Autobiographical interviews of Jews born in German speaking countries ("Yekkes") - 50/60 years after their immigration to Israel

Original name: Gerhard Mandel. Born 1929, Vienna. Emigration to Palestine in 1939. Secondary school in a children's home. “Gymnasium” (grammar school) in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Studies of Hebrew literature and theology, later history in Jerusalem. He became teacher in a grammar school and in a teachers' seminary, later literary scholar and university professor. ; Gershon Shaked's childhood and family: His mother's parents fled from Lemberg (Lvov) to Vienna because of a Russian pogrom during World War I. About his mother's many siblings and their fates. His father's parents came from Belz; about the fates of his family during World War II. Both parents ran wool shops. Compared with the economic difficulties of Jews from Galicia, his parents' shops were quite successful. His mother's mother was illiterate, but deeply religious. Shaked's family lived in district X (Favoriten) in Vienna. Though the family was not rich, his father engaged a piano teacher and a private Hebrew teacher for his son (because of his “economic” and cultural ideals). Shaked's parents were not very educated themselves. In Israel, his mother only learned enough Hebrew to talk a little bit with her grandchildren and to go shopping. Shaked's daughters laughed about their grandmother's mistakes in Hebrew; but she read German newspapers and started to read German literature at the age of 60. Shaked's father was a Zionist. He went already to Palestine in 1920, but could work only as agricultural and road worker and fell ill; his mother and his wife wanted him to come back. After the time in Palestine he first despised the orthodox faith. His desire had not been to become a merchant, as he was more a bohemian and would have liked to become an actor; sometimes he performed as a solo dancer (“Eintänzer”). - Analysis of the (not only Jewish) middle-class families in Vienna who used to have maids or nannies even for a single child. - Shaked went to a very small school at Karolinerplatz. He visited the school lately during a stay in Vienna. (Episode: He found again two schoolmates when his memoirs were published in English: His former best friend, who practiced as a lawyer in New York, read the memoirs; he found out that the Hebrew name Shaked means “almond” in English ; and “Mandel” in German and figured that the author could be his former classmate. He wrote him a letter. Details about the fates of Shaked's friends after 1938.) Gershon Shaked's first years in Palestine: About his parents' complicated illegal emigration to Palestine in September 1939. His father was interned in Buchenwald until he got a visa for Barbados. Instead of going there, he tried to go illegally to Palestine via Belgrad and Budapest, with a lot of complications. Gershon had immigrated alone several months before in April. He could not join the children's transport because he got measles. His mother, who had gone to Poland before the war started, was also arrested during these months. About his lonely journey to Palestinel via Trieste and his lonely arrival. ; For the first five years, Gershon Shaked lived in a children's home and school. He had already learned reading at the age of four because of his aunt's books. This aunt lived already in Palestine and helped him. The conditions for the children in the home were poor, but he appreciated the teachers. Repeated return to the topic of the books he read (German literature, history, psychology). His parents first lived in the south of Tel Aviv. In their small apartment, they collected books of German immigrants, mainly for waste paper trading (recycling). Gershon Shaked tried to save those of famous authors for himself. He started only some years later with reading Hebrew literature intensively, when he was sent to a prestigious grammar school in Jerusalem because he was considered to be very talented. He stayed there only for one year because he felt like an outsider among his schoolmates, who were mostly children of big functionaries of the Labor Union. He then moved to Tel Aviv and attended another grammar school there. He thinks that his teachers there were rather boring. About his interest in Marxist literature. He joined a group of young poets and wrote some publications. ; Gershon Shaked's career and family: He did his military service during the War of Independence at the age of 19. Then he decided to study Hebrew literature and theology in Jerusalem. (He gave up his dream of an artistic career because of the typical fear of middle-class people not to be able to earn a living, which his mother transferred to him.) In 1952, he voluntarily worked as teacher in refugee camps for Jewish immigrants from Iraq. He did his BA in 1953 and married. In 1957 he started his MA studies of history. (About the topics of his master and doctoral theses.) For eight years he worked as teacher in a grammar school and parallely in a teachers' seminary. The couple have two children. In 1964 Shaked finished his doctoral thesis and then worked as assistant at the university [and made an academic career: he talks only about some of his books]. Political opinions: About the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: Shaked thinks that the economic dependence of two peoples can force them to coexist peacefully (like Germany and France). - About the dominant role of the oil industry behind all political conflicts in the Middle East. General and personal remarks about psychoanalysis and his later skepticism towards Viennese psychological schools (comparing Jung and Freud).