The Wandering Jews
Encyclopedia
The Wandering Jews is a short non-fiction book (1926-27) by Joseph Roth
about the plight of the Jews in the mid 1920s who, with other refugees and displaced persons in the aftermath of the First World War, the Russian Revolution and the redrawing of national frontiers following the Treaty of Versailles
, had fled to the West from the Baltic States
, Poland
and Russia
. "They sought shelter in cities and towns where most of them had never been and , unfortunately, where they were made despicably unwelcome." Poverty stricken villagers, they were set apart by their origins, their piety and their dress. In the last five months of 1926 he visited the Soviet Union where he wrote the final section, The Condition of the Jews in Soviet Russia. Walter Jens
called it the best book on its subject in German. An English translation by Michael Hofmann
was published in 2001.
Born in Galicia, a Central European province of the Hapsburg Empire, Roth witnessed the end of this Empire yet continued to call it his only homeland. He regarded it as "something that contained multitudes, something not exclusive", and , according to his English translator Michael Hoffman, the Jews represented "human beings in their least packaged form" - "the most anomalous, individual of peoples", fissured by history and geography. Roth believed in "Judaism
, in the sense of a somewhat separate presence of Jews within and throughout and inspiriting Europe." Communism he believed would eliminate anti-semitism and Jewish identity alike. He never went to Palestine
, but he objected to the creation of a nation state there for the Jews. "The young halutz is also the disseminator of a culture. He is as much a European as he is a Jew".
In a Preface to the 1937 edition Roth was only able to hope for " conditions for Jews getting steadily and bearably worse. What happened instead was the Holocaust."
Joseph Roth
Joseph Roth, born Moses Joseph Roth , was an Austrian journalist and novelist, best known for his family saga Radetzky March about the decline and fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and for his novel of Jewish life, Job as well as the seminal essay 'Juden auf Wanderschaft' translated in...
about the plight of the Jews in the mid 1920s who, with other refugees and displaced persons in the aftermath of the First World War, the Russian Revolution and the redrawing of national frontiers following the Treaty of Versailles
Treaty of Versailles
The Treaty of Versailles was one of the peace treaties at the end of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The other Central Powers on the German side of...
, had fled to the West from the Baltic States
Baltic states
The term Baltic states refers to the Baltic territories which gained independence from the Russian Empire in the wake of World War I: primarily the contiguous trio of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania ; Finland also fell within the scope of the term after initially gaining independence in the 1920s.The...
, Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
and Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
. "They sought shelter in cities and towns where most of them had never been and , unfortunately, where they were made despicably unwelcome." Poverty stricken villagers, they were set apart by their origins, their piety and their dress. In the last five months of 1926 he visited the Soviet Union where he wrote the final section, The Condition of the Jews in Soviet Russia. Walter Jens
Walter Jens
Walter Jens is a German philologist, literature historian, critic, university professor, and writer.In the early 1940s, Jens joined the NSDAP. He denies having applied for membership actively and claims having been forced to join the party...
called it the best book on its subject in German. An English translation by Michael Hofmann
Michael Hofmann
Michael Hofmann is a German-born poet who writes in English and a translator of texts from German.-Biography:...
was published in 2001.
Attitudes
Joseph Roth wrote the book for, "readers with respect for pain, for human greatness, and for the squalor that everywhere accompanies misery; Western Europeans who are not merely proud of their clean mattresses." The book displays his "lifelong sympathies with simple people, the dispossessed guests on this earth and his antipathy to a selfish, materialistic, and increasingly homogeneous bourgeoisie." Roth is warm to his subjects, with "the exception of the middle-class, assimilated, denying Jews in the West." Jews in Germany and France, believing themselves to be assimilated, tended to look down on the newcomers to the West. And, "Roth sensed that the countries of Europe, stumbling out of one war and into another, floored by inflation, willing victims of atrocious right-wing propaganda and nationalist rhetoric would not be hospitable to the Jews who were being turned out of the East."Born in Galicia, a Central European province of the Hapsburg Empire, Roth witnessed the end of this Empire yet continued to call it his only homeland. He regarded it as "something that contained multitudes, something not exclusive", and , according to his English translator Michael Hoffman, the Jews represented "human beings in their least packaged form" - "the most anomalous, individual of peoples", fissured by history and geography. Roth believed in "Judaism
Judaism
Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...
, in the sense of a somewhat separate presence of Jews within and throughout and inspiriting Europe." Communism he believed would eliminate anti-semitism and Jewish identity alike. He never went to Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
, but he objected to the creation of a nation state there for the Jews. "The young halutz is also the disseminator of a culture. He is as much a European as he is a Jew".
In a Preface to the 1937 edition Roth was only able to hope for " conditions for Jews getting steadily and bearably worse. What happened instead was the Holocaust."