Non­fic­tion

The World of Auf­bau: Hitler’s Refugees in America

Peter Schrag

January 1, 2013

Auf­bau—a Ger­man-lan­guage week­ly, pub­lished in New York and cir­cu­lat­ed nation­wide — was an essen­tial plat­form for the gen­er­a­tion of refugees from Hitler and the dis­placed peo­ple and con­cen­tra­tion camp sur­vivors who arrived in the Unit­ed States after the war. The pub­li­ca­tion served to link thou­sands of read­ers look­ing for friends and loved ones in every part of the world. In its pages Auf­bau focused on con­cerns that strong­ly impact­ed this com­mu­ni­ty in the after­math of World War II: anti-Semi­tism in the Unit­ed States and in Europe, the ever-chang­ing immi­gra­tion and nat­u­ral­iza­tion pro­ce­dures, debates about the des­ig­na­tion of Hitler refugees as ene­my aliens, ques­tions about pun­ish­ment for the Holo­caust and oth­er Nazi crimes, the strug­gle for com­pen­sa­tion and resti­tu­tion, and the fight for a Jew­ish home­land. The book exam­ines the columns and adver­tise­ments that chron­i­cled the social and cul­tur­al life of that gen­er­a­tion and main­tained a detailed account of Ger­man-speak­ing cul­tures in exile. Peter Schrag is the first to present a defin­i­tive account of the influ­en­tial pub­li­ca­tion that brought post­war refugees togeth­er and into the Amer­i­can mainstream.

Discussion Questions

In The World of Auf­bau: Hitler’s Refugees in Amer­i­ca, author Peter Schrag, him­self one of those refugees, engag­ing­ly details the out­sized role that the Ger­man lan­guage week­ly played in help­ing Jew­ish refugees adapt to their new coun­try and become Amer­i­cans. In addi­tion to serv­ing as a vital bul­letin board for dis­placed per­sons,” search­ing for loved ones and friends from whom they had been sep­a­rat­ed, Auf­bau helped its read­ers with invalu­able infor­ma­tion on the prac­ti­cal­i­ties of life in Amer­i­ca, includ­ing the fre­quent­ly chang­ing immi­gra­tion and nat­u­ral­iza­tion pro­ce­dures they had to nav­i­gate. Auf­baus pages also pro­vid­ed exten­sive reports on sub­jects of crit­i­cal con­cern to the refugee com­mu­ni­ty, fea­tur­ing arti­cles on such top­ics as the des­ig­na­tion of Hitler refugees as ene­my aliens, the pun­ish­ment of Nazi crimes, the strug­gle for com­pen­sa­tion and resti­tu­tion, and the fight for a Jew­ish home­land. More than the his­to­ry of a pub­li­ca­tion, The World of Auf­bau paints an evoca­tive pic­ture of the entire refugee experience.