73135 research outputs found
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Conquest and restoration: United States policy on the restitution of personal assets from the Holocaust, a constructivist view.
No full textThe robbery of Europe's Jews preceded the genocide of the Holocaust and served as a warning of worse events to come. The Nazis, through the molding and construction of a religion meant to supercede the Jewish religion and the Jews as the new "chosen," achieved this robbery, as well as the disenfranchisement, and annihilation of the Jews, first of Germany, and then in the rest of Europe. Following the Nazis' defeat, the United States in concert with its war-time allies, began what would become a decade's long struggle for restitution for these crimes. Together, the robbery of Europe's Jews and the successes and failures of post-Holocaust restitution are explained through Constructivist theory which examines social construction through the interaction of linguistic speech rules.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Miami, 2004.School code: 0125
"We are not only English Jews---we are Jewish Englishmen": The making of an Anglo-Jewish identity, 1840--1880.
No full textThis work explores changes and developments in London's Jewish community in the years between 1840 and 1880 as it strove to maintain the religious connection and identity of its members while simultaneously joining the greater English society. Departing from earlier treatments of Anglo-Jewish identity, this project focuses on the crucial years during the Victorian period in which a majority of the community was, for the first time, native-born.More specifically, this work examines the melding of English and Jewish social, educational, institutional, and economic elements to create a new hybridization, Anglo-Jewry. The examination of this identity-formation process has been fleshed out by detailed canvassing of relevant period newspapers, both Jewish and English, as well as other archival material. Particular emphasis is placed on advertising material from the Anglo-Jewish press during these years, something that has not been done in previous work. Developments covered include changes in Jewish charity organization, in the Chief Rabbinate and its interactions with London Jewry, and in the economic, social, and political status of the community. It also deals with accommodative changes in education, and describes, in effect, the ability of the Jewish Community to maintain and adapt its Jewish practice and identity while creating an acceptable English persona for itself and its members, transforming most English Jews into Jewish Englishmen in the process.Thesis (Ph.D.)--State University of New York at Buffalo, 2004.School code: 0656
Klezmer: Music and community in 20th century Jewish Philadelphia.
No full textThis dissertation presents an overview of the "klezmer" (Jewish professional folk instrumental) musical tradition as practiced in Philadelphia's 20th century Jewish community. Through interviews, manuscripts, and recordings, I construct an ethnographic portrait of Philadelphia's Jewish wedding musicians, the environment they worked in, and the repertoire they performed at local Jewish life cycle and communal celebrations, from the music's heyday in the immigrant era through its midcentury decline, up to the more recent period of its revitalization.An offspring of the expansive eastern-European Jewish wedding music tradition (especially that of the southern Ukraine, the source for a large percentage of Philadelphia's Jews), Philadelphia's klezmer tradition featured music held over from immigrant days, as well as newer dances and rituals that were unique to this adopted community. Thus, Philadelphia's klezmorim (Jewish wedding musicians) honored old-country customs while functioning within an urban American musical culture.The issues I will address here include the place of musicians and celebratory music in Jewish society, the nature of "klezmer" culture, the ongoing tension between the sacred and secular in music, the complexity of hybrid ethnic musical expression, the insider-outsider dynamic in klezmer, the evolution of klezmer repertoire (and one musical medley in particular) over the course of a century, the ethnography of a nearly extinct regional musical community, including the relationship of that community to younger "klezmer revivalists", and the American transformation of a European ethnic musical tradition.In recent years, klezmer has become best known as the music of an adventurous concert presentation-focused revival. By exploring how this music and the musicians who played it functioned at celebratory occasions within a "provincial" community, I hope to shed light on the historical context of this once again vibrant tradition.Thesis (Ph.D.)--Wesleyan University, 2004.School code: 0255
Linguistic violence: Language, power and separation in the fate of Germans of Jewish ancestry, 1928--1948.
