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Issue 4|2009, abstracts:
Anja Horstmann
'Judenaufnahmen fürs Archiv’. The documentary film material ‘Asien in Mitteleuropa’, 1942
The interest of National Socialists to preserve film material of their victims beyond expulsion and elimination is an aspect which has only been looked at from a marginal perspective of historical science. Even though a number of films and photos as well as indications and traces of their production, accumulation and archiving exist.
In the following article the form and intention of such specifically made film material will be traced on the basis of the documentary film ‘Asien in Mitteleuropa’ which was recorded in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942.
Ingo Loose
The ambivalence of the authentic. Jews, Holocaust and anti-semitism in German movies after 1945.
The last fifteen years brought a drastic change of perception of the Holocaust in Germany. Knowledge about the national socialist murders of Jews is increasingly being transported through film. Considering this background and certain examples the article analyses the movie repertoire, in which Jews, the Holocaust and anti-Semitism are presented and especially points to the ambivalence with which the use of documentary films has always been connected with the national socialist provenience.
Sabine Haustein; Anja Waller
Jewish settlements in Europe. Approaches to of a transnational social-, gender- and thought-historical science.
Settlements played an important role worldwide to resolve social problems and problems of assimilation of immigrants in a new surrounding. Up until now it has been forgotten to recognize the history of the Jewish People Homes and Toynbee Halls as examples of Jewish settlements in Europe. Jewish People Homes and Toynbee Halls were mostly self organized social projects facilitating cultural contact between assimilated Jews and Jewish immigrants coming from Eastern Europe. Jewish men and women sought to realize models of emancipation and to renew the Jewish identity.
Focusing on these assumptions, the article will ask why the settlement movement was welcomed in Jewish circles and which were the transnational and gender-related similarities between settlements. Secondly the article will ask in a micro-historical study of the Jewish People Home in Berlin, as an example of a Jewish settlement, how it operated, what the various activities were it pursued and what actors were involved.
Victoria Hegner
When Migrants ‘Return’ to Religion ? The Renaissance of Hasidism and the Role of baalai teshuva in Chicago
The ethnographic article focuses on the current ‘renaissance’ of Hasidism in the US. The Chicago Congregation ‘Friends of Refugees of Eastern Europa’ serves as an exemplary field of study. There, the article draws attention to the specific role of the recent Russian Jewish Migration for the Hasidic revival. As ‘returnees’ to religion Russian Jews decisively reshape traditional Hasidic social hierarchies and thus contribute to a modernization of current Hasidism in the US.