There are many people who view Jews they way they view lawyers: they are all the same. Mark Kurlansky has written a book on the resurrection of Jewry in Europe after the holocaust. One thing you will learn from this book is Jews are not all the same.
Kurlansky along with Spence and Schama are my three favorite writers currently, and all of them are historians. I did not care for history as a topic in school, but then even the Catholic schools were ladeling out tripe when they decided to drink the kool-aid and accept government oversight of Catholic schools. School got boring for Catholics too.
Elsewhere Schama recounts that at a seminar at Balliol College circa 1968 a don suggested to write history about people and not so much events. It has occurred to me that this is the case with all three writers. In A Chosen Few, Kurlansky traces familes in Antwerp, Budapest, Cracow, Paris and North Africa, and at various points in time: prewar, war, post war, and a few points until the 1990s.
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Of particular interest to me is how people survive a disaster, what are the best moves, since we too have experienced a disaster, that is the economic boom of the 2000s in USA, when all of that damage was done to our economy. Since we are in the phase where we pay for it, blame is set, and scapegoats are “sacrificed” (a goat is killed ... just who made a sacrifice here?) it is interesting to me the best way to navigate these well trodden paths. Some important points: people generally did not see what was coming. What we think of as a swift disaster in the holocaust unfolded rather slowly. Kurlansky relates frankly how some Jewish elites cooperated with the Nazis, but it did them no good. After the war, escape to Israel was for many worse than staying in Europe since Israel had no economy. Being a Jew in Germany had more opportunites than a Jew in Israel. This is of particular interest to me: for all the vaunted Jewish entrepreneurialism, how come Israel could not survive without massive financial intervention of the communist states (it is undebatable that Israel was a socialist state, certainly at the start.) Is it simply impossible to have a productive economy under socialism? Would Israel have thrived if it had free markets, something it does not have to this day?
For those who wish to believe all Jews are alike, this book shows a distressing range of thoughts and actions by Jews. First there is the argument as to who is a Jew. Is Jewry a race, a nation, a culture? All of the above? Next, is assimilation a good idea, or the maintenance of Jewish identity? If so, what is the Jewish identity? From this uncertain foundation, there is a dizzying array of ideas, actions and even outright antipathy, such as Ashkenazim vs Sephardim.
Although Kurlansky is a Jew himself, he excels at not letting his personal views get in the way of his storytellers. A Jewish informant for the Stasi, who explains she was just building a socialist paradise in East Germany, gets as fair a shake as the Jew who escaped a concentration camp and went on to fight the nazis. Just the facts in this book. Kurlansky is even fair to politicians who have a tin ear to Jewish sensibilities, such as some French polticians.
There may be something unique about Jewish experience, and it is not about Jewish experience per se, but that is about non-Jew reporting thereof. Much is made of gas ovens in concentration camps, but apparently disease was the big killer. This is extremely important information, if true. Another Jewish scholar was looking at the number of six million dead, and comes up with a number of four million, with two million escaped East. The Soviet Union set up a Jewish Autonomous Region in 1934. It still exists... how come we haven’t heard anything on this? It leaves it up to Jews to write about Jews, but why? Good scholarship is not something peculiar to Jews. The fact is especially in academia, people are afraid to touch the topic.
The stories that Kurlansky tells, within the narrow bounds of the time and location of his subject, about Jews is so very true about any people at any time. The range of personalities, the ideas, the options, the actions, the motivations.
Something Kurlansky alludes to in this history like Speilberg in Schindler’s List, is Jews sell Jews down the river. Perhaps this topic is simply too clear to Jews to bear stating, given that in their bible Cain kills Abel and Joseph’s brothers actually do sell Joseph down the river. Perhaps it is too painful, and for a people feeling beset, an obvious lack of unity is too dangerous a notion to allow abroad. When your enemy thinks you are all alike, it is dangerous to let them know that divisions run deep in your ranks. But it seems it is exactly awareness of Jewish divisions that Nazis used so effectively.
Yet people selling their own down the river is nothing new. Japanese sell Japanses down the river, American Americans, Congolese Congolese, Argentinians Argentines, Romans Romans... there is no story to tell in history unless someone sells someone down the river. Jesus and Judas.
Kurlansky is adept enough to flesh out what differences there are, and when people kill over tennis shoes, I suppose these differences can have lethal consequences. So Carmelite nuns put up a convent at Oswiecim, and American Jews (fascinating politics this story) object. American Jews want this killing place left forever a desolate reminder. Christians build a convent on the grounds. Sort of a ground zero mosque story, circa 1995. Yes, Jews tend toward “l’chaim,” and Christians tend towards “pray for me.” The difference may be religious views, but the fight is politics.
I do recognize the “the Jews” are a favorite topic of wacko-americans, indeed wackos worldwide, and much junk and libel is written about them. But why cede any ground to them? We’ll be better off when reticence on certain topics is relieved.
In the meantime, read this book, it is great storytelling, fascinating history.
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