Across the Divide to Eastern Europe (Part 2)

VOLUME 13 NO.9 SEPTEMBER 2013 journal The Association of Jewish Refugees Across the divide to Eastern Europe (Part 2) efore 1918, the eastern territories was Martin Buber, born in Vienna in for considerably longer than Galicia and of the Austro-Hungarian Empire 1878 but raised from the age of three were correspondingly closer culturally B– those that were after 1945 to by his grandfather in Lemberg. The to Austria. This was reflected in the be situated behind the Iron Curtain second largest city in eastern Galicia fact that their Jewish population was – contained some of the largest was Brody, a major commercial centre largely German-speaking. The jewel concentrations of Jews in the world that became known as ‘Trieste on the in the crown of Bohemian Jewry was outside the Pale of Settlement in Russia. continent’, offering an opening to Russia Prague, whose Jewish community has The Jewish communities of acquired almost mythical the Dual Monarchy, spread status. Prague was home to across the present-day states Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, of Poland, Ukraine, Hungary, creator of the legendary figure the Czech Republic, Slovakia of the Golem, to the thirteenth- and Romania, were far more century Old New Synagogue diverse than those of the and to the celebrated Old German Empire discussed Jewish Cemetery. Franz Kafka, in last month’s issue of the probably the most influential Journal. Jewish writer of modern times, No area of what was once was born in Prague in 1883; the Austria-Hungary is more city can be sensed in seminal redolent of Eastern Europe’s works like The Trial and vanished Jewish past than Metamorphosis. Galicia (Austrian Poland). Part The Dohány Synagogue in Budapest Brno (Brünn), the capital of the Austrian half of the Dual of Moravia, also has a long Monarchy, Galicia came under Habsburg just as Trieste gave Austria-Hungary an association with the Jews. The city’s rule in 1772 and took its nineteenth- outlet to the Mediterranean. Brody was most famous sight is the Villa Tugendhat, century form under the settlement also known as the ‘Galician Jerusalem’ constructed in 1929-30 for a Jewish couple reached at the Congress of Vienna in since Jews formed over 80 per cent of its of that name by the modernist architect 1815. It was a crescent-shaped territory population and it was an important centre Mies van der Rohe. Moravia contributed stretching from Cracow in the west to the of enlightened culture and of Judaism; for notably to the high culture of the Habsburg Romanian border in the south-east; the a time the founder of Hasidism, the Baal Empire: Sigmund Freud was born in western part, around Cracow, now forms Shem Tov, had lived there. Příbor (Freiberg) and Gustav Mahler was part of Poland, while the eastern part, The principal city of Polish-dominated brought up in Jihlava (Iglau) on the border around Lviv (Lemberg), is in Ukraine. western Galicia was Cracow, capital between Moravia and Bohemia. A Torah At its western extremity was the small of Poland until the early seventeenth scroll from Moravská Ostrava (Mährisch- town of Auschwitz (Oświęcim), which century. Following the foundation of Ostrau) is on permanent loan to Kingston became part of Poland in 1918 and was Kazimierz in 1335 by King Casimir upon Thames synagogue, a memorial to annexed to the Third Reich in 1939. In its the Great as an outlying settlement for the region’s lost Jewish past. far south-east were towns like Tarnopol, Jews, Cracow became a major centre of At the eastern end of the Austrian Buczacz, Kolomea and Stryj, with a mixed Jewish life and culture though its Jewish half of the Dual Monarchy lay Bukovina, population of Poles, Ukrainians and Jews. residents also suffered periodic bouts of where the original Romanian majority was Lemberg, perhaps more than any other persecution. Much of the cultural and increasingly diluted by Ukrainians, Poles, Habsburg city, was associated with the intellectual elite of other towns in western Hungarians, Germans and Jews. Under rapidly expanding urban communities Galicia, such as Tarnow or Rzeszów, was Habsburg rule from 1775, Bukovina of eastern Jews, hard-working and Jewish. Around Przemyśl the Austrians passed to Romania in 1918. Its northern aspirational, eager for cultural and constructed one of the largest defensive part, annexed by the Soviet Union educational self-improvement, but also fortresses in Europe but in 1914 it failed to in 1940 and re-occupied by Romania conscious of the values, traditions and stem the advancing Russian armies. The between 1941 and 1944, now forms part religious practices of their birthplaces. atrocities of the Holocaust have, perhaps of Ukraine. Though it was the capital of a The arrival of the German-speaking understandably, obscured historical small, remote province, Czernowitz (now bureaucracy of the Habsburg state gave memories of the brutal treatment meted Chernivtsi) occupied a special position in the city a German-Austrian character and out by