Customer Reviews

A Hole in the Heart of the World: Being Jewish in Eastern Europe

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I don't know if the author Kaufman is Jewish or not, but his account appears not to be opinionated, biased, judgmental, or one-sided, but gains its strength through the characters or the situation "talking," rather than the author explaining things as Goldhagen tried to do in Hitler's Willing Executioners. I had read quite a few books on the Holocaust and wondered what happened after the war. Kaufman answers this question clearly and to the point, and for this I give him five stars. - As for the book's readability, as noted in previous reviews, the narrative introduces us to several Jewish families in different East European countries, and lets us "follow them" closely from the war's end to after the Berlin Wall fell. The result is quite good and, at the same time, very surprising and unexpected, at least to me; the characters are alive and real and they and their histories will remain in the reader's memory for some time. - Overall, I think Kaufman did an excellent job in answering my question as to what happened to the European Jews after the war. I was impressed.

Jonathan is first a journalist. He gives you a penetrating view of what it was like to be in Europe under communism as told by people that lived it. He makes you identify with these people and feel their stories. This is no simplistic story of good and evil. This is the story of real and complex people dealing in their different ways with an impossible situation. Some rebelled, some hid, and some joined the enemy. The only common thread is that they were all alive to tell Jonathan their stories when the Berlin Wall fell. Fortunately Jonathan was there at this unique point in time to listen to their stories and tell them to us.

Jonathan Kaufman wrote a wonderful book. It is very authentic, very broad and very readable, especially considering that it is non-fiction. The characters and situations are so real that all the time whilr reading I had the impression that the author had to come from that area in order to have such an understanding for the place and for the people.

Inspiring fascinating journey into the "heart of the world," former communist block countries where Jews are coming out of the woodwork. Kaufman does a fabulous job tracking down some amazing people and telling stories which need to be told. I've recomended this book to all of my friends. None of them has bothered to read it and frankly I'm sorry for them because reading this book is a life enriching experience. Three cheers for Kaufman

This book by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Jonathan Kaufman was written as the walls of Soviet Communism came tumbling down under Perestroika and Glasnost in 1989. Within this world changing backdrop Kaufman skillfully charts the lives of Jewish families living in countries virtually hidden from the Western world under communist rule from the end of the Second World War.

Kaufman's main project in writing this book was to chart the survival of the tiny Jewish communities in Eastern Europe pre- Perestroika, devastated by the Holocaust through the lives of some larger than life characters who would not be out of place in a novel. Such as the courageous Ferenc brothers in Hungary who despite the passive opposition of their father, a communist party member, and the virulent official anti-Semitism, in the guise of anti-religiosity and anti-Zionism, of the Hungarian government, went on to become Rabbis, and in the oldest brother's case, Tomas, a leading Jewish dissident, and finally a member of parliament under the new democratic government in the 1990s. No less dramatic or courageous in their own way are the stories of Nechama Estrongo the Greek born canter and survivor of Treblinka, and his German born Jewish wife. Estrongo sings and spiritually administers to the tiny elderly Jewish population of West Berlin and every Friday night crosses the border into East Berlin to the communist controlled radio station to broadcast religious songs to the even smaller more isolated Jewish population of East Germany. There are touching portraits of Barbara Asendrych in Poland, brought up as a Catholic during the war and growing up as an indifferent Catholic under Communism she discovers from a former Jewish friend of her "mother's" that she was in fact Jewish and was given to her adoptive mother by her true birth mother when she was new born with the hope she would survive the war. Kaufman then follows her emotional and spiritual journey to trace her family and to rediscover her lost Jewish self. The book comes to no conclusions about her continued search.

But perhaps the most dramatic of all is the story of Gregor Gysi, the son of a fiery communist Jewish mother and gentile German father who survives the war as a Communist partisan hiding with his then part Jewish fiancée Gabrielle, who later became his wife. Insisting through most of his life that the Nazis persecuted him because of his communism rather than his Jewishness despite losing almost all of his mother's side of the family in the Holocaust (his mother escapes to France and becomes ant-communist and pro-Zionist) he remains the most enigmatic and self deluded character of the whole story. Rising to become Minister of Culture under Eric Honneker he was distrusted by intellectuals, and anti-communist activists as a communist party stooge on the one hand and equally distrusted towards the end of the Communist era by Honneker and his supporters as a cosmopolitan Jew.

Kaufman takes us on a historical journey of Eastern Europe after the war describing how the former centers of European Judaism such as Budapest, Warsaw and Berlin had become virtually bereft of Jews, those remaining appearing as ghostly reminders of what Europe had lost in terms of art, culture, science and commerce as well its very soul. What the Nazis tried through violence to do the communists through enforced assimilation almost succeeded in doing and that was to obliterate Jewish presence finally from the communist European map.

The book ends optimistically if not somewhat triumphantly. The next generation of Jews in countries such as Germany, Hungary, Poland and former Czechoslovakia are now looking forward to a renaissance of Jewish life since the fall of Communism which many of the figures drawn in the book could only dream about during the dark days of Communist rule.

As a huge holocaust literature reader I found this book to be extraordinarily important. It shows losses that many of us have never considered before. This is an important book to understand an era that shows so much about what people are capable of doing.

A book set in Eastern Europe after world war 11 where many jews had hidden their
identities because of the nazis and later because to be communist and jewish
was not workable
How some coped others suffered and some only discovered their jewish identities
when they were older
It is well written interesting and at times very sad

This is a book for anyone interested in a story about the survival and ultimately, the rebirth of a culture and religion in Europe. Reporting on the cataclysmic events of this century in Europe and focusing on the history of five families since the end of WWII, this book is a nuanced account of how these families survived fascism and then communism and emerged with the fall of communism into the more hopeful light of a new Europe. I found it absolutely riveting

Like many people, including the author, I thought the Jewish population was close to nonexistant in Eastern Europe following WW II. After the fall of the Wall in 1989, the author discovered that was not totally true, and does a wonderful job of writing about the experiences of 5 Jewish families in Eastern Europe during the Cold War. It was an eye opener for me. While I knew that the Communist regimes hadn't exactly strongly supported Judism, I didn't realize they had launched such strong anti-Semite campaigns (or pogroms). Very easy read and it teaches you quite a bit about post-War Eastern Europe.

This is a beautifully touching book that takes a glimpse into the lives of people impacted by and living through Europe during the war and the following decades. It covers the lives of many people in Germany, Hungary, etc. in a way that makes you truly appreciate the impact to people's lives and sense of identity. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in this period of time.