Navigating a Limited ‘World of Possibilities’: Refugee Journeys of Jewish Children and Youth in the Aftermath of the Holocaust

What can historians bring to the current discussion about refugee journeys? Building on the example of a group of 1,115 young Jewish survivors who went to Canada in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust, this article addresses two essential questions: why did they leave and why did they go to Canada and not elsewhere? Drawing on Nicolas Mariot and Claire Zalc's notion of a ‘world of possibilities’ and taking into consideration age as a category of analysis, I argue that one can formulate hypotheses about these journeys by, first, mapping what was and was not available to the young survivors at different moments of their displacement and, second, by looking at how individuals navigated these possibilities and constraints. In so doing, this article aims to nuance approaches that uncritically emphasise agency, and therefore erase the specificity of young people's experiences of displacement.

Encounters with Antisemitism

Encounters with AntisemitismThe Holocaust destroyed Jewish communities across Europe and in Poland. Subsequently, in the Soviet bloc, most Jewish survivors were expelled from or coerced into leaving their countries, while the memory of the millennium-long presence of Jews in Poland was thoroughly suppressed. Through the lens of a scholar’s personal biography, this article reflects on how snippets of the Jewish past tend to linger on in the form of absent presences, despite the national and systemic norm of erasing any remembrance of Poles of the Jewish religion. This norm used to be the dominant type of antisemitism in communist Poland after 1968, and has largely continued unabated after the fall of communism. Spotkania z antysemityzmemZagłada zniszczyła społeczności żydowskie w Europie i w Polsce. Następnie w bloku sowieckim większość Żydów, która przeżyła, wygnano lub zmuszono do wyjazdu, a pamięć o tysiącletniej obecności Żydów w Polsce została całkowicie stłumiona. Artykuł ten, z perspektywy osobistej biografii badacza, stanowi zadumę nad tym, jak fragmenty żydowskiej przeszłości mają tendencję do trwania w formie nieobecnej obecności, pomimo systemowo-narodowej normy wymazywania jakiejkolwiek pamięci o Polakach religii żydowskiej. Norma ta była dominującym rodzajem antysemityzmu w komunistycznej Polsce po roku 1968. Po upadku komunizmu raczej nic się nie zmieniło w tym względzie.

Sexual Violence against Men and Boys during the Holocaust: A Genealogy of (Not-So-Silent) Silence*

Although far more women than men are sexually violated in conflict settings, the records indicate that sexual violence against men and boys has been routinely practised as a weapon of war and genocide. Sexual violence against men and boys during the Holocaust was likely a regular occurrence, but it has remained undocumented and under-researched. Sexual violence against men, because it does not conform to prevalent gender norms and expectations, has been subjected to cultural and epistemic erasure. As a result, it is construed on the model of female rape, making it difficult to recognize male-victim specific forms of assault. Moreover, normative and legal frameworks developed to address it do not take into account the role that the stigma of homosexuality plays in male sexual violence. This article is based on oral testimonies by male heterosexual-identified Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. I focus on the survivors’ self-presentation as adult men in light of their past abuse and on the dynamic of the interviews. I also reference one memoir (Nate Leipciger’s The Weight of Freedom) and reinterpret a chapter from Elie Wiesel’s Night in light of my findings. Revealing the extent of sexual violence against men helps delegitimize harmful gender stereotypes and conceptions of manhood and ‘homosexuality’ and expose their central role in the perpetuation of genocidal violence.

Ber Kotlerman, Broken Heart/Broken Wholeness: The Post-Holocaust Plea for Jewish Reconstruction of the Soviet Yiddish Writer Der Nister. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2017. 278 pp.

In Moscow in June 1947, the Soviet Yiddish writer known as Der Nister (Pinkhas Kahanovitsh, 1884–1950) boarded a train bound for Birobidzhan. The train, which had originated in the city of Vinnitsa, was carrying about a thousand Jewish survivors from southern Ukraine to their new home in the Jewish Autonomous Region in the Russian Far East. As Ber Kotlerman notes in his meticulously researched and captivating study of that relatively short but fateful episode, “this trip did not easily fit into Der Nister’s way of life” (p. 8). Even more remarkable, given the historical moment, is the fact that Der Nister took this trip on his own initiative, though he coordinated it with Soviet authorities. Moreover, he was the only prominent Soviet Jewish writer to visit Birobidzhan after the Second World War....

