This lecture will focus on the experiences of Jewish refugees as they fled Hitler’s regime, then lived in limbo in Portugal till they could reach safer havens abroad. Drawing attention not only to the social and physical upheavals these refugees experienced, this talk will highlight refugees’ complicated feelings as they fled their homes and histories, relying on the kindness of strangers.
Marion Kaplan is the Skirball Professor of Modern Jewish History Emerita at NYU. She is a three-time National Jewish Book Award winner for “The Making of the Jewish Middle Class: Women, Family and Identity in Imperial Germany” (1991), “Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany” (1998), and “Gender and Jewish History” (with Deborah Dash Moore, 2011) as well as a finalist for “Dominican Haven: The Jewish Refugee Settlement in Sosua” (2008). Her other monographs include: “The Jewish Feminist Movement in Germany; Jewish Daily Life in Germany, 1618-1945″ (ed.); and “Hitler’s Jewish Refugees: Hope and Anxiety in Portugal, 1940-45” (2020).