The article examines the foundation of the Belarusian State University in the early 1920s in the context of the multi-ethnic situation of the Belarusian Soviet Republic. Besides the conflict between the university as a centre for national cultures and its instrumentalisation in the creation of socialist cadres, a major focus is placed on the role of Jewish academics and Jewish officials in the design of the Belarusian State University and where they were to be located within that conflict.

Between 1989 and 2000 more than one million Russian-speaking people emigrated from the Soviet/Post-soviet Union to Israel on the basis of the repatriation law, Chok a-Schwut. As a consequence, Israeli society is facing a test never experienced before. This article addresses an integration process of immigrants regarded by the receiving country as diaspora people who on their part are unwilling to submit to norms closely connected with this status and thus decline the Zionist concept of the negation of a diaspora. Along with this goes an almost nostalgic remembrance of the abandoned homeland as well as a sort of ghettoization in Israel. On the other hand a new assimilation process can be observed integrating normative demands into their own narratives: a late victimization of anti-Semitic experiences in the country they left along with a conscious decision for Israel as their homeland.

In the summer of 1934 a pogrom took place against the Jewish population of Thracia, the European part of Turkey. Jews were beaten, Jewish women were raped, houses burnt and shops looted. In the course of the incidents hundreds of thousands of Jews fled the region in search for security. This expulsion of Jewish people has been concealed for more than sixty years. Today we have a considerable picture of what happened. With historical retrospect the Jewish expulsion significantly marked the deterioration in the existence of minorities. Other violent manifestations followed, such as forceful conscription into the military, consignment to hard labour, or the imposition of the ‘wealth tax’, which literally wiped out all the resources of non-Muslims. This article analyses the so-called ‘Thracian incidents’ within the context of long-term developments of Kemalist policy in the Republican era: the exclusiveness of Turkish nationalism and its implementations for violent nation-building, and the population- and settlement policy concerning the influx of Muslim refugees mostly from the Balkan states together with the problems surrounding their settlement.

Daniel Cohn-Bendit and Pierre Goldman had a different – even contrary – view of the events of May 68 in Paris. They represent two exceptional biographies of leftist Jews in postwar France. Despite – or perhaps because of – this exceptionality they also personify many experiences that strongly influenced the generation of Jews in France born between 1940 and 1945. Many became associated with the leftist movement beyond the Communist Party and played an important role in the events of May 68. The article will explain the situation in France after the liberation that culminated in May 68. It will also discuss the factors contributing to the political radicalisation of many Jewish intellectuals. On the basis of the two biographies the article will explore any relevance their ‘Jewishness’ might have had, and to what extent they mirror a specific Jewish history of experiences, located between the strained relations of Résistance and Holocaust.

“The Man in the Glass Booth” (USA 1975) has to some extent been overlooked in spite of its elusive yet striking qualities. It tells the startling and on the face of it unlikely fictional story of a Holocaust survivor, arrested by Mossad agents and brought to Israel for prosecution, as a result of misleadingly laying a trail of evidence that points to himself as a former SS officer. The protagonist, Arthur Goldman, is one of the most disturbing figures in the filmic representation of survivors. This article uses Goldman as a reference point to analyse psychic traumatisation caused by National Socialist persecution. The primary focus here is the question of how the film’s narrative corresponds to the experiences and testimonies of those affected by the Holocaust.

The contribution of Jews toward earning Hamburg the title of “Capital of Foundations” in Germany was disproportionately higher than that of the general population. The extraordinary development of Jewish Charity in Hamburg depended on the intersection of two essential conditions. Charity in Judaism had been an act of religious duty and human obligation since ancient times. A tradition of independent self-governance in Hamburg brought forth ethics of personal civic responsibility for the well-being of the community and corresponded well with the preventive sense of Jewish welfare. Foundations were set up for traditional purposes but Jewish benefactors proved, for example, especially sensitive to social problems arising during the urbanisation process of the 19th century. A negative symptom of urbanisation in Hamburg was a lack of housing and exorbitant rents affecting not only the poorer but now also the middle classes. The Jewish share of housing trusts, that form of charity typical of Hamburg, was outstanding, as was their commitment to providing rental assistance.

This article profiles the collaborative, interdisciplinary project, “Holocaust Geographies,” funded by the National Science Foundation in the United States (2008-2011). It outlines the theoretical genesis of the project, its multi-disciplinary approaches, and then examines how these approaches have been applied in a specific case study, the evacuations from the Auschwitz camp system in January 1945. The authors analyze the certainties and uncertainties involved in mapping the landscapes of Poland and the emotional cartography and communities of former camp inmates during these evacuations.