Voyage Into Savage Europe: A Declining Civilization

From the translator of Avigdor Hameiri's Hell on Earth, winner of the 2019 TLS-Risa Domb/Porjes Prize

In this unique memoir, now in English for the first time, Israel's first Poet Laureate Avigdor Hameiri details a trip to Europe in 1930 from the perspective of a Hungarian Jew who had served in the Habsburg Army. Upon visiting Austria, Hungary, Romania (including parts of ceded Hungarian Transylvania), and Czechoslovakia (including his Carpatho-Ruthenian homeland), he sees Europe in flux on the brink of an unknown disaster. Austria and Hungary are full of youth whose philosophy is "eat, drink and be merry; tomorrow we die." There is fear of Bolshevism from without, but the unfelt danger is German Fascism. Jews (especially in Hungary) are assimilated but cannot escape from their Jewishness: some are Zionists. Romania is corrupt and antisemitic. In Carpatho-Ruthenia, Hameiri has two premonitions warning him to return to Israel, a prediction of the destruction soon to befall Europe. Hameiri also gives accounts of the artistic and cultural scenes of 1930s Europe, as well as the world of Carpatho-Ruthenian Hasidism, which was soon to be destroyed by the Holocaust. From the growing danger and confusion surrounding inter-war Europe, in prose at once compassionate and bitingly sarcastic, comes a sweeping account of Jewish life in 1930 from one of Israel's prolific writers.

Avigdor Hameiri (1890-1970) was a prolific Hebrew writer. Born in Hungarian Transcarpathia, he was conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian army in 1914 and later emigrated to Palestine. He published dozens of books, including novels, memoirs, collections of short stories and poetry, scholarly and political writings, and children's books. Considered a pioneer of modernist Hebrew poetry, Hameiri was awarded the Israel Prize for literature in 1968.

Peter Appelbaum, Emeritus Professor of Pathology, spends his retirement writing and translating books about Jewish soldiers in World War I Central Power Armies. Seven books have appeared, notably the first English translation of Bagehinom shel Mata (Hell on Earth), for which he has recently been awarded the TLS-Risa Domb/Porjes Prize. He currently lives in Land O' Lakes, Florida.