Traces of Jewish life in Naumburg (Saale), Germany

A picturesque city, with many colourful houses spread around the old city area, Naumburg (Saale) also used to host a small Jewish community, first historically recognized in 1350. 

Close to the central square - markt - the Jewish street - Jüdengasse - was partially rebuilt in the last years and nowadays is part of the usual touristic tours regularly offered to the tourists from all over Germany visiting what is considered one of the most beautiful cities in the center of the country.

Nowadays, there is no significant Jewish presence in Naumburg (Saale) the former Jewish history being remembered by two memorial inscriptions: one in the memory of a pogrom that took place in 1494 and the other to remember the Jews killed during Shoah. 

In 1440, the archives mention the presence of 22 Jews in Naumburg (Saale). Unfortunately, even there was a small number, they were considered threatening enough by Elector Johann Friedrich who ordered their dispersion. The synagogue and the ritual bath - mikwaot - were destroyed. 

After the incident, in the last centuries, the Jews came and go, without establishing a constant high number presence. The few that were living here between 1933-1945 were killed in Shoah.

This stone representation of the 1494 events, on one of the walls of the Jüdengasse is an episode that went on repeat very often in Europe, in Germany and abroad. Innocent people that only wanted to live their life, were forced to leave in the middle of the night, with children and leaving everything behind. When were lucky enough to be able to run. Now, there is a state where Jews can go and live, but apparently, this is not good either, because, it seems, this fight and hate is never ending. 

Where Memory Leads by Saul Friedländer

Saul Friedländer is mostly known for his acribic search for the historical truth into the Vatican Archives, particularly in connection with the WWII, but it is always interesting to explore the life history of the historian. Where Memory Leads is the second installment of his life historical account, exploring his identity post-Shoah as well as its relatively less known relationship with Israel, Germany, France - his cultural identity remains French - and his country of adoption, US.

'I am a Jew, albeit one without any religion or tradition-related attachments, yet indelibly marked by the Shoah. Ultimately, I am nothing else'. He, like the founding fathers of the State of Israel, he belongs to a generation of action, secular and aimed to create an identity shaped by the Shoah. An heritage that still needs to be explored and analysed although meanwhile, a new generation of Jews and Israeli made the choice for a dramatically different identity. '(...) the only lesson one could draw from the Shoah was precisely the imperative: stand against injustice, against wanton persecution, against the refusal to recognize the humanity and the rights of 'the others''. As many of his generation, he is for the 'two state solutions' and refuse to understand the new religious fervor who sees as an alienation from the founding meaning of the state. Interestingly, he just doesn't want to understand the new process, either historically or sociologically, it just rejects it as alien. 

But the book is more than an essay about Israel, and this saves it when the reader might have a different political opinion. It is a book about growing up and coping with the lost of parents, about the lost childhood memories and a life broken into too small little pieces that can hardly come back together. It is equally a testimony of old times, of a different era that the less survivors are the more difficult to understand it. 

Friedländer also writes about life fragility and fears, about personal life decisions and growing out of love. A book worth to read, regardless one's opinions about the current situation in Israel, because it is written with passion and love, although the ideals and visions may differ dramatically. 

Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review

Traces of Jewish life in Salzwedel, Germany

A colourful little town close to Hamburg, Salzwedel also used to have a small Jewish community. The first traces of such a life were remembered by a note on the wall of the building on Marktplatz no.27: Here it used to function a synagogue to be from 1867 until the infamous Kristallnacht. Nowadys it is a private residence.

Situated on the German Timber-Frame road, Salzwedel succeeded to have a continuous Jewish presence only in the 19th century. The highest number of residents was achieved in 1840: 103 Jews. The number decreased to 64 in 1933. If ones keeps an open eye, can spot possible Jewish traces in the buildings around the central area.

Curious to find out more official historical testimonies, we addressed the Tourist Information Center, from where we were guided to one of the two Jewish cemeteries. Luckily, the door was opened and I could snatch inside to have a look and take some pictures.

The cemetery is situated in a green area, quiet, close to the Christian cemetery. The stones - around 50 according to my counting - were dated until 1945. 

Covered by green bushes, the stones are silent testimonies of a life that it is no more. Attracted by the salt business opportunities, Jews settled around here in the 14th century, but never achieved a flourishing life.

The stones are written both in Hebrew and old German scripts, many of the persons buried here with local German names.

Although empty and apparently abandoned, the cemetery doesn't have signs of vandalism.

The history of Jews in Salzwedel is not too much discussed and as far as I know, there are not noteworthy religious or community personalities associated with this place. Most probably, many came and go, this place being just a stop on the way to other attractive places around, such as Hamburg or Lüneburg.

My camera is wandering over and over again near the quiet stones.

The place is empty, then streets are empty, only the rays of light and the mild wind is wrapping everything in a quiet bubble.

I would be curious to find out more about the lives and stories of the people buried here, but the current knowledge is relatively limited. Only some local archives could be helpful perhaps.

