Childhood and youth recollections of Austrian Jewish women and men who were forced to escape Nazi persecution often evoke the narrative of a “lost paradise”, a sheltered world now lost to them. At the same time, the time remembered (1920s and 1930s) is generally known for the radicalization of anti-Semitic ...
(Show more)Childhood and youth recollections of Austrian Jewish women and men who were forced to escape Nazi persecution often evoke the narrative of a “lost paradise”, a sheltered world now lost to them. At the same time, the time remembered (1920s and 1930s) is generally known for the radicalization of anti-Semitic tendencies in Austrian politics and society. As Miriam Gebhardt (Das Familiengedächtnis, 1999) has shown with autobiographies, anti-Semitic incidents well-documented in diaries of that time are often excluded from memory. Oral-history accounts function in much of the same way (Anke Stephan, Erinnertes Leben, 2004). In light of the much more dramatic events after the Nazi take-over, incidents of anti-Semitic hostility prior to the “Anschluss” often seem insignificant and are omitted in some of the accounts. Questions specifically directed to explore this topic often reveal that the nostalgic memories of an idyllic world were, however, rather fragile.
Nostalgia of the “good old times” is a tendency that often increases with age. In the context of oral-history accounts of Jewish women and men who were expelled and uprooted from their home countries, however, the narrative of a “lost paradise” represents a sheltered world that was indeed irrevocably destroyed. It also reveals the deep trauma of persecution and expulsion of people, who experienced historical events as a “rupture in time going through their hearts” (Hertha Pauli) - indicating the complete separation from the world they once were familiar with and the cultural and geographical exile they subsequently experienced.
This paper will focus on oral-history interviews of Jewish women and men who were forced to escape Nazi persecution in Austria, exploring the relationship between memory, history and nostalgia. Differences in the testimonies between former integrated “Westjuden” and Austrian Jews from Eastern-European backgrounds in remembering the past will also be investigated as well as gender aspects.
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