Jewish Camp Research Articles

“Prisoners of the Postwar”: Expellees, Displaced Persons, and Jews in Austria after World War II

In the aftermath of World War II, Austria once again achieved notoriety as a “prison of peoples.” In 1951, theOst-West Kurier, a newspaper in Essen, decried the degrading mistreatment of Austria's so-called “prisoners of the postwar.” Men, women, and children were wasting away in former concentration camps and were denied citizenship rights, the right to work or to travel freely, and basic social protections, the newspaper reported. These “prisoners” were not, however, former Jewish concentration camp inmates, prisoners of war (POWs), or displaced persons (DPs). They were German expellees from Eastern Europe—the very Germans on whose behalf the Nazi war for Lebensraum had allegedly been fought. “In the entire Western world, there is today no group of human beings who has been sentenced to live with so few rights as the so-called Volksdeutsche in Austria,” the newspaper's editors proclaimed:300,000 people, whose homes and property have been torn from them through the expulsions, all too often by their closest neighbors, endured a hard journey to Austria, where they believed upon arrival that it could be something like a greater Heimat for them. Because only three decades ago, they too were Austrians.

Recovering Memories: The New Exhibition at the Gedenkstätte (Memorial) Bergen-Belsen

Bergen-Belsen is one of the best-known concentration camps on German soil. However, it is also one of the camps which is often misremembered. It was not only a concentration camp, but also a prisoner-of-war camp (mainly for Soviet PoWs), and, after the war, a camp for displaced persons, at first mainly for survivors of the concentration camp; later it became the largest Jewish DP Camp in Germany. Of these three camps, the concentration camp existed for the shortest period of time ? yet it is the camp that most people think of when Bergen-Belsen is mentioned. The contradictions between the historical Bergen-Belsen and the public memory of the place are the result of the protracted process of forgetting and remembering over the past 60 years. On 28 October 2007, a new permanent exhibition opened at the Gedenkst�tte (memorial) Bergen-Belsen, set in a new building specifically commissioned for this purpose and deliberately not entitled museum but documentation and information centre. This exhibition intends to recover the memory of Bergen-Belsen which was all but concealed for many years at the actual historical site. The master narrative is shaped by the key aim to explain the historic site, and the exhibition documents the history of all three camps which existed there. The history of Bergen-Belsen is told as far as possible from the perspective of those who were imprisoned there, or for whom it became the place of rehabilitation after their liberation. As almost all German records on Bergen-Belsen were destroyed before the handover of the camp to the British Army in April 1945, the exhibition makes extensive use of non-traditional sources. At the same time, visitors are helped to understand the historic structures of the site by a new landscape design. The paper discusses the main principles which guided the work on this new exhibition, the decisions which the team took with regard to its design and its narrative, and the first reactions from the public since the opening of the exhibition. With fewer and fewer people left who lived through Bergen-Belsen, it becomes increasingly the task of the Gedenkst�tte and its permanent exhibition to ensure that Bergen-Belsen keeps a place in public memory. The overall purpose of the paper is to discuss how far this can be achieved through an exhibition now that more than 60 years have passed since the events.

The Nationalization of Motherhood and the Stretching of its Boundaries: Shelihot Aliyah and evacuees in Eretz Israel (Palestine) in the 1940s

This article examines perceptions of motherhood as they developed during the late 1940s in the midst of the national struggle for independence in Eretz Israel (Palestine). It considers two case studies in which mothers who were ‘recruited’ by the emerging nation were temporarily separated from their children. The first case concerns women emissaries (Shelihot) who were called to help in Jewish refugee camps in Europe after the Holocaust. The second case involves mothers who were not evacuated with their children from their settlements during the War of Independence but remained, instead, at the front line. These situations led to the development of new perceptions of women and motherhood, which were shaped and matured during the national struggle for independence. The two case studies are used as lenses to explore women's own experiences and perceptions against the backdrop of the intensified idealization of motherhood in times of emergency circumstances.

