Böcker i Europaisch-judische Studien - Editionen-serien

In the last two decades a large amount of previously secret documents on Jewish issues emerged from the newly opened Communist archives. The selection of these papers published in the volume and stemming mostly from Hungarian archives will shed light on a period of Jewish history that is largely ignored because much of the current scholarship treats the Shoah as the end of Jewish history in the region. The documents introduced and commented by the editor of the volume, András Kovács, will give insight into the conditions and constraints under which the Jewish communities, first of all, the largest Jewish community of the region, the Hungarian one had to survive in the time of the post-Stalinist Communist dictatorship. They may shed light on the ways how "Jewish policy" of the Soviet bloc countries was coordinated and orchestrated from Moscow and by the single countries. The archival material will prove that the ruling communist parties were restlessly preoccupied with the "Jewish question." This preoccupation, which kept the whole issue alive in the decades of communist rule, explains to a great extent its open reemergence in the time of transition and in the post-communist period.

Even though the Shoa is frequently considered as the end of Jewish history, these documents make clear that the communist parties never stopped to be preoccupied with the "Jewish question." A selection of these papers, stemming mostly from Hungarian archives sheds new light on the "Jewish policy" of the Communist bloc countries.

Max Nordau (1849-1923), Arzt, Schriftsteller und Kulturkritiker, geboren in Pest als Sohn des Rabbiners Gabriel Sudfeld, begegnet Anfang der 90er Jahre Theodor Herzl, dessen Bemuhungen um die Grundung eines Judenstaates er vorbehaltlos unterstutzt. Rasch wird Nordau neben Herzl zu einer Fuhrungsperson der Zionistischen Bewegung: Auf dem I. Zionistenkongress 1897 ist er einer der mageblichen Initiatoren des Basler Programms, das eine gesicherte Heimstatte fur alle Juden fordert. Immer wieder tritt er als brillanter, oft provokativ agierender Redner auf und erweist sich, vielfach angefochten, als unerschrockener Vordenker, Kampfer und Mahner auf dem Weg der Juden zu einem eigenen Staat. Mit den in diesem Band erstmals umfassend prasentierten und ausfuhrlich kommentierten Reden und Schriften Nordaus wird die Grundlage geschaffen zu einer historiographischen Wurdigung eines Zionisten der ersten Stunde.