Kindertransport
Kindertransport sculpture in Hamburg by Frank Meisler & Arie Ovadia
© 2022 Bedour Braker
Night…from the ship
a gangplank to England
sea smells rising……yellow lights swaying
line of labelled children disembarking
from a darkening Continent
- by Tomas Berman (Poetry about his Kindertransport Experience - Voices of the Kinder)
‘Why do the children look scared and sad Mummy? Where are they going?’
My seven years old son asked me this question after we passed by the Kindertransport statue on our way home. It was raining that day, and everyone was rushing to Dammtor train station to get some shelter till the showers stop. I looked back at the sculpture after we were safe from the showers, and I turned my face to my son: ‘They had to run away and leave their parents to find a safer place’, I said. My little son was puzzled, with a sad look on his face he asked: ‘But how is it going to be a safer place without their mama and papa?’. As I was moving my eyes between him and the distant sculpture being washed under the rain, I thought, indeed! What is a safer place without your family around you to give you love and shelter?
The statue tells the story of a group of Jewish children who had to leave their homes during the nine months just before WWII and moved to Britain. The goal was to find refuge in another land between November 1938- September 1939. It is not a secret that the Jewish population in German-speaking countries were discriminated for a long time along their history, but things dramatically worsened after Hitler and his party came to power in 1933. For the Jews, the air of normality was rapidly diminishing.
I was intrigued by my son’s questions that day and started to search more into the history behind this mission, and here are the stories of the Kindertransport.
Push & Pull
The existence of Jews in Germany could be traced back, historically, to the twelfth century. Their discriminated community was small with less benefits than the rest of the society. Going through waves of push and pull throughout their history, German Jewry made a huge leap during the nineteenth century and managed to raise the scale of their social security as well as their financial prosperity and status as German citizens. Despite this success, they were under constant attacks by antisemitic parties fuelled by their political agendas, but when it comes to the public, the German majority valued and appreciated them as friends and neighbours. At that time, Jewish citizens were engaged in commerce, trade, and the financial sector in addition to other professions like medicine and law. Several of the prominent publishing houses were Jewish-owned, with a high percentage of writers, journalists, and in the film-making industry. When it comes to politics, they strongly supported the liberal and democratic centre parties as well as the moderate socialist party (1). With this group of successful Jews there was also another conservative and poorer group in their community, mainly worked as shopkeepers, tailors, and industrial workers (2). Overall, their involvement in many trades and branches of life gave the rest of the society the feeling that they were everywhere.
Der Marxismus muß sterben damit die Nation wieder auferstehe
Hitler speaking in Berlin in 1933. The banner above reads: Marxism must perish so Germany may rise up again.
Photo by: Robert Sennecke. via Wikimedia Commons rights
Conquest of the street, The Jews are to blame!
The preceding twenty years of the Jewish children’s transportation to Britain witnessed an escalation of events that inevitably led to their deportation. WWI ended in 1918 with a massive German defeat. Germany was blamed for the devastating results and had to pay huge sums of money to the countries it had fought in compensation for war damages. At that time Emperor Wilhelm II was blamed for the defeat and was forced to abdicate in the same year. In 1919 Weimar Republic was established (a new parliamentary democracy, which was later referred to as a Jew government by the Nazis) (2). The new political atmosphere after the war gave chance to a power struggle between the Social Democratic Party and the Communist Party (It is worth mentioning here that many radical Jews were leaders in the communist party, and eventually became involved in civil unrest between 1920-1923) (2). Opposing to them was the right-wing extremists and nationalists who tried to seize power over Germany (Adolf Hitler was among them) (5). This political upheaval in Germany coincided with economic distress and hyperinflation. The events led to political riots as well as street violence that mostly targeted Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe as they were then blamed for the defeat of the war (3). Violence, however, spread from the space of the streets to the surrounding businesses, forcing some retailers to post signs of ‘Christian Business’ to distinguish themselves from the Jewish businesses (3).
