Mustapha F. came to Sicily from Gambia. He had to spend several months in different reception camps until he came to Palermo. Since then he has been going to school, learning Italian and, like many others, working part-time (often several jobs and usually without an employment contract).
With this cinematic meditation on Hannah Arendt's Paris years, We Refugees Archive pays tribute to its eponym. Arendt's essay "We Refugees" sprang from her experiences as a refugee in Paris.
The Hungarian communist, writer, journalist and antifascist activist Paul-Adolphe Löffler (1901-1979) describes Paris in his diary as a dazzling place of longing, which, however, regularly disappoints him. As a refugee with forged papers, he arrives by train at Gare de l'Est, where the city immediately robs him of his illusions: Paris seems less beautiful and sunny than expected, but the hope for a brighter future remains.
"Asylum is only a marginal part of my life. I don't live to get it." The musician Bahila H. comes from Syria and now lives in Berlin. She is studying architecture at the Brandenburg Technical University Cottbus-Senftenberg, continues to make music and hopes for a life in Berlin away from traditions and the suppression of opinions.
Alaa M. and her husband came to Germany in 2015. They have built a new life in Berlin, their twins were born in exile. Alaa is a self-confident woman in Berlin who has to fight many prejudices. She does not accept that people judge her by her appearance.
In the documentary "Asylum on the Bosporus" Adelheid Scholz and Cornelius Bischof talk about their experiences with their family, in the internment camp and in the Nazi youth camp in the 1930s in Istanbul from a current perspective. In the We Refugees Archive, some excerpts from the documentary are selected to show the former refugee children's confrontation with their own memories.
Dina is a young artist from Aleppo and works as a graphic designer in Istanbul. After the war started in Syria, she decided to start a new life in Turkey, together with her brother and mother. She started from scratch with a new life in Turkey, but then she finished her studies as one of the best students in her school.
The lawyer and university lecturer Ernst Eduard Hirsch (1902-1985), like thousands of others, had to leave Germany after the Nazi rise to power. His new life began in Istanbul, where he was able to advance his academic career and later felt like a Turkish civil servant.
In this film, refugee South Asian LGBTQ+ activist Barbara Khan talks about her migration from Pakistan and her life in New York as a trans woman.
Fatima D. goes to school and receives training as a musician at the conservatory. Her future dream is to become a singer and musician. Her wish came about through a spontaneous encounter with a drum teacher who saw her playing the djembé.
Emmanuel comes from Ghana and has lived in Palermo since 1992. In the 27 years he has worked in various professions. Emmanuel could no longer pursue his profession as an industrial mechanic in Palermo and took a job as a night watchman in a flower shop.
Among the more than 10,000 Jews who were stranded in Vilnius in the fall of 1939 there was the librarian and political activist Herman Kruk from Warsaw. His exceptional diary records and press reports sketch a mosaic of the heterogenous society of refugees in Vilnius since the beginning of the war.
Poem by Mascha Kaléko, written in Israel in 1960’s
Ilija Trojanow, who fled with his parents from Bulgaria to Germany in 1971 and whose life is marked by experiences of migration, deals in…
Igiaba Sciego, actually Alì Omar Scego, from Somalia tells about the loss of his name in Italy.
