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Murder without hatred: Estonians, the Holocaust, and the problem of collaboration.
No full textThis dissertation explores patters of local collaboration in the Nazi murder of the Jews in Estonia. Unlike in the neighboring Latvia and Lithuania, there were no anti-Jewish pogroms, ghettos, or summary executions in Estonia. Under the rather loose German supervision, the Estonian Security Police apprehended and investigated the so-called communist suspects, including about one thousand Jews, on an individual basis. The level of anti-Semitism in Estonia was traditionally low; a majority of the ordinary Estonians who were called by the police to testify supported individual Jews they knew. Despite that, the Estonian Security Police had routinely charged Jews with "communist activities" or "subversive schemes." The humiliating Soviet takeover of 1940 did not only display internal weaknesses of the Estonian State but also made a majority population to acquiesce to the loss of independence. Perhaps as many as one-fifth of all Estonian policemen had in one form or another previously collaborated with the Soviet regime. By portraying Jews as communists, those men sought to divert attention from their own past as well as to attribute the collapse of the Estonian State solely to foreign intervention.Thesis (Ph.D.)--Brandeis University, 2005.School code: 0021
AHC Interview with Emma Leaf
No full textEmma Leaf, nee Susskind, was born on April 11, 1926 in Vienna. Two years after her mother Adele died, Mrs. Leaf and her sister Josephine lived with her aunt Fanny Weitzendorf and her uncle Siegfried. Her father Issac moved from Vienna to Reichnitz, Burgenland, Austria, and remarried there. Until 1936, Emma Leaf lived in the 5th district of Vienna and then moved to the 13th district (Hietzing). Immediately after the Nazi's rise to power in Austria, Siegfried Weitzendorf applied for a visa to the United States. The family left Vienna in October 1938 and went via Antwerp, Belgium to the United States. Mrs. Leaf went to high school and college, she got married. She became a social worker, living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan
AHC Interview with David Georg Gil.
No full textFebruary 28, 2005; March 10, 2005David Gil was born as Georg Engel in Vienna on March 16, 1924. He lived with his parents and his brother in the third district of Vienna. His father was a merchant. After the Nazis took over political power in Austria in 1938, David's father, Oskar Engel, lost his business and David was forced out of school. Shortly after the so-called Anschluss, Oskar Engel was deported to Buchenwald where he was interned untill 1940. The two sons David and Harry left with the Kindertransport. In 1939 David Gil went to Sweden and later he joined his brother in Palestine. Their mother, Helena Engel, did not survive the emigration and died 1940 in a British camp. David Gil stayed until 1953 in Israel and then immigrated to the US, where he lived as a professor of social policy.Austrian Heritage Collectio
The family memories of Robert Kanfer : Vienna – London – Cheltenham - Vienna.
No full textThe memoir includes a pedigree, photographs, representing the whole family, grandparents, parents, himself, in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. The manuscript starts with Robert Kanfer's grandparents' background, then covers the Boehm family--his wife Susie's family. Susie's father was Jewish. Her Catholic mother helped her husband's parents to get a visa. Her grandfather was Alfred Boehm. The next chapter covers vague memories of the "Anschluss" in March 1938. Robert Kanfer's father, Max Kanfer, was arrested by the Gestapo and deported to Buchenwald concentration camp. There he spent 4 months, and 4 more in Dachau concentration camp. Robert Kanfer's mother Bertha was forced to scrub off the streets which is vividly described. He describes a few more of these cruel daily antisemitic attacks. Since the family had a very limited budget, obtaining visas became quite difficult. The family had to separate and reunite only many years later, in 1947. The father emigrated to Shanghai, Robert could escape on a Kindertransport in 1939. He would spend the coming eleven years in England. Robert's brother Fritz was eager to move back to Vienna, and wanted his family to join him. He arranged for Robert to study architecture at the Viennese Academy of Fine Arts, which finally convinced Robert to join his brother. So he moved back to Vienna in 1950. He started to study with famous Austrian architect Clemens Holzmeister, but later changed to the Academy of Applied Arts in Vienna, to study with Franz Schuster. After graduation, he soon opened his own office. Throughout his career, he designed 10 Novotel hotels in Austria. He got married to his first wife Evi, they got a son, Roland. Soon they got a divorce, and Robert married Susy who he had known for a long time.digitizedPaul Schober, January 2006Robert Kanfer was born in May 1930 in Vienna. His family was assimilated and poor. He lived with his parents and a brother in a studio apartment. His grandfather was a jewelry box