Turning the public opinion against the Weimar Republic and the Jewish minority was taking excessive steps, led by Hitler and his National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei). In 1925, the steadily becoming popular, Hitler published his book Mein Kampf (My fight). The book was filled with his racist ideas and hatred for the Jewish race and the communists. Hitler also wrote a lot about his future plans for Germany through expanding its territory in Eastern Europe while throwing the enemies out (5). Along with Joseph Goebbels (his minister of propaganda) they brainwashed the public through orchestrated political operations and riots in the streets (3). Hitler, like many conservative Germans back then, linked the Communists to the Jews, and claimed they were everywhere, controlled everything, and acted so secretly and deviously that few could detect their influence. Supported by Goebbels tactics, the Nazis were joined by young unemployed, apprentices and high-school students who became the Party’s political soldiers. They were called Sturmabteilung- SA (Assault Division), and their main task was to conquest the street with an unlimited power over people (5). In his memoir, Goebbels emphasized the significance of the urban space in controlling the public opinion via inserting politics into spaces. “The street is now the primary feature of modern politics. Whoever can conquer the street can also conquer the masses, and whoever conquers the masses will thereby conquer the state.” The Nazis used streets as a form of mass media, their political messages reached a much wider circle than through a party’s newspaper such as Der Angriff (3).
"Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred" (7)
-Joseph Goebbels
In 1928 the Nazi Party won just 2.6% of the total poll in the elections for the German parliament. Around that time the economy was getting stronger again and many people didn’t feel the urge to follow Hitler’s party and their excessive views especially against the Jews.
Goebbels’s strategy in turning the public opinion against the Jews was successful. Looking back, I always had two questions in my head, why would many Germans feel that way towards the Jews? Why did most Germans stand still and not help when they saw the Jews forced into scrapping streets, brutally beaten in public, or taken to concentration camps? Jeffery Herf actually answered this in his book The Jewish Enemy. He states that Germans were exposed to anti-Semitism messages on daily basis via radio broadcasts at home, political posters in the streets, and headlines in newspapers. This all explain this wide wave of anti-Semitism that possessed many Germans. Herf thinks that this constant brainwashing slowly made it justifiable to the German public to accept the move from persecution to deportation and eventually extermination (4).
Nazis and local residents look on as Jews are forced to get on their hands and knees and scrub the pavement, 1938
Photo provided to Wikimedia Common by http://digitalassets.ushmm.org/photoarchives/detail.aspx?id=28172
When the world was hit by the crash of Wall Street Stock Exchange in New York in 1929, the German currency lost its value (one American dollar increased in value to 4.2 billion German marks) (5) Pursuing their plans, the Nazis went for the following elections and their numbers rose to 5.8% securing 13 seats in the parliament (5). Affected by the economic situation, steadily the Germans saw Nazis as an attractive alternative to democracy and communism, despite the open attack on the Jews by Goebbels and his famous slogan ‘The Jews are to blame’. In 1932 the Nazis became the second largest party in the German Parliament with 27.3% of all votes. 1933 was a busy year for the Nazis. It is when Hitler became the chancellor, and immediately seized the chance on January 30, 1933 to take control as the sole ruler of Germany ending Weimar Republic era (2). Many laws and decrees were issued, and a State of Emergency was announced. Several rights were no longer applied, such as freedom of expression, right of assembly, and confidentiality of the mail, not to mention that police could search houses and arrest people mainly political opponents and Jews. In March 1933, the German parliament voted in favour of the Enabling Act giving Hitler the power to issue new laws without the consent of the president or the Reichstag (the parliament). The absence of other parties like the Social Democrats and the Communists, who were themselves imprisoned, gave the chance for Hitler’s party to win most votes and eventually he became a dictator from then on.
‘The Jew today is the biggest agitator to bring about the complete destruction to Germany. Wherever in the world we read about attacks on Germany, the Jews are the originators, just as in peace and in war the Jewish Stock Exchange and the Marxist press inflamed hatred of Germany…’ (7)
- Joseph Goebbels’s, Der Angriff, March 1933
Hitler and his Nazi party believed that international Jewry presented a very real and present danger, to them, the Jews started WWI. Hitler claimed they were trying to incite millions among the masses of people into a conflict that is utterly senseless for them, and only serves Jewish interests (4). Consequently, many decrees were issued from April 1933 onwards that stripped the Jewish minority of their civil rights as they were no longer considered citizens. They were excluded from politics, culture, society, and economy, and could no longer vote or work for the government (6). Jewish goods were also boycotted, and SA men were stationed in front of shops, and painted Star of David on shop windows, while regular customers were not allowed in. There were also signs with boycott slogans in many streets.
