A Chosen Few - Mark Kurlansky [9]
As I write this introduction, during the week leading up to the 5754th year of recorded Jewish history, the French government has moved to rewrite its constitution to facilitate laws harassing immigrants; a statue of Kaiser Wilhelm I, a symbol of German military aggression, has been installed in Koblenz; while in the south, yet another of Germany's almost daily attacks resulted in the death of four immigrants in a burned-out hostel. This incident was not uniquely German—a week later a Bangladesh man lay in critical condition after being beaten and kicked in East London. The remains of Admiral Miklos Horthy—who, although less bloody than his successor, allied Hungary with the Third Reich and initiated the persecution and massacre of thousands of Jews—were re-buried in his hometown with honors. Several government ministers attended the ceremony. The Hungarian prime minister asserted that Horthy had been a great patriot who had gained back Hungarian land, which angered the prime minister of the Slovak Republic, Vladimir Meciar—not because of Horthy's war record but because some of that regained land had been at Slovak expense. The same week, Meciar made an interesting observation of his own. Gypsies, the prime minister explained, are “socially unadaptable and mentally backward.” Later, he denied the quote but rephrased the same thought in more polite language. While these things were happening, Bosnians were openly slaughtering each other for being Croats or Serbs or Muslims.
This is what European news is like these days. Although the style of this nationalism may be particularly European, the racism and racist attacks are not. The United States, too, has seen an increase in extreme right-wing facist violence groups like the Ku Klux Klan find willing shock troops in young skinheads. What is especially worrisome about Europe, however, is that the political establishment there reacts to such activities by pandering to the extremists. Rather than ostracizing the extremists, the establishment treats them as mainstream and goes on to ostracize the victims of extremist violence by discussing the “immigrant problem/’ In reality, the problem is not immigrants but the fact that immigrants are being attacked.
Germany, whose culture I have always admired—its music, its demanding and expressive language—is a country with which I have been trying to come to terms during twenty years of visits. While I am awed by its brilliance, there is something undefmable that I fear. Germans themselves fear it as well. Today, Germany's best writers are consumed with a dread of their own country. But it is too tempting to make simplistic assumptions about Germany. One time in Cologne, while I was trying to catch a soon-departing express train to Berlin, I cut into the only moving line. As I ordered my ticket in German, I heard a British couple behind me saying, “They're still like that. They'll never learn.”
This book is not intended as an argument about where Jews ought to live. It is the story of brave and tenacious people who have rebuilt their lives in the face of incomprehensible horror and refused to be pushed out of their homes by bigots.
The Jews I write about here are an eclectic group, selected in as arbitrary a fashion as possible. My only criterion for choosing a particular community was that it had previously been decimated by the Holocaust. In those communities I sought out Jews of any kind—the more varied, the better. I spoke with tailors, bakers, and butchers—I did not want only prominent people. But two people I interviewed are well-known political activists: one has an international literary reputation. A few are well-known