maker, his father was a travelling salesman, selling lottery tickets. The family lost whatever little they had possessed after the Nazis came to power in Austria. On April 25, 1939, Robert left on a "Kindertransport" to England. In 1950 he returned to Vienna to study architecture at the Academy of Arts, and became an architect. Among many other projects, he designed an Austrian memorial museum in Auschwitz in 1977. Robert Kanfer lives in Vienna, Austria.See also Austrian Heritage CollectionKanfer, FerdinandKanfer, HenriettaKanfer, AlfredKanfer, Fritz, 1925-Kanfer, BerthaKanfer, MaxRighteous Gentiles in the HolocaustBoehm, AdolfKanfer, Susie, 1940-Brooks, GretaJews--Austria; history; 1918-1938Emigration and immigration; after 1945; AustriaVienna. Verband Demokratischer StudentenKatz, FriedrichHolzmeister, Clemens, 1886-1983Vienna. HakoahArchitectureSteiner, KurtSchuster, Franz, 1892-197
Die Juden in und um Meerholz /
No full textArticle about the history of the Jewish community in Meerholz (Gelnhausen) from the 16th to 20th century. Included are population numbers for Meerholz and the surrounding communities as well as the Jewish communities there; lists of protected Jews in Meerholz and the surrounding communities; and information on the synagogue and Jewish school in Meerholz.digitize
Murder without hatred: Estonians, the Holocaust, and the problem of collaboration.
No full textThis dissertation explores patters of local collaboration in the Nazi murder of the Jews in Estonia. Unlike in the neighboring Latvia and Lithuania, there were no anti-Jewish pogroms, ghettos, or summary executions in Estonia. Under the rather loose German supervision, the Estonian Security Police apprehended and investigated the so-called communist suspects, including about one thousand Jews, on an individual basis. The level of anti-Semitism in Estonia was traditionally low; a majority of the ordinary Estonians who were called by the police to testify supported individual Jews they knew. Despite that, the Estonian Security Police had routinely charged Jews with "communist activities" or "subversive schemes." The humiliating Soviet takeover of 1940 did not only display internal weaknesses of the Estonian State but also made a majority population to acquiesce to the loss of independence. Perhaps as many as one-fifth of all Estonian policemen had in one form or another previously collaborated with the Soviet regime. By portraying Jews as communists, those men sought to divert attention from their own past as well as to attribute the collapse of the Estonian State solely to foreign intervention.Thesis (Ph.D.)--Brandeis University, 2005.School code: 0021
Franz Rosenzweig and scripture.
No full textThis dissertation centers on the writings of the German-Jewish philosopher, translator, and educator Franz Rosenzweig (1886--1929), arguing that Rosenzweig's works mobilize sacred language as the cornerstone of a new kind of philosophy. It demonstrates that a heretofore overlooked theme of scripture pervades Rosenzweig's mature work, namely, The Star of Redemption, a commentary on the poetry of the medieval Hebrew philosopher Jehuda Halevi, and a translation of the Bible into German. This theme unites Rosenzweig's evolving attempt to renegotiate the relationship between modern readers and ancient, authoritative texts and traditions. Rosenzweig's early concept of sacred scripture, which deployed specific biblical passages to demonstrate the universal theological condition of humanity, gave way in his later writing to a claim that scripture is uniquely Jewish. This turn in his thinking proved critical to his effort to create a new, non-territorial "home" for German Jews in language and text, an alternative to the solutions to the "Jewish question" proposed by Zionism, on the one hand, and by assimilationism, on the other.More broadly, the dissertation aims not only to revise the scholarly understanding of Rosenzweig's critical contribution to Jewish thought, but also to make a historical claim that the religious crisis in Weimar Germany precipitated a new interest in sacred language and scripture, of which Rosenzweig's work is one significant exemplar. My dissertation situates Rosenzweig's turn to language in general and scripture in particular within the context of the perceived "crisis of historicism" that gripped the German intellectual community of the early twentieth century. As many religious thinkers realized toward the beginning of the twentieth century, a century of scholarship---and a devastating war---had slowly come to dismantle the most fundamental verities of religious life, such as the assumption of the divine authorship of the Bible and the faith that its narratives corresponded to actual historical events. I show that Rosenzweig's effort to revitalize the Bible and Jewish classical texts paralleled the work of innovative Protestant religious thinkers. My study attends to this historical context while also suggesting implications of contemporary theological significance.Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2005.School code: 0212
Yidisher sotsializm: The origin and contexts of the Jewish Labor Bund's national program.
