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    <title>(Hi)stories of the German-Jewish Diaspora - Articles</title>
    <description>Latest Articles from the Online Portal</description>
    <link>https://diaspora.jewish-history-online.net/article/date</link>
    <lastBuildDate>Sat, 18 Jul 2026 14:42:18 +0000</lastBuildDate>
    <item>
      <title><![CDATA[Sietske van der Veen, Site of Transmigration and Long-time Diasporic Centre: The Netherlands as a Home to German-speaking Jews]]></title>
      <description><![CDATA[As a neighbouring country with a reputation of tolerance, the
Netherlands was seen as an Einwanderungsland (country of immigration)
for tens of thousands of German-speaking Jews during the 1930s.
Estimates of the number of them seeking refuge in the Netherlands
between 1933 and 1940 are hard to give. They vary from about 24,000 to
50,000, the large majority being Germans, although there were also
Jews from Austria, Poland, and other countries in Central and Eastern
Europe among them. By 1941, about 15,000 of these refugees still
resided in the country. More than 100,000 Jews who were deported from
the Netherlands during the Nazi occupation, including refugees, were
murdered in the Shoah – by far the highest relative figure in
Western Europe.

Due to its important port cities and its close proximity to Germany
geographically, culturally, and linguistically, the Netherlands
functioned as a temporary safe haven for many Jews from across the
eastern border. They often sought to travel further, mainly to the
Americas but also, for example, to Great Britain and Mandatory
Palestine. Yet, although predominantly considered a site of
transmigration, the Netherlands was a country of considerable
sociocultural significance within the longer historical context of the
German-Jewish diaspora. It had always received a large influx of
immigrants from German lands, and vice versa. Transnational family and
business networks ran back a long time. After World War II, survivors
who returned to or had remained in their country of refuge quickly
integrated into Dutch society.]]></description>
      <link>https://diaspora.jewish-history-online.net/article/van-der-veen-netherlands</link>
      <pubDate>Wed, 24 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
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      <title><![CDATA[Sheer Ganor, Aufbau: From New York to the Diaspora]]></title>
      <description><![CDATA[“Housewives from around the world meet each other in the Aufbau,”
declared the headline in the paper’s January 25, 1957, edition. It
published four recipes by women residing in different places who
shared their favorite dishes for the benefit of Aufbau readers, just
like themselves. Tucked in page 13 and covering a humble spot on the
top right corner of the page, this was clearly not a major media
event. The paper’s opening pages delivered the urgent news of the
hour, from the aftermath of the Suez Crisis in the Middle East to the
state of Soviet suppression in Hungary. Interspersed among those were
reports and essays that reflected the interests of the core
readership, for example: updates from Jewish communities across
Europe, a eulogy for the recently deceased Italian-American conductor,
Arturo Toscanini (1867–1957), and news of the latest winner of the
Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. While seemingly of lesser
consequence, the short feature on page 13 that addressed “housewives
from around the world” is equally revealing of the Aufbau’s
history, its function, and its meaning as one of the most important
publications of the German-Jewish diaspora.

The flight of German-speaking Jews during the years of Nazi terror and
their dispersion throughout the world saw the emergence of multiple
regional newspapers and press organs that catered to the readership of
Central European refugees. The Aufbau, which was published in New
York, was for many decades the most widely circulated and influential
of these papers. Like the British AJR Information or the
Mitteilungsblatt published in Palestine/Israel, the Aufbau was created
as the communications organ of a community organization, the
German-Jewish Club. When this organization was founded in 1924 in New
York, it served as a type of landsmanshaft with a membership of
several hundred Jews of Central European, primarily German origin.
With the influx of Jews fleeing Central Europe in 1933 and onwards,
the German-Jewish Club quickly expanded into a self-help society that
catered to the various needs of this growing refugee population, and
was renamed the New World Club in 1940.

