<bkr>Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer, Ghosts of Home: The Afterlife of Czernowitz in Jewish
Memory</>
<bkf>Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009, pp. xxvi + 352 </>
Ghosts of Home presents a fascinating picture of the idea of Czernowitz as “old Czernowitzers”
remember it and as interpreted by the post-memory generation in a constant dialogue between
past and present. The project began as a heritage trip to Chernivtsi, where the authors hoped to
discover traces of old Czernowitz, its tolerant and multicultural atmosphere and distinct culture,
and to follow the familial story of Lotte and Carl Hirsch in their journey from a relatively safe
environment to a ghetto and their escape from deportation to Transnistria. This familial story
grows into a communal one and develops into a discussion of the Romanian Holocaust, its
different structures and particularities, and the role of communism and the Soviet Union during
1940, uncovering layers of memory and engaging in a discussion of a still understudied segment
of Holocaust studies: Transnistria.
The book is divided into four parts, each corresponding to the authors’ journeys to
Czernowitz in 1998, 2000, 2006, and 2008. While they are all weaved into both a travel and
historical narrative, the trips have different goals, and as such, allow for different aspects of
Czernowitz and its history to emerge. The first trip resembles what the authors call a “roots trip”
with Lotte and Carl Hirsch, their guides in discovering “points of memory” and forging a
material connection to the city of Czernowitz in addition to the emotional connection the authors
had developed from stories of “old Czernowitzers” and various written sources. The second part
revolves around the second visit, which also included a trip to Transnistria, while the third
includes the organized multigenerational reunion of Czernowitzers and a second trip to
Transnistria. Part Four is also the epilogue of the book and focuses on the 600-year anniversary
of Czernowitz, its celebration, and an exhibit on Jewish history.
The first physical encounter with Czernowitz, with Lotte and Carl Hirsch, serves as a
prime example of what the authors define as “points of memory,” an alternative to Pierre Nora’s
lieux de memoire. As the authors explain, they focus their narrative around anecdotes, images,
photos, objects, and places that, as points of memory, open “small windows to the past” (xix).
What begins as a Certeau-style rhetoric of walking and discovery turns into a presentation of
Jewish life, culture, and history in Czernowitz. One point of departure is the Jewish cemetery
that reveals to its visitors a 200-year history of Jewish presence, with tombstones of people born
as early as 1783. The authors discuss the Austrian takeover of Bukovina from the Ottoman
Empire and the important mission of Jews as “agents of ‘Austrianizing’” (26) the region, the
Edict of Tolerance of 1781 that led to the assimilation of many Jews in the region, but also the
Romanianization after 1918, when Bukovina became part of Greater Romania. While the process
of Austrianization led to social advancement through secular education and fluency in German
and ultimately allowed the assimilated Jews to join the privileged minority of Austrians and
Austrianized German-speaking subjects during the Austrian rule, Romanianization, which was
also implemented through the educational system, led to loss of jobs and social status, especially
for those who never learned the new official language of Bukovina. Bukovina was home to many
other nationalities that were also affected by the Austrian and then new Romanian regimes,
especially Ukrainians, and it would have been interesting to find out how the other Bukovinian
nationalities viewed what was for some a welcome Austrianization and for others a “forced
Germanization” (Prokopowitsch). While the authors seem to equate Romanianization with
Romanian anti-Semitism, and for the most part rightly so, it would have been helpful to know
how Ukrainians, Hutsuls, Austrians, or ethnic Germans viewed this process and how the
transition to Greater Romania affected them. As István Deák noted, “Liberation from the
Habsburg yoke, it was commonly felt, would mark the dawn of a new era, the start of social
reform and of a glorious national future. In this respect, there was barely a difference between
Czechoslovakia, the new South Slav state, and emerging Greater Romania, on the one hand, and
German Austria and Hungary, on the other hand” (Deák 131). It is exactly within this context
that Romanian nationalism turned into anti-Semitism, but also targeted Ukrainians from northern
Bukovina in their process of Romanianization, as the authors also point out in their review of
history.
