Moreno History (sort of)

[Adam Blatner]

Why did Moreno's family of origin move from Romania to Vienna around 1900? Reading a book on the history of comic books (in preparation for a talk I'll be giving on this subject), in: 

Jones, Gerard. (2004). Men of tomorrow: geeks, gangsters and the birth of the comic book. New York: Basic Books / Perseus.  ... page 2-3:

   (One of the main characters in the history of comic books also was born in Romania, so: as background:)

1899 was the year of the great Romanian diaspora. For nearly twenty years Jews had been pouring from the Russian Empire into New York, but Romania had been a better place for Jews. To win French and German support for their war of independence, the Romanians had promised to respect the civil rights of all their citizens. Yiddish speakers had poured into the country from Russia, Poland, and the Ukraine, mingling with centuries-old communities of Turkish-, Romanian-, and Ladino-speaking Jews to create a complex and cosmopolitan Jewish world. By the late nineteenth century, Bucharest and the other big cities of Romania were between a third and a half Jewish. Jews rose in urban government; some were elected mayor in smaller cities. Jews owned big businesses, dominated the textile trade, produced prominent lawyers and doctors. Romania briefly promised to become a Jewish haven without match.

But once the Romanian government felt secure in its footing, it turned. It still promised equal rights to all citizens, but "citizen" was redefined to include only Christians. Then Jews were prohibited from peddling. Finally, in 1896, the Romanians proved that their soaring national pride could be every bit as hateful as the Russians', as they expelled Jews from whole districts of cities and mobilized unemployed young men for the country's first big pogrom. To a people encouraged to expect better it was a galling betrayal. With a swiftness and a unity unknown in any other country, the Jews rose. And they left. It's been estimated that from 1899 to 1904 a third of the Jews of Romania emigrated to other countries, most to America and most of those to New York. Some rich merchants paid the transportation costs for the Jewish communities of entire towns. Thousands of men and women too angry to save for train and ship fare banded together in a spontaneous movement to walk over the Carpathians and out of the country, singing Yiddish songs and sometimes wearing their old Romanian army uniforms in a final kish mir im tuchus to the nation that had tricked them. 

        I felt it added a little more context and depth to the history.   

Adam Blatner, M.D.
   website: www.blatner.com/adam/   
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://grouptalkweb.org/pipermail/list_grouptalkweb.org/attachments/20090427/b6ba8666/attachment.html>