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For better understanding Alexander Safran’s “struggle” in defense of the Romanian Jews’ rights after his election as Chief Rabbi of Romania, it is necessary to recount, if briefly, his itinerary, his education, his first writings and first stands.
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There is a widespread belief that anti-Semitism is a nonsensical construction because it is based upon an obsession against something that does not exist, which is Semitism.1 Indeed, Semitism as a name for an ethnic or religious group is not relevant because its meaning, originated in the 19th century scholarly debates over the Semitic family of languages, does not describe anything particularly Jewish but rather a much more general linguistic feature relevant for the family of Semitic languages, including the Arabic ones.2 Thus, the identification of the Semites was as problematic as the recognition of the Aryans within the modern world.3 However, many 19th century intellectuals did refer to something that may come under the incidence of Semitism. Directly or indirectly, they described a specific way of life or mode of thinking in order to portray the image of the Semite. Semitism was not only Judaism or Jewishness, but l’esprit publique of a world they perceived as decadent. The Jews, of course, were often seen as the first example of Semitism, but they were not necessarily the only ones susceptible of being “contaminated” by Semitism. Wilhelm Marr accused Germany of being Judaicized,4 Édouard Drumont denounced France for being Jewish5 and the examples could continue almost endlessly. Yet, though in many of these texts the danger took the form of an effective conquest or invasion of the [...]
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It happened 60 years ago, far and away from our daily lives. Far and away from our universities, work places, families and hometowns. They say almost six million people died in it. Yet, people die all around the world… There are only few survivors, generally old people of whom we hardly hear something. Now and then there are impressive ceremonies where you can see important statesmen, smartly dressed, with serious and meditative expressions on their faces paying their respect to the victims of the Holocaust… Even so… apparently… what is now labeled as “the Holocaust” has little to do with our every day existences, as there is no longer a Hitler among political leaders, no more SS officers to perpetrate crimes, no World War taking place… Therefore, the following question comes naturally to one’s mind: why remember the Holocaust? Why maintain, keep alive and pass to our children the memory of that horrendous “rupture of civilization”?
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“Who controls present controls past. Who controls past controls future.” Since 1948, the year George Orwell published his famous novel 1984, few scholars, journalists, and politicians have “dared” ignore this causal relation. Scholars are essentially concerned with the theoretical aspects. Journalists and politicians are interested first and foremost in its applicabilities. For them, the mechanisms that lie behind the intrinsic relation connecting past, present, and future, are important. However, what they are looking for are the final results, which they either promote or aim to prevent. Nowadays scholars constantly operate with the “Orwellian paradigm”. Whenever needed, they apply it to the multitude of existing cases to emphasize “nuances”. In fact, some of them say, it is not only for the totalitarian states and authoritarian regimes to use the past in order to legitimate their current policies and to emit claims over the future. Democratic governments are, in their turn, “culpable” from that perspective. Naturally, in the last case, scholars generally refer to a Felix Culpa.
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In this article I intend to deal with the relation between Jewish survivors and Holocaust remembrance in post-communist Romania. Therefore I will investigate the consequences of the Holocaust experience on Jewish survivors from the perspective of how, when and why they remember the catastrophe. My investigation will not particularly focus on the level of the trauma and sufferings they have to live with, but rather on how the political, social and cultural factors have managed to influence the public recollection of the war sufferings and the survivors’ attitude towards Holocaust remembrance. I am interested in discovering mainly the way these tragic experiences were perceived at the personal level by individual survivors and why, how and when they were recorded and became public. Thus, from the numerous (re)sources that contributed to the extremely wide field of Holocaust’s collective memory, I will focus on the nonfictional accounts of Jewish survivors
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Cartea Hannei Arendt, Originile totalitarismului, apare în anul 1951. Manuscrisul însă fusese terminat încă din anul 1949. Este o carte aparent confuză, poate cea mai confuză dintre cărţile scrise de Arendt. Motivele sunt evidente oricărei persoane care o parcurge cu atenţie. E greu de spus dacă avem de a face cu un volum de istorie, de ştiinţe politice, de sociologie, de filosofie politică sau chiar de istorie literară. De fapt, avem de a face cu trei manuscrise adunate într-un singur volum (Canovan, 2000, p. 26) şi asta face ca miezul dezbaterii să oscileze dintr-o parte într-alta.