Ummuahmde fled the war in Syria in 2012, together with her family. Since then they live in Istanbul and run a small shop there.…
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Syrian photographer Alaa Hassan looks at the city of Istanbul – as a city of refuge and transit for other Syrian refugees, as a…
Hilde Marx (1911-1986) was a German-American poet, writer and journalist. She is one of the authors whose writing career was only just beginning when…
Erdal Yılmaz, his name has been changed, talks about his life in Istanbul and uses his own experience to deal with different phases of…
Dina is 27 years old and comes from Aleppo. Here she talks about her escape, her hopes and the things she had to leave…
Paydar H. is a Kurd from Aleppo in Syria. After the bombing of the city in 2013, he fled to Istanbul via Afrin in…
The Syrian-Kurdish writer Widad Nabi has been living in Germany for 5 years. She does not see any distance between her and her German…
The Austrian writer Joseph Roth (1894-1939) did not wait long and left Berlin shortly after Hitler’s seizure of power. By February 1933, he was…
The Austrian writer Joseph Roth (1894-1939) did not wait long and left Berlin shortly after Hitler’s seizure of power. By February 1933, he was…
Mendel Balberyszski (1894-1966) was born in Vilnius but had been living in Łódź for over a decade at the outbreak of the Second World…
The financial scientist Fritz Neumark talks about homesickness and his not easy decision to return to Germany after 16 years of exile in Istanbul,…
In this 1938 letter to Leonie Zuntz, Fritz Rudolf Kraus (1910–1991) describes his feelings about the exilic condition in Turkey. He wonders whether he…
Even in exile, holders of a German passport could not escape anti-Semitic persecution. Fritz Neumark, for example, had to have a “J” stamped into…
In her essay, Widad Nabi reflects critically on belonging as reality or illusion, her experiences and feelings in Germany, and on exile not as…
K. moved to Germany from Russia as a child with her family as part of a contingent program for Jewish people. Here, she talks…
The Austrian writer Joseph Roth (1894–1939) did not wait long and left Berlin shortly after Hitler’s seizure of power. By February 1933, he was…
Because of his political and journalistic activities, İsa Artar came under state pressure and police observation in Turkey. Before he was sentenced to a…
Mendel Balberyszski (1894-1966) was born in Vilnius but had been living in Łódź for over a decade at the outbreak of the Second World…
Ibrar Mirzai about integration, arrival and the feelings of exiles
Mustapha F. talks about his first time in a reception camp and his experiences of the reception in Palermo. He reports about his lack…
In an interview with the We Refugees Archive team, political refugee and scholar Hasan discusses their relationship to their mother tongue and the notion…
Poem by Mascha Kaléko
In an interview with the We Refugees Archive team, political refugee and scholar Hasan discusses their identity as a refugee and the support networks…
Kefah Ali Deeb came to Berlin in 2014 and spent six years writing a taz column about her old home country Syria and her…
Isa Artar talks about his experiences as well as identity problems after arriving in exile.
This is one of the crucial excerpts from Hannah Arendt’s essay “We Refugees” that she published in 1943 shortly after arriving in New York.
On the night of September 5-6, 1939, just a few days after the German attack on Poland, a group of Jewish journalists and writers…
Herman Kruk was a refugee from Warsaw who wrote reports on the refugee situation in Vilnius for the Yiddish magazine Folks-gezunt (Public Health) of…
Maaza Mengiste’s short story describes traumatic experiences of flight with many mythological allusions.
As a convinced communist, progressive architect Margarethe Schütte-Lihotzky came to Istanbul in 1938 to teach at the Academy of Fine Arts. In this passage…
In an interview with the We Refugees Archive team, refugee and South Asian LGBTQ+ activist Barbara Khan discusses the question of home, homesickness and…
Mahdi A. describes his initial helplessness after his arrival in Berlin, what the city means to him now and his plans for the future.
