Jewish spaces and Gypsy spaces in the cultural topographies of a New Europe: heritage re-enactment as political folklore

Abstract

The European phenomenon of Jewish spaces was first described in the mid-1990s. They were then defined as themed environments initiated and operated by non-Jews, often located in historical Jewish neighbourhoods. Since then Jewish spaces have become a well-established concept in the media and among academics. This article explores Gypsy spaces as analogous to Jewish spaces. The paper compares two cases, the Gypsy pilgrimage to Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer in southern France and the Jewish Culture Festival in the Polish town of Kraków. There are striking parallels between the thriving Gypsy music festivals, Gypsy horse fairs and Gypsy pilgrimages on the one side, and Jewish Culture Festivals on the other. The author formulates some hypotheses as to why Gypsy spaces have not yet been recognised and dealt with more extensively. To conclude, the Jewish and Gypsy spaces are situated in a European landscape of remembrance and interpreted as heritage re-enactment within the framework of European integration.

Keywords:

• Jewish spaces
• Gypsy spaces
• European identities
• heritage re-enactment

Notes

  1. Bruner, Culture on Tour, 22. For discussions on the topic, reading early versions of the manuscript and numerous suggestions, I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers of the European Review of History as well as Nathalie Keigel, Alexandra Koehring and the contributors to the lecture series “Narratives of Nomadism”, which took place in the winter semester of 2011 and 2012 at the University of Hamburg with the support of the ZEIT Foundation.

  2. Pinto, “A New Jewish Identity,” 1–15; Pinto, “The Third Pillar.”

  3. Gruber, Virtually Jewish.

  4. Kugelmass and Orla-Bukowska, “If You Build it;” Gruber, “Kraków Jewish Culture Festival;” Lehrer, “Repopulating Jewish Poland;” Waligórska, “A Goy Fiddler”, “Jewish Heritage Production”, “Der Fiedler als Feigenblatt”, “Kleznetworks”.

  5. Šiaučiūnaitė-Vervickienė and Lempertienė, Jewish Space; Murzyn-Kupisz and Purchla, Reclaiming Memory; Ernst and Lamprecht, Jewish Spaces; Brauch, Lipphardt and Nocke, Jewish Spaces; Schischa and Berenstein, “Mapping Jewish Culture in Europe Today: A Pilot Project.” See also the conference of 2012 and on-going research project by Wolfgang Kaschuba, Berlin http://jewish-spaces.com/de [Accessed 6 March 2013].

  6. Broder, “Reise nach Zydoland;” Weiss, “Jewish Disneyland;” Schümer, “Phantomschmerz der Geschichte,” 35.

  7. Gypsies are not a group, but a category of analysis, designating different heterogeneous groups of inhabitants of spaces in-between. As a non-group, they had no interest in citizenship, state and nation during the nineteenth century. See also Streck, “Kultur der Zwischenräume.” Gadjé is the Romani word for non-Gypsies.

  8. Waligórska, “Jewish Heritage Production”, 239; Kugelmass et al., “If You Build It,” 321.

  9. On tourist narratives see Bruner, Culture on Tour, 22.

 10. Even in the 1970s, there were Polish intellectuals who were interested in Jewish history and culture. Jewish students and non-Jewish opposition members met underground when Jews were expelled from the Communist Party in 1968. Kugelmass et al., “If You Build It,” 317.

 11. http://www.jewishkrakow.net/en/see/jewish-festival/; Gruber, “Kraków Jewish Culture Festival,” 361–3; Waligórska, “Der Fiedler als Feigenblatt,” 395–407.

 12. Eckstaedt, “Klaus mit der Fiedel;” Slobin, Fiddler on the Move; Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, “Sounds of Sensibility,” 749–88; Winkler, Klezmer.

 13. Waligórska, “Kleznetworks,” 145.

 14. Eisen, Rethinking Modern Judaism.

 15. For Jewish heritage tourism, see Collins-Kreiner and Olsen, “Selling Diaspora,” 279–90; Ioannides and Cohen Ioannides, “Jewish Past,” 95–110.

 16. For literature on authenticity, see Trilling, Sincerity and Authenticity; MacCannell, The Tourist; Appadurai, The Social Life of Things; Handler and Saxton, “Dyssimulation: Reflexivity, Narrative.”

 17. Gruber, “Kraków Jewish Culture Festival,” 361–3; Waligórska, “Jewish Heritage Production”, 229.

 18. On the concept of liminality see Turner, “Betwixt and Between” and Turner, “Liminality and Communitas.”

 19. Gruber, Virtually Jewish, 148–50; Cohen, “Creation of Community,” 124–38; for the role of the Holocaust in Israel see Zertal, Nation und Tod.

