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From Cernovcy to Czernowitz Author(S): Verena Dohrn Source: European Judaism: a Journal for the New Europe, Vol Berghahn Books From Cernovcy to Czernowitz Author(s): Verena Dohrn Source: European Judaism: A Journal for the New Europe, Vol. 23, No. 2, EUROPE'S HIDDEN LEGACY (Autumn 90), pp. 29-34 Published by: Berghahn Books Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41443028 . Accessed: 25/06/2014 06:13 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Berghahn Books is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to European Judaism: A Journal for the New Europe. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 195.34.79.101 on Wed, 25 Jun 2014 06:13:40 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions FromCernovcy to Czernowitz thesum for his return to pursecontaining journey From Cernovcy to Czernowitz* Pultuzk. When the hasidim got wind of this outragethey forced the issue and elected Rabbi Eliezer as theirspiritual leader. However,Plock Verena Dohm t had a terriblereputation as "a devourerof the clergy",and Rabbi Eliezer's termof officewas brief. relatively of a Mr Ashkenazi out the house on the Cernovcy was the last station journey pointed thatthe old whichhad been the residenceof another throughthe WestUkraine. They say rynek the the ultimatestandard famoushasidic Rabbi Czernowitzwas crown, figure, HayyimShapira. had been at its While on his the Russo- of all thatGalicia, the Bukovina, praying balconyduring best. of the Bukovinahad fed Polish war in 1922, the man had been Legends questing saintly Rose Auslaenderand Paul arrestedand accused of to the journeys:poems by signalling enemy. Jewish of Aftera trialhe was executed a Celan, storiesof the German symbiosis, summary by firing and the manifold His some as a Enlightenment,tolerance squad. murder,perceived by Rose of the Shoah caused an cultural liveliness in that landscape. préfiguration , uproar in mind Poland and several to have Auslaenderhad painted a picture my throughout attempts of the "Green of the himrehabilitated were made until1939, when the mother/Bukovina", of cause thenseemed futile.For the firsttime I at "Carpathiantops/fatherly", "four-language- understandone last understoodhow such an absurdaccusation songs" and of "humans/who else overshadowedthis could have been - the rebbe's another".But: something perpetrated The black milk of the "Death balcony gave directlyonto the Vistula and idyllicpicture. had across it, had coloured it beyond,the open fields. Fugue" poured I had to findthe tombsof ancestors darklyso that it was no longerrecognizable. hoped my of Paul Celan - in the to kneel and forthose of The "Death Fugue" composed cemetery, pray wordsand our who had the out of hisown and strangers' suffering family perishedviolently among - end of the of four firstvictims of Nazi Instead of Czernowitz singsthe song barbarity. myhopes . weremet with the of the footballfield, language speakingfamily songs spectacle Karl Emil Franzostravelled which now the of the Once, the author occupies spot age-old Czernowitz:with As we walked the side of the on therailway to hishometown cemetery. along Train towardsthe from fieldI discoveredthe debrisof a tombstonewith the Karl-Ludwig East; to some Hebrew Whatdesecration! Even Cracow over Tarnow, Przemysl Lemberg. lettering. trainsand South:to thememorial monument which had been erected There,he changed travelled "Half Asiatic" he called in a cornerof the field the handfulof Czernowitz-Jassy. sports by which he survivorsof the Shoah had been Galicia, the landscape through severely the he vandalized.As we stoodthere, in tearful travelled; Czernowitz, city, however, plunged called "an oasis in the midstof the half-Asiatic a book of Psalmsin our a group thought, palms, culturaldesert". There was a time when the of youngstersjeered whilepassing Zhid , Zhidka I had never ever railwayunited Czernowitz with the world:with (Jew-boy,Jew-girl). Though and Warsaw and Bucharest, heardthat before,the blood frozein veins Lemberg Odessa, cry my and Berlin. In 1918 and in 1945 the as if I had some horrificecho Vienna perceived borders of the countrieswere drawn anew, fromthe of timethrough the resounding depths Czernowitzwas cut offfrom the world of the collectivememories of of cowering generations was to the outer of the ancestors.That word, which continued to echo in West, pushed edges Easternworld. Since then, an "IronCurtain" had my inside as we leftPlock, as we leftPoland, come to hangbetween the world,cutting streets summedup in one patheticsyllable, the harassing and lines in half.Until today, travellers experienceof the visit we had justended. Though railway a world had vanished,human follyabides. *Editor's Note: Translated and abridgedfrom a radio broadcast. tVerenaDohrn is a journalistand lecturerliving in Hanover,Germany. Her latestbook dealingwith contemporaryGerman life will appear shortly. 