Re: [Cz-L] Resilience

Serah,

No one knows exactly how many of the old-time Jewish residents
of Chernivtsi left in 1945-1946 and how many stayed,
but there is no question that the majority left.
Before WW2, half of the population of Czernowitz was Jewish,
about 50 000 people.
After the war, I estimate that this number was reduced to
about 30 000. Of these, many left illegally in 1944 and 1945.
12 000 left in the summer of 1945 and a somewhat smaller number
in 1946.
Of the old-time Czernowitzers, I estimate that at the most 10 000
remained there during the Soviet period. Jews from other areas
of the Soviet empire moved to Czernowitz.
The new Czernowitzer Jews had a different cultural background.

Gerhard Schreiber, is right about the lack of freedom and security,
Jews faced under Soviet rule and the reasons why most
of the old-time Czernowitzers left the "Communist paradise".
I imagine that those who stayed had good reasons for doing so.
What I object to, are your assertions that life under the Soviets
was not so bad and that the old Czernowitzers lacked resilience.

I am sure, that growing up in Czernowitz during Soviet times,
you still heard German, we old Czernowitzers very stubbornly
keep on speaking German. Even though German stopped being
the official language of Czernowitz 19 years before I was born,
with old-time Czernowitzers, I still speak German.
Not only do we speak German, but our frame of reference
includes both German and Jewish-German poets, authors and publicists.
It is safe to say that of the Jewish authors of the second half of
the 19th century
and the first half of the 20th, most wrote in German; Jakob Wasserman
Franz Werfel, Lion Feuchtwanger, Stefan Zweig, Arnold Zweig, Franz
Kafka,
Wolfgang Hildesheimer, Walter Benjamin, Kurt Tucholski. Else Lasker-
Schuler.

Bruce Reisch, our long suffering moderator (to the immoderate),
has already addressed the reason for the scarcity of materials
about the soviet period on the EHPES site, no need for me to say more.

Mimi

On Feb 2, 2013, at 4:16 AM, Jacob Greenberg wrote:

> Yosef,
>
> I am a Jewess from Bukowina. The Kraft family came to live in
> Bukowina generations ago from somewhere in Austria. You said most
> of the Jews from Bukovina left in 1945. Do you or anyone have the
> numbers, how many left and how many stayed?
>
> I don;t know how many stayed but there was a lot of German spoken
> around me in my childhood. The municipal cleaner, the plumber, my
> piano teacher, our family doctor, my parents' relatives and friends-
> they all were German-speaking Bukowiners. And, of cause, there were
> many others, who spoke Russian, Ukrainian, Romanian, Polish,
> Yiddish-the languages I heard at home, the languages of Cz.
> Chernovtsy did not become Siberia during the Soviet rule. And no,
> you didn't need 'komandirovka" to travel within USSR in the 60s and
> 70s, you needed money....
>
> One of the List members wrote "And lastly this here List (at least
> in my understanding), is an exercise in nostalgia about a world,
> we all irretrievably lost". Is this indeed the purpose of the
> List? Well, what I described above was the world I lost. It was far
> from perfect, there was no democracy and there was unspoken numerus
> clausus but that was my world in my beloved Cz for 19 years.
>
> I have a question to the List moderators. Should Bukowiners who, G-
> d forbid, lived in Cz under the Soviet regime, be excluded from the
> List?
>
> According to the Ephes website "The mission of the Ehpes website is
> two-fold: First and foremost, it serves the needs of the list
> members by providing a collection point for Jewish genealogical and
> historical materials primarily focused on the Czernowitz/Sadagora
> areas of Bukovina and surrounds; and Second, the Website makes its
> resources available to all researchers on the web by not
> copyrighting any of its original materials."
>
> The Soviet period of Cz is a historical fact. Yesterday my
> daughter, who has never visited Cz, expressed her interest in the
> Ephes website. What is she going to find there about her parents
> past? The only material that relates to the Khrushchev times is
> Asya Vaisman' "Sidi Tal and Yiddish Culture in Czernowitz in
> the1940s-1980s ( Number 23).
>
> Nevertheless, I am suggesting to the interested List members to
> read this paper.
>
> Serah Kraft
>
> [Moderator's note: Bukoviners and their descendants, from any time
> period at all, are most welcome to be a part of the Cz-L list. In
> fact, ANYONE with an interest in Jewish Bukovina is most welcome.
> As to the coverage you find on our Ehpes website - it is entirely
> dependent on contributions of list members. Submit your material
> and suggestions to webmaster Jerome, and it will find a home on our
> website. If a period of time is poorly covered, it's due to a lack
> of submissions, not a lack of interest. Moderator Bruce]
>

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Received on 2013-02-02 11:26:22