The very first edition of Aufbau was published on December 1, 1934,
and very much bore the character of a community newsletter. It was
initially published monthly, printed with a circulation of about 500
copies that were distributed to members of the German-Jewish Club.
Within a few years, the emergence of a large German-Jewish population
in the United States (numbering between 120,000 and 150,000 people)
and the circumstances under which it came into existence transformed
this newsletter into an esteemed weekly publication with a wide
readership and an impressive circulation. At its peak, during the
1940s, the Aufbau had a circulation of about 45,000 copies every week.]]></description>
      <link>https://diaspora.jewish-history-online.net/article/ganor-aufbau-new-york</link>
      <pubDate>Wed, 08 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
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      <title><![CDATA[Ann Beaglehole, Peter Munz (1921–2006)]]></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Born May 12, 1921, in Chemnitz, Germany
Died October 14, 2006, in Wellington, Aotearoa/New Zealand
Occupation: Professor, historian, philosopher, public intellectual
Migration: Italy, 1933 | Mandatory Palestine, 1939 (?) | Aotearoa/New
Zealand, 1940

“People in Europe were getting killed; it was a small price to pay
for being safe, when we couldn’t go to the opera in the
evening,” Ann Beaglehole, Interview with Peter Munz, 23 November
1984, Oral History Archive, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington,
http://www.natlib.govt.nz/records/35829736. recalled Peter Munz,
looking back in 1984 at his early years in his country of refuge –
New Zealand. Escaping Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, he arrived in
1940 at the age of nineteen, with his mother, who later became
established as a photographer specializing in children’s
portraiture, and his sister, who became an environmentalist. Despite
his ambivalence towards the cultural life of Christchurch – (the
main city in the South Island), where the family first settled, Munz
believed it was a lucky decision to migrate to New Zealand. While
maintaining a lifelong connection with European, including German
culture and scholarship, he became an eminent New Zealand scholar, an
internationally recognized medievalist, a historian of science and
ideas, and a stimulating and highly entertaining teacher at Victoria
University of Wellington.]]></description>
      <link>https://diaspora.jewish-history-online.net/article/beaglehole-peter-munz</link>
      <pubDate>Mon, 30 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
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      <title><![CDATA[Christine Schmidt, Postwar Documentation Efforts of the German-Jewish Diaspora: The Wiener Library’s Eyewitness Accounts Collection in London]]></title>
      <description><![CDATA[In the mid-1950s, the Wiener Library (now The Wiener Holocaust
Library, WHL) in London began an ambitious project to collect written
eyewitness accounts from survivors of Nazi persecution and the Shoah.
The initiative was led by the German-Jewish refugee scholar, Dr. Eva
Reichmann (1897–1998), the Library’s first Director of Research.
Supported by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany
(Claims Conference), the project began in London, from where Reichmann
directed a small team of paid staff members and additional volunteers.
Interviewers were located throughout Europe and were employed to
trace, contact, and persuade potential interviewees to take part.

The project continued until the mid-1960s, proceeding in a concentric
and centrifugal direction: they began close to London using their
network of professional and cultural contacts within German-Jewish
circles, and gradually spun out further and further as the network of
interviewers and interviewees widened and diversified. The resulting
collection consists of some 1,300 reports (including letters, poems,
songs, and other written materials predominantly recorded in or
translated from German), many of which have formed the basis of a
digital resource created by WHL: Testifying to the Truth
(testifyingtothetruth.co.uk). The digital resource includes the
history and original classification system of the collection, and
provides possibilities for searching the collection in new ways. The
project illustrates the reach and impact of transnational networks of
German Jews rekindled after the Shoah, and the methodology employed by
the project organizers exemplifies the efforts of German-Jewish
refugees in shaping Holocaust memory. Therefore, the Library as an
institution, still in operation today, stands as a testament to the
documentation efforts of the German-Jewish diaspora in England and
beyond.]]></description>
      <link>https://diaspora.jewish-history-online.net/article/schmidt-eyewitness-accounts</link>
      <pubDate>Sun, 15 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
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      <title><![CDATA[David Jünger, Joachim Prinz (1902–1988)]]></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Born 10 May 1902 in Bierdzan, Germany (today Bierdzany, Poland)
Died 30 September 1988 in Livingston, New Jersey, United States
Profession: rabbi, politician, and historian
Migration: United States, 1937