In a period of three years (1938–1941), Bukovina changed forever. In 1938, the
nationalist regime of Goga-Cuza came to power, and Romanian Jews experienced the first
significant decline in their rights. The Gigurtu regime of 1939 cut Jews’ rights even more
drastically, and by 1940, when Ion Antonescu came to power, Jews from Greater Romania were
facing a fate similar to that of German Jews. In addition, 1940 was an important year for
Romanian nationalist historiography, the so-called “Russian year,” since Russian troops
occupied the region and pushed back the Romanian army, which suffered defeat and humiliation.
The Romanian newspapers reported stories of humiliated soldiers, torture, and unusually cruel
deaths allegedly performed by pro-communist Jews from Bessarabia and Bukovina. These
articles fueled Romanian nationalist and anti-Semitic feelings and functioned as justifications for
Ion Antonescu’s actions regarding the “evacuation” of Bukovinian and Bessarabian Jews.
Most interesting is the candid presentation of communism in Ghosts of Home and the
initial fascination with it for so many Czernowitzer Jews, including Carl Hirsch, which turned
into utter disillusionment with the Soviet regime. Carl Hirsch, for example, remembers how he
left Bucharest for Czernowitz so he could welcome the Soviet troops that were supposed to put
an end to Romanian anti-Semitism. However, Soviet communism also meant nationalization of
property and production, and ultimately deportations to Siberia.
After Romanians, with the help of German troops, took over Bukovina in 1941, the fate
of Czernowitzer Jews turned disastrous. After regaining Bukovina and Bessarabia from the
Russians, Antonescu ordered retaliations for the Romanian soldiers who were killed during their
retreat in 1940. Fifty Jewish communists had to be killed for the death of every Romanian
soldier, and one hundred for the death of every officer. The Czernowitz ghetto was founded in
which fifty-thousand Jews were incarcerated, and in October 1941, the deportations to
Transnistria began. Carl and Lotte Hirsch’s escape from deportation was also connected to a
“point of memory” that the authors could now physically experience. “The corner,” which turns
out to be a major intersection, literally and metaphorically, was the place where their fate was
determined. A bribe of one-hundred Lei allowed them to return to the ghetto while everyone else
headed in the opposite direction to the train station where deportation trains awaited them.
On 4 October 1941, Antonescu ordered the deportation of all Bukovinian Jews within ten days.
A week later, the first transport left for Transnistria. While most could not escape these
deportations, 20,000 were saved by the Romanian mayor of Cernăuţi, Traian Popovici. He
pleaded to retain professionals in Cernăuţi so the city could continue to function and ultimately,
saved these people through the so-called Popovici authorizations. Antonescu never recognized
the role he played in the deportations. During his trial in 1945, he repeatedly affirmed that he had
to evacuate those regions because of the proximity of the war fighting, and that he acted as any
military person in charge would do in wartime situations.
The second part of the book, “The Darker Side” documents the second journey to
Chernivtsi in 2000 when the authors were accompanied by friends who also belong to the postmemory generation. The stories of these friends allow the authors to present two important
developments for Czernowitzer Jews in 1941: the evacuation of some along with the Russian
troops and enrollment in the Soviet army and the deportations of others to Transnistria. Based on
family stories and testimonies, published and unpublished, the authors create a narrative that fills
important gaps of memory and history. Photos are also at the center of their examination as they
attempt to decipher life in the Czernowitz ghetto, especially for Carl and Lotte Hirsch whose
intriguing photos depicting them strolling down the streets offer a glimpse of a more positive
experience compared to representations of other ghettos. However, most revealing in the authors’
analysis are the missing parts that do not show up in the photos. The spot on Carl’s lapel in one
of the photographs suggests a missing Star of David that Czernowitz Jews had to wear as well.
There are also no photographs of one of the most important events for Carl and Lotte: their
marriage ceremony that was performed as they were guarded by a soldier, who then allowed the
newlyweds to celebrate with a piece of cake in a pastry shop.