Boycotting Jewish-owned businesses
Members of the SA in front of a Jewish shop during the boycott of Jews in Nazi-Germany on April 1, 1933. The sign says: "Germans, Attention! This shop is owned by Jews.
Jews damage the German economy and pay their German employees starvation wages. The main owner is the Jew Nathan Schmidt."
Photo provided to Wikimedia Common by Yad Vashem https://www.tracesofwar.com/
In December 1933 the German government gave a full authority to the Nazi party to act outside of the government, which meant members of the party were entitled to arrest people on their own agendas (6) and many were then sent to prisons and concentration camps, where they were ill-treated and even died. On September 15, 1935, the Nazis introduced the Nuremberg Race Laws which were directed against the Jewish population. Hitler’s main target was to emphasise the Aryan race’s superiority. He wanted to strengthen Germany through strengthening its racially defined German people. This meant clearance of alien elements and elimination of individuals with physical and mental weaknesses (6) Nuremberg marriage Laws (Law for the protection of German blood and German honour) determined whether one was considered a German citizen. During that time, many Jews fled Nazi Germany to neighbouring countries. On November 9, 1938, Kristallnacht happened, and the story of the Kindertransport began.
Kristallnacht, The night of broken glass (1)
“You can’t imagine, how it looked like at home. Papa with a head injury, bandaged, I with severe attacks in bed, everything ravaged and shattered… When the doctor arrived to patch up Papa, Herta and Rosa, who all bled horribly from their heads, we could not even provide him with a towel.”
A description by a Jewish woman on Kristallnacht 1938 (8)
On November 7, 1938, Herschal Grynszpan, a young polish Jew marched into the German embassy in Paris and shot a German diplomat in revenge for his family after they were deported to Poland like many other Jews (23). This incident gave the Nazis the pretext for sanctioning systematic pogroms on that minority just two days following the shooting. 1,000 synagogues were burned, 7,500 Jewish businesses were smashed. Young Nazis invaded Jewish homes and hacked everything into pieces with axes while assaulting the residents (8). Wolf Gruner talks in his books about the scale of destruction that targeted the Jewish community during the few hours between 9-10 November 1938. According to him, the brutal attacks rendered thousands homeless, and hundreds beaten, sexually assaulted, or murdered (this played a pivotal role in many suicides that followed Kristallnacht, along with the decision of tens of thousands of them to flee Nazi Germany) (8). Scared Jews asked for refuge in neighbouring countries and begged for permission to emigrate to Palestine (which was rejected by the British government back then). Their children also had their share of bullying at school from fellow students who wore swastikas and teachers who supported the Nazis (9). The Kristallnacht was like a bolt from the blue for many countries, they knew about the discrimination, but never imagined its level of brutality. The Nazis were always careful how they depicted their treatment of the Jews to the rest of the world until that night.
Discussions immediately took place between the United States and the United Kingdom to rescue at least Jewish children. On November 15, 1938, a delegation of British Jewish leaders met with the Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain to appeal for help (9). The pressure on the British government forced the English parliament to offer refuge to some 10,000 children (unaccompanied) from Germany, Czechoslovakia, Austria, and Poland (1). (Smaller numbers of children were taken in by Belgium, Netherlands, France, Sweden, and Switzerland) (14). The process of emigration was funded by refugee agencies and Jewish businessmen with the promise that the children will be there temporarily and will not cause a burden on the taxpayer (1). Shortly after that, representatives were sent to Germany, Austria, and Poland to plan the exiting strategies, and they called their mission: the Kindertransport Operation. (More on that can be found in Mike Levy’s book (2022): Get the children out)
Kristallnacht, 1938
Smashed windows of Jewish shops on the next morning after the night of the pogrom.
