374 András Koerner

374 book reviews András Koerner How They Lived: The Everyday Lives of Hungarian Jews, 1867–1940. Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 2015. “The Holocaust over the years has become an abstraction. For me, it’s more a face, a human face. Let’s not forget this face,” Hungarian director László Nemes said when he received a Golden Globe Award for his debut film, Son of Saul, in 2016. In Son of Saul, the camera never leaves the side of Saul Ausländer, a Hun- garian Jew, and a member of the Sonderkommando in Auschwitz, forced by the Nazis to perform crucial tasks in the extermination process: guiding Jews into the gas chambers, removing the bodies, bringing them to the crematoria, and disposing of their ashes in the nearby river. On Saul’s face, which remains expressionless except for the smallest signs of humanity that his existence as a Sonderkommando allows for, we see reflected the horrors that surround him. Through witnessing the fate, and the face, of one man, the viewer is en- couraged to imagine the vastness of his suffering and that of his fellow Jews; a vastness that is so great that it cannot be represented, except perhaps through close attention to the individual and, ultimately, irreplaceable human face. In How They Lived: The Everyday Lives of Hungarian Jews, 1867–1940, a book of black and white photographs and accompanying text, it is the human face that jumps at the reader from literally every page. In fact, András Koerner’s desire to document the lives of Hungarian Jews stems from the sadness that has remained with him since the Holocaust, and the fact that so much of the world in which he grew up has vanished. We know a lot, Koerner says, about the circumstances in which Hungarian Jews were murdered, but we know much less about the ways they lived. What better way to glimpse a sense of historical understanding of their lives than by looking closely at the photographs that remain; indeed, by paying close attention to their dress, their homes, their workplaces, and, of course, their faces. Koerner’s book covers the period between 1867, when Hungarian Jews joined their Austrian co-religionists in the Dual Monarchy, until 1940, when the Second World War reached Hungarian Jews in the form of forced labor service (munkaszolgálat). The more than 420,000 Jews killed in the Holocaust, many of whom lived in the Hungarian provinces, took to their deaths a wealth of tradition that had deep roots in the Hungarian national landscape. From Pozsony in the northwestern provinces (present-day Bratislava, in Slovakia) to Nagyvárad (Oradea, in Romania) and the primarily Orthodox communities in the eastern provinces, Jews were an integral part of the social fabric of pre- World War Two Hungarian life. The decades between 1867, when the Jews of Hungary were emancipated, and 1940, saw an intense blossoming of modern © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2017 | doi 10.1163/18763308-04402008Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 07:52:48AM via free access <UN> book reviews 375 culture, a process in which the Jews played a large role. From a wholesale em- brace of everything that was new, experimental, and modern in Budapest, to milder forms of modernization in the provinces, the Jews of Hungary partici- pated in this push to modernization. Koerner argues that the large percent- age of Jews in this process was due to their status as “recent immigrants”: the roughly 150 years leading up to 1867 required from the Jews adaptability, mobil- ity, adventurousness, and reinvention in order for them to make a living and belong. This continuous assimilation made Jews deeply receptive to the new and the modern. But while the image of the urban, assimilated Jew is domi- nant in the Hungarian context, part of the rationale for Koerner’s book is to show the diversity that existed among Hungarian Jews. The scale of assimilation ranged from complete rejection among the Hassidim in the northeastern provinces, to a profound identification with Hungarian culture and politics by the bourgeoisie in Budapest. It is this diversity that vanished during the Holocaust, and which Koerner hopes to bring back to life. In order to give some organization to these many lives, Koerner divides the book into three parts: What They Looked Like, Where They Lived, and Where They Worked. He discusses the periods before and after 1900 separately, even though—as he admits—such a division in the lives of human beings remains arbitrary. In Part One, the way in which Jews assimilated across the generations is revealed in their appearance: while parents still show outer signs of Jewish tradition, the daughters no longer wear the elaborate headdress, and the sons appear clean shaven. Gone are the long black coats, the paot (pajesz in Hungar- ian), and the patriotic Attila coats and tri-colored ribbons that were popular in the 1860s and 1870s. Indeed, Koerner’s assumption that the way people looked reveals something about their identity, the kind of traditions, customs, and ori- entations they subscribed to, is borne out by these photographs. Organizing them in a roughly chronological order shows that in most families, assimilation was gradual; the scale is important, the diversity that existed between the extremes. Each human face tells a different story. In Part Two, it is striking how evenly Jews were dispersed throughout Hun- gary: while a large number resided in Budapest—more than twenty percent of Hungarian Jews lived in the capital in 1910—there was a Jewish community in almost every town in every county, including many rural settlements. Ko- erner emphasizes the peaceful coexistence between Jews and Christians: we see Romanian peasant women on the steps of a Jewish-owned inn, or Jews and Christians sharing an open-air market space. Here I would say that instances of anti-Semitism or anti-Jewish violence were rarely captured on camera, and are therefore absent from any visual representation of Jewish life. But what Koerner shows here is a past reality: a vibrant Jewish presence in the whole east central europe 44 (2017) 367-388 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 07:52:48AM via free access <UN> 376 book reviews country, a population whose residences were as diverse as their religious and cultural identities. In fact, the diversity in living conditions was greatest in the provinces where poor Jews lived in thatched-roofed homes and ennobled Jews owned sprawling estates. Again, the faces tell the story. Part Three enters the workspaces of Jews. Until their full emancipation Jews were denied access to landownership and the guilds. Instead, many found employment in the fluid professions and moving capital. It is thus no surprise, albeit a pleasure, to see the beautiful interiors of Budapest banks and depart- ment stores, or the facades of theaters, publishers, and newspapers offices. But this entrepreneurship existed also in the provinces, where Jews ran shops, mills, inns, restaurants, hotels, and worked in agriculture. The linguistic diversity of the shop signs shows both the multitude of the cultural identities of the owners and their sharp business sense. This happy cacophony of languages, which was the norm for many people, now belongs to an ever-distant past. With the faces vanished many tongues and a plurality of realities. In How They Lived, Koerner shows the realities behind the nostalgia; a diverse world composed of individuals, not stereotypes. The book that began on a mournful note on the deaths of Hungarian Jews ends up as a rich and colorful exploration of their lives. It is refreshing to see the faces and to discover the connections between them. Koerner has revived the world of Hungarian Jewry in our historical imagination, and his book is a reminder that, ultimately, their lives outshine their deaths. Ilse Josepha Lazaroms Goethe University Frankfurt [email protected] east centralDownloaded europe from 44 Brill.com09/25/2021 (2017) 367-388 07:52:48AM via free access <UN>.

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