Kathryn Sederberg

Writing Home: Emigration Diaries of German and Austrian Jews, 1933-1945 considers the practice of diary writing during emigration and exile, and the changes in writing and its functions as the author is geographically displaced. Beyond giving account of the history of emigration, the diary became a part of constructing a new self as a refugee in transit and in exile. Current political and humanitarian discussions surrounding refugee rights, asylum, and migration have fueled an even greater interest in refugee stories from the 1930s and 40s, and in personal accounts of emigration and resettlement. The archival evidence shows us that Jews throughout Europe continued to write diaries during the 1930s and 40s, whether as refugees, or in hiding, imprisoned in ghettos, or even in concentration and death camps. While many of these authors would not survive the Holocaust, some writers were able to find refuge through emigration, taking their diary with them. This project will demonstrate how the diary was often part of daily life for refugees: a site (a physical space and cultural practice) where writers document their search for a new life, and an instrument for interpreting and constructing life as a refugee. With a focus on Jewish emigrants from Germany and Austria, it traces the way these narratives give account of new beginnings in a strange country, where processes of acculturation and new concepts of self, home, and belonging shape the writing subject.