A Place of Our Own: The Rise of Reform Jewish Camping (review)

Reviewed by: A Place of Our Own: The Rise of Reform Jewish Camping Susan Curtis A Place of Our Own: The Rise of Reform Jewish Camping, edited by Michael M. Lorge and Gary P. Zola. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006. 240 pp. $25.00. The occasion for this collection is the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Olin-Sang-Ruby Union Institute (OSRUI) for Reform Judaism in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. Each of the essays contributes to the larger goal of explaining why OSRUI is worth studying and what it reveals. While former campers and camp leaders will undoubtedly find memories stirred by the essays and reminiscences in this volume, its value transcends in-group celebration and nostalgia. Taken as a whole these essays provide a valuable model [End Page 193] for analyzing a movement and at the same time offer a powerful argument for the transformative impact of OSRUI on Reform Judaism. The volume opens with three essays that situate OSRUI within the framework of camping in the United States and within the Jewish experience. Gary P. Zola offers an excellent overview of organized camping in the United States, which took off at the turn of the twentieth century, when Deweyan educational philosophy, increasing urbanization, and progressive reform efforts encouraged Americans to regain vigor, to "learn by doing," to rekindle the pastoral ideal, and to seek spirituality in natural settings. Settlement houses, the YM/WCA, and the Chautauqua movement, all promoted the development of campgrounds, a camping ethos, and educational programs in the natural environment with varied goals—social uplift, informal education and community building, and spiritual/religious growth. Jonathan D. Sarna follows with an essay that narrows the history of camping to Jewish camping, which began in 1893 with the establishment of Camp Lehman by the Jewish Working Girls' Vacation Society. In the next four decades, American Jewish camping expanded to include private camps for the well-to-do, philanthropic camps for immigrants and the working poor, and camps that focused on particular communal identities or ideological positions. OSRUI, founded in 1952, while not the first Jewish camp, represented the beginning of Reform Jewish camping, a history recounted by Michal M. Lorge and Gary P. Zola. They attribute the founding of a camp at Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, to strong local support in the Chicago area and to the presence of a group of people who saw in camping the potential for education and community building. Along with the first two chapters, Lorge's and Zola's contribution here is to situate at the regional level the establishment of a camp that was a product of both a national phenomenon and a vision shared by members of the community. The remainder of the volume explores the evolution of the camping experience from a number of perspectives—education, spirituality, and singing. It is in these chapters that contributors add elements to a thesis about the effect on Reform Judaism of programs developed at OSRUI. Michal Zeldin's analysis of the camp's educational program shatters several binaries typically used to describe alternative educational programming as formal or informal, identity-based or content-focused, and experiential or cognitive. He writes: "Regardless of where it takes place, Jewish education can be effective to the degree that it creates a rich tapestry of opportunities across a range of educational dimensions including goals, human resources, environment, and modes of learning" (p. 96). OSRUI's success in blurring the boundaries between these kinds of learning by providing opportunities to study in an informal setting material [End Page 194] that instilled both a stronger sense of Reform Jewish identity and knowledge of Hebrew, the Torah, and Jewish culture and history produced the "magic" that many former campers remember from their summers in Wisconsin. The magic was neither an illusion nor fleeting, however, for the personal and group growth that occurred in the camp setting formed succeeding generations of individuals, who in turn shaped Reform Judaism as the years passed. One particular aspect of education in the camp was how or whether Hebrew language would be taught. Hillel Gamoran's essay provides a history of language camps within American Judaism that began with Camp Massad in...

Die Arbeiter des estnischen Ölschieferbeckens – eine Industrieregion des Stalinismus

The article deals with the Estonian oil shale region Ida-Virumaa and how it turned into a Stalinist industrial area. Oil shale mining started already in 1916, mining and processing of oil shale expanded largely during the period of Estonian independence due to state protection and subsidies. After the Soviet occupation and annexation of the country in 1940, plans to extend mining and processing developed, but were not fulfilled because of the outbreak of war. Under German occupation the oil shale industry was at first neglected, but beginning with 1943 work intensified with the help of slave labor of Soviet POW‘s and Jewish concentration camp inmates. Soviet reconstruction projected a steep increase of mining and processing. Ida-Virumaa became one major target of industrial investment in the post-war decade, a large “building site of Socialism”. The aims were the provision of energy and the support of Soviet armaments, because uranium could be found in the area and oil and special fuels were desperately needed by the Soviet forces. Like under Nazi occupation, slave labor of POW‘s and camp inmates played an important role until 1949. Because war damages had been the largest in the entire Estonian SSR and living and working conditions were the worst in the republic, there existed an extreme shortage of workers. Campaigns to mobilize Estonians to work there utterly failed. The only way to solve the problem was to hire migrants from other regions of the Soviet Union, where conditions were even worse. The migration led to the Russification of the region, but this development was not intended by the regime. Only in the second half of the 1950s life turned normal and the conditions became bearable.

