Skirting History (Holocaust Refugee to Dissenting Citizen)

How public events affect private lives is a Leitmotiv of this moving memoir. Eva and her secular Jewish family managed to evade the Holocaust and lesser public disasters, but not some private ones. They were able to leave Vienna a year after the Nazi Anschluss (Annexation) of Austria. In New York and several other places and cultures, she evolved from a shy, often fearful child and adolescent to an increasingly self-confident feminist and outspoken peace activist.

She married George Moseley believing he was the “black sheep” of his right-wing military family. While his political views and attitude toward her Jewishness sometimes wavered, she remained true to her parents’ social-democratic principles and the “Jewish value” of justice for everyone. Family relations and troubles play out in a context of the Cold War and changes in Jewish status with the rise of Israel. After a not-so-amicable divorce and George’s violent death (an unsolved murder?), her attitude toward Jewishness changed because of Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians.

Worried about the future her offspring—and everyone else—will face, she devoted much of her time as a dissenting citizen concerned with issues ranging from nuclear weapons and climate change to advocacy for Palestinian rights and opposing unquestioning US support of militarized Israel.