In Scattered Formation: Displacement, Alignment and the German-Jewish Diaspora

The rise of National Socialism catalyzed a mass wave of forced migration of Jews from Nazi Germany and its annexed territories. From the beginning of Hitler’s rule and until the end of the Second World War, it is estimated that more than 400,000 German-speaking Jews fled antisemitic violence in Central Europe in search of safe havens and new homes. This dissertation portrays the process by which this displaced population reconstituted itself as a diaspora. It captures the contours of life in the aftermath of forced migration; the modalities of reorientation adopted by the displaced in their diasporic communities; their efforts to preserve a cultural identity threatened by extinction; and the lived tensions that emerged as a result of these developments. Encapsulating five continents and spanning from 1933 and until the end of the twentieth century, this dissertation approaches displacement as a dynamic field, illuminating the ways in which diasporic communities evolve across time. In its geographic reach, it explores the multifaceted responses of a community bound by shared history to the shock of near-total dispersion and to the cataclysmic rupture of the Holocaust./nThree key analytical threads are woven together throughout the five chapters that comprise the dissertation. The first approaches displacement as a lived experience. By focusing on spheres and aspects of everyday life – from relationships between parents and children, through visits to the doctor, to sharing jokes and laughs – this study uncovers multidimensional manifestations of displacement. As a result, the dissertation proposes to understand displacement as a condition that permeates across life spheres and extends well beyond the immediate events of forced removal. The second thread explores displaced German-speaking Jewry as a diasporic community that had no center to which they could look back towards. Forced migration and genocidal persecution created unique circumstances wherein far more German-speaking Jews were living outside of Europe than in it. Decades after National Socialism, German-speaking Jewry remained in its essence a diaspora, and unlike the majority of dispersed populations, this diaspora had no existing space to yearn for as a home. Displacement and dispersion were, I argue, the defining characteristics of German-speaking Jewry during this time period. Building on this last point, the third thread of the dissertation illuminates the coherence of the German-Jewish diaspora. While diasporas by nature operate as complex and variegated networks, they are also built around a set of ideas that bind their constituents together – a shared history, culture and values that become amplified in the process of diasporic formation. In the case explored here, this coherence was borne out of the pressures of balancing Jewishness and Germaness in light of and in the aftermath of the Holocaust. The fervor of anti-Jewish violence had made it impossible for the vast majority of German-speaking Jews to return to their previous homelands. Isolated and banished, the displaced nevertheless resisted denouncing their affinity with German culture, language and history. Although they had been forcibly removed from a geographic landscape, they remained embedded in a mental one that continued to play a crucial role in shaping their post-migration, still-displaced lives. The tension between German-speaking Jews’ continued attachment to their lost homes and the irreparable sense of grief and betrayal that was unleashed in these places echoes throughout the dissertation, as it resonated across the German-Jewish diaspora.

Advisor: Efron, John M