On 28 August 1963, some 250,000 people gathered in the American
capital for the legendary March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
This demonstration instigated the end of racial segregation one year
later and elevated the pastor and civil rights activist Martin Luther
King Jr. (1929–1968), with his dream of a just society without
racist discrimination, to a world-famous symbol of anti-racism. This
march also became iconic for the Jewish community in the United
States, not only because tens of thousands of Jews participated, but
because Rabbi Joachim Prinz, one of the most renowned representatives
of American Jewry, marched right alongside King.

In his moving speech, Prinz spoke of “a sense of complete
identification and solidarity” with the African American community,
which was born from the “painful historic experience” of Jewish
history over the past millennia. Given his own experience as a
“rabbi of the Jewish community in Berlin under the Hitler regime,”
Prinz understood all the better that the greatest problem was not the
racism and hatred of a few, but rather the “silence” of the
majority. Joachim Prinz, The Issue is Silence, 28 August 1963:
www.joachimprinz.com/civil-rights.html. Prinz’s speech in
Washington, D.C. was the high point of his political life and offers
an insight into this charismatic and at the same time headstrong
character in German-Jewish diaspora history. His experiences of
German-Jewish history and especially of National Socialism shaped
Prinz’s political thought and activity until the end of his life, as
was evident not least of all in his impressive speech on 28 August
1963.]]></description>
      <link>https://diaspora.jewish-history-online.net/article/juenger-joachim-prinz</link>
      <pubDate>Fri, 27 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title><![CDATA[Bea Lewkowicz, Oral Histories from Belsize Square Synagogue: Memory, Community, and Belonging]]></title>
      <description><![CDATA[This article highlights the importance of Belsize Square Synagogue
(BSS), founded in 1939 in London and, from 1940, known as the New
Liberal Jewish Congregation, for the German-Jewish refugee community
in the UK. The congregation provided a space of community and mutual
understanding for its members with a specific sense of religious,
cultural, and intellectual continental continuity.

My findings are based on interviews conducted in the year 2000, when a
substantial number of first-generation German-speaking Jewish refugees
were still actively involved in the BSS. Most of those interviewed
were either founding members or had family members who were closely
involved from the start. A few joined later – in the 1940s, 1950s,
and 1980s. The interviewees’ ages ranged from the early 70s to over
90, with years of birth spanning from before 1910 to the early 1940s.
Most interviewees came from Berlin, with others from cities such as
Hamburg, Frankfurt, and Freiburg. Interviews were conducted primarily
in people’s homes and lasted between one and four hours. Using an
open oral history approach, I allowed conversations to develop
naturally, but BSS consistently emerged as a central theme. All
interviews were conducted in English.

When I started interviewing members from the synagogue, I was looking
for the signs that link BSS of today to the past of its founders, who
were all Jewish refugees, mostly from Germany. In the interviews, my
impression was not that of discontinuity and loss but of continuity
and change. I suggest that the BSS community is perceived as the
‘cultural heir’ by the refugee generation, which gave its members
a link to the past and the future.]]></description>
      <link>https://diaspora.jewish-history-online.net/article/lewkowicz-oral-histories-belsize-square-synagogue</link>
      <pubDate>Fri, 27 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
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      <title><![CDATA[Anna Marion Weber, Salka Viertel (1889–1978)]]></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Born on June 15, 1889 in Sambor, Austria-Hungary (today Sambir,
Ukraine)
Died on October 20, 1978 in Klosters, Switzerland
Occupation: Actress, screenwriter, salonnière
Migration: United States, 1928 | Switzerland, 1960

“The greatest achievement in my life is probably to have created the
image of a very courageous woman. Nobody will ever know what it has
cost me.” Salka Viertel, Diary, 17th February 1961, DLA, quoted in
Katharina Prager, „Ich bin nicht gone Hollywood!“: Salka Viertel.
Ein Leben in Theater und Film, Wien: Wilhelm Braumüller
Universitätsverlag, 2007, 261. This is how the actress and
screenwriter Salka Viertel pinpointed her self-perception in her diary
in 1961, during the early stages of work on her memoir.

