By Bernard Postal and Samuel H. Abramson
The Landmarks of a People, a Jewish tourist’s guide to Europe, is a book which fills a long-felt need.
It will be deeply appreciated by Jews who visit Europe either as tourists or on business and who have been looking in vain for a comprehensive book to guide them not only to Jewish hotels and restaurants but also to places of Jewish historical interest. Its perusal will also inspire many who until now had no special inclination to search in their travels for Jewish monuments, to do just that and to take a deeper interest in the history of their people and in Jewish sights and sites in Europe.
It affords me a special pleasure to write of this book—which is to be published shortly by Hill and Wang, Inc.—because I had once planned the compilation of such a guide.
I have traveled extensively throughout Europe—not as a pleasure-seeking tourist nor as a prosperous businessman, but, alas, as a “vagabond” with empty stomach and empty pockets, yet with a fervent desire to see everything Jewish I could lay my eyes on. From Ireland to Finland, from Sweden to Portugal, from Turkey to Holland, from Bulgaria to Switzerland, from Denmark to Italy, and from Yugoslavia to Cyprus, throughout the length and breadth of Europe I looked for Jews, Jewish communities and monuments of interest to Jews.
As I write these lines, some of the these pass before me in my mind: the Old-New Synagogue of Prague and the tomb of the Maharal, the great Portuguese Synagogue of Amsterdam and the old Sefardi Cemetery in a suburb of that city; the old Synagogue and the Maimonides Square in Cordova in Spain; the closed synagogues of Salonica in Greece, which once had been a metropolis of Sefardi Jewry; the Jewish quarter in Galata in Istanbul and the Pletzel in Paris; the Arch of Titus in Rome and the tomb of Abarbanel in Padua; the statue of Socrates by the Jewish sculptor Antokelsky in Lugano and Michael Angelo’s David in Florence; the remains of the Theresienstadt concentration camp and the mass grave of the Budapest ghetto; the Round Tower in Copenhagen with the name of G-d in Hebrew letters inscribed thereon, and the Vatican library with its great treasures of Jewish books.
Some of these sites and many more a Jewish tourist to Europe should not miss.
In some cities it is not easy to find Jews. Yes—you might do as I did—look in the telephone directory for Cahan, Cahen, Kahn, Kohn, Kon, etc., and in this way, find even in a remote and small town, a brother of yours. (By the way: There is an interesting Jewish landmark in the Swiss telephone book. Beside the names of a few Jewish families you will see the following note: “Sabbath and Jewish holidays the telephone will not be answered.”) In other places, not even the telephone book might be of help to you. May I confess here that ten years ago I did not succeed in contacting Jews in Madrid—though my wife, who had been there a few months earlier, was not only able to find Jews there, but also attended a Hanukah service in a basement room which then served as their synagogue. I did my best to find Jews. With an issue of the Israel “Herut” daily—for which I wrote at the time—spread out before me, I walked on the Prado, one of the main streets of Madrid, hoping that a Jew, attracted by the Hebrew letters, would come up to me with a warm “Shalom Aleichem.” It did not work. Seemingly, no Jew passed me or noticed the newspaper.
However, from now on, Jews traveling to Europe will have no excuse of missing their brethren even in a small town, and should have no trouble finding and visiting Jewish communities and monuments of Jewish interest. The Landmarks of a People should take care of them.
The Jewish Press, Friday, March 30, 1962