Transfer and Transformation: Migration of experiences, knowledge, and bias in German-Jewish immigration to the US and Mandate Palestine from the 1930s to the 1950s

Session Submission Type: Panel Session

Abstract

This panel examines how the experiences of Jewish refugees, who had left Germany in the 1930s, affected their political and social behavior in their respective countries of refuge. The three papers illustrate how pre-emigration circumstances and experiences before and after the National Socialist takeover had a lasting impact not only on the refugees as individuals but also on how German Jewish refugees identified and understood themselves as a social and political group. The three papers of the panel will cover the two major destinations of German Jewish refugees in the 1930s: Palestine and the United States. David Juenger’s presentation highlights the participation of German Jewish immigrants in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s and how this participation was rooted in their experiences with racial discrimination in Nazi Germany. Anne Schenderlein’s paper focuses on World War II, when U.S. enemy alien legislation stirred up memories of the beginnings of Nazi persecution among German Jewish refugees. The paper examines how refugees drew on these recent experiences to fight the classification. Viola Rautenberg-Alianov’s paper explores the transfer of the conflict between “Ostjuden” and “Westjuden” and the gender dimension of this reencounter of German Jews and Eastern European Jews in Mandate Palestine during the 1930s.
The panel highlights processes of transfer and transformation of both the individual experience of the immigrants and the attitude of the receiving community towards them. While much of the scholarship on German Jewish flight and migration has focused on the transfer and transformation of specific expert knowledge (e.g. in the sciences or literature and the arts), this panel explores how everyday life experiences of social relations—inner-Jewish and Jewish-gentile relations—persisted and were transformed in the process of migration. The panel will focus particularly on the historical experiences of German Jewish refugees and the meanings these held for themselves as well as for the societies they migrated to.

Sub Unit

• Wild Card Division: Migration Studies

Chair

• Atina Grossmann, Cooper Union

Individual Presentations

• “Request not to be put in the same file as the Nazis”: German Jewish refugees in Los Angeles and the enemy alien classification during WWII - Anne Clara Schenderlein, German Historical Institute, Washington DC

• Reencounter with the Past: Jewish Refugees from Nazi Germany and their Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar America - David Jünger, Center for Jewish Studies Berlin-Brandenburg

• Caftan, Cravat, and Khaki: The Conflictual Reencounter of "Yekkes" and "Ostjuden" in Mandate Palestine in the 1930s - Viola Rautenberg-Alianov, Technische Universitaet Berlin

Respondent

• Tobias Brinkmann, Penn State University