Return and Reconstruction

This chapter explores the complex process of returning home after spending time as a Jewish refugee. The chaos of wartime conditions meant that there was a constant stream of Jewish refugees, often in the thousands, moving from place to place within the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. In such conditions, the idea of returning home at the earliest opportunity must have seemed an attractive option. Once they had decided to go back, however, the returnees faced the problem of actually gaining entrance into town. Once the Jews were back in town, they then had to reconstitute Jewish society. The third challenge facing the returning refugees was resuming their economic life. Ultimately, in social, economic, religious, legal, and possibly even psychological terms, the Jewish survivors, rebuilding their shattered lives, helped create a very solid foundation for the future growth of their communities. This was a process not without tensions and difficulties, and there was much suffering along the way. Still, as the 1650s progressed and made way for the 1660s, the Jews of Poland–Lithuania were able to position themselves for future growth and development.

The Galician Paradigm? Post-war Voices of German-Speaking Polish Jewish Survivors1

This paper examines the experience of Galician-Jewish survivors who were fluent in German and who had developed close ties to German culture before the Second World War. It suggests that looking through the German linguistic lens highlights the multilayered nature of Jewish cultural identity in Galicia and offers an important critical tool with which to understand the distinct ways in which Galician Jews experienced the Holocaust. Using personal accounts, this article analyzes the ways in which complex cultural biographies of Galician Jews shaped their identities as eastern European Jews, Polish citizens, and Holocaust survivors. On the basis of testimonies included in early accounts for the Jewish historical commissions, statements by Jewish witnesses in post-war trials, oral interviews, and memoirs, this article discusses the ways in which Galician Jews remembered their relationship with German culture and how their complex cultural identity shaped their personal trajectories after the liberation.

Personal Experiences in Post-Shoah Greece: The Case of Isaak Menahem Rousso

In December 1971, twelve years after his first letter to the West German government, 73-year-old Isaak Menahem Rousso exclaimed: “I ask you, what did I do to you for you to destroy my wealth, my shops? You killed my parents, and now you want to pay me a pittance”? The article focuses on the individual struggle of a Jewish survivor to receive compensation from the Federal Republic of Germany, as can be traced in the personal archive of Isaak Menahem Rousso. It examines the numerous letters he sent to German officials during the 1960s and 1970s, documents and contextualises his feelings of despair, fear and anger, and elucidates upon them. These feelings are typical for the Greek Jewish survivors that sought compensation. Survivors complained that the claims evaluation process constituted an unpleasant and inhumane experience. Many found it very difficult to return to the past and remember their suffering, as some of them already felt guilt or shame for having survived, not to mention the pain that reliving these traumatic experiences incurred. Many victims suffered from post-traumatic disorders and it was not easy to revive these experiences. Through Isaak Menahems’ story, I want to explore the survivors’ feelings in their search for recognition and compensation.

Commonalities and Peculiarities of the Return to Life of Holocaust Survivors in their Home Countries: The Dutch and Greek Cases in Context

This article provides a survey of the main characteristics of the return process of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust to their home countries in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, with the goal to contextualise and compare the return to the Netherlands and Greece.

Federal Appellate Court Allows Hungarian Holocaust Survivors to Pursue Claims

On December 28, 2018, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit held in Simon v. Republic of Hungary that fourteen Hungarian Jewish survivors of the Holocaust could continue to pursue their claims against Hungary and its state-owned railway. In a 2–1 decision authored by Judge Millett, the D.C. Circuit reversed the district court decision that had dismissed the case on two alternative grounds—the principle of international comity and the doctrine of forum non conveniens. The D.C. Circuit thus remanded the long-running case for further proceedings.