New Publication -- Jewish Cemeteries and Tourism

A visitor takes a picture in the Old Jewish Cemetery in Wroclaw, Poland, long adminstered as a museum of funerary art

Last year I was commissioned by the ESJF (European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative) to write a report on “Jewish Cemeteries and Sustainable Heritage Tourism.” 

This has now been published as part of an online handbook on Jewish cemeteries and sustainable tourism.

In my report I examine the history and background of what we can broadly describe as tourism (religious and secular) to cemeteries in general and to Jewish cemeteries in particular, with examples and recommendations on how to encourage and manage visitors while retaining the sacred character of the sites.

I discuss examples ranging from religious pilgrimage and honoring loved ones to “Dark Tourism” and appreciation of landscape, funerary art, and history.

And I provide profiles/case studies of the different ways that visitors are currently managed and/or encouraged/dealt with at Jewish cemeteries in several towns and cities in Europe, including Prague; Warsaw; London; Biala (PL) and Osoblaha (CZ); Plymouth, England; Wroclaw; Brno (CZ), and Mád (Hungary).

Click here to access the book, in the ISSUU format, which can also be downloaded 

Table of Contents for my Jewish Cemeteries and Sustainable Tourism section:

Lodz Ghetto photos -- my article

Downtown Lodz today

The Jewish Quarterly publishes my review of the book Memory Unearthed: The Lodz Ghetto Photographs of Henryk Ross, a fascinating collection of posed photographs and unexpected snapshots taken in the WW2 Lodz Ghetto and hidden underground until after the war.


By Ruth Ellen Gruber

June 22, 2015

The extraordinary images reprinted in Memory Unearthed: The Lodz Ghetto Photographs of Henryk Ross are survivors, both physical and symbolic.

Ross, born in Warsaw in 1910, was one of the more than 200,000 Jews imprisoned in the World War II Lodz ghetto. Thanks to his background as a photo-journalist, he was appointed to a privileged position—an official photographer for the Statistics Office of the Ghetto’s Jewish Council (Judenrat).

He worked in that capacity from 1940 to 1945, taking thousands of photographs that documented the widest possible range of ghetto life—and death.

On the one hand, his official work produced everything from ID portraits and group photos of ghetto police, to Potemkin village-like shots of ghetto inmates, smiling at their benches as they laboured in Council-run workshops, or “resorts”, including those that employed young children.

But he turned his lens, too, on other scenes far outside the purview of propaganda—scenes of violence and mass deportations, scenes of murder and malnutrition, scenes of death. Often taken on the sly, from a camera hidden under his coat, these images are chilling but almost familiar in the Holocaust horror they depict.

Ross, though, also immortalized intensely personal moments that put the death, destruction and degradation in a much more intimate, even unlikely, context: kids at play, a smiling bride at her ghetto wedding, friends clowning, a couple stealing a kiss.

Ross, who survived the Holocaust and emigrated to Israel after the war, knew just what he was doing and just what he wanted to do.

“Having an official camera, I was secretly able to photograph the life of the Jews in the ghetto,” he wrote in 1987, four years before his death. “Just before the closure of the ghetto in 1944, I buried my negatives in the ground in order that there should be some record of our tragedy, namely the total elimination of the Jews from Lodz by the Nazi executioners. I was anticipating the total destruction of Polish Jewry. I wanted to leave a historical record of our martyrdom.”

In January 1945, after the Red Army liberated the ghetto, he went back and dug up what he had hidden. Fewer than 3,000 of the 6,000 negatives he had buried survived intact; others were severely damaged from seven months under ground.

But by bringing them back to light, he brought them, and what they represented, back to life. Ross unearthed not only shadowy strips of celluloid; he unearthed direct testimony to the cruelty of life inside the ghetto, and direct testimony, too, to life itself – the lives lived by ghetto inmates, intimate glimpses of humanity side by side with the horror.

    …Continue reading

Publication -- New book to which I contributed is out: Philosemitism in History

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

I'm delighted to announced the publication of "Philosemitism in History," edited by Jonathan Karp and Adam Sutcliffe (Cambridge University Press). I contributed one of the 14 chapters  -- "'Non-Jewish, non kosher, yet also recommended': beyond 'virtually Jewish' in post-millenium Central Europe."

Philosemitism in History

Too often philosemitism, the idealization of Jews and Judaism, has been simplistically misunderstood as merely antisemitism "in sheep's clothing." This book takes a different approach, surveying the phenomenon from antiquity to the present and highlighting its rich complexity and broad impact on Western culture. Philosemitism in History includes fourteen essays by specialist historians, anthropologists, literary scholars, and scholars of religion, ranging from medieval philosemitism to such modern and contemporary topics as the African American depictions of Jews as ethnic role models, the Zionism of Christian evangelicals, pro-Jewish educational television in West Germany, and the current fashion for Jewish "kitsch" memorabilia in contemporary East-Central Europe. An extensive introductory chapter offers a thorough and original overview of the topic. The book underscores both the endurance and the malleability of philosemitism, drawing attention to this important but widely neglected facet of Jewish-non-Jewish relations. This book offers a broad and ambitious overview of the nature and significance of philosemitism in European and world history, from antiquity to the present. It underscores both the endurance and the malleability of philosemitism, drawing attention to this important but widely neglected and generally misunderstood facet of Jewish-non-Jewish relations.

Table of Contents

Introduction: a brief history of philosemitism Adam Sutcliffe and Jonathan Karp 

Part I. Medieval and Early Modern Frameworks: 

1. Philosemitic tendencies in medieval western Christendom Robert Chazan
2. The revival of Christian Hebraism in early modern Europe Abraham Melamed
3. The philosemitic moment? Judaism and republicanism in seventeenth-century European thought Adam Sutcliffe 

Part II. Three European Philosemites: 

4. William Whiston's Judeo-Christianity: millenarianism and Christian Zionism in early enlightenment England Adam Shear
5. A friend of the Jews? The Abbé Grégoire and philosemitism in revolutionary France Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall
6. Ordinary people, ordinary Jews: Mór Jókai as Magyar philosemite Howard Lupovitch 

Part III. The Cultural Politics of Philosemitism in Victorian Britain and Imperial Germany: 

7. Bad Jew / good Jewess: gender and semitic discourse in nineteenth-century England Nadia Valman
8. Anti'philosemitism' and anti-antisemitism in imperial Germany Lars Fischer
9. From recognition to consensus: the nature of philosemitism in Germany, 1871–1932 Alan T. Levenson 

Part IV. American Philosemitism: 

10. Ethnic role models and chosen peoples: philosemitism in African-American culture Jonathan Karp
11. Connoisseurs of angst: the Jewish mystique and postwar American literary culture Julian Levinson
12. 'It's all in the Bible': evangelical Christians, biblical literalism and philosemitism in our times Yaakov Ariel 

Part V. Philosemitism in Post-Holocaust Europe: 

13. What is the opposite of genocide? Philosemitic television in Germany, 1963-1995 Wulf Kansteiner
14. 'Non-Jewish, non kosher, yet also recommended': beyond 'virtually Jewish' in post-millenium Central Europe Ruth Ellen Gruber.