Hertha Nathorff, née Einstein (1895-1993) was a German pediatrician, psychotherapist and social worker. Until 1934 she worked as a senior physician at the Red…
Oskar Maria Graf was a German-American writer. His literary beginnings can be found in expressionist poetry. He wrote poems, novels, (autobiographical) stories, calendar stories,…
Berlin-born Romance philologist, literary and cultural scholar Erich Auerbach (1892-1957), now considered the founder of the discipline of comparative literature thanks to Palestinian postcolonial…
Bertolt Brecht’s poem on the difference between emigration and exile
Hilde Marx (1911-1986) was a German-American poet, writer and journalist. She is one of the authors whose writing career was only just beginning when…
Aliou B. left Guinea alone at the age of thirteen. On his way via Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Libya, he experienced hunger, mistreatment…
The German architect and urban planner Bruno Taut had come to Turkey from his first exile in Japan in 1935 as the head of…
In the documentary “Asylum on the Bosporus” Adelheid Scholz and Cornelius Bischof talk about their experiences with their family, in the internment camp and…
The German architect and urban planner Bruno Taut had come to Turkey from his first exile in Japan in 1935 as the head of…
After a short stay in Rome, Istanbul became a city of transit for Liselotte Dieckmann (1902–1994), a German scholar of German Studies. She lived…
K. talks about the reactions of others at school and at the citizen office to her Jewish identity.
Mustapha F. tells of the difficult situation in which refugees in Italy find themselves.
In this interview, Alexandra Sadownik reports what it means for her to be a Jew in Germany and where she lives her Jewish identity.
Kadija J. has lived in Palermo for over two years. In the interview, she talks about her reasons to come to Europe, her visions…
In an interview, the writer Widad Nabi speaks about what Berlin means to her.
In an interview with the We Refugees Archive team, Iranian Political Exilee and Coordinator of the Committee on Forced Migration at Columbia University Kian…
In her essay, Kseniia Tsybulska describes her escape from Kyiv and reflects on her feelings of homesickness after her arrival. How can she live…
Berlin-born Romance philologist, literary and cultural scholar Erich Auerbach (1892-1957), now considered the founder of the discipline of comparative literature thanks to Palestinian postcolonial…
Raymonde, Marceline and Bonifacia Sanchez talk about the role of Spanish and French in their lives, their role as mediators between and facilitators for…
H. comes from Somalia and lives in Italy today. Together with other Somali refugees he took part in a round table discussion of the…
Hertha Nathorff, née Einstein (1895-1993) was a German pediatrician, psychotherapist and social worker. Until 1934 she worked as a senior physician at the Red…
Berlin-born Romance philologist, literary and cultural scholar Erich Auerbach (1892-1957), now considered the founder of the discipline of comparative literature thanks to Palestinian postcolonial…
In her essay, Nazeeha Saeed critically examines the concept of “homeland” and analyzes the connotations that can go along with it, such as loyalty…
On the night of September 5-6, 1939, only a few days after the German attack on Poland, a group of Jewish journalists and writers…
Hanna Fuchs’s poem Knigge für Flüchtlinge, which she wrote in 1945 in Switzerland under the pseudonym Hansi Fuchs, deals with important questions of her…
In excerpts from the diary Berlin-New York Aufzeichnungen 1933 bis 1945, Hertha Nathorff vividly describes the destruction of her life, which was incomprehensible to…
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Traugott Fuchs, in protest against his dismissal by the Nazis and out of political convictions, followed his teacher Leo Spitzer into exile in Turkey,…
In an interview, Hussam Al Zaher, founder of the kohero magazine (former ‘Refugee Magazine’), talks about the importance the city of Hamburg has for…
In this letter of May 27, 1938, to the Latin and Greek teacher Johannes Oeschger, the German Romance scholar and literary scholar Erich Auerbach…
Käthe Berl was a well-known Austrian-American artist born in 1908 in Vienna into a Jewish family. Her family did not survive the Holocaust. Käthe,…
Berlin-born Romance philologist, literary and cultural scholar Erich Auerbach (1892-1957), now considered the founder of the discipline of comparative literature thanks to Palestinian postcolonial…
Mohammad talks in an interview about his arrival in Germany, about expectations and memories – about comparing and forgetting. And about Berlin: a city…
The author of the novel “A Jewish Refugee in New York” Kadya Molodovsky is one of the most important Yiddish poets of the mid-20th…
In this interview, the queer activist, human rights journalist, and refugee L. [1. they wish to remain anonymous] talks about their experiences of discrimination…
Hamdi shares a recipe from her home country Somalia and retells her story of flight and arrival.
