Peter Salner: MOZAIKA ŽIDOVSKEJ BRATISLAVY (Mosaic of Jewish Bratislava) ****************************************************************************************** * Blanka Soukupová ****************************************************************************************** “The city is the world,” wrote Marc Augé, a French urban ethnology classic. In his new monograph, however, Peter Salner, a Bratislava ethnologist, presents the capital of Slovakia in its past appearance: during the First Republic and the Second Republic and at the time of the Slovak State. His main interest, nevertheless, does not capture the city as a whole, but, primarily, so-called Jewish Bratislava. During the first leafing through this charming book with its numerous historic photographs from the time of the Hungarian monarchy, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Czechoslovak Republic and partly also the Second World War, the reader is already seized by nostalgia: that is, we often look at a Bratislava that Augé, M. (1994). Pour une anthropologie des mondes contemporains, Paris, Aubier. disappeared (frequently, too, because of the insensitive urban renewal of the city space). And even these places that resisted the pressure of the most varied of times are different and somehow less authentic, beautiful and intimate. Perhaps one should look for the cause of this effect in the disappearance not only of the buildings, but also in the prewar lifestyle of Bratislava, which the author thoroughly characterizes as a multi-ethnic and multicultural, trilingual (Hungarian-German- Slovak) city with a cultivated capacity for tolerance. The newly accented trilinguality, however, is bound to the character of the time, not to the genius loci of the city. The Czechs were expelled during the Second Republic; the majority of the Bratislava Jews were murdered during the Shoah or they left in one of the waves of emigration from Bratislava after the Second World War. That time also saw the displacement or forced expulsion of local Germans and Hungarians. The Bratislava world – or, perhaps, Bratislava worlds would be better – thus developed. The book shows the history of the city itself in Jaroslav Franek’s literarily conceived foreword: the retrieval of the radiating past of the city until the present. His ambition was also, however, to sketch the development of Jewish Bratislava from the end of the 18th to the beginning of the 20th century (with intermittent time overlaps). Even if this preliminary text cancels out occasional factographic errors (e.g., Franek writes about the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1782 [p. 10]; it is possible to controvert the minority policies of Joseph II), above all, one can positively appreciate his attempt at a comparison of the Slovak and European development of the relation of governments to the Jews. Franek rightly connected the acme of Jewish Bratislava to the end of the 18th century (pp. 13-14) and rightly pointed out the year 1848 – from the viewpoint of the relation of the majority to the minority – as a key year. By comparing Bratislava with Prague at the end of the 19th century, we ascertain that Bratislava (with more than 10 % of the Jewish population [p. 20]) probably had over 5 % more Jews than Prague. Perhaps thanks to the proximity to Vienna, the Jewish national movement (Zionism) came here at about the same time as to Prague at the end of the century before last. Peter Salner mainly organized his pictures of the Bratislava worlds on the basis of oral-history interviews (video recordings, 1994-1997) with witnesses of the Shoah from Bratislava (50 testimonies). Supplementary sources were archival material, press of the period, and published memoirs. In the first chapter, Salner depicted the dramatic beginning of the First Republic and the relation of the Bratislava Jews, traditionally pro-monarchy oriented, to it: from mistrust (Salner justifiably adds “mutual”) and abhorrence, from the first pogroms to identification with Masaryk’s Czechoslovakia, which meant – with the exception of a pogrom in 1936 – an era of peace and the development of the community (e.g., in 1930, 14,882 Jews lived in Bratislava, i.e., 11 % of the population of the city [p. 43]; the following year 30 Jewish guilds worked here [p. 43]; the Jewish People’s Kitchen offered its services. The Jews had a religious, political, nationally and linguistically structured community speaking five main languages (p. 47). Alongside a majority of Orthodox Jews in Bratislava, there were also Neolog Jews and a minority of atheists. Besides Orthodox Jews and Zionists, there were assimilated Hungarians, Germans and Slovaks. The second chapter of Jewish Bratislava approaches Jewish institutions and life in the city in the interwar period from the viewpoint of witnesses. Thus pictures of three Bratislava synagogues, Bratislava streets and squares, apartment houses, Jewish quarters, distinctive shops and enterprises, walks, schools, etc., parade before us. We feverishly read about memories of mainly good neighborly relations, Bratislava shops and markets, playgrounds and teasing, but also of household facilities of the time and, finally, also of the inhabitants of the city: Jews and non-Jews. No less colorful is a recollection of the functioning of Jewish families: their economics and relation to religiosity; the way they spent their free time, including sport activities (soccer, swimming). At the end of this period reminiscences of the first anti-Semitic excess connected with projection of the film Golem (1936) also shine through. Anti-Semitism penetrated into everyday life. As in the Czech lands, in Bratislava the situation also markedly worsened during the Second Republic. Salner devoted the third, socially most interesting, chapter to the so-called Bratislava Holocaust and subjectively experienced anti-Jewish measures and regulations. I fully agree with him that it is impossible to accept totally the famous Herberg triad of protagonists of the Shoah (perpetrators – victims – onlookers) (pp. 121-122) which, in addition, I feel ought to be in reverse order in that Slovak “solidarity” (like that of the Poles, the Czechs, etc.) with the Jews was often activated by their money and not by a human wish to help. Salner, however, offers the still-existing advocates of the Slovak State, in reality a satellite of Hitler’s Germany, not only subjective experiences of humiliation, but also unambiguous testimonial documents concerning Slovak Aryanization and collaboration. I also consider methodically correct the fact that Salner begins his own interpretation of the Holocaust at the end of 1938 and beginning of 1939, i.e., still in the era of the Second Republic. In Jewish memories, the Bratislava Holocaust takes the form of open physical violence in the streets and the expulsion and humiliation of the Jews. Its perpetrators were not only original German inhabitants, but also members of the feared Hlinka Guard. Bratislava was “beautified” with anti-Semitic posters and anti-Semitic caricatures, bans on entering for the Jewish population – symbols of the new era of the city. Witnesses remember forced migration of their families, Aryanization of Jewish enterprises, a ban on going to the majority of the schools and list of prohibitions contained in the so-called Jewish Code (November 9, 1941): for not wearing the Jewish star, deportation, etc. Some of the Jews chose a life in illegality, in hiding. In mid-1944 Bratislava was bombed. On April 4, 1945, it was liberated by the Red Army. Confused memories of poor clothing, undisciplined and evidently anti-Semitic Soviet soldiers seemed to usher in a continuation of the fates of the Jews after the Second World War. This book, however, ends with a technical description of the road of Jews returning home (but only fewer than onefifth of the prewar 15,000 Bratislava Jews returned). Salner’s book can be read in one sitting. Despite its undoubtedly enriching our knowledge of Jewish Bratislava, I would have a few suggestions. In view of the fact that photographs of the time create one half of the picture of Jewish Bratislava, the author could have paid more attention to their sequencing in the text and their captions (along with new names of squares and streets, we should also consistently find the old names and dates, etc.). Too much intense quotation of memories can also present a certain problem. The reader might welcome more general comments. And finally: I would welcome the application of the method of model analysis to the memories. Blanka Soukupová [ URL "LM-364.html "]