Ghosts of Home: The Afterlife of Czernowitz in Jewish Memory (review)

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...