Reluctant Return: A Survivor's Journey to an Austrian Town

Front Cover
Indiana University Press, 1999 M07 22 - 208 pages

"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.

 

Selected pages

Contents

A Call from Helmuth Eiwen
1
A Mission
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
Copyright

A Thousand Years in a BloodStained Land
63

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Reluctant Return: A Survivor's Journey to an Austrian Town
David W. Weiss
No preview available - 1999

Common terms and phrases

Anschluss anti-Semitism asked Austrian Ben-Yoetz Burgenland called camps century Chatam Sofer Christian church congregation Dachau David death Eiwens face father friends gentile German Gestapo God's hand Hauptplatz Hebrew held Helmuth and Uli Hillel Hillel Weiss Hillie Holocaust human Ichthys Ichthys community immunology Israel Israelis Jerusalem Jewish Jewish community Jews Johannes Vrbecky Judaism kaddish kasher knew Kobersdorf Kohn Kristallnacht land late later learned lives Marianne Neuber meal memory morning mother Nazi Neukloster Neunkirchen Neustädters Niederösterreich Oberrabbiner once parents Pater prayer priest rabbi religious Roman Russian Sabbath Shalom Soviet speak stand stood story Sukhumi synagogue Szolcsanyi talk Talmud tefillin tell Tempel tion told took Torah town town's turned Vienna walk wall week Weiss Westphal Wiener Neustadt wife Woche der Begegnung woman women words Yad Vashem Yair young

About the author (1999)

Born to an old and distinguished Jewish family in Austria, David W. Weiss fled as a child with his parents and sister from Nazi persecution, reaching the United States in 1939. He earned a Ph.D. in microbiology at Rutgers University and a D. Phil. in medicine from Oxford University. A former professor of bacteriology and immunology at the University of California Berkeley, in 1966 he immigrated to Israel, where he founded and directed the Lautenberg Center for General and Tumor Immunology at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In addition to numerous publications in biomedical science, Weiss is the author of works on Jewish law and philosophy, including The Wings of the Dove: Jewish Values, Science, and Halachah.

Bibliographic information

TitleReluctant Return: A Survivor's Journey to an Austrian Town
Reluctant Return
Jewish Literature and Culture
AuthorDavid W. Weiss
PublisherIndiana University Press, 1999
ISBN0253112788, 9780253112781
Length208 pages
  
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