29 This content downloaded from 195.34.79.101 on Wed, 25 Jun 2014 06:13:40 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions FromCernovcy to Czernowitz fromthe West had to organizethe journeyto Czernowitzspoke in a Swabian dialect in their Galicia and into the Bukovina through suburbRosch. And othersmixed their languages, Moscow . spoke Judaeo-German or Yiddish- their The timecame whenCzernowitz, the town-of- ancestors from the late Middle Ages, from many-people- Jews, Ukrainians, Romanians, Germany,had broughtthe old Judenteutsckwith Poles - was destroyed.Many of the 120,000who them. lived there: most of the 50,000 Jews(almost a The real floweringtime for Czernowitz Jewry thirdof the inhabitants)were killed; the rest- began when it was separated fromGalicia in gone with the wind. The old Czernowitz,51 1849. It became the "Crown-landDuchy of years on afterWorld War II started,is almost Bukovina"in 1867,part of the Austro-Hungarian forgotten.The present Cernovcyis a Soviet double-monarchy.This broughtthe Jews the provincialtown withabout 260,000 inhabitants yearned-forequal civil rightswith the Christian living in a kind of no-man's land, on the citizens of Czernowitz... A rich and varied Southwestborder of the Ukrainian Socialist Jewishculture now developed in Czernowitz:the Soviet Republic, 37 miles distant from the assimilatedJewish landowner, the factory owner, Romanian border. scholar, or simple shoemaker; the tattered Czernowitz/Cernauti/Cernovcy- merchants' Kaftan-Jews or theWunderrabbis , enlightened or roads fromConstantinople to Nuernberg,from Hassidic-influencedSocialists all the way to the Siebenbuergento Cracow and to the Baltic- dogmaticZionists - all was partof that culture. It theyflowed into one anotherhere, at a fordof was filled with social-economic,cultural and the Pruth.Czernowitz, as the name suggests,of politicalcontradictions and varyingexperiences Slavicorigin. It is firstmentioned in a document, which became a cultural dynamite or, by as a customspoint, in 1408. In the course of contrast,artistic intuition in the mindsof the history,the city had differentmasters: Moldavian intellectualsof Czernowitz. counts,Turkish governors, Habsburg emperors A major difference existed between whofinally granted it its own sovereignty lasting a Czernowitzand theimpoverished, heterogeneous good halfcentury until the beginningof the War Galicia behind the Carpathianmountains. The in 1914. When Austria-Hungaryand its double Bukovinawith its capitalcity Czernowitz in the monarchycame to an end, Czernowitzwas ceded Eastern-mostsection of the weakened, fairly to the Romanians.After a Soviet ultimatumin enlightenedHabsburg monarchy was a closed, 1940,the Red Armyentered it, and theGermans but certainlynot homogenoussociety with its came a year later and occupied Czernowitz.In own enclaves of smaller,closed societies.And 1945 it became part of the Soviet Union. therewas a place in Czernowitzfor that third of Whateverbefell it, Czernowitzwas different, its populationwhich was Jewish. unique among cities and the Shtetl- it was "a Comparingthe old and the new cityplans of world all its own". Czernowitz(the old one so muchbetter, so much It was a Jewishplace. Most of its inhabitants more detailed than the Soviet plan of today's were German-Sephardic-Galician-Russian-JewsCernovcy) while seated on a stone benchin the whofound their home in theBukovina. 1408 was Ringplatz,one beginsto understandthis place. also thedate whenthe first Jews were mentioned The old Czernowitzis there,before our eyes: the in documents.The MuslimTurks, rulers of the Ringplatz,the Rathaus, the Hotel "Schwarzer citysince the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, Adler"; the main road fromNorth to South, showed the Jews far more tolerancethan the the old Tempelgasse in the West, the Spanish Inquisitionor the Cossacks who had Russischestrassein the East. Diagonallyacross made the Jews theirscapegoat in theirbattle fromus is the Herrengasse,Southeast - thenas againstthe Schlachta(the Polish nobility).The now the "Korso" in the "Klein-Wien"of the Habsburgs,during their rule, came to profit Orient.One difference:Where in the Habsburg fromthe sophisticationand wealthof the Jewish time one saw the Maria Statue, in Romanian merchantsin Czernowitz,and receivedthe full times the "Liberation Monument" with the loyaltyof their
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