A Chosen Few
Authors: Mark Kurlansky
A Chosen Few
“This book is a fascinating review of the changing life of Jews and Judaism and Europeans in general since the Second World War.”
—
Rocky Mountain News
“Kurlansky does an astonishingly informative job here, covering a vast array of individuals and communities throughout Europe, chronicling the economic, political, and cultural trends that reshaped and often played havoc with their lives and destinies. His descriptions of life in Antwerp, Paris, Budapest, and Amsterdam are superb, while his chapters on Poland are among the best I’ve read.”
—S
usan
M
iron
Forward
“A richly descriptive and insightful survey of post-Holocaust European Jewry … With a novelist’s eye for irony and description, [Kurlansky] offers many moments of transcendence and humor; entertaining culture clashes between communists and capitalists, religious and secular, Zionists and diasporists.… A lively, penetrating follow-up to Holocaust readings that speaks volumes about the resiliency of the Jewish people.”
—
Kirkus Reviews
“Kurlansky’s collection of case histories unfolds like a novel.”
—
The Jewish Advocate
Acclaim for the work of Mark Kurlansky
Salt
“An immensely entertaining read … Kurlansky continues to prove himself remarkably adept at taking a most unlikely candidate and telling its tale with epic grandeur.
Salt
reveals all the hidden drama of its seemingly pedestrian subject. There is even a kind of poetry in the very chemistry of salt.”
—
Los Angeles Times Book Review
“Bright writing and, most gratifyingly, an enveloping narrative … It is Kurlansky’s neat trick to be both encyclopedic and diverting, to leave no grain unturned as he ties one intriguing particular to another, through time and space, keeping the reader’s attention.”
—
San Francisco Chronicle
“Mark Kurlansky is a writer worth his salt.… [He] always manages to bring out the sharpest flavors in his subject matter. For readers thirsty for well-told history,
Salt
hits the spot.”
—
Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Throughout his engaging, well-researched history, Kurlansky sprinkles witty asides and amusing anecdotes. A piquant blend of the historic, political, commercial, scientific, and culinary, the book is sure to entertain as well as educate.”
—
Publishers Weekly
Cod
“[An] eminently readable book … History filtered through the gills of the fish trade.”
—
The New York Times Book Review
“[A] fascinating study of the interrelationship between humans and fish.”
—
The Philadelphia Inquirer
“[A] naturalist triumph, a smoothly written, beautifully designed book … Kurlansky’s steady tone, somewhere between
Captains Courageous
and the mourner’s Kaddish, is perfect.”
—
Boston magazine
“[An] engaging history … Highly recommended.”
—
Library Journal
(starred review)
The Basque History of the World
“Thoroughly engaging … Kurlansky writes history with a quirky verve that makes his books as entertaining as they are enlightening.”
—
The Boston Globe
“A rich mix of mythos and reportage, history and anecdote, literature and etymology, culinary lore and recipes, this history may be the most important English work on Iberia since Robert Hughes’
Barcelona
.”
—
Miami Herald
“[A] lively, anecdotal, all-encompassing history of Basque ingenuity and achievement.”
—
The Atlantic Monthly
“Kurlansky’s book makes for highly enjoyable history, food, and travel reading.”
—
The Washington Times
A Ballantine Book
Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group
Copyright © 1995 by Mark Kurlansky
Introduction 2002 copyright © 2002 by Mark Kurlansky
Reader’s Guide copyright © 2002 by Mark Kurlansky and the Ballantine
Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc. Originally published by
Addison-Wesley Publishing Company in 1995.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by The Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Portions of this book have appeared, in somewhat different form, in
Partisan Review
and
Harper’s
.
Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Ballantine Reader’s Circle and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number is
2001012345
eISBN: 978-0-307-48289-1
v3.1_r1
“If God lets me live, I shall achieve more than my mother ever did, I shall not remain insignificant, I shall work in the world for people.”
—A
NNE
F
RANK
’s diary, April 11, 1944
“
Solange ed Juden gibt, wird es immer Nazis geben
.”
(As long as there are Jews there will always be Nazis.)
“A Jew is a citizen of no country except Israel.”
“
Waarom leef ik?
” (Why am I alive?)
—three of the comments written in the guest book at the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam
ONTENTS
PROLOGUE:
The Fifth Son in Berlin
——
——
——
——
——
——
EPILOGUE:
Freedom in the Marais
APPENDIX:
Jewish Populations in Europe
if they do it for no reason
there’s no motive
if they all do it
no one knows who has done it
.
—H
ENRYK
G
RYNBERG
,
“The Perfect Crime,” 1989
Anti-Semitism has proven to be one of the most enduring concepts in European civilization. In a 1927 book called
The Wandering Jew
, about the struggles of poor eastern European Jews, Viennese Jewish novelist Joseph Roth concluded that anti-Semitism would vanish from the world, ended by the Soviet Union. He wrote of anti-Semitism, “In the new Russia, it remains a disgrace. What will ultimately kill it off is public shame.” He noted virulent outbursts in Russia but dismissed them as the death struggles of dinosaurs resisting the inevitable future.
Roth even speculated that “If this process continues, the age of Zionism will have passed, along with the age of anti-Semitism—and perhaps even that of Judaism itself.”
Today the Soviet Union has been gone for a decade but anti-Semitism is still here. So for that matter, is Judaism. “The Jewish question”—I have never been certain what the question is—that Roth predicted would be put to rest with Russian leadership, has endured.
