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Calendar Upcoming Events Details 28 May 2008--Jewish immigrants who walked to freedom in the early 1900s
Calendar Upcoming Events Details 28 May 2008--Jewish immigrants who walked to freedom in the early 1900s
| 28 May 2008--Jewish immigrants who walked to freedom in the early 1900s |
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Fusgeyers: Jewish immigrants who walked to freedom in the early 1900s Presentation Jill Culiner SUBJECT: Romania’s new constitution of 1858 granted citizenship only to Christians. Jews, forbidden from working in most trades, soon became impoverished with twenty thousand starving on the streets. In 1899, seventy-eight unemployed Jewish artisans decided to cross Europe on foot on the way to America. These fusgeyers (wanderers) gave theatrical performances to raise money en route. Soon thousands of Jews formed Fusgeyer groups and left for America on foot in search of freedom and respect. A century later, Jill Culiner crossed Romania on foot, seeking lost Jewish communities, searching European archives, tracing the immigrant trail from Vienna to Liverpool to America. SPEAKER: Born in New York, raised in Canada, Jill Culiner has lived in England, France, Turkey, Germany and Hungary working as a photographer, artist and writer. She has published a photography book and two novels. Her non-fiction book, Finding Home: In the Footsteps of the Jewish Fusgeyers (Sumach Press, 2004), won the Joseph and Faye Tanenbaum Prize in Canadian Jewish History, and was short-listed for the ForeWord magazine prize. Jill has spoken to groups throughout the United States, Canada, France and Israel and is presently completing a work on the vanished Jews of the Great Hungarian plain. Jill will be available to sign copies of her book, before and after the presentation. |