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Teoria naţiunii la Herder şi aceea aparţinînd intelectualilor din fostul imperiu austriac necesită o constantă reluare. Aceasta pentru că este de revăzut ce anume stă la baza judecăţilor severe formulate de cărturarii germani asupra culturii franceze, respectiv, în ce măsură reproşul adresat perspectivei materialiste franceze era motivat de spiritualismul generaţiei lui Hamann, Herder şi Goethe şi ce urmări a avut în sfera ideologiilor franceze; pentru că e important să dezvăluim semnificaţiile construcţiei culturale propagată de curentul Sturm und Drang şi de întemeietorii acestuia, Hamann şi Herder; pentru că trebuie să înţelegem de ce acest curent de idei exaltă pentru prima oară tot ceea ce se presupune că este german (ca de exemplu arta gotică); pentru că este de reţinut care au fost diferenţele dintre cultura germană şi aceea franceză a secolului al XVIII-lea, adică, de exemplu, de ce Enciclopedia lui Diderot – o adevărată promotoare a paradigmei moderne raţionale, acceptată, multiplicată şi urmată de toţi francezii alfabetizaţi –, a fost provocatoare ori de neacceptat pentru congenerii germani ai enciclopediştilor.
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How does a Jew who suffered in/after the death camps see him/herself, religiously speaking? ‘The post-Holocaust era will be a religious one or it will not be at all.’ Do we have the right to imagine this Jewish alternative to Malraux’ statement? What position would Christianity take in this matter? In trying to reach for answers to the questions risen above, I intend to discuss the one aspect of Jewish identity that was probably the most affected by the Nazi experience – the religious self awareness.
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Omenirea are în interiorul ei germenele răului care trebuie izolat pentru a putea birui binele; aceasta se realizează printr-o ordonare a intelectului unui individ, a unei naţiuni, a umanităţii în ansamblu ei.
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Just like with people, for a community the absence of memory is harmful. Saying that those who forget their mistakes are condemned to repeat them has become a truism. On the other hand, excessive remembrance too can have negative effects. But can we speak of an excess of remembrance in regard to the Holocaust in Romania? On the contrary, here we are rather in the first case: forgetfulness, ignorance and minimization of the phenomenon.
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Paul Goma lives in Belleville. His recent book Basarabia (Bessarabia) ends with a breathtaking confession related to his Jewish neighbors: “I watch the elderly people in the street, poorly dressed, most of them leaning on walking sticks; judging by the acquisitions in their plastic bags, their “budget” is only slightly more significant than ours… I know them, I can feel them, I can see through them and their shabby coats, through the women’s rare hair, so rare it makes one cry, through the plastic texture of their empty wallets, through the fabric of their deflated bags… And I feel we are similar.[...]
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The legacy of the German past was an onerous one in more than one regard. One of the questions that have seldom and legitimately been asked is whether the German peculiarities and political culture made the rise and victory of Nazism unavoidable. It still remains an open question whether the twinges of uncompleted nation-building during the Bismarckian period would have eventually dispersed had they not been markedly expanded by the legacies of the First World War. What remains beyond doubt though is that the devastating effects of the war at the level of the German society and political system boded ill for the future. Therefore, allegations about where the accountability for Germany’s defeat should be positioned only added to the general conflicting frame of mind; the humiliating peace settlement aggravated the situation, leaving the majority of ordinary Germans infuriated; leading to political fragmentation, lack of legitimacy of the Weimar Republic and to the feebleness of the whole political system.
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The article is a realistic analysis of the phenomenon of anti-Semitism doubled by evocations of some sad experiences on the issue the author experienced both in Israel and Romania.
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