Holocaust Survivors And Immigrants

In the decade after the Second World War, 35,000 Jewish survivors of Nazi persecution and their dependants arrived in Canada. This was a watershed moment in Canadian Jewish history. The unprecedented scale of the relief effort required for the survivors, compounded by their unique social, psychological, and emotional needs challenged both the established Jewish community and resettlement agents alike. Adara Goldberg’s Holocaust Survivors in Canada highlights the immigration, resettlement, and integration experience from the perspective of Holocaust survivors and those charged with helping them. The book explores the relationships between the survivors, Jewish social service organizations, and local Jewish communities; it considers how those relationships—strained by disparities in experience, language, culture, and worldview—both facilitated and impeded the ability of survivors to adapt to a new country. Researched in basement archives and as well as at Holocaust survivors’ kitchen tables, Holocaust Survivors in Canada represents the first comprehensive analysis of the resettlement, integration, and acculturation experience of survivors in early postwar Canada. Goldberg reveals the challenges in responding to, and recovering from, genocide—not through the lens of lawmakers, but from the perspective of “new Canadians” themselves.

Based on a unique research study, this volume examines the later life development of Holocaust survivors from Israel and the US. Through systematic interviews, the authors – noted researchers and clinicians – collected data about the lives of these survivors and how they compared to peers who did not share this experience. The orientation of the book synthesizes several conceptual approaches – gerontological and life span development, stress research, and traumatology, and also reflects the varied disciplines of the authors, spanning psychology, social work, and sociology. The result is a multi-faceted view of their subject with an understanding of the individual, society, and the interaction of the two, tempered by the authors’ own Holocaust experiences. Chapters cover a range of areas including stress and coping of these survivors, reviews of their heath and mental health, an examination of their social integration, as well as a review of the multiple predictors of psychological well-being and adaptation to aging. This book will be of interest to psychologists, social workers, sociologists, psychiatrists, and all those who study both trauma and aging.

This volume follows the chain of events of the summer of 1947 when, escaping from Nazi Germany, Jews were denied passage to pre-State Israel, then British Mandate Palestine. The passengers were forced to disembark in Hamburg. This is the story of that affair and asks what became of the immigrants.

This book explores Jewish refugee movements before, during and after the Holocaust and to place them in a longer history of forced migration from the 1880s to the present. It does not deny that there were particular issues facing the Jews escaping from Nazism, but in this enlightening study the author emphasises that there are longer term trends which shed light on responses to and the experiences of these refugees and other forced migrants. Focusing on women, children, and 'illegal' boat migrants, the author considers not only British spheres of influence, but also Europe, the Middle East, the Americas, South Asia, Australasia. The approach adopted is historical but incorporates insights from many different disciplines including geography, anthropology, cultural and literary studies and politics. State as well as popular responses are integrated and the voices of the refugees themselves are highlighted throughout. Films, novels, museums and memorials are used alongside more traditional sources, allowing exploration of history and memory. And whilst the importance of comparison underpins this book, it also provides a detailed history of many neglected refugee movements or aspects within them such as gender and childhood. Written in a lively and committed style, the book is accessible to both a general as well as a specialist audience, and will be of interest to those interested in the Holocaust, migration and generally in the growing crisis of ordinary people forced to move.

This book deals with the integration of thousands of survivors of the Holocaust into Israeli society in the early years of the new State's existence. Among the issues discussed are: the ways in which the survivors were recruited into the defence forces and the role they played in the War of Independence, the settlement of the immigrants in towns and villages abandoned by Arabs during the war and the immigrant youth.

Based on interviews with survivors and records of organizations which assisted in the resettlement of displaced persons, compares the experiences of 60 Polish Christians and 60 Polish Jews now living in Pittsburgh. Discusses prewar Poland, the Nazi occupation, and emigration to the USA. Ch. 2 (pp. 9-41), "Between Swastika and Sickle, " describes wartime experiences, mentioning life in the ghettos, the deportations, and the concentration camps. Notes that fear of antisemitism was a primary reason for leaving Poland after the war. Many of the Jewish survivors emphasized that the climate of hate was a continuation of their experiences with Polish antisemitism prior to and during the war. Ch. 4 also discusses the Displaced Persons Act which was considered to be discriminatory against Jews.

Against All Odds is the first comprehensive look at the 140,000 Jewish Holocaust survivors who came to America and the lives they have made here. William Helmreich writes of their experiences beginning with their first arrival in the United States: the mixed reactions they encountered from American Jews who were not always eager to receive them; their choices about where to live in America; and their efforts in finding marriage partners with whom they felt most comfortable?most often other survivors.In preparation, Helmreich spent more than six years traveling the United States, listening to the personal stories of hundreds of survivors, and examining more than 15,000 pages of data as well as new material from archives that have never before been available to create this remarkable, groundbreaking work. What emerges is a picture that is sharply different from the stereotypical image of survivors as people who are chronically depressed, anxious, and fearful.This intimate, enlightening work explores questions about prevailing over hardship and adversity: how people who have gone through such experiences pick up the threads of their lives; where they obtain the strength and spirit to go on; and, finally, what lessdns the rest of us can learn about overcoming tragedy.

Beyond the Holocaust: An Immigrant’s Search for Identity is Sylvie Heyman’s personal narrative as a refugee, with her family, from Europe during World War II. It chronicles their journey to Brazil, the harrowing experiences as they were smuggled to Argentina, the challenges faced in those dictatorship countries and the final immigration to the United States of America when the author was a teenager. In the second part of the book, the author blends her personal experiences with scholarly theories about language, nationality, and identity to better understand the long-term struggles and challenges that immigrants face.