the Russian armies to the Jewish the artistic and intellectual world of the appearance in its orderliness and in the communities in the Austrian territories Habsburg Empire, a ‘little Vienna’ on the popularity of its coffee-houses. By 1910, occupied in 1914-15. River Prut where a prodigious appetite for 28 per cent of the city’s population was The Austrian crown lands of Bohemia culture led to a remarkable flourishing of Jewish. Among its celebrated residents and Moravia were under Habsburg rule continued overleaf AJR JOURNAL SEPTEMBER 2013 Across the divide to Eastern Europe (Part 2) continued ‘German and Austrian Refugees: Their Impact German-language literary and intellectual anti-Semitic political party to compare and Personal Legacy’ life. The Jews, who came to form one with Lueger’s Christian Socials in Austria; third of the city’s population and spoke only after the defeat of Austria-Hungary Tuesday 10 - Wednesday 11 a Viennese German spiced with Yiddish in 1918, and Hungary’s loss of some two September 2013 and Ukrainian words, dominated the city’s thirds of its territory under the Treaty of The AJR is once again joining forces cultural institutions. Czernowitz was the Trianon, did anti-Semitic resentments with the London Jewish Cultural Centre birthplace of the celebrated poets Paul come to the fore. (LJCC) and Sussex University’s Centre Celan and Rose Ausländer and the novelist The Jewish communities in the other for German-Jewish Studies (CGJS) to Aharon Appelfeld, Holocaust survivors regions of pre-1918 Hungary fared poorly, convene a seminar, which will take place who continued the city’s tradition of as minorities amidst ethnic groups that at the LJCC, Ivy House, on Tuesday 10 and Jewish high culture into the post-war era. were themselves subject nationalities Wednesday 11 September 2013. The Jews in the Hungarian half of the under Magyar domination. The large Building on presentations, discussions and Dual Monarchy were a case apart, insofar Jewish community in Slovakia, Hungarian lectures in the past two years, the three as they tended to speak Hungarian in until 1918, included a cultured, German- organisations have come together to reflect on the lives and culture of the Jewish German and preference to German. In those parts speaking middle class in western cities Austrian refugees who fled Nazism. of the pre-1918 Kingdom of Hungary like Bratislava (Pozsony in Hungarian, As well as hearing from eminent historians and where Hungarian was spoken, the Jewish Pressburg in German), but tended to the reflections of some of the refugees, this year’s population tended to assimilate into be poorer, more traditional and Yiddish- seminar will focus in particular on the refugees’ Hungarian society, since the Magyars speaking in eastern cities like Košice personal legacy and the effect on subsequent were the ruling ethnic group. Despite (Kassa, Kaschau), with Nitra and Banská generations. We are also delighted to include a long history of discrimination and Bystrica in between. a greater contribution from the second and persecution, the Jews of Hungary In distant, impoverished Transylvania, third generations and feature the thoughts and repeatedly displayed their patriotic which passed to and fro between perspectives of three generations from one family. allegiance to the country in which they Hungary and Romania in the period As ever, we encourage you and your lived. In the revolution of 1848-49, Jews of the World Wars, the presence of a families to participate. Full details of the joined with the insurgent Hungarian German community, the Siebenbürger event are on the AJR’s website at forces fighting for liberation from the Sachsen, complicated the ethnic situation www.ajr.org.uk with information on how Habsburg yoke. The revolutionaries further. Most of the region’s principal to book on the LJCC’s website at www.ljcc.org.uk promised equal rights and freedom from centres of population, such as Brasov discrimination for all; Jews were granted (Brasso in Hungarian, Kronstadt in full civic rights by the National Assembly German), Cluj (Kolozsvár, Klausenburg), in July 1849. But the revolution was also a Sibiu (Nagyszeben, Hermannstadt) and national uprising; the upsurge of inflamed Oradea (Nagyvárad, Großwardein), had nationalism that it provoked led to an substantial Jewish communities, which outburst of anti-Semitic feeling and to ugly suffered from the ethnic rivalry between atrocities against Jews. The crushing of Romanians, Hungarians and Germans, as Sunday 20 October 2013 the revolution in 1849 (two weeks after did that in Timişoara (Temesvár) in the the legislation granting citizenship to neighbouring Banat region. In Ruthenia 12 noon to 4.30 pm Jews) halted the democratic movement (also known as Subcarpathia), one of for a decade, but the reforms of the 1860s the Empire’s most remote and backward at the Hilton Hotel, culminated in the lasting emancipation areas, Jews were largely concentrated in of Hungary’s Jews.

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