ePub Bitter Ashes: Fallen Timbers at Shiloh by Will Turner in History

Description

In the 1930s; many tens of thousands of people fleeing Nazi-dominated Europe found refuge in Latin America. And in the short; terrifying months between the Anschluss and Kristallnacht in 1938 and the outbreak of World War II; Bolivia was one of the few remaining places in the entire world to accept Jewish refugees; more than twenty thousand Central Europeans were soon remaking their lives in this unknown land. Their story was largely overlooked until Leo Spitzer began his pathbreaking work for Hotel Bolivia; their extraordinary experiences have never been examined in such touching; memorable detail. But Hotel Bolivia is more than a colorful chapter in the history of the Jewish diaspora; and more than another effort to document the life stories; and reclaim the memories; of ordinary people who have been hidden from history. Leo Spitzer—whose Viennese Jewish family arrived in La Paz in 1939 and who lived in Bolivia for almost ten years—is a historian with a special interest in the interdependence of; and tension between; memory and history. With a subtle use of oral-history sources—interviews with survivors who left Bolivia and now live in Israel; the United States; Europe; and elsewhere—and unusual archival illustrations and photographs; he examines the effects of displacement on the experiences of people remaking their lives in a country so strange to them—effects on their European culture and memories; on their Jewish identities; and on Bolivia's politics and society. His beautifully written book is a personal testament to the diverse cultures that shaped him and a haunting consideration of the ways we make meaning out of the cultural baggage we carry with us wherever we go.