No full textThis dissertation examines the Jewish Labor Bund's debates and programmatic statements regarding the 'national question', analyzes the relation between the Bund's national program and European social democracy, and considers how the Bund put its national program into practice in a range of political, cultural and recreational activities in interwar Poland. The Bund's national program was an attempt to reconceptualize national relations, especially within the state, according to socialist (but non-Bolshevik) principles. This program openly challenged nationalism and the nation state and championed the rights of the different nationalities (not only Jews) within each state. Its main tenet was that the Jews of Russia, and later Poland, as well as the other national minorities, must be granted a limited 'national-cultural autonomy'. It also stressed that the solution to the Jews' problems must be found in the places where they already lived and not through emigration (doykayt). Whereas the existing historiography often presents a simplified version of Bundism or stresses the Bund's failure to achieve its aims, this dissertation attempts to understand the Bund's aspirations and activities in their own terms. The first chapters discuss the internal debates that led the Bund to adopt its national program and reconstruct the intellectual background that resulted in the Bund's particular synthesis and views. I give particular attention to the work of key theorists that had an impact on the development of the Bund's program, among them the 'founding fathers' of Marxism (Marx, Engels and Kautsky), Austro-Marxist theorists (Karl Renner and Otto Bauer), Bundist theorists (such as Vladimir Medem and Beynish Mikhalevitsh), and ideological rivals within the Marxist movement with whom the Bund maintained fierce debates in the process of developing its national and political identity (Rosa Luxemburg and the Bolsheviks Lenin and Stalin). In the later chapters I explore the extent to which the Polish Bund in the interwar period endeavored to apply its national program and unique synthesis of socialism, internationalism, and Jewish identity in the development of a complex subculture of working-class, secular Yiddishist institutions, and I show how this network constituted an impressive 'national-cultural autonomy in the making'.Thesis (Ph.D.)--New York University, 2005.School code: 0146
Dreiundsechzig.
No full textIrene Runge’s 14th book was written on occasion of her 63rd birthday: instead of a speech, it was printed and delivered to 63 of her friends. The book is a memoir, and jumps back and forth in time. It consists mostly of personal memories and anecdotes, but there are also reflective passages and analyses. It is divided into many chapters, which resemble diary entries. Irene Runge was a member of the "second generation": She was born in the New York exile, but her parents moved back to Germany during a political climate in the USA, when it became very difficult for sympathizers with the communist party. Her memories give rich insight into the life as an emigrant in New York, but also as a re-emigrant in Germany. She writes about her disappointments with the evolving German Democratic Republic (GDR; experiences, which repeated again in 1989/1990, when the reunification with West Germany took place. The year 1989 had practical consequences for her private life when she lost her job at the university, because her past seemed not compatible. She discusses the PDS, the party which evolved from the communist party of Eastern Germany after the "Wende" (reunification), and life in Berlin after the reunification. At one point she asks whether the current Turkish-Muslim community in Berlin could be comparable to the living conditions of the Jewish community in the 1930. This is a rare memoir documenting many recent aspects of German-speaking Jewry.Irene Runge, née Alexan, was born in New York City in 1942. Her father's name was George Friedrich Alexan (pre-war name Alexander Kupfermann). Her parents were affiliated with the communist party. They had lived in Berlin, Germany, and fled the Nazis in 1933 to Paris, then in 1938 to New York. The family moved back to Germany shortly after the war, in the late 1940s, and chose to live in Eastern Germany.Arendt, KatjaKrueger, LoreEmigration and immigration; 1933-1945; FranceEmigration and immigration; 1933-1945; USAGermany; history; allied occupation; 1945