Born to a liberal, middle-class Jewish family in the Austro-Hungarian
crownland of Galicia, she defied the expectations for a young woman of
her background and trained as an actress. Between 1910 and 1928,
Viertel had numerous engagements in the German-speaking sphere,
including theatres in Berlin, Vienna, Leipzig, Hamburg, and
Düsseldorf. Having married the poet and theatre director Berthold
Viertel (1885–1953) in Vienna in 1918, she followed him to Hollywood
with their three sons in 1928. While her husband’s attempt to
establish himself as a film director and screenwriter remained largely
unsuccessful, Viertel became a highly-paid screenwriter for the
American film production company MGM, as well as one of the foremost
networkers within both film industry circles and the German-speaking
exile community. Falling out of favour with the studios during the
post-war McCarthy era due to her left-leaning political convictions
and earlier anti-fascist activism, Viertel returned to Europe. In
1960, she settled in Klosters, Switzerland.]]></description>
      <link>https://diaspora.jewish-history-online.net/article/weber-salka-viertel</link>
      <pubDate>Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
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      <title><![CDATA[Sebastian Musch, In the Holy Land of Buddhism: German-Jewish Migrants in Sri Lanka]]></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Situated off the southern tip of the Indian subcontinent, the island
nation of Sri Lanka lay far from the main routes of twentieth-century
German-Jewish migration. The total number of German-speaking Jews who
found refuge there is difficult to determine. One source from 1941,
during the period of Nazi persecution, refers only to “a small
number of Jews” of German origin. “Fünftes Merkblatt über die
Lage der Deutschen in Britisch-Indien und auf Ceylon” [Fifth
memorandum on the situation of Germans in British India and Ceylon];
Archive of the Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History, Munich, ED
353-2-27, fol. Overall, it is likely that no more than a few dozen
individuals remained on the island for any extended period.

Even so, the presence of this group on the island, which today has a
population of around 22 million, deserves closer attention both for
the unusual motivations that drew them there and for the prominence of
several of its members. Many of these migrants were motivated by an
engagement with Buddhism that had developed in early twentieth-century
German-speaking Europe, making this destination a clear outlier within
the broader German-Jewish diaspora. Despite their small overall
numbers, a few of these German-speaking Jews went on to become
influential figures in Asia, leaving a legacy that continues to shape
Sri Lanka today.]]></description>
      <link>https://diaspora.jewish-history-online.net/article/musch-sri-lanka</link>
      <pubDate>Thu, 12 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
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      <title><![CDATA[Sue Silberberg, The Michaelis Hallenstein Family and Their Contribution to Building Melbourne’s Jewish Community]]></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Moritz Michaelis (1820–1902)
Born on November 8, 1820 in Lügde, Germany
Died on November 26, 1902 in St Kilda, Australia
Occupation: Businessman and community leader
Migration: Great Britain, 1843 | Colony of Victoria (later Australia),
1853

Isaac Hallenstein (1830–1911)
Born on January 23, 1830 in Brunswick, Germany
Died on September 30, 1911 in Hamburg, Germany
Occupation: Businessman and community leader
Migration: Great Britain, 1843 | Colony of Victoria (later Australia),
1863

“One by one, the pioneers of Victoria are disappearing from the
scene of their activity. Mr. Moritz Michaelis was one of the early
arrivals who turned his ability and energy into industrial channels,
building up a large business, and took a foremost position in the
commercial world. But whilst devoting himself to business, Mr.
Michaelis never neglected the cultivation of his mind, or failed to
remember that there were others less fortunate than himself in the
community, and was always ready to alleviate distress, foster
education and assist talented young people.” “The Late Moritz
Michaelis”, in: Table Talk, December 11, 1902, 13. 

