As the daughter of Eastern European Jews, Rachel Salamander spent the first seven years of her life in the Displaced-Persons camp pine forest in the South of Munich. With their “literature of action” created a store for Jewish literature and publications on Judaism. In the meantime, it has become a widely branched network. In Germany, only a few can speak so clearly about Jewish topics, such as salamanders. the By Anne Goebel
– Rachel Salamander in 1999, the Cultural prize of honour city of Munich, in the always a little dusty looking Old town hall, travels from Berlin, the Minister of culture. Michael Naumann praises the winner of the prize, the audience listens, the car radar transparent chandelier glow. Then Rachel Salamander takes the floor and reminds one of the beginnings of your Jewish bookstore in the city – fifty years “after the Entjudung of the German book trade”. An ugly word is suddenly in the room. It is believed to be felt in the rows of a Tremble.
Rachel Salamander, who celebrates today, Wednesday, in their seventieth birthday, has answered in your life many awards. The speech in Munich 20 years ago, was one among many, and yet they showed an example: to speak In such clarity about Jewish issues, to call such precise things as they are, without being unforgiving, and can in Germany, not many. It was just a slight vibration, at the time, in the festival hall. Because the front of a woman, elegant, bright, with flaming red hair, which left no doubt that they want to build something fruitful between Jews and non-Jews in Germany. The truth is the first step.
Rachel Salamander “literature of action”, the specialist shop for Jewish literature and publications on Judaism, has long since become an extensive network. There are six branches, among others in Berlin, countless tributes have emphasized the uniqueness of the project, which took in 1982, his start in Munich’s Prince street. A Store for Jewish books and books about Jews, in the Land of the perpetrators, in the former “capital of the movement”: it was “a monstrous novelty,” says Salamander, and works every Time even a little surprised if they reported the impact of your idea.
the project is not only therefore is the correct term, because at the beginning it was unclear whether the Plan would succeed, but also because the then 33-Year-old had more in mind than Regal way to offer books for those interested. It was a place of encounter, the rescue of the lost Jewish cultural life. “I wanted all those re-naturalized, and burned had been expelled.”
grew up between the people, “wearing a piece of destruction”.
as we know, both. The literature acts seem to thrive, even in times of unstable book shops. Especially the headquarters in Munich has become a vibrant centre of Jewish and non-Jewish life. Readings and discussions with authors Henryk M. Broder to Nicole Krauss have done over the years, a significant contribution to the “bias and Timidity in dealing with the subject of Judaism”, as Salamander says. Of lay about students to students of every Inquisitive in the literature for action at the Munich Jakob is the place to find it – in the meantime, the business opened in 2006, the Jewish centre is located.
Rachel Salamander, the some years the editor of the Literary world was, told with the literary plot of your own story. In 1949, the daughter of Eastern European Jews born, who escaped the Holocaust in the Soviet Union, she spends the first seven years of her life in Föhrenwald near Munich, in a Displaced-Persons camp to Survivors of the Holocaust. For the emigration to Israel, the mother is weak, she dies in 1953.
As a girl, the Rachel Salamander has often told, she marked on the one hand, the feeling of a great Emptiness, Growing up between people, “wearing a piece of destruction”. But also the “infinite security”, they gave her the child. And after studying German in Munich, after the Promotion “I thought it would be a good idea, the understanding of the diversity of Jewish life to pass on”. And that’s what she did then.