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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>Thu, 08 Oct 2026 03:18:49 +0000</lastBuildDate>
    <item>
      <title><![CDATA[Amy Carney, Jonathon Eder, A Journalist Whose Diasporic Experience Contributed to Progressive Postwar Globalism: Ernest Pisko’s Thank You Letter of October 22, 1965]]></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Austrian-born writer and editor Ernest Sigmund Pisko immigrated to the
United States with his wife and daughter in 1940. He worked as a
journalist for the American newspaper The Christian Science Monitor
for twenty-five years (1940–1965), where he applied his prior
experience as a newspaper editor in interwar Vienna and his knowledge
of European affairs to bridge cultures, societies, and historical
periods. His American journalism shows his resilience, adaptability,
and the capacity to recognize the horrors of one of the worst chapters
in human history while also maintaining faith in progressive ideals in
the aftermath of the Second World War. Following his retirement, Pisko
wrote a thank you letter to his former Monitor colleagues. Although a
non-observant Jew, emotion expressed about his time at the newspaper
inspired Judaic references: his farewell party would be remembered as
a “high holiday,” and he recalled his coming to the United States
in language from the Hebrew Bible: “I was a stranger in a strange
land” (Exodus 2:22). Ultimately, this thank you signaled Pisko’s
successful integration into a new country. This letter is part of the
collections of The Mary Baker Eddy Library in Boston.]]></description>
      <link>https://diaspora.jewish-history-online.net/article/carney-eder-ernest-piskos-thank-you-letter</link>
      <pubDate>Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
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      <title><![CDATA[Pragya Kaul Guido, Welcoming Refuge? German-speaking Jews in India]]></title>
      <description><![CDATA[India has historically been home to three Jewish communities –
Baghdadi Jews, Cochin Jews, and the Bene Israel – none of which
trace their origins to Europe or the German-speaking lands. As a
colony under the British crown from 1857 to 1947, German speakers had
only a limited presence in the subcontinent. Nonetheless, an estimated
two to six thousand German-speaking Jews found refuge from Nazi
persecution in then-British India between 1933 and 1945, forming a
transitory diaspora with enduring impacts on music, architecture, and
medicine in modern India.

German-speaking Jews seeking refuge in Britain’s India confronted a
tumultuous political and social landscape. Already by 1933, when
refugee Jews first arrived in the colony, anticolonial nationalism had
gained mass momentum, and immigration controls were tightening. When
India entered the Second World War on September 3, 1939, German
speakers and nationals, Jewish and non-Jewish, were interned as
‘enemy aliens.’ Jewish refugees, thus, were caught between
countervailing pressures of their multiple identities as Jews,
refugees, German speakers, and Europeans in colonial lands.]]></description>
      <link>https://diaspora.jewish-history-online.net/article/guido-india</link>
      <pubDate>Wed, 09 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
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      <title><![CDATA[Anna Marion Weber, Living between Languages, Writing between Languages: Salka Viertel’s Diaspora Diary]]></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Keeping a diary from 1957 until 1969, the actress and screenwriter
Salka Viertel (1889–1978) filled one notebook and nearly 400
typewritten pages. They are gathered together as four separate diaries
in the collection of her papers held at the Deutsches Literaturarchiv
(DLA) in Marbach. The first diary (28 June 1957 to 3 October 1958) is
the only one to take the shape of a notebook, and the only handwritten
document. Bound in cardboard, Viertel pencilled her initials, the
year, and her address on the cover: “S.V. 1957, East Hampton 67
Sherrill Rd.” Inside the cover, the booklet contains a blank school
timetable as well as lists of principal holidays and time differences,
suggesting it was originally intended as a student diary.

The second diary (14 June 1959 to 12 January 1960) consists of 55
typewritten pages with some corrections by hand. This is also the case
for the remaining two diaries, which run from 13 January 1960 to 15
June 1961 (82 pages) and from 24 June 1961 to 13 August 1969 (252
pages). Viertel kept her diary in English, although the entries are
interspersed with German and, less often, phrases from other
languages. Chronicling Viertel’s diasporic life – including
reflections on her transnational family and circle of friends, her
work, and her memories of the past – her diary provides an important
first-person perspective on the history of the German-speaking Jewish
diaspora.]]></description>
      <link>https://diaspora.jewish-history-online.net/article/weber-salka-viertels-diaspora-diary</link>
      <pubDate>Fri, 31 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
    </item>
    <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 on May 12, 1921 in Chemnitz, Germany
Died on 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[Lukas Böckmann, A Caribbean Way Station: The German-Speaking Jewish Diaspora in Cuba]]></title>
      <description><![CDATA[The emergence of the German-speaking Jewish diaspora in Cuba was
inextricably linked to the persecution of Jews by Nazi Germany from
1933 onward and the exodus it set in motion. By 1945, around 11,000 to
12,000 European exiles had reached the Caribbean island. They included
refugees fleeing persecution in German-occupied Europe as political
dissidents, Jews, or both. By far the largest group of European
exiles, however, were the roughly 6,000 Jews from predominantly
German-speaking regions.

