Workshop “From the ‘Forced Emigration’ to Deportation and Ghettoisation of the Jews from the Greater Germany”

The Institute for German Jewish History (Hamburg), the editorial project "Judenverfolgung 1933-1945" (Berlin), and the Terezin Initiative Institute (Prague), plan a two-part workshop. Part I on the theme of “Forced Emigration of Jews (1938/9 until 1941)” will take place in May 2009 in Hamburg.

The topic of the first part of the workshop will be the Jewish perspective of the years 1938/9 until 1941, so far largely neglected by historiography. Therefore we want to concentrate on the situation of Jews – here we mean not individual or local persons or groups, but their organisations – in their home countries and places to which they emigrated.

After the breakout of the WWII in September 1939 the end of individual emigration slowly became apparent. While Nazi functionaries made up adventurous plans for mass deportation of Jews with a genocidal aspect (just to mention the Madagascar Plan), the Jewish organisations (some of which were founded by force) in Germany, annexed Austria, Sudeten areas and the “Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia” looked perforce for other solutions to help Jews escape the countries controlled by the Nazis. Since the early deportations to the Lublin district (February 1940) and France (October of the same year) took place parallel, the time and leeway got shorter. The Jewish organisations in the German Reich could act with the support of the relief organisations. In this increasingly difficult situation, even the relief organisations had to look for new ways to continue emigration in spite of the war, be it while supporting semilegal or illegal transactions.

We are looking for our workshop for contributions that:
- cast light on the situation of the Jewish organisations in Greater Germany (as described above: “Altreich”, Austria and the “Protectorate”) and their aims to facilitate emigration
- analyse the activity, problems and goals of the Jewish relief organisations in these years

The workshop will be conducted in German and English (no interpretors).
We seek proposals (about 2 pp – 500 words) briefly describing the paper, sources and a very brief biography of the author. The abstract should be in German or English. Please send these in by the 15th of November, 2008 to:

Beate.Meyer@public.uni-hamburg.de
Heim@ifz-muenchen.de

The second part of the workshop will take place in spring 2010 in Prague, focusing on „Jewish everyday life in the German Reich in the times of deportations (1941-1945)“. The CfP for this will follow later.

PD Dr. Susanne Heim
Dr. Beate Meyer
Anna Hájková