Between Sorrow and Strength: Women Refugees of the Nazi Period

by Edited by Sibylle Quack

• ISBN13: 9780521522854
• ISBN10: 0521522854
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-11-07
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Many refugees of the Nazi period have attracted considerable scholarly attention. Einstein, Thomas Mann, Hannah Arendt, among others, are all famous examples. In contrast, little is known about the lives of more typical refugees, their everyday lives in exile and emigration, their daily pain, sorrow, and underlying strength. This study shows, for the first time, how refugee women during the Nazi period endured, examining their important role in the survival of their families, and the meaning of exile and emigration for their future lives and careers. Between Sorrow and Strength combines essays by noted scholars in the field with eyewitness reports from contemporaries. It reveals a great deal about the role of women in the history of Jewish, as well as non-Jewish, emigration from Europe during the Nazi era.

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
List of Contributors	ix
Introduction	1	(10)
Sibylle Quack
Prologue: Jewish Women in Nazi Germany Before Emigration	11	(40)
Marion Kaplan
PART ONE: A GLOBAL SEARCH FOR REFUGE
Jewish Women Exiled in France After 1933	51	(12)
Rita Thalmann
Arrival at Camp de Gurs: An Eyewitness Report	63	(6)
Elizabeth Marum Lunau
Women Emigres in England	69	(12)
Marion Berghahn
England: An Eyewitness Report	81	(8)
Susanne Miller
Women Emigres in Palestine: An Eyewitness Report	89	(8)
Rachel Cohn
``Naturally, many things were strange but I could adapt'': Women Emigres in the Netherlands	97	(24)
Ursula Langkau-Alex
Refugee Women from Czechoslovakia in Canada: An Eyewitness Report	121	(8)
Wilma A. Iggers
Women in the Shanghai Jewish Refugee Community	129	(10)
David Kranzler
Shanghai: An Eyewitness Report	139	(8)
Illo L. Heppner
German--Jewish Women in Brazil: Autobiography as Cultural History	147	(12)
Katherine Morris
A Year in the Brazilian Interior: An Eyewitness Report	159	(12)
Eleanor Alexander
PART TWO: REFUGE IN THE UNITED STATES
Community and Institutions
Women's Role in the German--Jewish Immigrant Community	171	(14)
Steven M. Lowenstein
``Listen sensitively and act spontaneously -- but skillfully'': Selfhelp: An Eyewitness Report	185	(6)
Gabriele Schiff
``My only hope'': The National Council of Jewish Women's Rescue and Aid for German--Jewish Refugees	191	(14)
Linda Gordon Kuzmack
The Genossinen and the Khaverim: Socialist Women from the German-Speaking Lands and the American Jewish Labor Movement, 1933--1945	205	(10)
Jack Jacobs
Occupations of Women Emigres
New Women in Exile: German Women Doctors and the Emigration	215	(24)
Atina Grossmann
Women Emigre Psychologists and Psychoanalysts in the United States	239	(26)
Mitchell G. Ash
Destination Social Work: Emigres in a Women's Profession	265	(18)
Joachim Wieler
Chicken Farming: Not a Dream but a Nightmare: An Eyewitness Report	283	(6)
Eva Neisser
The Occupation of Women Emigres: Women Lawyers in the United States	289	(12)
Frank Mecklenburg
Fashioning Fortuna's Whim: German-Speaking Women Emigrant Historians in the United States	301	(24)
Catherine Epstein
Exile or Emigration: Social Democratic Women Members of the Reichstag in the United States	325	(16)
Christl Wickert
Women's Voices in American Exile	341	(12)
Guy Stern
Brigitte V. Sumann
Epilogue: The First Sex	353	(14)
Peter Gay
Index	367