TheHaganahby Arab and Palestinian Historiography and Media

I NTERPRETING THE PAST IS ONE aspect of the Arab-Israeli conflict and will certainly continue to engage scholars and readers for many years to come-even when and if the two sides reach a political accord. Historiography of the Mandate period, on both sides, deals with, among other things, issues like whose side the British were on, who was the first to set up military organizations, which side began the violence, what are the limits of legitimate struggle for a national liberation movement, who sold and who purchased land, and many other topics that have yet to be fully aired in the scholarly literature. A study of how Arab sources relate to the Haganah runs up against the fact that, in general, the Jewish camp is treated in cursory fashion and is perceived as monolithic. This makes it difficult to isolate specific references to the Haganah as a separate organization. According to Arab and Palestinian history books and textbooks about the Mandate era, it was the Jews, led by the Haganah, who first acquired weapons and trained their young people for a war over the country, whereas the Palestinian side merely reacted to the threat. Similarly, the Palestinians interpret British behavior as supporting Zionism and the Jews' aspirations to set up their own state; they also accuse the British of supplying arms, setting up military units, and training Haganah members. In some of the literature, the Haganah is described as a regular army in every respect; in other sources, as a terrorist organization. In general there is an emphasis on its close links with the British authorities. In the Arab perception, the British Mandatory authorities supported, assisted, and encouraged the Jews to establish their own armed force and helped them with training and weapons. One recent history book by Emile Shofani describes the establishment of the Haganah as follows:

Nietzsche and the Jews: Exaltation and Denigration (review)

166 SHOFAR Fall 2000 Vol. 19, No.1 literature concerning the Frankist movement, however, provide a significant resource both for scholars and for lay readers. They provide a valuable overview ofthe state of the field to date, and for that reason the book merits a place on the library shelves. Elisheva Carlebach Department of History Queens College, CUNY Nietzsche and the Jews: Exaltation and Denigration, by Siegfried Mandel. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1998. 329 pp. $49.95. Contemporary discussions ofthe influential nineteenth-century German philosopher's attitudes toward Jews and Judaism focus on several related issues. These include how consistently and for what reasons Nietzsche distinguished between Jews of various historical periods, to what extent Nietzsche himselfeither was or sounded antisemitic, how his complex attitudes toward Jews shaped and were shaped by other important ideas in his philosophical and psychological thought, and how these attitudes were influenced by other people and events in his life. While the analyses Mandel provides in his book have implications for the study ofall of these issues, most of his attention is focused on the second and the last. In a 1998 article ("Nietzsche's Attitudes Toward the Jews," Journal ofthe History ofIdeas, Vol. 49, No.2, pp. 301-317), Will Mittelman and I argued that "Nietzsche draws a threefold distinction between (i) the Judaism of the older, pre-prophetic parts of the Old Testament, (ii) the prophetic Judaism out of which Christianity arose, and (iii) modern Judaism," and that it is the middle category which receives Nietzsche's negative critique. One excellent recent book, Weaver Santaniello's Nietzsche. God. and the Jews: His Critique ofJudeo-Christianity in Relation to the Nazi Myth (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), while correcting some of the details of our analysis, assumes this general threefold distinction and builds upon it. Mandel does not begin with this distinction, though much of what he says would support it, but starts fresh and takes the reader for a detailed chronological journey from the beginning of Nietzsche's life and his earliest writing to his fmal days. Most commentators today recognize that Nietzsche was consistently, even courageously, opposed to the antisemitism he encountered in the words and actions of so many ofhis contemporaries. His comment in a letter to his sister in 1887 that "It is a matter ofhonor to me to be absolutely clean andunequivocalregarding anti-Semitism, namely opposed, as I am in all my writings" (cited in Walter Kaufmann's Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist. Antichrist [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974], p. 45) is Nietzsche at his clearest. At the same time, to pick just one of Mandel's many examples, "neither the anti-Semite nor the Jew can take any comfort" when Nietzsche writes (in a note for Ecce Homo) "Actually, what is it that distinguishes a Jew from an Book Reviews 167 anti-Semite: The Jew knows when he lies, the anti-Semite does not realize that he always lies" (pp. 246-7). Mandel agrees with other recent commentators in arguing that "we fmd in [Nietzsche's] thought higher praise and lesser depreciation of Jews than in most anti-Jewish and even Jewish camps ofthought during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries" (p. 13), but he argues that Nietzsche's attitudes are more ambivalent than some others have suggested. One will not find in Mandel's book much extended discussion ofthe broader social and political context in which Nietzsche's thought must be considered, nor will one find much new analysis of the relationship between Nietzsche's attitudes toward the Jews and his various philosophical ideas. For discussion ofthese matters, one would do well to turn to a book such as Santaniello's. What one does find in Mandel are wonderful character studies; he excels in tracing and analyzing the primary relationships in Nietzsche's life. One prominent example is the book's extended discussion ofRichard Wagner. Mandel sees Wagner as the figure whose presence in and eventual absence from Nietzsche's life most influenced Nietzsche's attitudes on Jews and Judaism. As he writes early in the book, "Biographically, a discussion ofNietzsche and the Jews can be divided justifiably into periods 'before and after Wagner'" (p. 13). It...