Literary “love letter” by Widad Nabi to Berlin
Giulia di Carlo worked in a reception centre in Palermo and describes from her perspective the situation for refugees in the city.
Khatereh Rahmani describes her attempt, despite separation from her family and uncertainty about the future, to build her new life and everyday life in…
Paydar H. is a Kurd from Aleppo in Syria. After the bombing of the city in 2013, he fled to Istanbul via Afrin in…
In an interview with the We Refugees Archive team, Eric, a political refugee from Venezuela, talks about being a refugee and homesick in New…
Hilda Epstein was a German nurse born in Karlsruhe into a religious Jewish family. She learned infant care in Heidelberg, and later moved to…
In her 1984 memoirs, Susanne Friedmann-Kirsch (born 1926) describes her family’s flight migration – a “three-year odyssey” – from Vienna after the Anschluss in…
Mendel Balberyszski (1894-1966) was born in Vilnius but had been living in Łódź for over a decade at the outbreak of the Second World…
Mendel Balberyszski (1894-1966) was born in Vilnius but had been living in Łódź for over a decade at the outbreak of the Second World…
In her essay, Alaa Muhrez not only describes her own reflections on the topics of “homesickness”, “identity” and “exile”, but also takes up the…
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The German-Jewish artist Lili Rilik-Andrieux fled to Paris in 1938 and was interned in several camps after the German invasion of France. There she…
Ismael Xol was born in Xolcuay, El Quiché in Guatemala and crossed the border into the United States at just 15 years old. Ismael…
In an interview with the We Refugees Archive Team, Iranian Political Exilee and Coordinator of the Committee on Forced Migration at Columbia University Kian…
Widad Nabi’s poem about languages that shape her identity, from which she was expelled, which she fears and in which she has to settle…
Ilija Trojanow, who fled with his parents from Bulgaria to Germany in 1971 and whose life is marked by experiences of migration, deals in…
In the course of the National Socialist racial policy, Hertha Nathorff lost her license to practice medicine in 1934 and her medical license in…
In a diary entry in New York on June 20, 1941, the poet Mascha Kaléko (1907-1975) describes the many, mainly material, worries as a…
An unknown author writes in a DP camp magazine about the shortcomings of just having a single term for all displaced persons.
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Traugott Fuchs, in protest against his dismissal by the Nazis and out of political convictions, followed his teacher Leo Spitzer into exile in Turkey,…
Nacibullah came to Turkey from Afghanistan as a 16-year-old in 2018 without his family. He continues to live and work in Istanbul without papers…
In an interview with the We Refugees Archive Team, Iranian Political Exilee and Coordinator of the Committee on Forced Migration at Columbia University Kian…
In an interview with the We Refugees Archive team, the political refugee and activist Sami[1. name changed] from Syria, talks about his American identity…
The Austrian-Jewish (later Czechoslovakian) writer, journalist and reporter Egon Erwin Kisch (1885-1948), with his literary reportage “Notizen aus dem Pariser Ghetto” (Notes from the…
Because of his political and journalistic activities, İsa Artar came under state pressure and police observation in Turkey. Before he was sentenced to a…
Fritz Neumark published his autobiography “Zuflucht am Bosporus. Deutsche Gelehrte, Politiker und Künstler in der Emigration 1933–1953“. In it, he describes his two-decade stay…
