RE: [Cz-L] Resilience

When I and friends drove to Czernowitz,then Soviet,in 1964,I met
German-speaking Jews. And the most interesting was the comment I got from
some,when asked why German "Aber,wir sind doch Oesterreicher!" But we are
Austrians! And this was a long time after 1918.and I am sure some were born
during the Romanian time. Cornel

-----Original Message-----
From: bounce-72650064-8441035_at_list.cornell.edu
[mailto:bounce-72650064-8441035_at_list.cornell.edu] On Behalf Of Miriam Taylor
Sent: 02 February 2013 16:58
To: Jacob Greenberg
Cc: CZERNOWITZ-L; Gerhard Schreiber
Subject: 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

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Received on 2013-02-02 12:25:20