Czernowitzers... For so many years we have been dealing with genealogy in Bukovina as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The many names and name variations of our ancestors have left many of us with unanswered questions. But never before have I found answers to some of these questions in a more humorous way in a literary work. According to the Sunday Times, Joseph Roth's is “one of the literary masters of the twentieth century”. In the third chapter of his work “The Wandering Jews”, i. e. “Ghettoes in the West”, Joseph Roth follows a poor Eastern European Jew who has made it to Vienna:
“When he sets foot in the Second District, he is greeted by familiar faces. Or do they really greet him? No, he probably just sees them. People who have already been there for ten years have no use for the recent arrival. Someone else has arrived. Someone else wants to earn. Someone else wants to live. The worst of it is: He can’t just be left to perish. He’s not a stranger. He is a Jew and a compatriot. Someone will be found to take him in. Someone else will advance him a small loan or get him credit. Someone else will organize a territory for him, or turn over his own. The new arrival will go into installment selling. His first and most difficult call is on the police. The man behind the counter dislikes Jews in general, and Eastern Jews in particular. He will demand to see papers. Exotic, improbable papers. Papers the like of which are never required from Christian immigrants. Besides, Christian papers are in order. All Chistians have sensible, European names. Jewish names are mad and Jewish. Nor is that all: They have two or three surnames, qualified by false or recte. You never know what to call them. Their parents were married by a rabbi. The marriage has no legal standing. If the father’s name is Weinstock, and the mother’s Abramovsky, then the children of their union will be called Weinstock recte Abramovsky, or perhaps Abramovsky false Weinstock. The boy, for example, is given the Jewish first name of Leib Nachman. Because the name is difficult and might sound provocative to others’ ears, the son styles himself Leo. So his name is: Leib Nachman, styled Leo Abramovsky false Weinstock. As far as the police are concerned, names like that are nothing but trouble. The police don’t like trouble. Nor is it just the names. The birthdates are inaccurate. The papers have generally been burned. (The registry offices in small towns in Galicia, Luthuania, and Ukraine were continually ablaze.) All the papers have been lost. Nationality is a moot point. Following the War and the Treaty of Versailles, it’s become still more complicated. Now, how did our man get across the border? Without a passport? Or with a false one? That means his name isn’t his real name - even though he gave so many of them, so many, in fact, that they can’t all be right - but it’s probably wrong in an objective sense as well. The man listed on the papers, on the alien registration form, isn’t the same as the man who’s standing in front of him. So what’s to be done? Lock him up? Then the wrong man would be locked up. Have him extradited? That would be extraditing an imposter. Whereas if he’s told to come back with proper papers, with sensible names on them, then it wouldn’t just be sending the right man packing, but maybe a way of making a wrong’un into a proper one. Se he’s sent packing, and again, and again, and again. Till it dawns on the Jew that he has no option but to give false information for the correct impression. To stick to one name that might not be his but would be a plausible and believable name anyway. The police have given the Eastern Jew the idea of concealing a true but tanglet set of circumstances behind bogus but tidy ones. Everyone professes astonishment at the capacity of Jews to give false information. No one professes astonishment at the naive expectations of the police.” For all those who can/want to read the work in the original German, here is the download link: https://sammlungen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/download/pdf/741597.pdf Enjoy the enlightening reading! Edgar Hauster [MacBook] ******************************************************************************* This moderated discussion group is for information exchange on the subject of Czernowitz and Sadagora Jewish History and Genealogy. The opinions expressed in these posts are the opinions of the original poster only and not necessarily the opinions of the List Owner, the Webmaster or any other members or entities connected with this mailing list. The Czernowitz-L list has an associated web site at http://czernowitz.ehpes.com that includes a searchable archive of all messages posted to this list. Beginning in 2021, archived messages can be found at: https://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ To send mail to the list, address it to <[email protected]>. To remove your address from this e-list follow the directions at https://it.cornell.edu/lyris/leave-e-lists-lyris To receive assistance for this e-list send an e-mail message to: [email protected] -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
