German Diasporic Experiences: Identity, Migration, and Loss

8 “Memories from Afar”: Aspects of Memories Spanning Several Generations in Families of Austrian Jewish Refugees

EIGHT “Memories from Afar” Aspects of Memories Spanning Several Generations in Families of Austrian Jewish Refugees
Andrea Strutz 83 83 How did Austrian Jewish refugees remember their former home and culture , and what memories and narratives did they pass on to later generations ? The research in this chapter is based on interviews with children and grandchildren of Austrian Jewish refugees in New York with at least one Jewish grandparent who had been expelled from Austria in 1938. The memories of the first generation of Austrian Jewish refugees concerning the expulsion from Austria in 1938 and the Holocaust were not dominant, although the grandparents had been traumatized. Even though cultural heritage or the German language became formative in the identies and memories of the second and third generations, the research discovered that Austrian cuisine dominated the memories of second- and third-generation refugees, creating for them a positive emotional bond with their ancestors’ former home. How does one remember the past, and how are memories passed on? How do Austrian Jewish refugees remember their former home and culture? What memories and narratives do they pass on to younger generations? These are key questions of the video history project titled “Erinnerungen aus der Ferne.”1 This is a follow-up investigation to the project “Emigration: Austria–New York,” whose goal was the collection and analysis of experiences and memories of Austrian Jews who were expelled from Austria in 1938–39, took refuge in the United States, and could not (or did not want to) return after World War ii. 84 ANDREA STRUTZ “Emigration. Austria–New York” focused on New York City, where more than 70,000 Austrian and German fugitives from Hitler populated Washington Heights in Manhattan—called the “Fourth Reich on the Hudson ”—and Riverdale in the Bronx.2 “Since so many of the Austrians were city-dwellers from Vienna, it was not surprising that a very large proportion of them settled first in New York.”3 Twenty-three qualitative interviews were videorecorded with Austrian Jewish refugees in 1996 in New York City.4 An essential part of the project was to explore the relationship of Austrian Jewish refugees with their former home country and to find out in particular what images and memories about Austria the interviewees had preserved. The video documentation continental divide.geteilte leben features the life stories of these interviewees and the crucial moments in their lives, and also the relationship with their former home and their reminiscences of Austria.5 The video gives Austrian Jewish refugees a voice to express themselves and shows the various ways of coming to terms with the past.6 “Memories from Afar”continued these research activities, but concentrated on the second and third generations of families of Austrian Jewish refugees. In his investigation of collective memory, Jan Assmann differentiates between cultural memory and communicative memory.7 Cultural memory preserves a group’s pool of knowledge. This knowledge is, at the same time, reconstructed for the actual situation, and memory is culturally moulded and handed down to later generations via rites, texts, memorials , and history books. While cultural memory, according to Assmann, stretches over long periods with certain fixed points, collective memory is defined by a limited and accompanying time span of three to four generations and also describes the period of investigation of oral history. Communicative memory, on the other hand, is based on everyday conversation : “Personal memory is built up from this type of conversation… it is a) socially conveyed and b) group related. Each individual memory is constituted in a combination with the other.” Therefore, this project aims to explore the communicative memory in the families of refugees. The interviews with the first generation of Austrian refugees had revealed, besides terror and the resulting nightmares, depictions of Austria and especially Vienna with certain nostalgia. The apartments of these interviewees are decorated with drawings, photographs, books, calendars, and other souvenirs of Austria. During the interviews with the first generation of refugees, their grandchildren in particular showed enormous interest in the grandparents’ former home country as well as in their memories. Being carriers of cultural codes and images, migrants have important functions in mechanisms of reception and reflexion. The “Memories from Afar” project investigates how Austrian Jewish refugees remembered their former home and culture and what memories and narratives they passed on to their descendants. How were these memories and narratives transformed , and what memories are dominant...