In an effort to answer the question, “What did it mean to be Jewish in pre Second War Europe?”, historians have categorized eastern and western Europe into a generalized list of characteristics. While not totally invalid, they erase the experiences of unique individuals that do not fit the Eastern or Western “mold”. The memoirs of Henry Buxbaum and Esther embody the need for intersectionality in understanding the Jewish experience in Germany and Poland before the Second World War. In the specific context, religious, national, and gender identities are especially relevant.
Intersectionality is a field of crossroads where one’s various identities make up who they are and impact how they experience life. Two initial identities to consider when looking at the experience of Jews in pre war Europe are those of religious and national ties. In Germany, the Jewish community was generally more culturally integrated and not as devout in their faith. Henry Buxbaum, a doctor from Friedberg, seemed to embody those particular characteristics. Although he was raised
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It is obvious to say that men and women experience life differently. In this context of Jewish identity in the pre war period, men and women underwent persecution of varying degrees. Within the Jewish community, the number of opportunities made available for men like Buxbaum are vast in comparison to those offered to a young girl like Esther. From the introduction at the beginning of his memoir, it is known that Buxbaum was able to attend Gymnasium, become a soldier, obtain his degree in medicine, and become a practicing doctor by the time he was 30 years old. From a young age, Esther was denied the chance to study, read, and pursue certain subjects, books, or goals because she was a girl. Her options for a career and economic independence were incredibly limited, and she found herself teaching only because she was told she had no other choice as a Jewish
The history of Jews in host cities often depict a story of success or of failure when it comes to relations between the Jews and the Christians in Europe. Historian Jonathan Elukin, author of Living Together, Living Apart, presents the integration as a success process with rare, and special cases, of failure. On the other side of the spectrum is historian Raymond P. Scheindlin. Scheindlin’s novel, A Short History of the Jewish People, presents many cases of integration between the Christians and Jews that led to massacres and brutal endings for the Jewish community. There are many monumental events that take place during the long span of time that oversees European Jewish history, and both historians study and evaluate the events, however, they do so through different lenses.
Sitting in a comfortable leather chair on a cloudy January day, I sat in a house and interviewed Susan Gustavson, a life long Jew that is in her mid-fifties. She is a graduate of UC Berkeley and Columbia University, where she got an MBA in marketing. She told me about her opinions on the Judaism.
Racial antisemitism was born in the Nineteenth Century when laws were passed in many European countries posing the Jewish people as second-class citizens, not receiving the same rights as others in society. While they had reached a level of religious emancipation in some countries, Judaism had become recognized as an ethnicity as well, and this ethnic difference from the Aryans therefore made them “inferior.” Pogroms began across Eastern Europe in the late 1800’s which resulted in
In 1939, Hitler was unsure of what he was going to do with the Jews; the Nazis were tossing around options and ideas with the goal of removing Jews from the population. The German invasion into Poland, allowed for the first ghetto, regarded as a provisional measure to control and segregate Jews. Ghettos were enclosed, isolated urban areas designated for Jews. Living under strict regulations, with unthinkable living conditions, and crammed into small areas, the ghettos destroyed all hope of retaliating. In this paper, I will discuss what life would be like to be a Jew inside one of the 1,000 of ghettos within Poland and the Soviet Union. I will imagine myself a member of the Jewish council, describing the
Through the course of history, the Jewish people have been mistreated, condemned, robbed, even put to death because of their religion. In the Middle Ages, they were forced to wear symbols on their clothing, identifying them as Jews. The dates 1933 to 1945 marked the period of the deadly Holocaust in which many atrocities were committed against the Jewish people and minority groups not of Aryan descent. Six million innocent Jews were exterminated because of Hitler’s “Final Solution.” This paper will exhibit how Adolf Hitler used the three anti-Jewish policies written in history, conversion, expulsion, and annihilation to his advantage.
Throughout the 1800’s to the mid-1900’s one problem restricted and threatened the Jewish race. Through trials, battles, immigration, and more the jews couldn’t catch a break. They were a despised people suffering due to an inability of the Jewish people to fully assimilate into other societies. This issue highlighted the political and cultural atmosphere and events throughout the time periods we studied. From beneath all the destruction and chaos occurring during this time period lies an important message.
