Ghosts of Home

The Afterlife of Czernowitz in Jewish Memory

Marianne Hirsch, Leo Spitzer

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780520944909
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Jewish Theology

In modern-day Ukraine, east of the Carpathian Mountains, there is an invisible city. Known as Czernowitz, the "Vienna of the East" under the Habsburg empire, this vibrant Jewish-German Eastern European culture vanished after World War II—yet an idealized version lives on, suspended in the memories of its dispersed people and passed down to their children like a precious and haunted heirloom. In this original blend of history and communal memoir, Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer chronicle the city's survival in personal, familial, and cultural memory. They find evidence of a cosmopolitan culture of nostalgic lore—but also of oppression, shattered promises, and shadows of the Holocaust in Romania. Hirsch and Spitzer present the first historical account of Jewish Czernowitz in the English language and offer a profound analysis of memory's echo across generations.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Illustrations
• Preface
• PART ONE: "WE WOULD NOT HAVE COME WITHOUT YOU" 1998
• 1. "Where are you from?"
• 2. Vienna of the East
• 3. Strolling the Herrengasse
• 4. The Idea of Czernowitz
• 5. "Are we really in the Soviet Union?"
• 6. The Crossroads
• PART TWO: THE DARKER SIDE 2000
• 7. Maps to Nowhere
• 8. The Spot on the Lapel
• 9. "There was never a camp here!"
• 10. "This was once my home"
• PART THREE: GHOSTS OF HOME 2006
• 11. The Persistence of Czernowitz
• 12. The Tile Stove
• EPILOGUE 2008
• Notes
• Selected Readings
• Index