Re: [Cz-L] Easy choice.

My choice between the Habsburg era and the Romanian prewar era,
is very heavily influenced by what I heard about those eras from my
parents.
There is no question that from the point of view of equal rights and
civic rights,
Jews in Czernowitz fared better under Austrian rule.
Still, life in the later part of the 19th century and the beginning
of the 20th was hard.
Many Jews were very poor, and technology had as yet not provided
people with most
of the amenities which later, they took for granted.
During the prewar Romanian period the number of Jews in Czernowitz
grew exponentially.
Most of them were relatively well off economically, despite the
depression.
They were also much better educated than their parents and rightly or
not,
believed in progress and in a better future. They were very engaged
in various political
and philosophical ideas of the time, took up hobbies, previously not
traditional
among Jews and were proud of the Jewish authors, musicians and
politicians in other countries.

Despite the Anti-Semitism, which got progressively worse in the
thirties, when we,
who were born in Czernowitz, talk enthusiastically about life there,
we do not talk about
the Austrian period, our parents were little children then and did
not talk about it either.
They did talk with enthusiasm about Kaiser Franz-Joseph, but not from
personal knowledge.

On the other hand, I will admit that if life was good during the
prewar Romanian period,
it was because the basis for it had been established during the
Austrian period.

To answer some specific arguments raised by Mark Wiznitzer;
Many Jews left Czernowitz in the 1920ies, mostly for economic reasons.
But many Czernowitzer Jews, possibly more, also left before WW1,
during the Habsburg era.
Not wanting to serve in the army was traditional. In order to escape
being conscripted
into the Austrian army in his small town in Maramures, one of my
great-grandfathers
escaped to Czernowitz.
My father served in the Romanian army, it was no worse than serving
in most armies.

Mimi

On Oct 22, 2012, at 12:23 AM, Mark Wiznitzer wrote:

> My father and uncles left Bukovina around 1927. Their positive
> references to Franz Josef clearly placed the Hapsburg era well
> ahead of the early Romanian period. The latter was marked by
> disastrous economic conditions exemplified by the only phrase
> taught to me: "Romania Mare, mamaliga nare" (Romania is Great,
> there is no cornmeal). My family also sought to escape military
> service in the Romanian army of that time, known for its harsh
> treatment of Jewish conscripts.
>
> After visiting Czernovitz I also realized that the three brothers
> must have read the hand writing on the wall as anti-semitic
> policies became progressively discriminatory and dangerous, a
> development that probably became crystal clear with the 1926
> killing of the schoolboy David Falik, (http://archive.jta.org/
> article/1926/11/24/2764154/jewish-pupils-will-be-punished-for-
> attending-david-faliks-funeral) who demonstrated against the
> imposition of quotas on Jewish student admissions (his killer
> admired the crime, but was acquired of murder). Although I only
> learned about the limitations on higher education and this event
> when I visited the Jewish Museum in 2010, I imagine my grandfather
> with a heavy heart encouraged his sons to emigrate soon after this
> atrocity against a boy about the same age as his own boys.
>
> Sent by iPhone

-snip-
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Received on 2012-10-22 20:08:34