Memories of History: Women and the Holocaust in Autobiographical and Fictional Memoirs

Only later in life have some women voiced their Holocaust experiences. One example is Ruth Klüger's acclaimed German autobiography, weiter leben-eine Jugend (1992). The Holocaust has also influenced female fiction writers. American-born Sherri Szeman wrote the Auschwitz novel The Kommandant's Mistress (1993). Both engaging texts consist of non-chronological memory fragments. Szeman's two narrators, a female Jewish concentration camp inmate and a Nazi camp commander, strive for hegemony as they reveal their common sexual encounters in the concentrationary world. For Szeman, the Holocaust, despite its magnitude and impersonality, provides a symbolic language and a framework in which to express individual victimization of women, and crucially, the possibility of survival. A juxtaposition of autobiographical and fictional memoirs reveals a contrasting depiction of remembered history, especially with regard to women. Good intentions and literary talent aside, the dilemma of fictional representation of the Holocaust arises, and questions of verisimilitude and author's responsibility demand response. Critics continue to grapple with these issues.

Photography in Israel (review)

170 SHOFAR Fall 1998 Vol. 17, No. I Photography in Israel, guest-edited by Yeshayahu Nir. Special issue of History of Photography, Vol. 19, No.3 (pp. 185-276). London: Taylor & Francis, Autumn 1995.1 This thematic issue of a journal edited at Linacre College in Oxford combines a select historical portfolio of Israeli photography with an array of essays approaching the subject from various perspectives. Nir is a professor of visual communication at the Hebrew University. Nir's own opening essay is concerned with Holy Land photographic images from the nineteenth century. In one episode, villagers shown their picture failed to recognize themselves in it, as "a photograph seems to have connoted a ruler or other notable figure, the most likely subjects of any photographs they may have seen" (p. 185), "overshadow[ing] the perception ofthe referential link between a photograph and its subject." Nir contextualizes such patterns of interaction within Western "paternalist and appropriating relationship towards the Orient" (p. 193). Orna and Micha Bar-Am's paper, "The Illustrator E. M. Lilien as Photographer" in the Holy Land, reveals a littleknown side of an artist whose etchings and Jugendstil Biblical illustrations feature prominently in the history of modern Jewish art. Jugendstil and Bible is invariably Lilien. "Lilien's most famous photograph is generally not associated with his name or with his biblical project. It is the image of Zionist leader Theodor Herzlleaning on the balcony of the Drei Konige Hotel in Basel, Switzerland, and gazing over the Rhine" (p. 198). (As an aside: such is the instant recognition this image prompts, that when, recently, the Shas party openly adopted Zionism, a cartoon in the Jerusalem Post glossed the event by placing on the head ofthe leaning Herzl a Charedi wide-brimmed hat. It was a glaring evocation of that photograph, but did you know it was taken by Lilien?) In "Zionist Photography, 1910-41: Constructing a Landscape," Ruth Oren deals with pictures that were mainly published by the Jewish National Fund and the Keren Hayesod. Photography, indeed, is an important tool for overt propaganda, as well as a medium for subtle conceptualizations which assert an idea rhetorically, whether the photographer is aware or not (cf. e.g. the interesting but, in treating his data, unquestionably anti-Israeli essay by Derek Gregory, "Imaginative Geographies," in Progress in Human Geography, Vol. 19, No. 4[1995]: 447-485). The next essay is by Nir's colleague at the Hebrew University, Prof. Erik Cohen: "The Representation ofArabs and Jews on Postcards in Israel." An otherwise interesting subject is unfortunately spoilt by ebullient theory and an ideological ax to grind, by vociferously demonizing anti-Israeli proclamations, and by an academically