-
Views
-
Cite
Cite
Sheer Ganor, Resettlers and Survivors: Bukovina and the Politics of Belonging in West Germany and Israel, 1945–1989. Gaëlle Fisher, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Volume 39, Issue 1, Spring 2025, Pages 117–118, https://doi.org/10.1093/hgs/dcae050
Close - Share Icon Share
Extract
In 1959, authors at both the Israel-based Die Stimme (The Voice) and the West German-based Der Südostdetusche (The South-East German) were united in their animated indignation at one Gregor von Rezzori, who had recently made a name for himself as an author. Rezzori was especially well-known for his sarcastic portrayal of the culture, everyday life, and people of his former home region, Bukovina. His mocking tone resulted in other former Bukovinians’ vehement disapproval, as seen in the rage pieces published in the Stimme and in the Südostdeutsche, which accused Rezzori of “throwing dirt” at, even “blaspheming,” the former cherished homeland (p. 165).
At that point in their history, there was little else on which the people behind the Stimme and the Südostdeutsche could agree. As Gaëlle Fisher shows in Resettlers and Survivors, the fact that Jewish Bukovinians and ethnic German Bukovinians shared a former homeland and a deep yearning for its past did not lead to harmonious dialogue or a sense of a common fate in the postwar era. Rather, in the aftermath of displacements, total war, and genocide, as both communities sought belonging in new, foreign homelands, they developed differing, oftentimes competing interpretations of Bukovina’s history and their place in it. Fisher’s book, among the first to focus on these two entangled communities simultaneously, offers a fascinating analysis of how both groups confronted material and emotional challenges following their forced removals and how they crafted memory cultures of Bukovina to address their evolving needs and goals.