 20. Gudonis, “Constructing Jewish Identity in Post-Communist Poland.”

 21. Declaration of the Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust, available at http://www.holocausttaskforce.org/about-the-itf/stockholm-declaration.html?lang = de.

 22. Steffen, “Formen der Erinnerung,” 367–86; Gross, Neighbors; Gross, Anti-Semitism in Poland; Gross, Złote żniwa.

 23. Ruchniewicz, “Geschichtsstunde.”

 24. Waligo´rska, “A Goy Fiddler.”

 25. Gudonis, “Constructing Jewish Identity,” 48–9.

 26. Pinto, “Third Pillar.”

 27. Rosenson, “Polish Jewish Institutions in Transition,” 269.

 28. Pinto, New Jewish Identity, S. 9.

 29. LeRider, “Mitteleuropa as a Lieu de Mémoire,” 42.

 30. Schenk, “Mental Maps,” 511–13.

 31. Tessmar, “Der Zauber des Weggelegten.”

 32. Gantner et al., “The Constructed Jew.”

 33. Schenk, “Mental Maps,” 511–13.

 34. Schlör, “Bilder Berlins als ‘jüdischer Stadt,’” 209; Weiss, “Jewish Disneyland.”

 35. Bittner, “Die Stadt als Event,” 14–23.

 36. Broder, “Reise nach Zydoland;” Šiaučiūnaitė-Vervickienė and Lempertienė, Jewish Space; Waligórska, “Jewish heritage Production”; Waligórska, “A Goy Fiddler,” 367–82; Gruber, “Kraków Jewish Culture Festival.”

 37. Pinto, “A New Jewish Identity;” Pinto, “The Third Pillar.”

 38. Schümer, “Phantomschmerz der Geschichte,” 35.

 39. See also the Australian documentary by Nolan Menachemson, Poland's New Jews (The NRS Group, 2001). Transcripts of the interviews (also with Jonah Bookstein of the Lauder foundation) are on the website: http://polandsnewjews.nrsgroup.com.au/

 40. Pinto, “The Third Pillar;” on Polish-Jewish identities see Rosenson, “Polish Jewish Institutions in Transition.”

 41. Gruber, “Scenes from a Krakow Café,” 41.

 42. On newly created traditions and encodings in the 20-year history of virtually Jewish spaces, see Gruber, “Beyond Virtually Jewish,” 491 ff.

 43. Pusca, “The ‘Roma Problem’ in the EU;” Orta, Mapping the Invisible.

 44. Greverus and Schilling, Zigeuner und Wir.

 45. Vaudoyer, Les Stes Maries de la Mer; Starkie, Auf Zigeunerspuren; Colinon, Les Saintes Maries de la Mer; Derlon, Unter Hexen und Zauberern; Fischer, Schicksal der Zigeuner; Günther, Das Kreuz der Zigeuner. Günther was interested in Zigeuner, but conceived of them as Eastern European: the guitar playing and flamenco dancing Gitans in Saintes seemed like impostors to him. Ohanian, Les Fils du Vent.

 46. In detail for the pilgrimage see Bordigoni, “Pèlerinage des Gitans,” 489–501.

 47. Printed in Colinon, Saintes Maries de la Mer, 175–80.

 48. For the course of events and significance see also McOwan, “Ritual Purity,” 95–109.

 49. Holzer, “Faszination und Abscheu,” 45–56; Brown, Gypsies and other Bohemians.

 50. For Baroncelli, see Zaretsky, Cock & Bull Stories. His Mas (farm) was demolished during the German occupation. Due to its proximity to the coast, the estate was located in the blocked zone, so he had to retreat to Avignon where he died in 1943.

 51. Zaretsky, Cock & Bull Stories, 97–105.

 52. Bordigoni, “‘Pèlerinage des Gitans,’” 492.

 53. Zaretsky, Cock & Bull Stories, 61–84.

 54. Zaretsky, Cock & Bull Stories, 135. Gitan is etymologically derived from Egyptien.

 55. Bordigoni, “Pèlerinage des Gitans,” 494–6.

 56. Scott, “Imagining the Mediterranean,” 225–6.

 57. Norton, Political Identity, 53–8; Park, “Human Migration,” 881–93.

 58. Zaretsky, Cock & Bull Stories, 135 f.

 59. Filhol and Hubert, Les Tsiganes en France, 122.

 60. Debilly, Un camp pour les tsiganes; Pernot, Un camp pour les Bohémiens; Bertrand and Grandjonc, “Saliers.”

 61. Filhol and Hubert, Les Tsiganes en France, 318.

 62. Starkie, Auf Zigeunerspuren, 262.

 63. Boissevain, “Revitalizing European Rituals.”

 64. Pizepan, “Les étapes du développement du flamenco.”

 65. See the special issue Baumann, Folk Music in Public Performance.

 66. Sere, “Les Tsiganes séduits par le prosélytisme.”

 67. McDowell, Gypsies, 45.

 68. Bordigoni, “‘Pèlerinage des Gitans,’” 496. The Gitans used to camp along the village streets and engaged in various forms of exchanges with the locals, being allowed to use their water and outhouses, bringing them cloth and other goods from the north.