inexcusable inattention to his data. Counterexamples probably could be found, but the argument is generally weak. He fails to consider, further to the Jewish vs. Arab dichotomy in life IDistributed by Dawson (UK) Ltd., Cannon House, Folkestone, Kent CTl9 5EE, UK. Price as a back issue: £25 or $39.50, plus postage (total: $47.50). Journal ISSN: 0308-7298. Book Reviews .........:;~ 171 and imagery, such intra-Jewish divisions that also feature prominently in national or semi-official or dominant rhetoric (are all ethnic postcards only on Arabs?). Visually, he fmds a pattern, in Israeli postcards, ofhappy sovereign Jews vs. dignified dominated Arabs. Is it really all grins and "Hava Nagilah" in cards depicting the Jewish camp? Is it only Charedi or Oriental Jews who are advertising toothpaste in all postcards? It boils down to his thrust to denounce, in the facial expressions he detects in postcards, the evidence of (and at a time the plot to mask) "a most telling metonymy of the political as well as symbolic domination of Jews over Arabs in contemporary Israel" (p. 210). The relatively quite bland phrase (and mind you: possibly a true insight) quoted here, in its original context is related to a postcard that shows falafel balls in half a pitta, with a small Israeli flag stuck in a ball on the left. Not that the essay is' overly original. It takes a theory on ideologically biased American images ofNative Americans and tries to apply it to the Zionist villain (with all this author's...

THE IMPACT OF CULTURAL CONTEXT ON THE MENTAL HEALTH OF JEWISH CONCENTRATION CAMP SURVIVORS

This study examines whether the area of settlement of Jewish concentration camp survivors has an impact on their mental health. Using the Langner mental health index, survivors in Israel are compared with an earlier study of survivors in Montreal. Survivors in Israel score higher than their Montreal counterparts, indicating a greater degree of mental impairment. The suggestion is raised that the numerous memorials and ceremonies commemorating the Holocaust in Israel increase the salience of the survivors' remembrance of the past. These persons may, therefore, be more sensitive to the perpetually tense military situation prevalent in the country, and this may have a deleterious effect on their mental health.

A Cooperative Effort Between Formal and Informal Education Agencies

There is a strong tendency in American Jewish education to promote the coordination of formal and informal Jewish education. This is not always possible for a variety of different reasons. One factor is the separate nature of the formal educational and informal educational organizations and their institutional goals and directions. Moreover, the formal educational agencies tend to hire staff that are not capable of dealing with informal education. They look at Jewish education as the transmission of cognitive skills; Jewish knowledge is viewed largely as a set of skills which demands long hours in classroom situations. On the other hand, informal educational institutions like the Jewish communal camps (in contrast to the ideological camps such as Camps Ramah, Morasha, Habonim Camps, Young Judea Camps, etc.) are generally social-work-oriented agencies. They do not always perceive themselves as the transmitters of Jewish culture nor as change agents in the complex process of Jewish identity. There is an uns...

A Look at Jewish Communal Camping

A Look at Jewish Communal Camping

Jewish Educational Camping—Its Potentialities and Realities

Jewish Educational Camping—Its Potentialities and Realities

Jewish Educational Camping—Its Potentialities and Realities

Jewish Educational Camping—Its Potentialities and Realities

A Look at Jewish Communal Camping

A Look at Jewish Communal Camping

A note on a community problem of clinical significance: Motivation of patients and German compensation of Jewish concentration camp survivors.

A note on a community problem of clinical significance: Motivation of patients and German compensation of Jewish concentration camp survivors.