Viola Alianov-Rautenberg’s paper analyses the meaning of amateur songs and singing in Jewish emigration from Nazi Germany between 1933 and the 1980s, arguing that this grassroots musical practice served the migrants as a communicative, social, and psychological resource. Exploring both the lyrics and the melodies of these songs, this paper opens a window to the role of sound in creating emotional communities.

Victoria Van Orden Martínez's paper traces the life stories of Jewish women in the fields of science and medicine during and after the Holocaust. Using a microhistorical approach, she reveals the emotional impact and weight of their experiences on their professional lives and ethics.

In her paper, Daniella Doron illuminates the meaning of emotions in the context of family separation among Nazi-era Jews. Tracing the history of Jewish youngsters who migrated to the United States alone in the 1930s, she explores the emotions communicated in letters between children and their parents.

Christian Bailey's paper analyzes German-Jewish youth magazines from the 1960s to explore the emotional styles of Jewish adolescents during this era. He reveals the conflicting attitudes and discourses of these youngsters towards romantic and sexual relationships with non-Jewish Germans.

In bringing these four papers together, this panel aims to use emotions as an analytical tool to provide new impulses in current academic debates in the historical study of the Jewish experience, perception, and aftermath of Nazi persecution, Antisemitism, the Holocaust, and its aftermath. Ultimately, it asks what a focus on emotions can offer to Jewish historiography of the 20th century.

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For example Christian Bailey, German Jews in love, Stanford 2023; Daniella Doron, Feeling Familial Separation: Emotions, Agency, and Holocaust Refugee Youths Jewish Social Studies, Volume 28, Number 3, Fall 2023, pp. 1-30; Derek Penslar, Zionism : An Emotional State, Rutgers 2023; Orit Rozin, Emotions of Conflict, Israel 1949-1967, Oxford 2024.