Research

This project reconstructs the significance of European refugees for the transfer of global categories (e.g. “refugee”, “Sh’erit ha-Pletah”, and “Holocaust survivor”) between internationally contested spaces in the twentieth century.

In the public discussion, the intersection of Jewish and colonial histories often produces simplistic stereotypes. To counter these, this project offers a nuanced investigation of Jewish entanglements with colonial rule, with anti-colonial struggles, and with decolonization. It emphasizes the ambivalent Jewish position between inclusion and exclusion, indigenous and foreign, colonizer and colonized. Through a focus on the Mediterranean region during the turbulent decades of the mid-20th century, it decenters the prevalent emphasis on the Arab-Jewish conflict over Palestine/Israel and explores forgotten experiences from other contexts. The study of these experiences may inform contemporary debates on colonialism, racism, and antisemitism.

This project systematically investigates the connections between socialist-communist underground work and women's networks under Nazi occupation along the transregional European flight routes (Soviet Union, Poland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, France).