(September / October 2000)
HOTEL BOLIVIA: THE CULTURE OF MEMORY IN A REFUGE FROM NAZISM By Leo Spitzer. Hill and Wang, New York, 1999.
So here I am, living in Richmond, B.C., age 55, and revisiting my past as Outlook asks me to review Leo Spitzer's Hotel Bolivia. Born in Sucre, Bolivia, 1944, I personally have not been a guest in my high-altitude "tin hotel" since 1950. That is when my parents came to Canada, sponsored by my much older brother who had been a prisoner of war. (Being a German national, but studying at a Jewish school in England when the war broke out, he was shipped to Canada, and eventually regained freedom and became a Canadian citizen.) Dad operated a small sawmill in Gibson's landing called Sucre Lumber Company. My parents stopped speaking Spanish, yet continued with German. I promptly forgot all my Spanish, but can still communicate quite well in German. Therein lies the rub, indeed the crux of irony that is intertwined through much of Spitzer's book. The German language prospered in exile, despite what the German and Austrian Jews suffered at the hands of Hitler. After the war, when many of them checked out of the "hotel" to points more practical, the German-speaking gestalt remained firm, and as always, combined with varied shades of Yiddishkayt. You cannot imagine the surreal memories that were triggered for me reading Spitzer's well-researched account of those days, even though I was only five when we came to Canada! Those memories, though distant, are overwhelming!
As the book's preface puts it, "Hotel Bolivia examines the relationship between memory and cultural survival during an era of persecution and genocide" At the same time Spitzer ties together something I never realized. Bolivia, of all places, had played a role of refuge for Jews fleeing persecution back in the years of the Spanish inquisition. Some of the marranos-persons of Jewish origin, forcibly converted to Christianity, settled in my place of birth, Chuquisaca (later Sucre), as well as other Bolivian communities such as Santa Cruz and Taria. Up to the first few decades of the twentieth century, their descendants-now Catholics-nevertheless continued to light candles on Friday evening and "maintained in 'Sucre' a semi-secluded seven-day deep mourning period for their dead that in form, if not substance, bore a great resemblance to the Jewish mourning service of Shiva."
Spitzer, in explaining how the events of the Third Reich transformed this land-locked South American country into a guest house for thousands of Jewish families (including his own from Austria), reveals a deep need to tell the story and research fully the events that led up to this most unbelievable exodus.
Hotel Bolivia's first chapter, "Desperate Depature," opens with an in-depth examination of the situation in Austria after the 1938 Anschluss. There is a photograph of Lize Rosenfeldt (a Jewish neighbor of Spitzer's maternal grandparents) daring to sit on a bench in a Vienna park marked "Nur Für Arier"(For Aryans Only). The photograph, taken by Spitzer's father with a precision Rolleiflex (that had to be sold before the family's departure) is dated August 30, 1938, almost six and a half months after the Anschluss. A second photo (taken by Spitzer's father as well) on the same page, shows a lunar eclipse. The author comments on this photograph of the darkening and the eclipse of light, "What better way to represent and convey the advancing forces extinguishing the central European era of emancipation and cultural effervescence in which Jews had been so prominent? How clever of my parents to display the essence of the times in such an understated but powerful manner."
As a backdrop to ensuing events in Bolivia, this first chapter establishes a reality that in today's press sometimes tends to be swept under the historical carpet. The following chapters take the reader with the mainly Austrian and German Jews to a land that is the antithesis of Johann Strauss and the Blue Danube. Here people from various European backgrounds are thrown together in such unheard-of locations as Potosi, Cochabamba, Sucre, Oruru, and La Paz. La Paz becomes the most populated, instant shtetl, more than two and a half miles above sea level. The highest capital in the world, La Paz is carved out of the hills, with majestic Mount Illimani and Lake Titicaca looming above like some supernatural Inca manifestations. Altitude sickness is common, yet the experience becomes breathtaking; everyone there in the same "reed boat" or "hotel" learns to adjust, coming to terms with the unimaginable and yet somehow retaining a grip on the future.
