place, and memory.” • Andrei Corbea-Hoişie, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Iași, Romania

List of Repatriates from Southern Bukovina

This list comes from World Jewish Congress London (London n° 1087) and displays – in more or less alphabetical order – about 3,500 repatriated persons from Southern Bukovina, no date, no list of nationalities, but most likely all of them Jewish. Is there anybody out there, who might tell us more on this list? Is it connected to the list of “Repatriates at the USSR/Romanian Border – March/April 1946” posted at:

http://radauti.blogspot.com/2009/12/repatriates-at-ussrromanian-border.html

Courtesy: Arolsen Archives