By Taxi on the Sabbath

More than 75 years after the beginning of the Holocaust, two journalists traveled to the places that were the centers of Eastern European Jewry before the Second World War. They wanted to know how Jewish life in seven former Communist countries in Eastern Europe had evolved after 1945. Were their rights recognized once again, was restitution given for their property and were the perpetrators held accountable? Did the anti-Semitism disappear or was it merely suppressed? What is Jewish life like today in Krakow, Prague or Budapest? The authors talked to the last remaining survivors, with rabbis, congregants, Jewish intellectuals, museum founders, cemetery keepers, with children placed in institutions in Odessa, and inhabitants of retirement homes. They tell of their respect and awe for the life experiences that flooded in on the current of the regime change, the thawing and the repression, to the implications of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. For these Jewish communities today a lot depends on whether the countries of Eastern Europe are prepared to give Jewish history its rightful place in their national cultural memory. But that’s not what seems to be happening. Some believe there will be a “Renaissance of the Jews.” But the hate has returned to the Europe of this young 21st century. Eva Gruberová is a freelance journalist and filmmaker. She also is a consultant at the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site. Helmut Zeller directs the Dachau editorial office of the Süddeutschen Zeitung newspaper. C.H.Beck recently published his book Ich sang für die SS. Mein Weg vom Ghetto zum israelischen Geheimdienst (I Sang for the SS. My Path from the Ghetto to the Israeli Intelligence, co-authored with Abba Naor, 2014). C.H.Beck also released Eva Gruberová und Helmut Zeller’s Geboren im KZ. Sieben Mütter, sieben Kinder und das Wunder von Kaufering I (Born in a Concentration Camp. Seven Mothers, Seven Children, and the Miracle of Kaufering I, 2015).