Grossmann Family Collection 1925-1998 Bulk dates: 1950-1975

The Grossman Family Collection holds papers on several members of the family, most prominently Erika Busse Grossmann and Hans Grossmann, but also includes articles by Walter Grossmann and a family tree. Included are Erika Busse Grossmann's official, educational and restitution papers and documentation of Hans Grossmann's legal practice.Erika Busse was born October 20, 1911. She attended various schools in Bavaria and Berlin. In 1929 she began studies at the Kaufmannische Privatschule. While working for one of Berlin's largest pharmacies she studied for her Abitur, and in 1931 began university studies in pharmacy. In 1933 she passed her first pharmacist exam but was forced to leave the university. At this point she became interested in immigrating to Iran and took classes in Persian. In 1935 she left for Tehran, where she would live for the next ten years. Due to the prevailing conditions in the country she could only find work as a secretary during this time. At some point while living in Iran she met the lawyer Hans Grossmann.Hans S. Grossmann was born August 26, 1902, the second son of Eugen and Gertrud (née Duritz) Grossmann. In 1947 the couple married and went on to have one daughter. At some point they immigrated to the United States, where they settled in New York City.Nicole and Thorsten Wendt's wedding (1998) ; Grossmann, Walter ; Congregation Tikvoh Chadoshoh, Hartford (Conn.)Processe

Forum : Holocaust and history of gender and sexuality

Historians of sexuality in the Holocaust go where most fear to tread: Lisa Heineman called the intersection ‘doubly unspeakable’. Why is it important to explore the history of sexuality in the Holocaust and what are the methodological, ethical and political issues at stake? In this Forum, five historians of gender, sexuality, Nazism and the Holocaust discuss what the field of Holocaust history gains from integrating sexuality and gender as analytical categories. By connecting Holocaust studies to the history of sexuality, the field gains, as we will argue, new theoretical insights, recognizing power hierarchies and societal shifts. As the scholarship moves to examining gender and sexuality in the Holocaust beyond a sole (if understandable) focus on sexual violence, topics like agency, love and prostitution, same sex desire and memory and subjectivity of both the perpetrators and victims come to the fore. What are we allowed to research? Why do we consider so many topics connected to mass violence and sexuality as taboo? How are we to make sense of them? The history of sexuality and gender not only introduces new topics to Holocaust studies; it also offers, more importantly, new perspectives on familiar themes

Shelter from the Holocaust: Rethinking Jewish survival in the Soviet Union

About 1.5 million East European Jews-mostly from Poland, the Ukraine, and Russia-survived the Second World War behind the lines in the unoccupied parts of the Soviet Union. Some of these survivors, following the German invasion of the USSR in 1941, were evacuated as part of an organized effort by the Soviet state, while others became refugees who organized their own escape from the Germans, only to be deported to Siberia and other remote regions under Stalin's regime. This complicated history of survival from the Holocaust has fallen between the cracks of the established historiographical traditions as neither historians of the Soviet Union nor Holocaust scholars felt responsible for the conservation of this history, which at best is pushed to the margins and often silenced or forgotten altogether. With Shelter from the Holocaust: Rethinking Jewish Survival in the Soviet Union, editors Mark Edele, Sheila Fitzpatrick, and Atina Grossmann have compiled essays that are at the forefront of developing this entirely new field of transnational study, which seeks to integrate scholarship from the areas of the history of the Second World War and the Holocaust, the history of Poland and the Soviet Union, and the study of refugees and displaced persons. Life as an escapee of the Holocaust was terribly difficult and often lethal, but it at least offered the opportunity for survival and, therefore, an experience fundamentally different than the systematic genocide the Nazis unleashed on those left behind in the territories under their control. What became of these survivors varies greatly-some joined Soviet Jewish evacuees in harsh exile in Central Asia; some Polish Jews evacuated to Iran in 1942 with the exile Anders Army, moving on to Palestine; most were eventually repatriated to postwar Poland, and many of them then fled further to displaced persons camps in allied-occupied Europe, where they constituted the largest group of East European Jewish survivors. Shelter from the Holocaust addresses these very different paths in seven chapters, beginning with a general overview of migration patterns, including a specific example of postwar memory focusing on those who ended up in Australia. The book continues with an exploration of the diverse ways Polish Jewish survivors talk about their experiences and identity with regard to the Holocaust, and ends with one family's personal narrative of experiences in Uzbekistan during World War II. Shelter from the Holocaust came to fruition as the result of the opening of formerly classified Soviet and Polish archives, determined efforts to interview the last remaining Holocaust survivors, and the growing interest in the histories of displaced persons and migration. This pioneering volume will interest scholars of eastern European history and Holocaust studies, as well as those with an interest in refugee and migration issues

Introduction to Shelter from the Holocaust: Rethinking Jewish survival in the Soviet Union

[Extract] Millions of Eastern European Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. Of those who escaped that fate—the surviving remnant, known as the She’erit Hapletah—most remained alive because the Soviet Union had provided an often involuntary, and by and large extremely harsh, refuge from genocide. This volume investigates aspects of this history and its implications for more established historiographies. The experiences of Poland, the Soviet Union, the Holocaust, and postwar displacement and migration intersect here in dramatic ways. This entanglement has so far remained mostly unexplored. The chapters in this volume try to open up a new transnational field of research, bringing together histories that for the most part have been studied separately. Contributors focus in particular on the history of Polish Jews who survived in the Soviet Union