Shattered spaces: Encountering Jewish ruins in postwar Germany and Poland
ruin, ruine, Jewish, juif, World War II, Seconde Guerre Mondiale, post-war, après-guerre, histoire urbaine, tourisme, mémoire, patrimoine urbain, Meng Michael, Germany, Allemagne, Poland, Pologne
<div><b>Abstract from the publisher:</b></div>
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After the Holocaust, the empty, silent spaces of bombed-out synagogues, cemeteries, and Jewish districts were all that was left in many German and Polish cities with prewar histories rich in the sights and sounds of Jewish life. What happened to this scarred landscape after the war, and how have Germans, Poles, and Jews encountered these ruins over the past sixty years?<br />
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In the postwar period, city officials swept away many sites, despite protests from Jewish leaders. But in the late 1970s church groups, local residents, political dissidents, and tourists demanded the preservation of the few ruins still standing. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, this desire to preserve and restore has grown stronger. In one of the most striking and little-studied shifts in postwar European history, the traces of a long-neglected Jewish past have gradually been recovered, thanks to the rise of heritage tourism, nostalgia for ruins, international discussions about the Holocaust, and a pervasive longing for cosmopolitanism in a globalizing world.<br />
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Examining this transformation from both sides of the Iron Curtain, Michael Meng finds no divided memory along West-East lines, but rather a shared memory of tensions and paradoxes that crosses borders throughout Central Europe. His narrative reveals the changing dynamics of the local and the transnational, as Germans, Poles, Americans, and Israelis confront a built environment that is inevitably altered with the passage of time. Shattered Spaces exemplifies urban history at its best, uncovering a surprising and moving postwar story of broad contemporary interest.</div>
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<b>Michael Meng</b> is Assistant Professor of History at Clemson University.</div>
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Michael Meng
Harvard University Press
November 2011
368
Ouvrage
Modernity and the cities of the Jews. Quest. Issues in Contemporary Jewish History (No. 2)
modernity, modernité, twentieth century, vingtième siècle, Jewish, juif, histoire urbaine, Venice, Venise, Livorno, Livourne, Trieste, Odessa, Alexandria, Alexandrie, Vienna, Vienne, Budapest, Warsaw, Varsovie, New York, Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Minsk, Facchini Cristiana
<div><b>Extract from the introduction by Cristiana Facchini :<br /> </b></div> </div> First of all, our journey is meant to be a snapshot of Jewish culture through cities, but it also aims to depict a much more complicated picture of the interplay between modernity and Jewish culture. It tries to connect the perspective of time and the relevance of place in Jewish history, whilst underlining recurrent cultural patterns or significant differences amongst Jewish cultures of different periods and places. Both dimensions are relevant in order to better comprehend the response of Jews to the challenges brought about by the rise and spread of modernity. In doing so, we thought it might be enlightening to perform a sort of cultural pilgrimage through the cities that either are, or have been at some point, of great significance and relevance to the Jews.<br /> <br /> Why cities? Because cities tell stories. Their streets and architecture are like the convolutions of a nautilus shell, a natural history of the living cultures that produced them. If modern European history is inextricably linked to the history of its cities, modern European Jewish history may also be reconstructed through the cities where Jews have dwelt. <br /> <br /> The connection between cities and the Jewish people is deep and well documented. From ancient times, Jews found their way to the most important cities of the day. Even beyond the cities of the ancient Jewish commonwealth (the second Temple period), Jews concentrated themselves in important cultural centers of the Mediterranean world, such as Alexandria and Rome. Their contribution to the history of Western culture is well understood, although work remains to be done on a more diverse cultural geography through the early modern period. Jews disappeared from some cities, leaving feeble traces; others bear witness to their presence through the ages.</div> </div> <b>Contents of the Focus section:</b></div> </div> Cristiana Facchini - Modernity and the cities of the Jews</div> Cristiana Facchini - The city, the Ghetto and two books. Venice and Jewish early modernity</div> Francesca Bregoli - The port of Livorno and its </div> Tullia Catalan - The ambivalence of a port-city. The Jews of Trieste from the 19th to the 20th century</div> Joachim Schlör - Odessity: In search of transnational Odessa (or "Odessa the best city in the world: All about Odessa and a great many jokes")</div> Dario Miccoli - Moving histories. The Jews and modernity in Alexandria, 1881-1919</div> Albert Lichtblau - Ambivalent modernity: The Jewish population in Vienna</div> Konstantin Akinsha - Lunching under the Goya. Jewish collectors in Budapest at the beginning of the twentieth century</div> François Guesnet - Thinking globally, acting locally: Joel Wegmeister and modern Hasidic politics in Warsaw</div> Mark A. Raider - Stephen S. Wise and the urban frontier: American Jewish life in New York and the Pacific Northwest at the dawn of the 20th century</div> Ehud Manor - "A source of satisfaction to all Jews, wherever they may be living". Louis Miller between New York and Tel Aviv, 1911</div> Elissa Bemporad - Issues of gender, Sovietization and modernization in the Jewish metropolis of Minsk</div> Mario Tedeschini Lalli - Descent from paradise: Saul Steinberg's Italian years (1933-1941)</div> </div> <b>Cristiana Facchini </b>is Associate Professor in the Department of Historical Sciences, University of Bologna.</div> </div>
NC
Fondazione Centro di Documentazione Ebraica Contemporanea (CDEC)
October 2011
Revue
http://www.quest-cdecjournal.it/index.php?issue=2