No full textMy dissertation investigates the linguistic violence of official, anti-Semitic Nazi government categories and analyzes how these processes preceded, accompanied, and made possible the physical violence against racialized minorities in Germany. My study contextualizes these processes by comparing them with the situation in the late Weimar years and the period of American military occupation of the early postwar years.Beginning with the central role of key language control sites, such as the Nazi Propaganda Ministry, this work sheds light on the impact of these official agencies on the German print media. It focuses specifically on the conceptual separation between the categories of "German" and "Jew" that these institutions perpetuated. My dissertation examines the dissemination of social aggression via these racialized categories through the press. It traces how this state-level instigation affected the ways readers used language to navigate in harsh worlds and ultimately to fight for their own lives.Examining the concept of "discursive contestation," my study reveals a level on which German Jews, Jewish converts to Christianity, and people whom the Nazis termed "Mischlinge" were anything but passive victims of state-organized linguistic and physical violence. Instead, these individuals actively engaged in a struggle for their survival and sense of self against the Nazi onslaught. My work speaks to questions of how linguistic violence interacted with political power and helped to create a culture in which genocide was possible, and how Germans of Jewish ancestry managed and did not manage to go on with their everyday lives in the midst of this violence.My dissertation offers an analysis of official agencies and the print media, their crucial impact on the ways individuals identified and defined one another, and illuminates how Nazi agencies constructed enemies and victims through a process of linguistic separation. This study also uses discourse analysis to explore the complex responses of victims to these extreme realities and experiences. By investigating the structures and methods of language dissemination in Weimar, Nazi, and early postwar Germany, my research advances an analytical model which may be used to study other instances of linguistic violence and genocide in the modern world.Thesis (Ph.D.)--The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2004.School code: 0153
The effects of aversive anti-Semitism on selection decisions regarding Jewish workers in the United States.
No full textThe effects of aversive anti-Semitism on selection decisions regarding Jewish employees in the U.S. were studied. The extant literature on aversive racism, prejudice and stereotyping, and job discrimination provided a backdrop for the present study. Participants read transcripts of an interview for a bank president position that varied by candidate religion/ethnicity and qualifications. They then rated the job candidate on job-relevant scales and personality traits, and completed an anti-Semitism scale and demographics questionnaire. The first hypothesis predicted a 2-way interaction of candidate religion/ethnicity and qualifications on candidate ratings such that Jewish candidates would be rated lower than Christian candidates in the ambiguous qualification condition but not in the strong or weak qualification conditions. The second hypothesis predicted a negative correlation between self-report anti-Semitism and Jewish candidate ratings across conditions. College and graduate students ( N = 299) participated in the study. Tests of the first hypothesis indicated an interaction of candidate religion/ethnicity and qualifications on candidate ratings that was modified by participant religion. Specifically, when qualifications were weak, Jewish and Christian participants rated Christian candidates higher than Jewish candidates. In contrast, participants with no religion rated Jewish candidates higher than Christian candidates in the weak qualification condition. Post hoc correlation analyses revealed significant variations in candidate ratings based on implicit associations between Jews and ambition and Christians and incompetence. In particular, strongly qualified Jewish candidates who were rated highly for the job were seen as ambitious yet their Christian counterparts were not. Weakly qualified Christian candidates who were rated poorly for the job were seen as incompetent, yet their Jewish counterparts were not. Tests of the second hypothesis revealed no significant correlation between candidate ratings and total anti-Semitism scores. However, significant correlations were found for the traditional anti-Semitism subscale, indicating that traditional anti-Semitism was a better predictor of anti-Jewish discrimination than modern anti-Semitism. Tests of demographic factors revealed that frequent interaction with Muslims and Republican Party membership both correlated positively with anti-Semitism. Overall, this study did not demonstrate the expected effects of aversive anti-Semitism in the banking industry. However, important links were found between implicit personality-based biases and hiring decisions.Thesis (Ph.D.)--Alliant International University, San Diego, 2004.School code: 1389
Joke-making Jews/jokes making Jews: Essays on humor and identity in American Jewish fiction.
