Two Homes: From the Carpathians to the World

The article delves into the profound meaning of home for refugees, a concept that takes on a new depth when one’s homeland is ravaged by war. It examines the contrasting experiences of the Polish writer Stanisław Vincenz and his Jewish friend Benedykt Liebermann, both from the Eastern Carpathian region. Despite their different paths, both individuals demonstrated remarkable resilience. Vincenz, while in exile, poetically recreated in memory his childhood Carpathian home, which allowed him to continue his writing. For Liebermann, who attempted to build a new home in pre-state Israel after being uprooted, the destruction of Jewish life in his former hometown made recovering a sense of home immensely difficult. The author of the article suggests that philosophies about memory’s role in preserving a home have limits, as the trauma of losing one’s home is a highly personal experience. For Jewish refugees, that rupture severed entire cultural worlds in a way that defied simple remedies.