 69. See also Bruner, Culture on Tour, 194.

 70. Silverman, “Trafficking in the Exotic,” 336.

 71. Boissevain, “Introduction,” 13–14.

 72. Wiley, “Romani Performance,” 136.

 73. Turner, Vom Ritual zum Theater, 125.

 74. Fraser, The Gypsies, 47.

 75. Pratt, “Arts of the Contact Zone,” 33–40.

 76. Pratt, Imperial Eyes, 7.

 77. Rosaldo, Culture and Truth, 208.

 78. Bruner, Culture on Tour, 193.

 79. Vaudoyer, Les Stes Maries, 47.

 80. Bruner, Culture on Tour, 17.

 81. Scott, “Imagining the Mediterranean,” 224.

 82. Scott, “Imagining the Mediterranean,” 226.

 83. Cf. the films of the Romanian director of Jewish origin Radu Mihaileănu, Train de vie (1998) and Le Concert (2009).

 84. Waligórska, “A Goy Fiddler;” Helbig, “All Connected Through the Gypsy Part of Town;” Silverman, “Trafficking in the Exotic;” Szeman,“‘Gypsy Music’ and Deejays.”

 85. Ronström, “Concerts and Festivals,” 57 f.

 86. Lehrer, “Repopulating Jewish Poland,” 335–55. Eastern Jewish dolls and souvenirs from Cracow, photographed in 2008, can be found at http://picasaweb.google.com/tsimblist/TsimblingAcrossEuropeJuneJuly2008#523016546803924118.6.

 87. Brown, Gypsies and other Bohemians; Saul, Gypsies and Orientalism; Colmeiro, “Exorcising Exoticism,” 127–44. For exoticising Balkan Gyypsies see Holzer, “Faszination und Abscheu.”

 88. Waligórska, “A Goy Fiddler;” Gruber, “Beyond Virtually Jewish.”

 89. I cannot further elaborate here on flamenco culture and workshops which are well established in southern France, for example in Nîmes. They offer the Gitans residing there opportunities for cultural recognition and integration.

 90. Barth, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries.

 91. Balibar, We, the People of Europe?

 92. The general and diffuse term “identities” is deliberately avoided here and replaced with terms such as self-image, social positioning, identification, categorisation, group affiliation and feeling of togetherness. Brubaker et al., “Beyond ‘Identity,’” 1–47.

 93. Norton, Political Identity, 53.

 94. Norton, Political Identity, 57–8.

 95. Pusca, “The ‘Roma Problem’ in the EU;” Sigona and Trehan, Romani Politics; Marjanović, “The Racist Regime.”

 96. Malvinni, The Gypsy Caravan; Silverman, “Trafficking in the Exotic;” Szeman, “‘Gypsy Music’ and Deejays;” Helbig, “All Connected Through the Gypsy Part of Town;” Marković, “Brass on the Move.”

 97. Helbig, “Ethnomusicology and Advocacy Research,” Hemetek, “Applied Ethnomusicology.”

 98. Hegburg and Abu Ghosh, “Introduction: Roma & Gadje,” 7. They speak of “the absence of the Romani Holocaust from non-Romani narratives both scholarly and ethnonationally surfaced as a concern shared by contemporary ethnographers and archivally oriented historians.” Stewart, “Remembering without Commemoration;” Filhol, “L'indifférence collective.”

 99. Helbig, “All Connected Through the Gypsy Part of Town.”

100. Silverman, “Trafficking in the Exotic.”

101. Szeman “‘Gypsy Music’ and Deejays,” 99.

102. Dobreva, “Celluloid Gypsy;” Pusca, “The ‘Roma Problem’ in the EU.”

103. Simhandl, “Beyond Boundaries?”

104. Bogdal, Europa erfindet die Zigeuner.

105. Scott, “Imagining the Mediterranean,” 226–7.

106. Simhandl, “Beyond Boundaries?,” 79.

107. Schär, “Nicht mehr Zigeuner,” 206.

108. Salazar, “Imagineering Tailor-Made Pasts,” 94.

109. Salazar, “Imagineering Tailor-Made Pasts,”106.

110. Balibar, We, the People of Europe?