WALTER LAQUEUR
415
of the thirties (from
Nosferatu
to
Ninochka
and
For Whom the Bell Tolls)
went
as a pioneer to Palestine; he calls his recent autobiography
Heimat Los!
(1997), but the uprooting seems not to have caused him many sleepless
nights-he has become so much part of the Rehavia scene in Jerusalem
that he probably would not like to live anywhere else.
Dr. Dorit Bader Whiteman, a clinical psychologist, has written about
the lasting emotional consequences for the young uprooted. Her conclu–
sions about emotional wounds suffered seem eminently sensible-for
instance, that "escapees have grave doubts about mankind in an abstract
sense and about the fate of the world." But the same would appear to be
true with regard to all generations who lived through the Second World
War, except perhaps those in the United States who were lucky and did
not suffer the ravages of war, and, to a lesser degree, those in Bri tain. This
is not to belittle the emotional consequences of being uprooted, but it
should never be forgotten that the twentieth century more than any previ–
ous one was a century of expulsions and resettlement, especially in Europe
and Asia, and that tens of millions of people were affected. A few memoir–
writers complain that they were deprived of their youth, with all that this
implies: the right to be carefree, to dream, to be irresponsible, to waste their
time. True enough; but if so, they chose the wrong time to live. Those born
in Europe between 1915 and 1925 were not good insurance risks in the
first place and they were lucky to survive without substantial damage.
The preoccupation with the need for roots has been replaced to some
extent with the fashionable debate about identity, ethnicity, ethnic group
identification, self-esteem, and so on. This is a relatively recent phenome–
non and it developed at the same time as multiculturalism was spreading.
It is in many ways more of a second-generation problem. For when the
young emigres of 1933-39 arrived in Britain or in the United States, it
seemed obvious that there was a majority society and culture, and that inte–
gration in this society was the commandment of the hour, rather than
stressing their own ethnic and cultural diversity. Nevertheless, the quest for
identity has been reflected in several memoirs.
Before 1933, German Jews in their majority had moved far, not just
from the Jewish religion, but from interest in and identification with things
Jewish. Some no longer thought of themselves as Jews, quite irrespective of
whether they had officially dissociated themselves. Mter the Nazi rise to
power, and later, under the impact of the Holocaust, there was a rediscov–
ery ofJudaism, within limits. Few memoirs fail to mention this. With this
rediscovery came a new interest in family origins, and eventually the urge
to write down recollections. It is doubtful whether all this amounts to a
renaissance of Jewish feeling among the members of the generation on
which this review has focused, let alone their children or grandchildren.