Within the culture of the llama, panpipe, the Spanish-speaking elite, the cholos (people of mixed Indian and Spanish descent) and First Nations (the largest indigenous population in South America), a semblance of normalcy and a common chord had somehow to be struck by European immigrants. Spitzer provides incredible insight into the ways in which the guests of the "hotel" managed, and quite often without much helpful "room service". One Bolivian president, German Busch, helped the Jewish population find employment through the promotion of a farming experiment deep in the jungles. (Busch died in 1939 under rather mysterious circumstances.) Maurico Hochschild (of European Jewish background, who came to Bolivia sometime before the crisis in Europe), head of the tin mines in Potsi, worked hard to find employment for the refugees, and was quite friendly with Busch. Hochschild wanted to make a more refined impression for his influential connections by not rocking the boat. Yekkes (German-speaking Jews) were welcome, but Eastern European Jews (polacos), according to Spitzer, were not. When the next regime came to power, Hochschild fell into disfavour, was imprisoned and almost faced the firing squad. Only through the intervention of persons of high influence was Hochschild released and flown out of the country. He never set foot on Bolivian territory again. The influence of the Nazi party could not be ignored in Bolivia. However, as a new political order was established and the war years became history, many of the original Jewish refugees were able to "check out."
Spitzer notes that today there are no more than 1500 Jews living in Bolivia. However, his book gives clear testimony to the multitude of memories that live in, and haunt, the hearts of Bolivian-Jewish "children" scattered around the world.
A desire to give closure to these memories, one suspects, is what prompted Spitzer in 1991 to place in Aufbau (a German Jewish newspaper published in New York since 1934) an ad reading, "I am seeking interviews with persons who emigrated to Bolivia in the 30's and early 40's from Germany or Austria." The catharsis or search came together and was bound in book form more than four decades after Spitzer's arrival in the U.S. His research revealed that life in the "hotel" was not just an attempt to reconstruct a "Little Hamburg" or "Little Vienna" in the Andes. However, this often appeared to be the case. For example, in two Bolivian newspapers, Rundschau vom Illimani (1939) and Jüdische Wochenschau (1940), ads appeared for the Cafe Vienna, Club Metropol, Café Restaurant Wiener, and for Bolivian-produced European sausages, pastries, delicatessen items and other culinary pleasures from "back home." Refugees with theatrical backgrounds put on classical German productions that were popular and well attended by the refugee communities.
Spitzer explains that children of refugees received both formal and informal education strongly influenced by cultural memories of Europe. There were Bolivian State Schools that children could attend, however, more often than not, other schooling was chosen. Spitzer attended the Escuela Boliviana-Israelita in La Paz. He remembers learning in the second year from his teacher about the map of Europe, specifically, the Blue Danube and the Rhine, "with its many castles and the beautiful Austrian Alps." This tunnel vision of a sanitized Central European culture was imparted almost with delight on one level. Yet on another level were the increasing reports of Nazi victories and atrocities. A rather difficult mixture to digest, particularly for children in later years.
How were the Jewish refugees received by the Bolivian people? Spitzer explains that for the most part, Bolivians were quite supportive of the Jewish immigrants, for which many Jews were grateful. Nevertheless, there were a few cases in which the opposite was quite apparent as well. Spitzer describes and reproduces antisemitic cartoons and photos from the Bolivian press of 1939-40, including a photo of the first prize winners in a carnival contest for most humourous costume. The winners are grotesquely costumed as classic caricatures of Jews, complete with false noses. D irect influence from Nazi Germany became increasingly evident in Bolivia. German clubs in La Paz and Oruru organized activities to which members of the Bolivian military and civilian elite were often cordially invited. As well, German-sponsored schools in Cochabamba, La Paz and Oruru became key agencies for Nazi propaganda.
Visiting the Jewish cemetery recently in La Paz, Spitzer walked among the names that remain through the dust of those years. Those pages were the most difficult of all to read! I hope someday that the genius of a Stephen Speilberg will be driven by the depth of Spitzer's true-life experiences and research to turn this magnificent book into an equally compelling motion picture.