Shortly after his well-attended funeral, the Australian magazine Table
Talk published an obituary for the businessman and community leader
Moritz Michaelis (1820–1902) to pay tribute to his life’s work.
Michaelis and his nephew, Isaac Hallenstein (1830–1911), were part
of the early wave of Jewish settlers to the Colony of Victoria,
leaving an indelible mark on its capital, Melbourne. Those Jewish
settlers who immigrated from what was later to become Germany,
including the Kingdom of Prussia, made up the second-largest group in
the community after the predominant English Jewish population.

Victoria, later a state of the Commonwealth of Australia established
in 1901, had a gold rush from the early 1850s, swelling its
population. The number of Jews also grew significantly in the colony,
from just 57 in 1841 to 2,181 by 1857, within a broader population of
just over 400,000. The 1857 census of Victoria identified 1.94 percent
of the population as being born in Germany (7,934), of which
approximately 160 were Jewish. Many of these German-born Jews, such as
Michaelis, had spent considerable time in England before migrating to
Victoria, while a few, like Hallenstein, had tried their luck on the
Californian diggings before crossing the Pacific.

The Michaelis Hallenstein family represents the transnational
relationships of German-Jewish entrepreneurs overseas in the
nineteenth century, who often maintained close ties to their country
of origin. They belonged to a group of influential families of
German-Jewish origin in Melbourne, whose companies operated across the
Australian colonies, as well as in New Zealand, Hong Kong, England,
and Germany. Within the Jewish community, they were recognised for
their dedication to building and supporting Jewish institutional life
and their philanthropic activities throughout the city.]]></description>
      <link>https://diaspora.jewish-history-online.net/article/silberberg-michaelis-hallenstein-family</link>
      <pubDate>Fri, 23 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
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      <title><![CDATA[David Jünger, Divided Experiences: Joachim Prinz, the Jewish Struggle against Racism in the United States, and the “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom” on 28 August 1963]]></title>
      <description><![CDATA[The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom took place in front of
the Lincoln Memorial in the American capital on 28 August 1963. With
around 250,000 participants, this was the biggest demonstration in the
history of the United States up to that point. The March on Washington
is today known above all for the iconic speech held by the American
pastor and civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968),
in which he spoke about his dream of a just society without racist
discrimination. This impressive gathering, along with its moving
speeches, contributed significantly to the elimination of racial
segregation through the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act
of 1965.

Immediately before King’s speech on that occasion, the American
rabbi Joachim Prinz (1902–1988) from Newark, New Jersey, also
addressed the crowd, among whom were tens of thousands of Jews. In his
rousing speech, he explained why the Jewish community was committed to
the struggle for civil rights. Precisely due to the experience of
millennia of Jewish history, Prinz argued, the community was able to
identify completely with the suffering and the history of the African
American community.

Yet Prinz himself also had a personal connection to the civil rights
movement based on his own experience. He had been a rabbi in Berlin in
the 1930s before being forced to flee Germany by the Nazis in 1937.
During these years, as he elaborated, he had learned that the greatest
problem was not the hate and oppression of a few, but rather the
silence of the many. In conclusion, he demanded that the American
self-conception as “the land of ‘liberty and justice for all’”
should be made “a glorious, unshakeable reality in a morally renewed
and united America.” With his speech at the March on Washington,
Prinz managed to transpose the German-Jewish experience of antisemitic
oppression and persecution by the Nazis onto the US context and to
universalize it for the sake of a mutual struggle against racism.]]></description>
      <link>https://diaspora.jewish-history-online.net/article/juenger-prinz-march-on-washington</link>
      <pubDate>Wed, 21 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
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