Amber Nickell, review of Being German Canadian: History, Memory, Generations, Alexander Freund, ed., Canadian Jewish Studies v.35 (Spring 2023). (original) (raw)
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Being German Canadian: History, Memory, Generations, edited by Alexander Freund, explores the experiences of German immigrants and their descendants in Canada through the lenses of history, memory, and identity. The collection examines how German and German Jewish migrants navigated their pasts and integrated into Canadian society, particularly in the context of the legacies of World War I, the Holocaust, and the Nazi regime. While addressing contributions from various authors, the review highlights the need for a broader engagement with diaspora scholarship and the importance of understanding Germanness in a Canadian context.
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2011
One aspect of post-Holocaust Jewish life to which little attention has been paid in the study of Holocaust literature is the experience of migration. This article examines three Canadian Second Generation Holocaust memoirs and their portrayal of migration. Memoirs by Jewish-Canadian authors prove to be particularly beneficial for analyzing aspects of migration because the immigration of Canada’s survivors often took place when their children were old enough to consciously experience it. Lisa Appignanesi’s Losing the Dead (1999), Eva Hoffman’s Lost in Translation (1989), and Elaine Kalman Naves’s Shoshanna’s Story (2003) all depict the challenges of the arrival to 1950s Canada. The memoirs explore the ways in which the young immigrants cope with dislocation, alienation, and belonging. Against the backdrop of a traumatic family history, they experience different forms of ‘cultural crossings’ – for instance, with re- gard to language, the immigrant’s body, or religious identity. The focus on migration in Second Generation memoirs highlights the transnational and transcultural rather than merely the transgenerational features of Holocaust memory.
The Contours of Canadian Jewish Life
Contemporary Jewry, 2011
Though a small minority (approximately 1% of the Canadian population), Jews have been important in shaping Canadian culture and identity and have had an open presence in the country since 1760. This paper seeks to provide an historical overview of the immigration and settlement of Jews into Canada and the subsequent growth and development of the community. Using recent Canada census data and local Jewish community studies, it identifies key demographic features of contemporary Jewish life and, where possible, compares this to the United States. The paper paints a picture of Jews as fulfilling the twin promise of Canadian multiculturalism: they have been successful in integrating into larger Canadian society while at the same time retaining a vibrant internal Jewish religion and culture. By outlining current issues and trends in Jewish life in Canada, this work demonstrates the growth and maturation of the Canadian Jewish community. The paper moves beyond the outdated ''time-lag'' theory in order to explain the more traditional nature of Canadian Jewry compared to the United States. It identifies a range of other historical, political and geographical factors to account for this difference. Keywords Canadian Jews Á Canadian Jewish history Á Demography This work is designed to serve as an introductory article to this specialized volume on the Jews of Canada. By providing a broad-sweeping sketch of the historical and contemporary context within which the Jewish community of Canada lives and operates, the article is designed to set the stage for the articles that follow in this volume. It sets out to offer breadth of coverage over particular depth in any one historical or demographic feature of Canadian life. By providing this background, it is intended to prepare the reader to better appreciate the subsequent articles, each of which examines a particular angle or feature of Canadian Jewish life.
Marianne Hirsch defines postmemory as a form of memory that “characterizes the experience of those who grow up dominated by narratives that preceded their birth,” such as the Holocaust, explaining that those occupied by postmemory often find their “own belated stories are evacuated by the stories of the previous generation [and] shaped by traumatic events that can be neither understood nor recreated” (Hirsch 22). My paper will examine the transmission of Holocaust trauma, not from survivor to child as has been the predominant focus in literary and psychological studies, but as it is represented through postmemory in Jewish Canadian memoirs of second- and third-post-Holocaust generations. I intend to focus on two compelling works: Bernice Eisenstein’s memoir I was a Child of Holocaust Survivors (2006), and Jonathan Garfinkel’s memoir Ambivalence: Adventures in Israel and Palestine (2008). The Holocaust is a central pillar of Canadian Jewish identity and though Eisenstein’s family was displaced from Poland by the Holocaust and Garfinkel’s was displaced also from Poland by pogroms that foreshadowed the horrific event, both authors are representative of how Holocaust trauma has been passed down not only through familial lineage, but through ancestral lineage as well. Drawing on work done previously on Canadian Jewry by historians such as Richard Menkis and Gerald Tulchinsky, writing by Marianne Hirsh on postmemory and tropes of Holocaust representation, and by Shoshana Felman on post-Holocaust writing, I will attempt to answer the following question: How can the inheritance of Holocaust trauma and acts of postmemory rewrite diasporic identity narratives? Work Cited: Hirsch, Marianne. Family Frames: Photography, Narrative, and Postmemory. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press, 1997. Print.
Postmemory in Canadian Jewish Memoirs: The Holocaust & Notions of a Jewish Homeland
A version of my Master's thesis, published in "Israelis: A Bilingual Periodical by Israel Studies Students" published out of the Ben-Gurion Research Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in 2017. Can be found online here: http://in.bgu.ac.il/bgi/israelis/DocLib/Pages/2017/Lizy-Mostowski.pdf
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