RE: [Cz-L] Generalizing about the Cz Jewish Experience

Dear all...

I'd like to add my two cents to this still very interesting thread by sharing with you an excerpt from my father's memories, edited by him on 20.08.1986, one day before his 74th birthday (sorry for the perhaps a bit bumpy translation from German to English):

"During my adolescent years in the "golden" Twenties in Czernowitz, the approaching Second World War loomed ahead, but almost nobody took it seriously, at least not within our so called higher class. Czernowitz, a city with a population of about 120,000 at that time, distinctly presented the leftover of the lost Habsburg Empire. Since 1918 Czernowitz was part of Romania, the population being a conglomerate of Jews, Germans, Ukrainians, Poles and Romanians, who learned to rub along together. The Jewish community was divided. Our poorer but perhaps more numerous fellow believers lived in the Jewish qaurter. Jüdische Gasse streamed out the picturesque but unhygienic atmosphere of a Polish or Russian "Shtetl". Many Orthodox Jews lived there, wearing "Pejes" (sidelocks) and "Stramel" (Shtrayml, caps edged with fur), black caftans and boot like shoes, as captured by Roman Vishniac's wonderful photos and as one can view in the Antwerp central station area even today. Their language was Yiddish, a kind of Bessarabian rather than a Polish Yiddish. Czernowitz is a city, erected on a hill, the Pruth passes through the valley, the so called orthodox, religious and poor Jews lived mostly in the lower neighbouhoods, where the suburbs were located too. We, i. e. "the emancipated" and wealthier Jews resided in the upper districts...."

Does this sound snobbish? No, I don't think so; for me it's rather down-to-earth. However, my father made no secret of an virulent snobbism typical for Czernowitz. Is that really a Czernowitzer specialty? I'm not sure about that, although I'm afraid that in every rumour there is a little bit of truth.

Warmest - and egalitarian - wishes from the Netherlands!

Edgar Hauster
Lent - The Netherlands

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> Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2012 01:05:26 -0800
> To: czernowitz-l_at_list.cornell.edu
> From: rea_at_ucsd.edu
> Subject: [Cz-L] Generalizing about the Cz Jewish Experience
>
> My father's personal trajectory from birth to young adulthood in
> Czernowitz makes me wonder if there ever truly was a stereotypical
> Jewish class profile in Czernowitz, though certainly there could have
> been folks both poor and uneducated, and both wealthy and educated,
> who remained either poor or wealthy over their lifetimes. But my
> father, who moved upward economically and intellectually, and who in
> other ways didn't fit Mimi's or Hardy's demographic assumptions,
> couldn't have been an isolated case. He was just one generation
> earlier than the current Czernowitz-list members, and maybe things
> changed after he left. Maybe snobbery and class immobility was more
> true of a later time. But my dad's story doesn't fit either Mimi's or
> Hardy's sense of Jewish Czernowitz patterns. I more closely identify
> with Iris's perspective, which reflects experiences of an earlier time.
>
> My father was born in 1893, the 3rd youngest of ten children in a
> family where Yiddish was spoken. They moved from house to house
> several times in the area around Dreifaltigskeit, in what Mimi
> describes as the poor "lower part" of Czernowitz. Did Yiddish names
> and a large family suggest that they were, religious, even orthodox?
> I don't know about his parents or his early childhood, but I do know
> that my father was not observant at all in America. The only hint
> about his early years he ever shared was that he sometimes walked
> behind his father's coal cart. These things suggest poverty, and also
> lack of formal education if I understand Mimi's framework. However
> he was proud to have studied at Gymnasium before leaving for America
> in 1911 at age 18, which suggests either a rather swift ascent out of
> poverty and illiteracy in the family, or a long-term family reverence
> for education despite being poor. One of his nephews became a lawyer
> in Czernowitz, a brother became a businessman on one of the main
> Czernowitz avenues, so my father wasn't the only child of his family
> to move upward economically and socially in a fairly short time
> frame. He was literate in both Yiddish and German, It wasn't a case
> of either Yiddish or German. He chose to come to America rather than
> to Palestine, but after immigrating he soon became an ardent Zionist,
> was active in Jewish political organizations, started in the clothing
> industry as a labor organizer, then joined a specific trade starting
> at the bottom rung, and eventually became a Union official. He served
> as a liaison with Histadrut on trips to Israel. So these things also
> defy generalization. Jewishness was always a central part of his life
> despite the fact that he only attended synagogue services on the High
> Holidays and only when I was in Hebrew school, and he never learned
> to speak or read Hebrew. But he WANTED to be Jewish, years before,
> during, and after the brewing Holocaust made some people choose not
> to be obvious about who they were.
>
> Most of his colleagues and friends in America were Jewish and were
> similar to my father in all of these things, whether they'd come from
> Bukovina or Poland or elsewhere in Eastern Europe. Their stories are
> similar to lots of immigrant stories in America, among all ethnic
> groups, even today, when so many people are keeping their cultural
> roots strong even though they are not mainstream. But there is no one
> way to classify their individual stories. I have a feeling that it
> must have been the way things were for many Jewish families once upon
> a time in Czernowitz, too.
>
> [Jessica Attiyeh]

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Received on 2012-12-12 09:30:49