Most frequent mentions about Salzwedel are connected with the WWII tragedies. Nearby, in 1943, it was created the Neuengamme women concentration camp, with a capacity of 1,000 persons that hosted around 3,000 inmates.

The inmates were Jewish and non-Jewish both, mostly from Hungary, but also Greece or Poland.

The memory of the Salzwedel Jews is remembered by Stolpersteine placed in the front of the buildings were the Jewish residents lived once.

Nowadays, Jewish life in Salzwedel means a lot of silence and many memories, many of them waiting to be written.

Part of the traveller's task was to keep the current memory and share is further. Sometimes, this is all we can do and, as for now, it might be the beginning of a new story.

Book review: This is not a love story, by Judy Brown

I till remember how shocked and deeply moved I've been by Hush, written at the time under the pseudonym of Eishes Chayil - a woman of valor.  After the book created controversies and awe at the time in the Hasidic community, faced publicly with a reality often hidden under the carpet, there were rumors about the real identity of the writer, but Brown decided to make the revelation during another dramatic moment: the murdering in Brooklyn of the 8-year old Leiby Kletzky. 

Part of a long lineage of Rabbis, Brown who is no more Hasidic nowadays, returns under the lights of the literary world with an equally beautifully written memoir, focused on the acceptance and lessons of loving her 'cursed' brother 'crazy as a bat'. When a child with special needs is born in a religious family, everyone seems to have its own explanation, like they just called Gd and got the answer. Either the family is not religious enough, or, in this case, the parents met directly not through a shadchan - matchmaker -, or they are cursed for old and hidden sins. Although nowadays the situation changed as there are much more children with Down Syndrome or various ADHD and autism-related needs, the perception remains, but at least the social services and assistance for families - and even the degree of acceptance, improved. Children with special needs are no more given away 'as a disposable', but integrated in special classes, undergoing therapy or taken care in the advanced and highly efficient health and therapy system created for decades in Israel. 

But at the time Judy Brown was growing up in America: 'Being sick was a much better thing (...) than being sick'. The curious Menucha wants to know why her brother Nachum is not 'normal', why Gd is not answering her prayers and doesn't reward her attempts of fasting. 'If I were Gd, I'd keep things much more simple and straightforward. Then I wouldn't have to listen to so many tearful prayers'. The misunderstandings around Nachum is a source of tension not only among children, but also for the parents. A terrible episode is describing the father trying violently to convince Nachum to say a blessing. He was unsuccessful, but kept shaking the poor speechless boy. 'My father couldn't stop. It was as if he was ripping down the wall around my brother's mind with his bare hand, trying to tear my brother out of there, and drag him over to our side, where he belonged'. The fear of the unknown and incomprehensible - the poor Nachum unable to defend or say something, like we all do - is always there and can explain, without justifying certain behaviors: 'where there are no words, there is always fear'.  

It is an emotional, well written, from the point of view of a small girl and a grown up, wiser, teenager, book, depicting perfectly deep feelings, contradictions and sadness, but also curiosities and funny childhood moments - I personally loved the sweets bargaining.

I first recommend reading this book because it is a good book, but also for the story of love and acceptance and growing out of social and religious borders and finding a voice and the own path. And sharing stories with the world. I can't wait for her next book, as Judy Brown is a writer to include on the Jewish literary radar in the years to come.

Golem Exhibition at the Jewish Museum Berlin

Until the end of January 2017, the Jewish Museum in Berlin hosts a temporary exhibition dedicated to the frightening, mythical and often misunderstood figure of the Golem. Does this exhibition make justice to it, bringing more clarifications and countering the anti-Semitism associated to it?

To start with the news lead: during the wandering through the various artifacts and explanations, and some movies too, I hardly found anything that haven't been told about the Golem. In a bric-a-brac style I encountered in the case of other exhibitions hosted here, you are introduced to an enormous amount of information and objects. From Made in China plastic warriors to work of art playing with calligraphy and new-Age Kabbalistic visions and manga, the exhibition succeeded to cover almost everything.

But too much information, especially when presented in a quite uncritical and - maybe - shyly to assume some standpoints doesn't help too much, especially when your audience is not an expert and it is possibly expecting to understand more about a specific topic than to encounter various manifestations of the topic.

Obviously, there is never enough time to properly approach such a controversial topic, and eventually one can read more about the Golem before and after the exhibition. The first reference to the creation of such a being is mentioned in the secret Kabbalistic book of Sefer Yetzira - Book of Creation - attributed to Avraham Avinu. It is supposed that Maharal of Prague created the first Golem, in Prague - late 16th, beginning of the 17th century. In the 19th century, the legend was that a Golem may protect Jews from persecutions. The other meaning is that a Golem is a symbol of political crazes going amok, but by extension it can be applied to robotics, Artificial Intelligence or genetic engineering. The artists exploring the mysteries of creativity are supposed to brought to life powers that may be bigger than life and thus, dangerous if misused.

