Description
Book SynopsisIn 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. This memoir chronicles the city's survival in personal, familial, and cultural memory.
Trade Review"[This] monumental book ... is a stunning marriage of intellectual curiosity and personal search. [It] reads with the poignancy of memoir, yet in a collective voice... The overarching authorial voice is nuanced and reflective but also informed. " Pri's The World "Hirsch and Spitzer expose the complex layers that inform our understanding of the past." Jewish Book World "Unique ... Ghosts of Home collects the fragments of one place and provides us with an artifact that is as close as we will ever come to 'perfect rest.'" Tikkun Magazine "An interesting volume." German Studies Review "Eminently readable... Hirsch's depiction of prewar Jewish life is masterful." -- Norman Ravvin Canadian Jewish News "The ability to observe, evaluate, and contextualize habits and specific objects is one of the greatest strengths of this book." Austrian History Yearbook
Table of ContentsList of 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 Chernivtsi at Six Hundred Notes Selected Readings Index