Photo provided to Wikimedia Common by Le Mémorial aux juifs assassinés d'Europe (Berlin)
Kindertransport, we must get the children out
‘We entered the train in our hometown as children, and left the train as adults, because from here on we were responsible of our own lives for the rest of our lives’
Frank Meisler, Kindertransport survivor, BBC Documentary (2012)
The mission to transport around 10,000 Jewish children to a safer place might seem trivial in comparison to the 1,5 million children that were killed during the Nazi time, but it is considered a pivotal corner in the history of WWII. The children were transported in groups, every one of them was allowed to have a bag and carried a tagged number on their chests, their names didn’t matter anymore, just numbers. Most of them believed that their parents would join them after they were settled, maybe in a couple of months when the situation gets better (10). On December 1, 1938, Jewish parents were waiting with their children to leave on the first kindertransport train. They smuggled valuables into their children’s luggage, and above all, they tried to squeeze as much care and advice into a few moments and reassured them that the parting was only temporary (1). The scenes at the stations or discreet places of last farewell moments, dictated by the Nazis to avoid public spectacle, were terrible according to the storytellers of their own stories. It was a terrifying time for parents and children not knowing when and where will they meet again. Many children who could not fathom what was happening, felt angry and rejected. A woman on a BBC documentary (2012) said with tears in her eyes: ‘I don’t remember a night when I didn’t cry! I was homesick since the age of 12 till God knows when! It was a feeling you caried around.’
The first 200 children arrived at Liverpool Street station in London. They came from Hamburg, and a Jewish orphanage in Berlin that was damaged by the Nazis (10). The transportation was made possible by the efforts of Jewish delegates and organizations, like the Central British Fund for German Jewry and the Jewish Refugee Committee who dedicated 50 pounds for each child (approximately 3,000 pounds now) to help for their eventual emigration to Palestine (9). The Refugee Children's Movement (RCM), sent representatives to Germany and Austria to establish the systems for choosing, organising, and transporting the children. The majority in their lists included teenagers who were threatened to be sent to concentration camps, children in Jewish orphanages, and those whose parents were too impoverished to keep them (1). The children were accompanied by adults who had to return to ensure the transportation of more children as agreed upon with the Nazis. At that time, the Nazis preferred to send the children by rail since they did not want to be seen as having refugee ships leaving German-occupied territories (9).
‘The Nazis apparently are only too glad to get rid of the children with the exception of boys of 17 or over, who they require for labour’ the National Archives (9)
The trains had to go through the Netherlands, so the German ports are not clogged up. For the first three months the kindertransports came mainly from Germany, then the emphasis shifted to Austria. In March 1939, children from Prague also joined the mission after the Nazis established a protectorate in the Czech Lands. Three trains from Poland in February and August, and one from Danzig. Around the time when the transportation was not possible anymore due to lack of funding, not many children got permission to leave ‘officially’, so parents would just throw their younger children into the train to older children and ask them to look after their little ones in an act of desperation (9). Some autobiographies testify that some parents were forced to make a heart-wrenching choice among their children in the hope that the evacuated child would help his sibling to join him in England one day (12).
‘A child is an orphan when he has no parents, a nation is an orphan when it has no children.’
Rabbi Joseph Cahaneman, 1886-1969
Arriving in the new land was not really the end of the children’s hurdles according to the survivors themselves. Children were sent to camps, orphanages, and some foster families (few were Jewish homes, while the majority were non-Jewish and the children had to change their names and religion), they also had to learn English in a country where the child's native German or Czech was not understood, was another cause of stress (BBC 2012). At school, the English children would often view them as ‘enemy Germans’ instead of being ‘Jewish refugees’. Some also went through traumatic experiences of predatory, and many were taken in as maids for the household domestics. But also, some of them felt the freedom once they stepped off the trains, Rabbi John Rayan, kindertransport 1939 described his first impressions as: ‘We disembarked at Harwich and were taken out into some fields. The sun was shining, the air clean, the grass greener than any I had ever seen, and if freedom was a tangible thing, it was so that morning in Harwich.’ Other children had to live with the feeling of guilt for the rest of their lives. In her autobiography, A Tempered Wind (2009), Karen Gershon, says she was constantly reminded that other children might have come in her stead. Knowing that these other children remained behind to die, while she was saved, left her with the feeling that she had to justify her own survival (12). When the war ended the children tried to reunite with their families, and agencies were flooded with requests from children seeking to find their parents, or any surviving member of their family. Some of the children were able to reunite with their families, others discovered that their parents had not survived the war (15). Fifty years after the night when the last train left with the last group of children, Bertha Leverton who was a kinertransport survivor decided to disseminate a call for all the kindertransport survivors to reunite as a defining point in their existence as Holocaust survivors. It is only then that the public opinion became aware of the story. The story was told, not just in cinema, but also many articles were written, documentaries were recorded, books and memoirs by the survivors were published. Each told the story the way they could best, and one of them was Frank Meisler, an architect and sculptor.
