Bruce Feiler - Where God Was Born, Abraham, Walking The Bible

Nazi Tourism
Monday, March 5, 2007

You've heard of eco-tourism. How about Nazi tourism? The City of Vienna is in New York this week pitching itself as a honeymoon spot for Jews, highlighting a decades-long campaign to make Jews feel welcome in a city long associated with Hitler and the Holocaust.

The tour also touts Vienna's successes in urban renewal, waste management and attracting innovative industries. But at its heart are the amends it has made for its Nazi past – paying out reparations, returning stolen property, and helping to set up a “Jewish Welcome Service” that over the past 27 years has funded hundreds of visits by Austrian Jews who fled the Nazis.
Austrian authorities have paid for the rebuilding of synagogues, Jewish schools, memorials and other institutions serving the capital's 7,000 Jews.
“Everything is OK. I feel good here,” said Raphael Chai Malkov, who moved to Vienna from Israel in 1989 and owns a kosher bakery and grocery. “I hope it will stay this way.”
Three of the 12 planned events deal with Jewish themes – a visit to a Brooklyn Hassidic community by representatives of Vienna's Jews; a discussion of “Contemporary Jewish Vienna,” and a showing of “Zorro's Bar Mitzvah,” a documentary about four Austrian Jewish youths preparing for their religious coming-of-age ceremony.

BTW, here's what Variety says of the film: Vet documaker Ruth Beckermann blends healthy irony with bemused respect in "Zorro's Bar Mitzvah," which follows four youngsters in Austria as they celebrate becoming full members of the Jewish community at age 13. Film smoothly challenges the unstated taboo of portraying well-off German-speaking Jews whose children are thriving and have no qualms about expressing their Jewish identities. Intimate, communicative lensing and keen editing suggest an all-media career for Jewish and non-Jewish auds alike.

To learn more about the film, click here.

Labels: Europe, Judaism

Posted by B Feiler at 7:00 AM
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