Notes from the Other Side of Night is a diary-memoir written upon Juliana Geran Pilon's return to her native Romania in 1975, which she had left along with her family when she was just fourteen. Poetically weaving together modern insight and realities with childhood perceptions, Pilon tells the haunting stories of her parents, grandparents, neighbors, and friends. Although the scenery of her native home had remained essentially unchanged since her childhood, Pilon recalls streets that are no more, homes and churches that have been demolished. Yet, the hills and forests, the flowers and mountains, the heat of old Bucharest, remained the same. The scenes and characters described in this book are simply unforgettable. Despite the many tragedies it describes--anti-semitism, political imprisonment, and judicial execution were ruthless realities under communism--Notes from the Other Side of Night is not a depressing book. Pilon writes with a detached melancholy about events and characters that illustrate Hannah Arendt's terrifying "banality of evil." But she remembers, as well, those few who managed to remain human beings until the end. Ultimately, hope triumphs in this memoir. This edition includes a new foreword, which discusses the initial writing and publication of this and previous editions.

Presents an inventory of the images of the Jew, mainly in Romanian culture. Focuses on popular beliefs, while illustrating ties with more elite political imagery. Groups anti-Jewish stereotypes into various "portraits": physical, occupational, moral and intellectual, mythical and magic, and religious. Some physical images of the Jew, like red hair and "Jewish" freckles were associated with the devil. Another negative feature, one not exclusive to Romanian folk culture, was a belief in the existence of an unplesant Jewish smell considered to be a punishment for deicide that could be, alleviated only by the blood of Christians. Occupational stereotypes often related to materialism and dishonesty, contrasting the Jewish tradesman with the nature connected Romanian peasant. Jewish tavern-keepers were also associated with the devil. Characteristics that could be viewed as positive, like intelligence, were often linked to negative Jewish stereotypes, like craftiness. Some anti-Jewish stereotypes derived from early Christian views, e.g. of the Jews as blind to the "truths" of Christianity. Other images, like that of the Jew as a rain-maker, reflect traditional East European peasant views. An apparently positive image may have negative connotations, e.g. the positive omen of meeting a Jew at the beginning of a trip is based on the idea of the Jew as a "lightning-rod" for attracting the devil away from Christians. The religious portrait combines traditional universal Christian images of the Jew as deicide with local legends of the Jews as responsible for martyring a Christian saint and defacing a revered local icon. As elsewhere in Europe, Jews were accused of killing Christian children. Some of these negative stereotypes were also associated with the Gypsies or other minorities.