In the German-speaking realms, the predominant representation of the Golem was influenced by the movie with the same name, Paul Wagner, extensively presented at the exhibition. Without grasping the deep understanding of the legend and the meaning, the interpretations slightly entered the well-known register of anti-Semitism. This is, in my opinion, particularly the risk encountered by presenting too much information: everyone can pick up a single sentence and meaning, out of the original context, and play it in the unexpectedly wrong way. Call it the Golem's curse, maybe...

Despite the problematic part, if you plan to attend the exhibition with an open mind and a notebook for some further inspiration and documentation, there are things to learn about, especially when it comes to the works of art and the creative representations of the Golem. Shortly, this is one of the exhibitions it is snobbish to eff it, because everyone else in your group was there, but not necessarily the headline of the season, obviously for a good intellectual reason. 

Book review: The Yid, by Paul Goldberg

It is late February, in 1953. A gang of few Yids, plus a Black Proletarian worker from the oppressive America, speaking fluent Yiddish, are set on a mission: killing comrade Stalin, before it is too late. Too late before the Soviet Final Solution is implemented. There are also signs and testimonies, as Black Marias - the trademark car of 'intelligence' services - are busy transporting Jews. It is just the prelude of a massive operation aimed to make the great Soviet Union free of Jews. In his datcha, Stalin 'can imagine the multitude of Jews, foreign sounding names, and he cans ee the gallows he'll construct for killer doctors who had the gall to plot against them'. The Yids cannot let this happen. This tragic-comical team of Bar Kokhba fighters breathing Shakespearean drama and moving in the pace of Commedia dell'arte, but in Yiddish, succeeds and the Yids are saved. They do it discretely, as any lamed vovniks do and split ways. Mission accomplished.

 The author himself was born in the Soviet Union and emigrated later to the US with his family later. The book is based on a historical reality: Stalin did have a massive plan to eliminate Jews from the Soviet life that was interrupted by his death, in March 1953. There are a lot of stories about those events, including the assumption that Gd's will was not that Jews are destroyed. Another historical fact is that many Jews fought on behalf of the Soviets in the 'Big Patriotic War' and also many of them ended up in the Soviet prisons because considered disloyal and even, German spies. Sounds familiar...Personally, I've read as a child a couple of stories about a Black Proletarian worker that joined the Bolshevik revolution and become a citizen of the Soviet Union, but I bet there were more than one in the country of Soviets.

More than a historical tragic-comedy, the book develops many fine layers exploring the new and old transfigurations of anti-Semitism, from the blood libel to the 'Doctors' plot' and the everyday Jewish hate. As one of the characters is described: 'He hated us in the abstract. He hated the idea of our being. But one-on-one, he was a decent man. I've fought beside men like him, and I would again'. Sometimes the victim enters the logic of the accuser and assumes the labels assigned. In Paul Goldberg's book, the Yid is a common character, because this is how 'they' saw them, doesn't matter what.

Any story is nothing without the writing and in this respect, you have a happy mixture of many styles and influences, from Shakespeare to commedia dell'arte, Kafka and Daniil Kharms. Absurd and supernatural and a pinch of marxism-leninism, in the illegible Stalin version - what serious communist would ever give a 2 penny to Stalin writings. anyway. The dialogues are delicious and ridiculously smart. As smart as a pirouette with Finnish daggers in the heart of a NKVD little something coming to arrest a harmless clown. 

Forgotten Jewish painters: Rudolf Levy

A nostalgic portrait of a boy, traced with various nuances of blue. It is hard to avoid the sight of beauty and loneliness uttered by this figure, with the black holes as eyes, like those of a specter from a different world, not ours. But it could be one of the shadows of humans that were hunted, killed, followed and condemned to death in the cultured Europe. The author of this emotional work that I admired at the Pomeranian Museum in Greifswald, is Rudolf Levy, himself running across Europe to escape the Nazi hunters but ended up dying on the way to Auschwitz, after being caught by the Nazi occupiers of Florence.

The story of Rudolf Levy is of many German Jewish intellectuals of the time. Considered one of the 'pioneers of modern art movement', he was born in Stettin and studied in Baden, at the Grand Ducal School of Decorative and Applied Arts and after that, in Munich. He later moved to study with Henri Matisse, and the French painters, particularly Cezanne, played a big influence on his art. His love for France wasn't as big as his dedication to Germany though. During WWI, he volunteered for the front and fought for Germany against France. For his war achievements, he, as many other Jewish warriors on behalf of Germany, received the Iron Cross. 

After the war, he moved to Berlin, where he belonged to the German Secession movement. He was also on the board of directors and member of the jury of the Berlin Secession.

In 1933, he decided to flee Berlin to Paris, but once the Nazis approached Paris, he moved on to Italy, and Florence. During his wandering years, he continued to work, many portraits, mostly on commission, as well as still art. His paintings were owned by many German museums, but after 1937, his works were took off and probably ended up in the houses of many high ranking officials of the Nazi party. 

From his family, his brother, Paul, a railroads engineer, was also murdered at Auschwitz. His sister, Käthe, survived and moved to Tel Aviv, where she died in the 1950s. 

His works can still be found in some German museum - as it was the case in Greifswald, or auctioned by big houses in Europe or USA.