During World War II many minority groups thought that if they were to participate in the war and defend the country that they would gain more respect or get a higher class status in society, although they thought wrong instead they were sort of obligated to defend the country in war without thinking they were going to get any reward in return. African Americans were one of the few minority groups that hoped to win a better position in postwar society. But in the end they were very disappointed. Many blacks were migrated from rural areas into industrial cities which was great for the economy but not really for the blacks because it created tensions among blacks and whites. In the military blacks had the most menial assignments, and there were segregated training camps and units for the blacks. Not only were blacks affected by the war but also Native Americans. There was very little war work that was available for the tribes. Some young people left the reservations causing the number of people in tribes decrease. This caused many Indians to come in close contact with white people, which opened up their eyes to the benefits they would receive if they left the reservations and lived in a non-Indian world and adjust to American society. But soon after the war there were fewer jobs available for them so they returned back to their reservations. Then there were many pressures to eliminate the reservations for good, which would require tribes to reassign themselves and adjust to
The most memorable genocide constructed abruptly by German Nazis left both Jewish and German-Jewish residents of Poland in a whirl of destruction. 1933 had been the year that changed the lives of billions, but one young lady by the name of Stefania (Fusia) Podgorska managed to save thirteen, including herself along with her young sister. Upon moving to Przemysl and working a steady job as a grocer, ghettos in Poland had begun to be invaded, and her mother and eldest brother were not too lucky. Podgorska’s family had been sent to Germany for forced labor, like the rest of the Jewish community in that vicinity. While still without question, going through a rough patch at the grocery store, oddly enough, she had also been relieved simply because
People’s understanding of resistance among European Jews throughout the Holocaust is a topic that has been vehemently debated by scholars from various fields of study. These scholars have produced multiple notions regarding the idea of resistance among European Jews, as the debate has developed significantly since the end of World War II. The definition of the term “Jewish resistance,” which has been used to characterize a rather obscure concept, still continues to be a major point of contention in historians’ understanding of the Holocaust. While some scholars who studied the topic in the decades following World War II argued that armed resistance was nearly the only legitimate form of resistance against Hitler and the Nazi’s, other scholars who studied the topic later on contend that this definition has its boundaries. These historians, who argue that other means of defiance must be incorporated into the definition of resistance in the context of the Holocaust, ultimately provide an argument that incorporates more elements that accurately describe the experience of European Jewry and their daily struggle to resist Nazi powers.
World War II was a very important event in American history, but as bad as war is or seems to be there always seems to have better outcomes in the end. By the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 and bringing America into the war it opened the eyes of all Americans to the problems not only domestically but internationally and the biggest problem that was discovered after the completion of World War II was the level of social equality around the world. It had been a problem that had plagued the world for many years but the atrocities that brought about by the war coupled with the ever growing eye of the media caused for greater concern in the light of social equality in the world.
The United States has been involved in many conflicts, but the World Wars are two of the major conflicts, which many people lost their lives. World War II, being the more recent war, is the war that the United States should have entered earlier than they have. The World Wars are two of the most violent wars we have had in the world, but World War II, was by far, the more hurtful war out of the two. World War II has violated many human rights, and has produced many social injustices to the people who have suffered during this war. Millions of people could have been saved from the Nazi’s lust for purity if the United States would have entered the war earlier than they have.
She is a brilliant student, bright and talented, but her future after college is uncertain. “I was supposed to be having the time of my life,” she says (pp 2). Everyone around her seems to be happy, but Esther is growing dissatisfied with her life. Esther “came of age in an era where women were explicitly told that happiness could only be achieved through the enactment of a biological imperative, in a society in which all deviance was treated with suspicion (Smith, pp 34.)” But, she knows that marriage and babies are not what she wants and will not make her happy: "The last thing I wanted was infinite security and to be the place an arrow shoots off from.
Esther’s mother and society’s expectation as a woman, which is to be a good wife and a mother, suffocate and demoralize Esther’s dream as a professional writer. Esther’s mother wants her to “...learn shorthand after college, so I’d have a practical skill as well as a college degree” (Plath 40). Her mother believes that Esther cannot further advance her education as a writer and simply wants her to be a secretary since professional career for women was uncommon and discouraged because it disturbs the role as a married woman. These pressures often obliged her to fall into the societal expectations, to give up her higher education, and to marry somebody. However, she knew that the marriage and the babies were not for her, “because cook and clean and wash were just about
Esther was constantly pushed around by men, which was a stereotype in the 1950’s that men controlled the women and were always in charge. Esther had a relationship with a man named Buddy Willard who was expecting that she was just going to marry him. Men believed that they had everything a woman may desire, but actually they did not. Women were forced to marry men because of their fortune or family relations.
From the continental European perspective shared by Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, two groups would have stood out as the most historically marginalized; women and Jews. For much of European history, both Jewish people and women were denied the rights and privileges afforded to even the least privileged Christian men. They could not hold their own lands, were barred from all but a select few professions, and lived with the constant threat of organized violence ready to be turned against them if they ever stepped out of line. In a sense, both woman and Jew are used as an other for their outgroups, male and Gentile respectively, to define themselves apart from. Accordingly de Beauvoir and Sartre manage to illustrate substantial similarities between the two groups in their respective analyses that greatly affect their ultimate treatment, even as through their limited scope and personal biases. Chiefly among these similarities is how both the idea of “woman” and “Jew” are created classes, social constructs made in bad faith. While there will obviously be female humans and Jewish people, the identities of woman and Jew exist only because those who were not female and Jewish have labeled them as such. “If the Jew did not exist,” writes Sartre in Anti-Semite and Jew, “the anti-Semite would invent him.” (8) However, one key difference exists between the two: Jews present a hidden and existential threat to their foes that women never will. Even the most strident opponent