Hotel Bolivia: The Culture of Memory in a Refuge from Nazism Review

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(More customer reviews)When many think of the land locked country of Bolivia, they think of narcotics, Nazi's and natural resources. Few think of Jews. But to Jews fleeing Europe after the Anschluss of 1938, Bolivia was the place about which to think. Bolivia offered a safe haven in a world of closed doors; at least 20,000 Jews found refuge in La Paz, Sucre, Oruro, Cochabamba during the War.
Leo Spitzer, a Professor of History at Dartmouth and specialist in cultural memory and gender studies, was born in La Paz in 1939, his parents having just fled their beloved Vienna. His book, Hotel Bolivia, succeeds in providing an enlightening look at the little known story of the Jewish refugee community in Bolivia; and also, for the most part, Spitzer accomplishes his goal to craft a meditation on the nature of individual and collective memories and the ability of people to adapt to their new environment.
Through interviews, testimonies, documents, diaries, and recollections, many rendered benign by the passing of time, Spitzer relates to us the stories of the refugees who never felt at home in Bolivia -- people who viewed themselves as refugees and not residents -- perceiving Bolivia as a transit station, a hotel by the name of Hotel Bolivia.
In 1938, Bolivia was still recovering from its devastating Chaco War with Paraguay. This Catholic country that was seventy percent Quechua and Aymara-speaking mestizos did know a little about Jews. Its liberator, President Antonio Jose de Sucre, was probably part crypto-Jewish, and Mauricio Hochschild, of German Jewish parentage, was one of Bolivia's wealthiest industrialists. Into this high altitude came over 20,000 Jewish refugees. While most gained entry in order to set up agricultural settlements, just a few hundred ever left the urban center of La Paz for the good earth of cooperative farming.
The story of Spitzer's own family's crossing from Genoa to La Paz is engrossing. Although Spitzer's grandfather Leopoldo, for whom he is named, died on the ship en route to Boli! via, the Spitzer family's shipboard photos and recollections are filled with optimism and are devoid of sorrow. Did the passage of time distort their memories? It was not until Spitzer discovered his father's captions on the obverse sides of the photos that he learned of his father's profound sadness of leaving his homeland (Heimat) and his extreme feelings of loss on losing his beloved father and having to bury him during a port call in Caracas. Spitzer sharply quotes journalist Herb Caen's observation, "Nostalgia is memory with the pain removed."
Leo, named for his grandfather who had died just a few weeks prior, became a link to the past in this new and alien land. The other refugees recreated several other links to their pasts, including the Circula Israelita, Austria Club, Juedische Jugendbund, Judische Gemeinde, and Macabi socials and sporting clubs.
Spitzer shows how the sinking of the refugee ship "Orazio" took on an amplified importance in the refugee community. Although most of the Orazio's passengers, who were en route to Bolivia, were rescued off the coast of France, the sinking came to represent the collective experience of all the Jewish refugees.
The most disconcerting passages in HOTEL BOLIVIA are those attributed to some of Bolivia's "German" Jewish leaders during the War, some of them laced with prejudice against the Ostjuden of Poland.
Today, with less than 1,500 Jews residing in Bolivia, and fewer than 100 of the original refugees, Leo Spitzer transmits an important story to us about forgotten refugees, their adaptations, their institutions, and their even leaders' attempts at communal farming.

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