Face Of Survival

In the late 1930s about 4.7 million Jewish men, women and children lived in the East Central European countries of Poland, Hungary, Romania and Czechoslovakia. Over 4.2 million, or 90 per cent, of these lives were lost in Hitler's war against the Jews - the Holocaust. Today, even the most optimistic estimates put the Jewish population of these countries to be not more than 150,000. Behind these cold statistics lies the tragedy of European Jewry. Behind the sad facts of persecution and destruction is also the story of survival. Out of the despair of 1945 Jewish life in each of the countries concerned was reborn. As a result of individual as well as collective efforts and in the face of varying degrees of adversity Jewish communal life was maintained in all of East Central Europe through the worst days of Stalinist and neo-Stalinist rule. The collapse of communism in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Romania has transformed Jewish life in these countries yet again. A new set of circumstances has been created in which the emergence of democratic freedoms has been a mixed blessing. There has been a revival of Jewish cultural life, and greater numbers of Jews than previously are now openly professing their Jewishness. At the same time, under the pressure of mounting political, national and economic tension antisemitism has resurfaced. The Face of Survival combines narrative and autobiographical text with many hitherto unpublished photographs to view Jewish life in East Central Europe from the vantage-point of the present. In words and pictures it traces the history of the Jews of Poland, Hungary, Romania and Czechoslovakia from the late nineteenth century through the First World War, theinterwar years and the Holocaust till the present day. Throughout the book every care is taken to depict the full richness of Jewish life in each of the countries concerned, and while each society is treated singularly, running through the book is a visible comparative thread.