Overview
Workshop dates: June 21-25, 2027
Co-organizer and Host: Institute for the History of the German Jews, Hamburg, Germany
The Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Institute for the History of the German Jews invite applications for the 2027 Jacob and Yetta Gelman International Research Workshop Jewish Escape to the Americas: Port Cities and Refugee Experiences in the Holocaust Era, coordinated by Björn Siegel (Institute for the History of the German Jews) and Andrea Sinn (Elon University). The workshop will take place June 21–25, 2027, at the Institute for the History of the German Jews, in Hamburg, Germany. Applications are due January 5, 2027.
In the 1930s and early 1940s, hundreds of thousands of Jews fleeing Nazi persecution sought escape routes to the Americas, often converging in the port cities of Europe’s Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts. This workshop—hosted in Hamburg, itself a key port of departure— examines Jewish refugee mobility through the interconnected histories of the routes, port cities, and the maritime and communication networks that both enabled and constrained escape.
Conceptualizing flight as a historical process shaped simultaneously by state policies, commercial networks, humanitarian actors, and individual agency, it places European ports of departure and transit within a broader comparative geography extending to the ports of arrival throughout the hemisphere, from Halifax and New York to Havana, Rio de Janeiro, and Valparaíso. In doing so, the workshop seeks to both reconstruct the experiences of Jewish refugees navigating uncertainty, bureaucracy, displacement, and survival in port cities and in transit, and to illuminate the multifaceted histories of flight, transit, and refuge across the Atlantic world.
While recent scholarship has increasingly emphasized the transnational dimensions of Jewish flight, mobility, and refuge in the Holocaust era, the practical, economic, and spatial dimensions of escape remain comparatively understudied. The workshop will examine the intersection between the commercial opportunities created by refugee migration for shipping companies, travel agents, brokers, and other intermediaries; the work of humanitarian agencies that arranged, financed, or facilitated passage; and the experiences and strategies of refugees navigating these systems. Biographical, comparative, spatial, and digital approaches will anchor our discussion of the diverse archival landscape that underpins this field—state and institutional archives, museum and community collections, and private family archives—with particular emphasis on integrating textual, oral, and especially visual sources, from official documents, correspondence, and memoirs to oral histories, photographs, and personal artifacts. Drawing on initiatives such as the Hamburg-based Key Documents of German-Jewish History, we seek to bring these sources and methods into conversation to generate new scholarship and identify underused materials and approaches.
We invite applications examining Jewish flight, transit, and refuge to and in the Americas from these or related perspectives, including work on:
Port cities and maritime routes
Shipping companies, brokers, and other commercial actors
Financial and bureaucratic infrastructures of escape, including insurance, banking, ticketing, and visa brokerage
Humanitarian organizations and refugee-assistance networks
Family, community, and diasporic networks of information and assistance
Refugee experiences of transit, displacement, and reception in ports of arrival
Refugee admission and immigration regimes across the Americas
Biographical and microhistorical approaches to individual trajectories of flight
Spatial and digital humanities methods applied to refugee migration, including mapping and network analysis
Hamburg itself will serve as a site of inquiry. The program will include a guided city tour, a visit to the Altona Museum’s upcoming exhibition on Jewish life in Hamburg, research time at the State Archive of Hamburg, and an introduction to a collaborative digital mapping project on Jewish escape routes to the Americas. The workshop will also lay the groundwork for an international research network and a proposed open-access edited volume in the Institute’s series Hamburger Beiträge zur deutsch-jüdischen Geschichte.
Participants will also have the opportunity to learn more about relevant archival resources in the Holocaust Museum's David M. Rubenstein National Institute for Holocaust Documentation.
To Apply
Applications are welcome from scholars affiliated with universities, research institutions, archives, or cultural heritage sites, and in any relevant academic discipline, including but not limited to anthropology, economics, history, Jewish studies, literature, philosophy, political science, religion, and sociology. Scholars with expertise in migration history, urban history, maritime history, and digital humanities are particularly encouraged to apply. Applications are encouraged from scholars at all levels of their careers, from Ph.D. candidates to senior faculty.
The Mandel Center will reimburse the costs of round-trip economy-class air, train, or bus tickets to and from Hamburg, Germany, and related incidental expenses, up to a maximum reimbursable amount calculated by home institution location, which will be distributed within 6–8 weeks of the workshop’s conclusion. The Mandel Center will also provide hotel accommodation for the duration of the workshop. Participants are required to attend the full duration of the workshop and to circulate a draft paper in advance of the program.
The deadline for receipt of applications is January 5, 2027. Applications must include:
A short biography
A curriculum vitae
A list of any related publications and/or ongoing research projects
An abstract of no more than 500 words outlining the specific project that the applicant is prepared to present during the program.
Applications must be submitted in English via our online application.
Questions should be directed to researchworkshops@ushmm.org.
This workshop has been made possible through the generosity of the Jacob and Yetta Gelman Endowment at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.