Ruth Schwertfeger, Professor of German, Department of Foreign Languages and Literature

The focus of the talk will be on narratives written by German Jews about their experiences as refugees in France after 1933 and then as internees during the occupation of France¿the Dark Years when they were stigmatized on two fronts as Germans and as Jews. These narratives have traditionally been assigned to the field of Exile Studies, with little or no emphasis on their Jewish context. The result is that famous German Jews are barely visible in Exile Studies as Jews, and invisible as exiled Germans in the history books of the Vichy years. Their status has been ‘in transit’. Yet all of these writers, whether famous or unknown were both Germans and Jews. The talk will address how identity was represented by four groups that can be broadly categorized: famous writers, political dissidents, ordinary people (die kleinen Leute) and adults who later wrote about their experiences as hidden children.