Jewish destinies in Timișoara. The portrait of the community from the interwar period until today, Getta Neumann. Hasefer Publishing House, 2014. The second edition, 2018
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In May 2011, in Haifa, we met 270 Jews who had spent many years of their lives in Timișoara. The emotion of rediscovery, the wave of nostalgia that overwhelmed us and the obvious inner need to share our baggage of feelings generated the idea for me to record life stories of the Jews of Timișoara. I talked to people from different generations, between 35 and 97 years old, in Timișoara, in Israel, in the USA and Canada, in Germany, Sweden and France. In semi-guided conversations, they talked about childhood and family, school and career, about the individual destiny, inseparable related to historical events, the social and political context, the local mentality. The course of the dialogue was winding at will, but it always returned to the key points: What defines us? What meaning do we give to existence? What binds us? What does Timișoara mean to us? What life lessons does our experience teach us? Remarkable are the joy of life and trust in people who persist despite traumatic feelings - war, deportation, injustice, anti-Jewish demonstrations, emigration. In times of trouble, the most effective shield is humor and goodwill. Horrors are told with reluctance and modesty, and some scary events are told as anecdotes that emphasize the hilarity, the absurd. Getta Neumann
It is a book of findings on several wavelengths, but also one of shared nostalgia. It is, for others, the ignorant, the opportunity to discover a specific universe of life, the lived history of a community that they were or were not close to, that they admired or ignored, that they will discover here, wanting to know more. Conf. dr. Smaranda Vultur. West University Timişoara
… a book with and about the Jews of Timișoara offers new information, problematizes the past from new angles, describes the experiences of the narrator, makes it possible to know the connections with others, with other communities. The life stories of the interviewees update the Jewish cultural code, contextualizing it in Timişoara between the interwar and post-war decades.. Prof. univ. dr. Victor Neumann, historic. West University Timişoara