Kindertransport mission, 1938-1939
Groups of children carrying numbered tags and a luggage during their trip to London.
Photo provided to Wikimedia Common by the German Federal Archive
Arrival of Jewish children, London (February 1939)
The children of Polish Jews from the region between Germany and Poland on their arrival in London.
Photo provided to Wikimedia Common by the German Federal Archive
The documents that allowed to children to enter UK
This documents contains the name and age of the child as welll a personal photo for proof.
(This work is ineligible for copyright and therefore in the public domain because it consists entirely of information that is common property and contains no original authorship) Wikimedia Common
Five sculptures, The journey from death to life
‘I am hungry. May I have a piece of bread’ those were few of the last words Frank Meisler’s parents taught him before he left them to Britain (BBC interview, 2012). He was 14 years old when he was transferred from Danzig in Poland to London as one of the last sixteen children in 1939. He studied architecture at the University of Manchester and was involved in the early development of Heathrow Airport as an architect. After his emigration to Palestine in the 1950s, he was known as a sculptor and established his own workshop and gallery in the Old City of Jaffa (13). Meisler was commissioned by the Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR) and World Jewish Relief to create a sculpture to replace Flor Kent’s Für das Kind at Liverpool Street Station in 2006 (12). The sculpture was supposed to tell the story of the Kindertransport and their journey. The project expanded later to become five Kindertransport sculptures located at five different cities of cities that had a pivotal role during the operation in the 1930s.
Kindertransport in London -The arrival (2006)
A bronze sculptured five children of various ages, standing at the end of a railway line with their suitcases and precious belongings. The youngest child sits on one of the cases holds her toy, and they are waiting in hope and anxiety.
Photo by Andrew King, 2015
Kindertransport in Berlin- Trains to Life, Trains to Death (2008)
Seven children arranged in a way that reflects their contrasting destinies. Five figures in grey bronze looking at one end (probably meaning the concentration camps) while the others are in a different shade of bronze looking at the opposite direction (possibly their train to safety), this can be seen in their facial expressions and posture.
Photo by Andrew King, 2015
Kindertransport in Danzig- The Departure (2009)
One of the five children is waving to possibly his unseen parents, in a gesture of acknowledgment of the importance of parents and their courageous role in saving the children (12). The other children are waiting on a platform for their departure.
Photo by Andrew King, 2015
Kindertransport in Hoek van Holland- Channel Crossing to Life (2011)
There is a newspaper in bronze under the suitcase of the boy, who doesn’t look as hopeful as the rest of the children, possibly tired and bored. Other children are looking around with different feelings on their face.
Photo by Andrew King, 2015
Kindertransport in Hamburg- The final parting (2015)
A girl is being led to her safety while looking in the opposite direction, extending her arm to reach the other children whose train is taking them to one of the Nazi’s concentration camps.
Photo by Bedour Braker, 2022
In both German sculptures in Hamburg and Berlin, the representation of the different fates during the Nazis was evident through the composition of two different groups of children with two different bronze shades and different facial expressions and body movement. The significance of those sculptures is them being almost the same size to real-life children, makes it easier for other children, nowadays, to connect and possibly get an idea on how real the imminent danger was like in the nine months between 1938-1939. Meisler’s message was delivered when my son (as a child in similar age to those sculpted children) saw the statue for the first time, and asked me with a sad face: why the children were sad? And it was even more surprising for him and me to know that the sculptor who created this sensational piece of art was one of the children himself. It made me aware of the importance of telling our children and the younger generations similar stories of all Kindertransports who have been through similar brutalities (my son went to his bed and cried after I told him the story of those children that day).
Then & Now
Just over eighty years later, Ukrainian children are arriving at Friedrichstraße train station in Berlin and Dammtor train station in Hamburg. On their way to their safe refuge, they could pass by the children of the Kindertransport sculptures.
