Language:
English
Year of publication:
2014
Titel der Quelle:
Dapim; Studies on the Shoah
Angaben zur Quelle:
28,1 (2014) 38-55
Keywords:
Theresienstadt (Concentration camp)
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
;
Jews Identity
;
Jews History 1945-
Abstract:
Based partly on interviews with survivors of Theresienstadt, residing both in the Czech Lands and abroad, examines the ways in which Czech Jews negotiated their bonds with with Jewishness immediately before and during their deportation to Theresienstadt, as well as after their liberation from this ghetto, in reinstated Czecholslovakia of 1945-50. Argues that rather than producing common Jewishness, Theresienstadt generated differences. Its purely Jewish environment did not produce any shared Jewish belonging, but to the contrary, led to the formation of at least three distinctive groups, sometimes conflicting with one another, but nevertheless, supporting their members emotionally in the menacing environment: Zionists, Czecho-Jews, and communists. The Zionists were further fragmented along national lines: Czech Zionists, German Zionist, etc. In postwar Czechoslovakia, ties to Jewishness were arbitrary, only rarely corresponding with one's previous affinities. The decision to emigrate or to remain in Czechoslovakia depended on emotional and situational factors. Many of those who were confronted with antisemitism in the hysterically nationalist postwar Czechoslovakia, emigrated. Those who did not, have identified themselves as Czechs.
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