 |
| Image source: jewishmuseum.cz |
Prague and the
historical city center offers many attractions and a lot of exhibitions on
different topics, but we want to suggest you today a special one, commemorating
one of the lesser known episodes of First World War, namely the odyssey of the Jewish
refugees within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. A new exhibition called The
Orient in Bohemia? and hosted by the Robert
Guttmann Gallery – Jewish museum of Prague tries to shed some light on the
issue. The exhibition is organized in three small rooms.
The first room
frames the issue in the historical context. So we learn that as soon as the war
began thousands of people took flight and for the first time in the modern
history, national states were faced with the new problem of refugees. To
deal with this emergency, during the first months of the war the Austrian
Empire hurriedly built up barracks according to ethnical/national identities in
order to accommodate, organize and control this crowd of people. Among them
there were also the Jewish communities from Galicia and Bukovina (in what is now
the western Ukraine), fleeing from their towns and villages occupied by the
Russian Army. This latter had invaded the eastern territories of the double
monarchy in Autumn 1614. The eastern Jewish population was gathered especially
in different camps. For instance, that of Německý Brod (today Havlíčkův Brod) was
originally inhabited by Italian and Istrian refugees, later reserved for Jewish
refugees. Due to epidemic and poor conditions, the mortality was particularly
high in it. Other camps were in Pohořelice, Kyjov
and Mikulov. Small groups of Jewish
refugees were also dispersed in villages and accommodated in dormitories or
apartments, sharing the spaces and necessities with the local people, which
resulted in frequent conflicts. The State provided basic support to those
refugees, who were not able to manage; this implied however, that they were not
allowed to move without permission and were strictly controlled. Civil
committees and aid organisations were also active within the different ethnical
groups to support the refugees, as well as the orphans.
The second
room – a very minimal space which recall a barrack of the camps – offers video
and audio testimonies. The curator, Michal Frankl, told us that it was very
hard to find out these video clips, dealing the most totality of documents
gathered in the past decades almost exclusively with the memory of the Shoah.
Three interviews were finally found out: we can so listen to and watch the
videos of few elderly people who experienced the war during their childhoods in
Galicia and Bukovina.
The third
room enables the visitor to perceive the intricate situation of this Jewish
community. Jews started settling in Galicia and Bukovina in the 12th century,
reaching close to one million on the eve of the Holocaust, although many of
them emigrated at the beginning of the twentieth century, due to the poor conditions
of the region. These eastern community were usually Yiddish-speaking Orthodox
Jews. As they arrived in the camps and settled in the other regions of the
Empire, not only the non-Jewish population, but also their same coreligionists
saw them as exotic in their religious customs, clothing and language. For some
integrated Jews, the strictly observant religious men with caftans and side
curls were a symbol of the ghetto; for other they were a source of authentic
Jewish national culture. “Difference” is in fact the key-word of this section,
which shows through photos and newspaper illustrations, how the perception of
Jewish difference became the subject of intense debate and contributed to the
cliché and prejudices against the “Eastern communities”, regarded as non
emancipated. Especially the photographs of refugees depict this sense of
otherness, as if it was a source of attraction or even ethnographical
fascination in documenting different ethnic or racial types. The encounter of
the “Eastern” Jews with the local inhabitants stimulated a discussion about
Jewish identity, but also stoked prejudices against their allegedly backward.
The historical situation worsened the confrontation: due to the great storage of
food and basic necessities, Jewish refugees – like other refugee groups –
became the target of vicious press campaigns in which they were portrayed
almost as criminals. As the documents showed in the last room prove, demands
grew for their return home, particularly after the founding of Czechoslovakia.
The hatred against the “Eastern” Jews was originally part of the growing
nationalism, but played an important role also in the development of Cyzech
anti-Semitism.
This
exhibition is not so huge, but it represents a really unique experience to
learn more about another forgotten history of the Great War. It deserves therefore
particular attention. If you are in Prague, don’t miss it. It runs till
February 2015. Further information here.