Frank Meisler’s work represents more than the history it portrays; it offers glimpses into understanding different sides of human nature.
‘Whoever saves one life saves the world entire’
The Talmud
Frank Meisler in the inauguration of his Kindertransport Sculpture in Hamburg, 2015
Frank Meisler sitting at the far left, front row in the photo
Photo credit to Marit Meisler, 2015
Credit of the colored photos in the gallery bellow to ‘Marit Meisler’s own collection’ of her father’s work and inaugurations.
To have more insight on how it was, have a look at this documentary (featuring Frank Meisler) by BBC released in 2012: BBC movie- Kindertransport: A journey to Life
Photographer Andrew King also talked thoroughly about the kindertransport, have a look here: https://www.andrewkingphotography.co.uk/the-kindertransport-sculptures-of-frank-meisler-2/
There is also a book that targeted the people who actually helped make this kindertransport happen despite all obstacle back then, by Mike Levy: Get the Children out! Unsung Heros of the Kindertransport, 2022
More useful sources:
Grenville, J.A.S., 2012, The Jews and Germans of Hamburg, The Destruction of Civilization 1790-1945, Routledge
Jonathan, M., Oppenheimer, D. 2000, Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport, Bloomsbury
Loberg, M., City streets and civil unrest: the cost of violence in Weimar and Nazi eras, https://perspectivia.net/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/pnet_derivate_00002136/73_loberg_violence.pdf
Herf, J. 2006, The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During World War II And the Holocaust, The Belknap Press
Klußmann, U., 2012, The Ruthless Rise of the Nazis in Berelin, Der Spiegel https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/how-the-nazis-succeeded-in-taking-power-in-red-berlin-a-866793.html
https://www.annefrank.org/en/timeline/4/germany-loses-the-war-protests-against-the-treaty-of-versailles/
Gobbels, J., Kampf um Berlin, Der Anfang, (Kindle version), 2019
Gruner, W., 2019, The mass destruction of Jewish homes during Kristallnacht, Brewminate. https://brewminate.com/the-mass-destruction-of-jewish-homes-during-kristallnacht/
The National Archives, Kindertransport: Britain’s rescue plan, https://media.nationalarchives.gov.uk/index.php/kindertransport-britains-rescue-plan/
Allard, M.Ch., 2006, Modelling bridges between past and current issues of forced migration: Frank Meisler’s memorial sculpture Kindertransport – The Arrival, Jewish Historical Studies, 2020, 51(1), pp. 86-104. DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/111.444.jhs.2020v51.007.
https://www.andrewkingphotography.co.uk/frank-meisler-kindertransport-sculptures/
Thompson, S., 2018, Kindertransport survivor sees German payments as history acknowledged, Reuters https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-holocaust-kindertransport-idUSKCN1OJ09A
Leverton, B. 1990, I came alone: The stories of the Kindertransports, Book Guild
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/moscow-says-1847-children-among-thousands-transported-ukraine-russia-2022-05-03/
https://www.dw.com/en/children-who-fled-nazis-to-get-compensation-from-germany/a-46774407
https://www.ushmm.org/learn/timeline-of-events/1939-1941/hitler-speech-to-german-parliament
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/29/learning/do-you-think-the-world-is-getting-closer-to-securing-the-promise-of-never-again.html
https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/go-in-depth/why-did-hitler-hate-jews/
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340956710_Modelling_bridges_between_past_and_current_issues_of_forced_migration_Frank_Meisler's_memorial_sculpture_Kindertransport_-_The_Arrival
https://theconversation.com/the-forgotten-mass-destruction-of-jewish-homes-during-kristallnacht-123301#comment_2229484
Levy, M. 2022, Get the Children Out!: Unsung Heroes of the Kindertransport, Lemon Soul Ltd
Bundeszentrale for Politische Building, 2018, 1938 - Point of no return - Contemporary Testimonies of the German-Jewish Diaspora, https://www.bpb.de/themen/nationalsozialismus-zweiter-weltkrieg/schicksalsjahr-1938/265000/1938-point-of-no-return-contemporary-testimonies-of-the-german-jewish-diaspora/#node-content-title-12