Jana Matthies M.A.

Blind Spot –  The memory of the Holocaust in Ukraine in the German-Jewish culture of remembrance

Current debates on the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine have once again shown that Eastern Europe is a blind spot on the map of Germany´s culture of remembrance. This is even more surprising if one takes in mind that the majority of Jews living in Germany stem from the former Soviet Union and its successor states and 45 percent of them in turn have their roots in Ukraine. The immigration of Russian-speaking Jews in the early 1990s introduced a new collective memory in the Jewish communities that had at its center not the Holocaust but the “Great Patriotic War”, and, connected with this, the victory over Germany. In contrast, the experiences of those Jews whose relatives had become victims of the Holocaust and the War of extermination on Soviet soil were articulated much more quietly und still occupy a rather marginal place in the German-Jewish culture of remembrance of the present. Based on an empirical study with Jewish families of different generations, the aim of the planned research and mediation project is to expand the pluralisation of memories of the Holocaust and the Second World War to include the perspective of Ukrainian Jews who immigrated to Germany. Read more

Hamburg as a former home – Associations of former Hamburg residents in Israel

Since the 1960s, immigrants from Europe – who had managed to flee the Nazis thirty years earlier – have been founding so-called ‘alumni associations’ in Israel. These served to preserve memories of destroyed worlds, as well as to uphold traditions and the language. Later, former Hamburg residents also came together in this way; however – and this was a distinctive feature – until 1992 they were organised into two associations based in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Who was involved in the associations? How were they organised and funded, and what exactly did they do? To what extent were there also trans-local contacts with Hamburg?

Answers to these and other questions are provided by the comprehensive collections of source material preserved in various archives relating to the associations of former Hamburg residents, which are being analysed for the first time. The results of the project are due to be published at the end of 2025.