Zuflucht und Utopie. Österreichisch-jüdische Emigration in die Dominikanische Republik

S:I.M.O.N. Issues

S:I.M.O.N. Sections

Editorial

S:I.M.O.N. is an e-journal of the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI). It appears twice a year in English and German language. S:I.M.O.N. aims at both a transnational and comparative history of the Holocaust and Jewish Studies in Central and Eastern Europe within the broader contexts of the European history of the 20th and 21st century, including its prehistory, consequences and legacies as well as the history of memory.

S:I.M.O.N. serves as a forum for discussion of various methodological approaches. The journal especially wishes to strengthen the exchange between researchers from different scientific communities and to integrate both the Jewish history and the history of the Holocaust into the different “national” narratives. It also lays a special emphasis on memory studies and the analysis of politics of memory. S:I.M.O.N. uses a double-blind review system, which means that both the reviewer’s and the author’s identities are concealed from each other hroughout the review process.

Shoah: The journal deals with the history of the Shoah from multidisciplinary, transnational and comparative perspectives. It seeks to integrate studies on Jews as well as on other groups of victims of the Holocaust, especially on Roma, and of so far less researched regions of (East) Central and (South) Eastern Europe.

Intervention. The journal reports on research projects and their transmission into public events. It also informs about current educational and remembrance programs.

Methods. The journal serves as a forum for the discussion of methodological approaches as, for instance, the everyday history, oral history, gender history, the history of violence, anti-Semitism and racism and the theory of memory and memory politics.

DocumentatiON. The journal contributes to critical approaches on using and interpreting archival materials in the 21st century.

Download the current issue S:I.M.O.N. 2017/2.

Articles

Patrice G. Poutrus

Die antisemitischen Ausschreitungen im Berliner Scheunenviertel 1923. Zur Berichterstattung der Wiener Tagespresse

This contribution uses a case study in order to establish the fundamental theses for a research project on the mass media representation of migration in Vienna and Berlin during the interwar period. What knowledge about migratory movement and experiences was spread in the public spheres of both metropolises via the daily press? The institutionalised production and distribution of knowledge made the press a decisive contributor to what was socially accepted to express and visible, to the definition of topics and therefore the collective perception of social contrasts: the media did no merely reflect, but also produced social realities. The case study refers to strongly antisemitic excesses in the Scheunenviertel in Berlin, a district that was largely inhabited by migrants, in early November 1923. It investigates the depiction and interpretation of these events in the Viennese press against a two-fold backdrop and context: the Danubian city's role as the destiny of a massive migration movement that had developed since the collapse of the Habsburg empire and partly even before, as well as Vienna's predominant antisemitism.

SWL-Reader

Wolfgang Benz

Der Ort des Terrors. Die Welt der nationalsozialistischen Zwangslager

The network of camps that eventually covered almost all of Europe under the management of the SS was a firm component of the national socialist system of terror and defined the Nazi regime in its essence. From the British channel island Alderney to the Soviet Union and from the Baltic to Greece, there was hardly a place in the Nazi sphere of power without one form or another of such a camp. The names of the large concentration and extermination camps have today become synonyms for Nazi state terror, and are perfect metaphors of terror, dehumanisation and racist mass murder. Paradoxically, however, this development at the same time saw the erasure of the traces of those countless small camps in the system: the network that made the terror possible in the first place down to its last branch. They have been lost from Europe's cultural memory.

Wolfgang Benz provides a systematic presentation of this knowledge, making it accessible again on the basis of the nine volume standard oeuvre on the history of Nazi concentration camps which he published together with Barbara Distel.

Events

Miloslav Szabó

Ein ‚antislowakischer' Oscar-Film? Zur Darstellung des Holocaust im tschechoslowakischen Film Obchod na korze

During the clerical-fascist Slovak State, "Tóno" Brtko, a docile and poor carpenter, is offered the possibility to 'aryanise' the small Main Street sewing accessories shop of Rozália Lautmannová. Torn between his good-natured principles and his greedy wife Evelyna, he finally agrees to take over the shop by making the deaf and senile lady believe he is her nephew arriving to help her out. Yet he then discovers that the business is bankrupt, and Ms. Lautmannová is only relying on donations from the Jewish community. While letting his wife believe he is making money from the shop, he gradually becomes a supporter of the old lady. More and more, a cordial relationship between the two evolves. When the Slovak authorities finally decide to deport the Jewish population of the small town, Tóno, in a deep conflict with himself and his values, finally opts for hiding Ms. Lautmannová – a decision which turns into tragedy. Obchod na korze won the 'Oscar' for Best Foreign Language Film in 1966. The film was presented on the occasion of a VWI-Visuals presentation on 29 January 2015 in Vienna's Admiralkino.

The Dominican Republic is nowadays considered an ultimate holiday paradise by most Europeans. It is less known that this small state in the Antilles served as a place of refuge from Nazism for Austrian, German and Czech Jews during the Second World War. While most countries closed their borders to the flood of refugees after the 'annexation' of Austria, it was - of all places - this dictatorial Caribbean island state that offered refuge to the persecuted. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee built an agricultural model project in Sosúa on the country's northern coast, which was modelled on Kibuzzim and was laid out for tens of thousands of refugees. However, only a few hundred reached the island; they included many Viennese.

The history of this settlement project reveals the developmental lines of the twentieth century: the democratic states' capitulation in the face of the German anti-Jewish policies, the concept of an agricultural project based on socialist ideas and its failure and, finally, migration as a modernising catalyst.