Nearly all of them viewed Cuba primarily as a stopover on their
journeys to safety and hoped to travel onward soon, ideally to the
United States. By the end of the war, however, only slightly more than
half had done so. Even for longer-term residents, Cuba usually
remained provisional – a safe haven, not a permanent home. One
reason may have been that, unlike other countries in the Western
Hemisphere – such as the United States, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay,
or Brazil – Cuba did not have an established German-Jewish community
predating the Nazi regime.

The broad contours of Jewish migration to Cuba, both voluntary and
forced, are well documented. Better-known figures, especially
political exiles, have been the subject of individual biographies. Yet
to date, there is no systematic account describing the everyday
cultural life of German-speaking Jews in Cuba.]]></description>
      <link>https://diaspora.jewish-history-online.net/article/boeckmann-cuba</link>
      <pubDate>Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
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      <title><![CDATA[Susanne Bennewitz, Switzerland as a Stopover: A Safe Haven Close at Hand]]></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Switzerland remained neutral during the Second World War and escaped
invasion and occupation. Its small Jewish population – well under
one percent of all residents with Swiss citizenship – therefore
enjoyed a degree of security and, in retrospect, unusual continuity at
the heart of Europe. Jewish life in Switzerland faced no fundamental
cultural or political threat and remained protected. Jewish
communities, aid organizations, and private individuals made
tremendous efforts to help victims of antisemitic persecution across
Europe. Their ability to offer refuge, however, was severely
constrained. Even before German Jews fled en masse in 1938–39, the
Swiss government had opposed issuing visas to Jews. Its asylum policy
remained restrictive. In the early years of the crisis, its approach
could be summed up as “entry solely for the purpose of onward
travel.”

Nevertheless, this small, quadrilingual country, surrounded by members
of the Axis alliance, became an important cultural, logistical, and
economic hub for German-speaking exiles and Jews. Its significance as
a place of refuge for German-speaking Jews during the Nazi era far
exceeded what the statistics on immigration and permanent settlement
might imply. In early 1933, political refugees and intellectuals could
still enter Switzerland relatively easily, generally posing as
tourists. Many of those fleeing neighboring Austria after the
so-called ‘Anschluss’ (annexation) in March 1938 likewise escaped
by way of Switzerland. During the war, however, strict border
enforcement beyond the official crossings, including surveillance,
arrests, and expulsions, made it extremely difficult to cross the
border illegally.

For most refugees, Switzerland was merely a transit country. The
government did not recognize racist persecution as grounds for asylum
or establish special quotas for European civilians fleeing terror.
Indeed, foreign nationals were not granted permission to remain in the
country during the Second World War except in rare cases. Beginning in
1944, even those granted temporary refuge on humanitarian grounds
between 1939 and 1945 were ordered to leave Switzerland, whether or
not they wished to return to their countries of origin or were able to
do so. The requirement that refugees move on shaped both legal and
illegal emigration from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and France
during the early years of Nazi rule. After the regime’s defeat, this
policy once again limited their choices as they considered where to
build a future, settle permanently, and acquire citizenship.

It is difficult to assess the impact of immigration by German-speaking
Jews after 1933 on Jewish culture within Switzerland. There is little
evidence that the established communities or their social milieu
underwent a systematic shift. This may have been partly because
Germany and Switzerland had already maintained close ties and a lively
exchange over the preceding decades.

German-speaking Jewish culture in Switzerland had taken shape during
the nineteenth century through immigration from Alsace and southern
Germany. As restrictions on foreign Jewish immigration eased toward
the end of the century, an urban Jewish middle class emerged out of
the small enclaves of the northern cantons. Officially recognized
religious communities nevertheless remained the exception, and
scarcely any of the rabbis who served in Switzerland during the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries were Swiss citizens.]]></description>
      <link>https://diaspora.jewish-history-online.net/article/bennewitz-switzerland</link>
      <pubDate>Mon, 16 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 on May 10, 1902 in Bierdzan, Germany (today Bierdzany, Poland)
Died on September 30, 1988 in Livingston, New Jersey, United States
Occupation: 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>
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