Andrea Hammel – författare

For readers in the English-speaking world, almost all Holocaust writing is translated writing. Translation is indispensable for our understanding of the Holocaust because there is a need to tell others what happened in a way that makes events and experiences accessible – if not, perhaps, comprehensible – to other communities.Yet what this means is only beginning to be explored by Translation Studies scholars. This book aims to bring together the insights of Translation Studies and Holocaust Studies in order to show what a critical understanding of translation in practice and context can contribute to our knowledge of the legacy of the Holocaust. The role translation plays is not just as a facilitator of a semi-transparent transfer of information. Holocaust writing involves questions about language, truth and ethics, and a theoretically informed understanding of translation adds to these questions by drawing attention to processes of mediation and reception in cultural and historical context. It is important to examine how writing by Holocaust victims, which is closely tied to a specific language and reflects on the relationship between language, experience and thought, can (or cannot) be translated. This volume brings the disciplines of Holocaust and Translation Studies into an encounter with each other in order to explore the effects of translation on Holocaust writing. The individual pieces by Holocaust scholars explore general, theoretical questions and individual case studies, and are accompanied by commentaries by translation scholars.

For readers in the English-speaking world, almost all Holocaust writing is translated writing. Translation is indispensable for our understanding of the Holocaust because there is a need to tell others what happened in a way that makes events and experiences accessible – if not, perhaps, comprehensible – to other communities.Yet what this means is only beginning to be explored by Translation Studies scholars. This book aims to bring together the insights of Translation Studies and Holocaust Studies in order to show what a critical understanding of translation in practice and context can contribute to our knowledge of the legacy of the Holocaust. The role translation plays is not just as a facilitator of a semi-transparent transfer of information. Holocaust writing involves questions about language, truth and ethics, and a theoretically informed understanding of translation adds to these questions by drawing attention to processes of mediation and reception in cultural and historical context. It is important to examine how writing by Holocaust victims, which is closely tied to a specific language and reflects on the relationship between language, experience and thought, can (or cannot) be translated. This volume brings the disciplines of Holocaust and Translation Studies into an encounter with each other in order to explore the effects of translation on Holocaust writing. The individual pieces by Holocaust scholars explore general, theoretical questions and individual case studies, and are accompanied by commentaries by translation scholars.

In 1938 and 1939, some 10,000 children and young people fled to the UK to escape Nazi persecution. Known as the ‘Kindertransport’, this effort has long been hailed as a wartime success story – but there are uncomfortable truths at its heart.The Kindertransport was a complex visa waiver scheme, and its organizers did not necessarily act with altruism. The British government required a guarantee to indemnify itself against any expenses, and refused to admit the child refugees’ parents. The selection criteria prioritized those who were likely to make the best contribution to society, rather than the most urgent cases. And some children and young people were placed in unsuitable homes, where many arrangements irrevocably broke down.Written with striking empathy and insight, Andrea Hammel’s expert analysis casts new light on what really happened during the Kindertransport. Revelatory and impassioned, this book will be essential reading for anyone interested in the history of migration and refugees, and offers thought-provoking lessons for how we might make life easier for children fleeing conflict today.

In 1938 and 1939, some 10,000 children and young people fled to the UK to escape Nazi persecution. Known as the ‘Kindertransport’, this effort has long been hailed as a wartime success story – but there are uncomfortable truths at its heart.The Kindertransport was a complex visa waiver scheme, and its organizers did not necessarily act with altruism. The British government required a guarantee to indemnify itself against any expenses, and refused to admit the child refugees’ parents. The selection criteria prioritized those who were likely to make the best contribution to society, rather than the most urgent cases. And some children and young people were placed in unsuitable homes, where many arrangements irrevocably broke down.Written with striking empathy and insight, Andrea Hammel’s expert analysis casts new light on what really happened during the Kindertransport. Revelatory and impassioned, this book will be essential reading for anyone interested in the history of migration and refugees, and offers thought-provoking lessons for how we might make life easier for children fleeing conflict today.

New perspectives on the relationship - or the perceived relationship - between the German language and the causes, nature, and legacy of National Socialism and the Shoah.There is seemingly no escaping the association of the language of Goethe with the language of Hitler: the two leaden clichés seem to be inseparable, suggesting a Sonderweg between enlightened sophistication and subtle beauty on the one hand and linguistic barbarism on the other. Victor Klemperer suggested that the Lingua Tertii Imperii was a perversion of German that needed to be purged from the language, but does the notion of "Nazi language" as an identifiably separate entity really hold water, or does it only reflect a desire to construct a clear demarcation line between "Germans" and "Nazis"? What new linguistic, literary, or historical perspectives are availableon the functioning of language during and after the Third Reich? Must German always be the "language of the perpetrators," entailing a constant state of heightened self-awareness or vigilance against contamination, or is neutral,objective speech about National Socialism possible in German?This collection provides new perspectives on the relationship - or the perceived relationship - between the German language in all its manifestations and the causes, nature, and legacy of National Socialism and the Shoah.Contributors: Ian Biddle and Beate Müller, Mary Cosgrove, Peter Davies, Sylvia Degen, Andrea Hammel, Geraldine Horan, Teresa Ludden, Dora Osborne, Marko Pajevic, James Parsons, Simone Schroth, Arvi Sepp, Simon Ward, Jenny Watson.Peter Davies is Professor of Modern German Studies at the University of Edinburgh. Andrea Hammel is Senior Lecturer in German at Aberystwyth University.