One of the most eye-opening experiences in this part is the authors’ trip to Transnistria as
recorded in the chapter “There was never a camp here!” (197–231). Through this visit to
Transnistria and the camp of Vapniarka, the authors hoped “to clarify the distinctive features of
the Romanian Holocaust and its legacies, as well as its impact on the afterlife of Czernowitz”
(201). The story of Vapniarka comes to life through Dr. Kessler’s testimony and the little book
of drawings he received from his patients — a collage of testimonial fragments allowing a
glimpse into the indescribable. “Each tiny drawing in stick-figure form,” as the authors explain,
“represents individualized experiences of unprecedented suffering and survival, even as it
underscores the inadequacy of this or any other idiom for its expression” (228). Dr. Kessler was
able to save many inmates from a debilitating disease caused by the poisonous food they were
given. After repeated denials that a camp ever existed in Vapniarka, the visitors are able to
locate, thanks to the maps they had brought along, the last standing building dating back to the
camp, now the kindergarten of a Ukrainian military base. It comes as no surprise that the only
monuments in the region are of Soviet heroes of World War II, but no commemoration of
Transnistria. “Vapniarka, it seemed,” as the authors conclude, “was a case study in strategic
forgetting, or, at the very least, in simple neglect” (230). It is also an indication of how eastEuropean countries have avoided responsibility for the Holocaust, in part due to a policy of
forced forgetting during communism, and lack of education about these tragic events.
Part Three, “Ghosts of Home,” details the reunion of Czernowitzers in 2006, which was
organized by the Internet group Czernowitz-L. Participants belonged to the second and third
generation and hailed from various countries. The authors seem to take more of an observer and
witness position in documenting this extraordinary reunion that allowed people from cyberspace
to physically meet, talk, and exchange stories, but also gave way to various fissures that
included, for example, the attitude of many toward a Romanian scholar who wanted to join the
group who eventually became a scapegoat, a representative of Romanian anti-Semitism that their
ancestors had experienced (271–72). Social and economic differences, as well as linguistic
barriers hindered a relation to present-day Jewish inhabitants of Chernivtsi, but most of all it was
due to the visitors’ primary focus on discovering traces of old Czernowitz, rather than presentday Chernivtsi.
A second trip to Transnistria included Moghilev, Budi, Bershad, and Shargorod which
unearthed powerful emotions for many participants who tried to find some closure at these places
of past suffering and death. Visiting each of these sites elicited strong emotions that for some
turned into relief after having said kaddish for their dead, while others never found closure, but
rather “unending sadness and despondency” (286). As in Vapniarka, very few onsite memorials
commemorate the traumatic events of 1941–1944. More powerful than the inadequate memorials
in Moghilev are the individual gestures of commemoration such as the encounter with the mayor
of Shargorod who acknowledged the Jewish presence in his small town, and more importantly
the Ukrainian responsibility for the crimes committed against the Shargorod Jews.
The last part, the “Epilogue,” focuses on the last visit to Chernivtsi in 2008 on the
occasion of the city’s 600-year anniversary. While the authors did not participate in the
festivities, they were involved in the organization of an exhibit on Jewish history in the Jüdisches
Haus. The plans that the authors designed before their trip seemed to clash with the concept of
the local organizers. “The unique Jewish culture of Czernowitz was erased one more time,”
Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer conclude as they realize that there was “little interest in the
assimilated secular German-Jewish culture, or its multiethnic connections, that we associated
with the idea of Czernowitz” (312).
The idea of Czernowitz for its Jewish inhabitants incorporates both a nostalgia for this
once multicultural city, an Austrian-Jewish culture, and its core constituent German, and the
traumatic memories of persecution and deportations in an effort to erase and modify the very
fabric of this city. The authors highlight “the haunting continuity of Czernowitz” present also in
the life of second and third generations, and their effort to present the afterlife of Czernowitz is a
truly rewarding one and could be described best in the words of the Czernowitz-born Yiddish
writer, Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman: “So deft,/ so transparent,/ you sketched yourself for me./
Now I’m mother to your past.” Ghosts of Home is a must read for any reader interested in the
cultural and historical exploration of this unique city that was once home to Paul Celan, Rose
Ausländer, and Aharon Appelfeld, as well as a relevant location in the history of the Romanian
Holocaust.
<rau>Valentina Glajar <#> Texas State University, San Marcos </rau>
<bmh>Work Cited</>
<bib>Deák, István. “The Habsburg Empire.” After Empire: Multiethnic Societies and NationBuilding. Eds. Karen Barkey and Mark von Hagen. Boulder: Westview Press. 129–
41.</bib>