“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.