This volume gives an extensive overview of current developments in the field of archival collections relating to German-speaking refugees located in Germany, Austria, the USA, Ireland and the UK. The contributions illustrate the three interlinked areas of refugee archives, Exile and Migration Studies research and related databases and other resources. The articles investigate their interrelationship as well as the future challenges facing all three areas by focussing on larger archival holdings as well as collections relating to individuals and organisations and more recently established electronic and online resources and finding aids. The volume is aimed at researchers and archival practioners alike and should be especially useful for anyone starting out in the field.

Featured historian in the Ken Burns documentary The U.S. and the Holocaust on PBS • WINNER OF THE NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD • In this remarkable work of historical reclamation, Holocaust historian Rebecca Erbelding pieces together years of research and newly uncovered archival materials to tell the dramatic story of America’s little-known efforts to save the Jews of Europe. “An invaluable addition to the literature of the Holocaust.” —Andrew Nagorski, author of The Nazi Hunters and Hitlerland “Brilliantly brings to life the gripping, little-known story of [a] transformative moment in American history and the crusading young government lawyers who made it happen.” —Lynne Olson, New York Times bestselling author of Last Hope Island For more than a decade, a harsh Congressional immigration policy kept most Jewish refugees out of America, even as Hitler and the Nazis closed in. In 1944, the United States finally acted. That year, Franklin D. Roosevelt created the War Refugee Board, and put a young Treasury lawyer named John Pehle in charge. Over the next twenty months, Pehle pulled together a team of D.C. pencil pushers, international relief workers, smugglers, diplomats, millionaires, and rabble-rousers to run operations across four continents and a dozen countries. Together, they tricked the Nazis, forged identity papers, maneuvered food and medicine into concentration camps, recruited spies, leaked news stories, laundered money, negotiated ransoms, and funneled millions of dollars into Europe. They bought weapons for the French Resistance and sliced red tape to allow Jewish refugees to escape to Palestine. “A landmark achievement, Rescue Board is the first history of the War Refugee Board. Meticulously researched and poignantly narrated, Rescue Board analyzes policies and practices while never losing sight of the human beings involved: the officials who sought to help and the victims in desperate need. Top-notch history: original and riveting.” —Debórah Dwork, founding director of the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Clark University, and coauthor of Flight from the Reich: Refugee Jews, 1933–1946

Migration is, and has always been, a disruptive experience. Freedom from oppression and hope for a better life are counter-balanced by feelings of loss – loss of family members, of a home, of personal belongings. Memories of the migration process itself often fade quickly away in view of the new challenges that await immigrants in their new homelands. This volume asks, and shows, how migration memories have been kept, stored, forgotten, and indeed retrieved in many different archives, in official institutions, in heritage centres, as well as in personal and family collections. Based on a variety of examples and conceptual approaches – from artistic approaches to the family archive via ‘smell and memory as archives’, to a cultural history of the suitcase – this volume offers a new and original way to write Jewish history and the history of Jewish migration in the context of personal and public memory. The documents reflect the transitory character of the migration experience, and they tell stories of longing and belonging. This book was originally published as a special issue of Jewish Culture and History.

Archives have never been more complex, expansive, or ubiquitous. Archives: Power, Truth, and Fiction is an indispensable research and reference book: a hugely helpful guide to archives in the twenty-first century. Material discussed ranges from medieval manuscripts to born-digital archival content, and art objects to state papers.

An award-winning historian presents an emotional history of Jewish refugees biding their time in Portugal as they attempt to escape Nazi Europe This riveting book describes the experience of Jewish refugees as they fled Hitler to live in limbo in Portugal until they could reach safer havens abroad. Drawing attention not only to the social and physical upheavals of refugee life, Kaplan highlights their feelings as they fled their homes and histories while begging strangers for kindness. An emotional history of fleeing, this book probes how specific locations touched refugees’ inner lives, including the borders they nervously crossed or the overcrowded transatlantic ships that signaled their liberation.

Writing about Palestine and the Palestinians continue to be controversial. Until the late 1980s, the question of Palestine was approached through Western social theories that had appeared after World War 2. This endowed European settlers and colonists the mission of guiding the "backward" natives of Palestine to modernity. However, since the work of Palestinian scholar Elia Zureik, the study of Israel, and the "ethnic relations" in Palestine-Israel has been radically shifted. Building on Zureik's work, this book studies the colonial project in Palestine and how it has transformed Palestinians' lives. Zureik had argued that Israel was the product of a colonization process and so should be studied through the same concepts and theorization as South Africa, Rhodesia, Australia, and other colonial societies. He also rejected the moral and civilizational superiority of the European settlers. Developing this work, the contributors here argue that colonialism is not only a political-economic system but also a "mode of life" and consciousness, which has far-reaching consequences for both the settlers and the indigenous population. Across 13 chapters (in addition to the introduction and the afterward), the book covers topics such as settler colonialism, dispossession, the separation wall, surveillance technologies, decolonisation methodologies and popular resistance. Composed mostly of Palestinian scholars and scholars of Palestinian heritage, it is the first book in which the indigenous Palestinians not merely "write back", but principally aim to lay the foundations for decolonial social science research on Palestine.

Prologue : a letter to our communities -- Introduction : departures -- A refugee critique of the law : on "fear and persecution" -- A refugee critique of fear : on livability and durability -- A refugee critique of humanitarianism : on ungratefulness and refusal -- A refugee critique of representations : on criticality and creativity -- Conclusion : in/verse -- Epilogue : a letter to UNHCR.