Joachim Schlör - Böcker

Migration is, and has always been, a disruptive experience. Freedom from oppression and hope for a better life are counter-balanced by feelings of loss – loss of family members, of a home, of personal belongings. Memories of the migration process itself often fade quickly away in view of the new challenges that await immigrants in their new homelands. This volume asks, and shows, how migration memories have been kept, stored, forgotten, and indeed retrieved in many different archives, in official institutions, and in heritage centres, as well as in personal and family collections. Based on a variety of examples and conceptual approaches – from artistic approaches to the family archive via ‘smell and memory as archives’, to a cultural history of the suitcase – this volume offers a new and original way to write Jewish history and the history of Jewish migration in the context of personal and public memory. The documents reflect the transitory character of the migration experience, and they tell stories of longing and belonging. This book was originally published as a special issue of Jewish Culture and History.

Migration is, and has always been, a disruptive experience. Freedom from oppression and hope for a better life are counter-balanced by feelings of loss – loss of family members, of a home, of personal belongings. Memories of the migration process itself often fade quickly away in view of the new challenges that await immigrants in their new homelands. This volume asks, and shows, how migration memories have been kept, stored, forgotten, and indeed retrieved in many different archives, in official institutions, and in heritage centres, as well as in personal and family collections. Based on a variety of examples and conceptual approaches – from artistic approaches to the family archive via ‘smell and memory as archives’, to a cultural history of the suitcase – this volume offers a new and original way to write Jewish history and the history of Jewish migration in the context of personal and public memory. The documents reflect the transitory character of the migration experience, and they tell stories of longing and belonging. This book was originally published as a special issue of Jewish Culture and History.

Carefully piecing together the personal letters of Alice ‘Liesel’ Schwab, Escaping Nazi Germany tells the important story of one woman’s emigration from Heilbronn to England. From the decision to leave her family and emigrate alone, to gaining her independence as a shop worker and surviving the Blitz, to the reunion with her brother and parents in England and shared grief as they learn about the fate of family members who died in the Holocaust, her story provides powerful insight into both the everyday realities of German-Jewish refugees in Britain and the ability of letters and life-writing to create transnational networks during times of trauma and separation. Elegantly written and deeply researched, Joachim Schlör’s emphatic and unflinching re-telling of Alice Schwab’s life sheds new light on the Jewish experience of persecution during the Holocaust and adds nuances to current debates on emigration, memory, and identity. This book is an essential primary resource for scholars of modern European history and Jewish studies, offering a compelling and intimate route into understanding what it meant to be a Jewish refugee caught up in the tragic and tumultuous events of World War II.

Carefully piecing together the personal letters of Alice ‘Liesel’ Schwab, Escaping Nazi Germany tells the important story of one woman’s emigration from Heilbronn to England. From the decision to leave her family and emigrate alone, to gaining her independence as a shop worker and surviving the Blitz, to the reunion with her brother and parents in England and shared grief as they learn about the fate of family members who died in the Holocaust, her story provides powerful insight into both the everyday realities of German-Jewish refugees in Britain and the ability of letters and life-writing to create transnational networks during times of trauma and separation. Elegantly written and deeply researched, Joachim Schlör’s emphatic and unflinching re-telling of Alice Schwab’s life sheds new light on the Jewish experience of persecution during the Holocaust and adds nuances to current debates on emigration, memory, and identity. This book is an essential primary resource for scholars of modern European history and Jewish studies, offering a compelling and intimate route into understanding what it meant to be a Jewish refugee caught up in the tragic and tumultuous events of World War II.

Ebook available to libraries exclusively as part of the JSTOR Path to Open initiative.In the early 1990s, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and during the process of German reunification, the city of Berlin commissioned a working group to create a “Memorial Book for the Jews of Berlin”, recording their persecution under the Nazi regime. Alongside the necessary archival research, the group also contacted “former Berliners” – Jewish refugees and their descendants – across the globe. The response was overwhelming: In hundreds of letters, documents, and poems, the correspondents asked the city to take note of their life stories their experiences, and above all their relationship to their former hometown. They describe their childhood and youth in Berlin, the rise of antisemitism and hatred, and the loss not just of property, but also of a feeling of belonging. They report on life in the countries of emigration and show a deep interest in the development of a new, democratic Germany that needs to be made aware of the fate of its Jewish community. The book offers a deep reading and a framework for an understanding of these letters and the emotional “luggage” they contain: feelings about the city of Berlin and about the afterlife of a lost Berlin in the memories of the émigré families.

The first decades of the 21st century have presented numerous challenges for European Jewry: far-right movements and a rise of antisemitism, a global pandemic, and a war on European soil. At the same time, heritage sites commemorating the Jewish past and the use of digital platforms to create new forms of communication and cultural co-construction are growing. Using a variety of spaces – heritage sites, museums, digital practices, urban topography, and communal activities – as case studies, this collective volume analyses whether they might serve as a reminder that despite moments of crisis, Jewish life in Europe persists. The spatial analysis offered by the volume uses the concept of “virtuality” as a starting point, thereby engaging anew with spatial concepts laid out by scholars in the 1990s. Now, 30 years later, prompted by today’s political, social, and cultural European landscape, as well as the increasing role of digitization, the authors discuss the meaning of “virtuality” and how it relates to notions of “authenticity” and “reality” in Jewish culture and in Jewish/non-Jewish relations. As such, the book provides a fresh take on and a new way forward for the conceptualizations and applications of “space”, which together offer particularly useful avenues to access power relations, identity (re-)constructions, and performative aspects of the European Jewish experience.