Reluctant Return: A Survivor's Journey to an Austrian Town"This beautifully written memoir, which shifts smoothly from past to present as it blends memory and contemporary experience, is a story that will resonate with any sensitive Jew. [The book] intrigues and challenges, transcends the personal and becomes a universal statement." -- Hadassah Magazine "In an astonishing and moving document, Weiss... describes his 1995 return trip to the Austrian hometown from which, as a boy, he fled Nazi persecution in 1938..... [T]his soul-searching odyssey... will reward readers of all faiths." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review) "A powerful and unusually eloquent memoir of a prominent Austrian Holocaust survivor invited back to face... old ghosts and demons.... An intelligent and profound memoir." -- Kirkus Reviews David Weiss is an eminent biomedical scientist, now living in Israel. But in 1938 he was an 11-year-old boy in Austria who dramatically escaped the Nazis with his family. For some 56 years Weiss held a deep and abiding enmity for everything Austrian and German. Reluctant Return is his account of his emotional return to his hometown of Wiener Neustadt, the remarkable Christian group that brought it about, and the visit's surprising echoes and consequences. |
From inside the book
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... A Thousand Years in a Blood - Stained Land 63 10. Wiener Neustadt , March 1938 , and Escape 68 II . Berkeley to Jerusalem 86 12. Pater Johannes Vrbecky 96 13. Hillel and Yair Sign On 102 14. The Week of Return : Wiener Neustadt , May.
... Jerusalem shortly after I came home from the Woche der Begegnung in Wiener Neustadt , the town in which I grew up . They urged me to record the story of what brought that week about and what I was trying to make of it , and they ...
... my frequent outbursts of enraged vanity . I acknowledge her contribution with love and admiration . David W. Weiss Jerusalem July 1998 RELUCTANT RETURN Chapter 1 A CALL FROM HELMUTH EIWEN DECEMBER XII / ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.
... JERUSALEM y secretary announces a call from Zurich : " The man sounds Israeli . He says you don't know each other . " We don't . He represents an Israeli organization in Switzer- land and Austria , and he has been asked by an ...
... Jerusalem right now , at an assembly of European Freikirchen . They and their people come frequently to demonstrate support and to volun- teer . Are you willing to talk with him ? He is reluctant to call you direct- ly ... perhaps you ...
Contents
1 | |
4 | |
Ulis Visions | 8 |
Return? Nunc Mas | 12 |
Guardian Angel as Starshina | 19 |
Roots and Specters | 25 |
The Tactics of Remembrance | 33 |
Encounter at the Holyland | 39 |
Wiener Neustadt March 1938 and Escape | 68 |
Berkeley to Jerusalem | 86 |
Pater Johannes Vrbecky | 96 |
Hillel and Yair Sign On | 102 |
Wiener Neustadt May 1995 | 110 |
What the Pastor of Ichthys Has Caught in His Net | 181 |
When One Stands Face to Face | 188 |
A Thousand Years in a BloodStained Land | 63 |