No full textBeginning from the premise that humor plays a prominent role in the construction of group and individual identities, as a social phenomenon and a simultaneously alienating and assimilating force, these essays explore and examine humor and its construction of American Jewish identity within the context of various works of American Jewish fiction. Though organized as "chapters," the essays do not build upon one another progressively, nor do they center on a unified thesis; rather, each is written to stand alone; however, each approaches the general subject of humor and identity in American Jewish fiction, and as a collection it is intended that the whole equal more than the sum of its parts.Following the Introduction, chapter two examines Abraham Cahan's Yekl and the relationship between humor and identity for the Jewish immigrant at the turn of the 20th century. Attention is also paid to the absences of humor, and how these are likewise capable of constructing identity.Chapter three raises questions regarding the ethics of humor, particularly when dealing with the Holocaust. It examines Saul Bellow's The Bellarosa Connection under the guiding question of "What is to be gained by reading this novella?"---with specific attention being given to the connective function of the novella's humor.Bernard Malamud's God's Grace is examined in chapter four, which seeks to read the novel as a retelling of an old Jewish joke, in the form of the story of Abraham and Isaac; Malamud's reversal of the story, and his use of absurdist humor, is read as an affirmation of humanism and Jewish identity.Chapter five examines the humor of Philip Roth and Woody Allen, as representatives of second-generation anxieties about Jewish identity in America.Then, chapters six and seven explore two possible responses to these anxieties. Chapter six looks at the works of the Coen brothers and asserts that Jewishness has been deliberately absented from their narratives; chapter seven looks at the works of Allegra Goodman and Nathan Englander and asserts that, in their fiction, a new, anxiety-free Jewish Self is being constructed, with humor playing a prominent role in this postassimilationism.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2004.School code: 0506
Protecting Poznania: Germans, Poles, and the conflict over national identity, 1886--1914.
No full textThis dissertation is a comparative study of the patriotic societies that spearheaded the national conflict between Germans and Poles in the Prussian province of Poznania in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I argue that such a comparative analysis reveals considerable (and long overlooked) similarities between the German and Polish societies in the social backgrounds of their memberships and in the language and imagery that they employed in their discourses.Patriotic societies emerged in the Prussian eastern provinces in the late 1880s and early 1890s. The Pan-German League and the German Eastern Marches Society were founded in 1890 and 1894 respectively, as a result of German disenchantment with Caprivi's "New Course" and as a response to the growing threat of Polish nationalism. This "growing threat" was the result of the Polish "organic work" movement, of which the gymnastic societies and the "Guard" Society were two pillars. These organizations focused on education---national, physical, and practical---and sought to overcome the traditional social and economic weaknesses of Polish society and to integrate the Polish population into a unified national movement. On the German side, patriotic societies sought to mobilize national loyalties among Germans in the eastern provinces in support of harsher policies against Prussian Poles, such as the Germanization of schools and place-names and the settlement of Germans in the eastern provinces.The historical literature on these organizations is extensive, but it suffers from critical weaknesses. First, it treats each side in isolation, analyzing either the German national societies or the Polish national movement. Second, the literature has, perhaps unconsciously, incorporated a political message into the historiography, a weakness which is accentuated by the traditional focus on the political and institutional histories of the organizations. This dissertation addresses these weaknesses in the historiography by (1) explicitly comparing the German and Polish organizations according to a thematic organization and (2) focusing on the cultural, rather than the political and institutional history of these organizations. The core of my analysis focuses on five major themes: (1) the social basis of the patriotic societies; (2) the language, symbols, and imagery of the patriotic societies and their representations both of the "Other" and of the "ideal self;" (3) gender, including the engendering of nationalist imagery and the role of women in the conflict; and (4) the confessional question, including the Jewish question.Thesis (Ph.D.)--Georgetown University, 2004.School code: 0076
Spezialinventar und -bibliografie : Archivalien, Sammlungsgut und Literatur zur deutsch-jüdischen Geschichte des 19./20. Jahrhunderts in Ostwestfalen-Lippe.
No full textThesis for the Fachhochschule Potsdam, Fachbereich Informationswissenschaften, Studiengang Archiv. Contains listing of archival materials related to the Jews in Ostwestfalen-Lippe
AHC interview with Lola Leah Sprinzeles
No full textLola Leah Sprinzeles was born on July 22, 1924, in Vienna where she lived at Gerhardusgasse 10 in the 20th district. She was part of the Zionist movement in Vienna. After the Nazis’ rise to power, she fled to the United Kingdom where they stayed from December 1938 until September 1948. She went to Palestine (1948-50), the UK (1948-53), and finally came to the United States in January 1953. She became a psychologist, and now lives in New York, New York
AHC Interview with Alice Heisig
No full textAlice Heisig was born in Vienna on November 10, 1912. She lived at Taborstrasse 7 in the second Viennese district and went to a trading school called "Handelsakademie" from 1926-1930. After the "Anschluss" of Austria, her husband Erwin Heisig was deported to Dachau concentration camp. The family fled from Vienna on July 2,1939 to England and then came to New York on January 6, 1940. Alice Heisig started to work as dressmaker and fitter