Always a Berliner at Heart: Jewish Emigrants in Dialogue with Their Home Town

Ebook available to libraries exclusively as part of the JSTOR Path to Open initiative.

In the early 1990s, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and during the process of German re-unification, the city of Berlin commissioned a working group to create a ’Memorial Book for the Jews of Berlin’ and their persecution under the Nazi regime. Alongside the necessary archival research, the group also contacted ’former Berliners’ - Jewish refugees and their descendants - all across the globe. The response was overwhelming: In hundreds of letters, documents, and poems, the correspondents asked the city to take note of their life stories, their experiences, and above all their relationship to the former hometown. They describe their childhood and youth in Berlin, the rise of antisemitism and hatred, the loss not just of property, but also of a feeling of belonging. They report about life in the countries of emigration and show a deep interest in the development of a new, democratic Germany that needs to be made aware of the fate of its Jewish community. The book offers a deep reading and a framework for an understanding of these letters and the emotional ’luggage’ they contain: Feelings about the city of Berlin and about the afterlife of a lost Berlin in the memories of the emigré families.