Shapiro Annual Lecture: “We are far, very far from our former home”: German and Austrian Jews after Deportation to “the East”

Please join us on Monday, December 12th at 7pm EST for the United States Holocasut Memorial Museums Mandel Center's 2022 J. B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Annual Lecture with Shapiro Senior Scholar Andrea Löw. Use the link HERE to register to attend virtually or to come to the Museum to hear Dr. Löw in-person and to meet her at the reception afterward.

Lecture Topic: “We are far, very far from our former home”: German and Austrian Jews after Deportation to “the East”

In 1939, the year after the Nazis annexed Austria, Wilhelm and Johanna Schischa sent their daughter to England on a rescue transport for children. Any hope of reuniting with her ended with their deportation to “the East,” along with tens of thousands of other German-speaking Jews. They suddenly found themselves in a foreign place with few possessions, little food, and no money. 

Masses of deportees died or were murdered far from home in places like Minsk and Riga and in killing centers in German-occupied Poland. But others survived ghettos, forced labor, and death marches. Join us to learn what diaries and letters reveal about their experiences.