Women writers offer us rich and diverse perspectives on exile, yet they remain relatively unexplored in the scholarship. This book aims to address this omission by illuminating the life and work of four German-speaking writers exiled in Britain after 1933. Gerda Mayer, Gabriele Tergit, Ruth Feiner and Eva Priester, in different and unique ways, all articulate ideas of (national) identity and home in their work, opening up new ways of understanding the impact of exile and gender on belonging.Using Heimat theory, nomadic subjectivity and transnationalism, the women’s works are interrogated to encourage a reassessment of traditional conceptions of Heimat and belonging for refugees, exiles, and those distanced – whether physically or emotionally – from «home».

«Dr. Laima Vincė Sruoginis, an established author, academic, and life-long part of the North American Lithuanian diaspora, courageously faces Lithuania’s difficult historical legacy in her ground-breaking book. She researched her community’s refugee ancestors, drawing both from personal interviews and dusty academic sources, confronting uncomfortable truths.»(Philip S. Shapiro, President, Remembering Litvaks, Inc.)As World War II ended, refugees fled Soviet-occupied Lithuania, finding shelter in the displaced persons camps of Europe. By 1949, most had emigrated to North America. They brought with them opposing narratives about the Nazi occupation (1941–1944) when 95 percent of Lithuania’s Jewish community was annihilated. Trauma narratives were passed down to the second and third generations through collective memory. Through postmemory, cultural memory, and trauma theory, Vanished Lands analyzes literary works by North American Jewish and Lithuanian writers who speak over the silence of decades, seeking answers.

A popular history telling the stories of a varied group of people who found refuge in Wales from the scourge of National Socialism in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. The book is designed to resonate with those who have personal experience of similar situations, those looking to understand the refugee experience, young people investigating Welsh and European history and the stories of their ancestors, as well as the general history reader. The book will include a chapter - a kind of historical postscript - on the experience of contemporary Syrian refugees.

This book is the first comparative study of the novels written by five German-speaking women – Anna Gmeyner, Selma Kahn, Hilde Spiel, Martina Wied and Hermynia Zur Mühlen – who had to flee National Socialist Central Europe. Gmeyner, Spiel, Wied and Zur Mühlen found refuge in Britain and thus added – together with male colleagues such as Stefan Zweig and Robert Neumann – an important but rarely investigated new dimension to the British literary landscape. The aim of this study is to reassess the women refugee writers’ narrative strategies and integrate their work within feminist literary studies. The author investigates the five writers’ narrativisation of everyday life, used to subvert the dominant discourse, and their portrayal of the intersection between class, racial and gender oppression. She also shows their innovative ways of picturing the gendered tension between the experiences of exile and exile as a modernist metaphor as well as their search for ways to refute the Nationalist Socialist rewriting of history. The book situates the novels within the theoretical discussions surrounding exile studies, social history and women’s writing.

Dieses Buch erforscht das Verhältnis von Identität und Werk deutsch-jüdischer Schriftstellerinnen. Die Zeitspanne von 1900-1938 bot ihnen eine breite Palette möglicher Selbstidentifikationen – sowohl zwischen jüdischer Tradition (oder ‘jüdischer Renaissance’) und kultureller Anpassung als auch zwischen traditionellem und modernem weiblichen Selbstverständnis. Durch die Analyse und die Einbettung ihrer Schriften in die historischen und literarischen Hintergründe ihrer Entstehung, enthüllen die Aufsätze des Buches Traditionen und Positionen, die nicht unbedingt in den Texten der Autorinnen selbst direkt vermittelt werden. Dieses Buch stellt einen wichtigen Beitrag zum Verständnis von Schriftstellerinnen dar, die im weitesten Sinne bis heute vom literarischen Kanon ausgeschlossen blieben. Darüber hinaus nimmt der vorliegende Band eine Neubewertung ihrer Arbeiten vor. Zusätzlich zu Gertrud Kolmar, Else Lasker-Schüler, Veza Canetti, Else Ury und Mascha Kaléko werden auch weniger bekannte Autorinnen ins Auge gefasst: Klara Blum, Ulla Wolff-Frank, Auguste Hauschner, Anna Goldschmidt, Else Croner, Anna Gmeyner, Selma Kahn, Ruth Landshoff-Yorck, die Journalistin Regina Neisser und die Salonière Berta Zuckerkandl-Szeps.

Exile and Everyday Life focusses on the everyday life experience of refugees fleeing National Socialism in the 1930s and 1940s as well as the representation of this experience in literature and culture. The contributions in this volume show experiences of loss, strategies of adaptation and the creation of a new identity and life. It covers topics such as Exile in Shanghai, Ireland, the US and the UK, food in exile, the writers Gina Kaus, Vicki Baum and Jean Améry, refugees in the medical profession and the creative arts, and the Kindertransport to the UK.

The Second and Third Generation have become increasingly active in remembering and researching their families’ pasts, especially now that most refugees from National Socialism have passed away. How was lived experience mediated to them, and how have their own lives and identities been impacted by persecution and flight?This volume offers a valuable insight into the personal experience of the Second Generation, as well as a perceptive analysis of film, art, and literature created by or about the subsequent generations. Recurring themes of silences, transferred trauma, postmemory, and “roots journeys" are explored, revealing the distance, connection, and collaboration between the generations. Contributors are: David Clark, Miriam E. David, Rachel Dickson, Yannick Gnipep-oo Pembouong, Anita H. Grosz, Andrea Hammel, Brean Hammond, Stephanie Homer, Merilyn Moos, Angharad Mountford, Teresa von Sommaruga Howard, Jennifer Taylor, and Sue Vice.