In 1939 there were ten million Jews in Europe. After Hitler there were four million. Today in 1996 there are under two million. On current projections the Jews will become virtually extinct as a significant element in European society over the course of the twenty-first century. Now, in the first comprehensive social and political history of the experience and fate of European Jews during the last fifty years, Bernard Wasserstein sheds light on the reasons for this dire demographic projection.
Drawing on a rich variety of sources, many hitherto unpublished, Wasserstein begins with the painful years of liberation after World War II when Jews tried to recover from the destruction of their people and communities, then traces the Jewish experience in Eastern and Western Europe in different national and ideological contexts. His important and original inquiry covers the impact on Jews of postwar reconstruction, Soviet occupation, the Cold War, and the collapse of communism. These, combined with the memory of Nazi genocide, the persistence of antisemitism, the development of Israel, and the Middle East conflicts, shaped the history of European Jewry in the second half of the twentieth century.
With exceptional eloquence and conviction, Vanishing Diaspora argues that survival for European Jews ultimately will depend on choices they themselves make to reverse trends. They have an alarmingly imbalanced death-to-birth ratio, and many have jettisoned religious observance in the spirit of a secular Europe, losing their cultural distinctiveness as well as their numbers. This often painful story of destruction, irreparable loss, and the shattering of ties thus serves as a wake-up call and a dramatic warning.
Rochelle Wright provides the first historical overview and analysis of the manner in which Jews and other ethnic outsiders have been depicted in Swedish film from 1930 to the present.
Focusing on films produced in Sweden for primarily Swedish audiences, Wright analyzes how the portrayal of the relatively small Jewish minority has evolved over the years. She compares the images of Jews in Swedish film with those of other ethnic subcultures: long-term resident communities such as tattare (‘travelers’, an indigenous pariah group often confused with gypsies), Finns, the Sami, and recent immigrant populations such as Greeks, Italians, Turks, and Yugoslavians.
Wright’s cross-disciplinary approach to interrelated issues of ethnicity and national identity enables her to take advantage of the methodologies of historians and sociologists as well as those of literary and film critics. She bases her study on a detailed analysis of the films, but, by way of comparison, she examines filmscripts and literary sources. She also consults contemporary reviews, interviews with actors and directors, and biographies and memoirs as well as critical discussion among film historians.
Wright confronts important—and exceedingly difficult—social questions. She deals head-on with xenophobia, anti-Semitism, immigration, assimilation, ethnicity, multiculturalism, and the national self-image of Swedes as reflected in their cinema. She also analyzes the manner in which Swedish film represents the persecution of Jews in Nazi-dominated Europe.
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