Ausgabe
Studie über die Rückkehr
Evelyn Adunka
Inhalt
Viennese Jews after the Holocaust
Wayne State University Press, Detroit 2021
271 S., U.S. Dollar 34,99.-
ISBN 978-0-8143-4838-3
Die Historikerin Elizabeth Anthony, die die Visiting Scholar
Programs at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for
Advanced Holocaust Studies am United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum in Washington leitet, stellt in ihrem Buch die
Frage:
“Why did some Viennese Jews still envision homes and lives in
a country that had shortly before robbed and then either expelled
or deported them?”
Die Studie basiert auf Anthonys von Debórah Dwork an
der Clark University betreuten Dissertation. Die Autorin beschreibt
zahlreiche Fallbeispiele, zitiert aus Interviews, die sie
während eines Forschungsaufenthalts in Wien geführt hatte,
und legt für ihre Einleitung eine gründliche Analyse der Sekundärliteratur
vor. Einzelne kurze Kapitel widmet sie den
Mitgliedern des Young Austria in London, Berufsgruppen wie
Anwälte und Ärzten und Fragen der Restitution. Abschliessend
stellt Anthony fest:
„Important to returning Jews was that they felt thoroughly Viennese.
They wanted to again be part of that city and that society,
defining themselves and operating within the boundaries it required,
Reémigrés recommenced the delicate navigation of antisemitism
with the assumption that they could handle the challenges of
such discrimination. Presuming it would pose no more of a problem
than they had encountered before, they considered Austrian’s
embrace or tolerance of the Nazis’ eliminationist antisemitism to
have derived from opportunism rather than from principled, deeply
held conviction. […] Home after all had motivated and enticed
them back, and once there, the majority of them indeed made it
home again, even if that home was neither the same as before nor
exactly as they expected. “