K. talks about the term “contingent refugees” and her own experience of flight from her childhood perspective.
Even great political theorists sometimes have to write CVs. Also Hannah Arendt. It proves how crucially her experiences and work in Paris influenced her…
In an interview with the We Refugees Archive team, refugee and South Asian LGBTQ+ activist Barbara Khan talks about her identity as a trans-refugee…
Hertha Nathorff, née Einstein (1895-1993) was a German pediatrician, psychotherapist and social worker. With the help of American relatives, she managed to emigrate to…
Fred (Fritz) Grubel (formerly Grübel in Germany) was born in Leipzig in 1908. He studied in Leipzig,Frankfurt and received a doctorate in law. He…
Mendel Balberyszski (1894-1966) was born in Vilnius but had been living in Łódź for over a decade at the outbreak of the Second World…
On an unusually bright morning in Berlin I was sitting alone, sipping a cup of coffee and hesitating over a loud noise. This word…
Because of his political and journalistic activities, İsa Artar came under state pressure and police observation in Turkey. Before he was sentenced to a…
Herman Kruk writes about his pain facing the catastrophic war situation in his chosen hometown Warsaw.
The writer and journalist Paul-Adolphe Löffler (1901-1979) writes about the initial loneliness he suffered during his first period in Paris without his family, as…
Nazeeha Saeed, a journalist from Bahrain who lives in Paris and Berlin since 2016, talks about how she came to call herself a “journalist…
Hilde Marx (born November 1, 1911 in Bayreuth) was a German-American poet, writer and journalist. She is one of the authors whose writing career…
Herman Kruk writes in his diary about his flight from Warsaw to Vilnius, September 1939.
The German architect and urban planner Bruno Taut had come to Turkey from his first exile in Japan in 1935 as the head of…
The Austrian writer Joseph Roth (1894-1939) did not wait long and left Berlin shortly after Hitler’s seizure of power. By February 1933, he was…
In undated diary entries, the writer and journalist Paul-Adolphe Löffler (1901-1979) writes about his favorite places in Paris – mostly places of the French…
Issam Alnajm’s poem is an ode to Bochum, where Issam found a “new home” after his arrival in Germany in 2015.
In this interview, Alexandra Sadownik tells the motivations of why her family decided to migrate from Uzbekistan to Germany in 1998 and what difficulties…
Majid comes from the Darfur region in Sudan and belongs to the ethnic group of the fur people. He fled to Turkey via Libya…
The newspaper article “Jews must preserve the German language” appeared in the New York exile newspaper Aufbau on Dec. 27, 1940. In it, the…
Official letter from the Prussian Minister for Science, Art and National Education, dated September 1, 1933, to Fritz Neumark concerning his withdrawal from teaching…
On 24 June 1941, Kruk writes about his discouragement regarding his futile attempts to leave Vilnius for the USA shortly after the German attack…
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Fred Stein (1909-1967) began to make photography his profession after his escape from Nazi Germany to Paris in 1933. Besides street photography, portraiture became…
In her work “A Jewish Refugee in New York” Kadya Molodowsky presents the life of the twenty-year-old refugee from Lublin – Rivke Zilberg in…
In his letter to the architect Walter Gropius, Martin Wagner reflects on how the Neues Bauen (New Building) can be rescued into better times…
“For me, even the air is political”: In an interview, Hussam Al Zaher talks about the founding of kohero Magazine, an online magazine for…
Hilde Marx (1911-1986) was a German-American poet, writer and journalist. She is one of the authors whose writing career was only just beginning when…
Kefah Ali Deeb came to Berlin from Syria in 2014. In her text, she describes the first few weeks after her arrival, which were…
Diawara B. talks about the shocking experiences he made after his arrival in a reception camp in Sicily and the support he received on…
In this interview, Alexandra Sadownik shares what home means to her and where she feels at home. She tells what she particularly likes about…
Edith Hillinger, born in Berlin in 1933, fled with her parents from Nazi Germany to Istanbul in 1937. Her father Franz Hillinger worked in…
George Edel, a Jewish doctor from Vienna (who converted to Christianity), tells of his flight from Zagreb to Paris and of his stay in…
In his letter to Ernst May from 1935, the former Berlin city planner Martin Wagner, who went to Istanbul exile in 1935, reports on…
In an interview, Widad Nabi describes what the words home and future mean to her.
In his poetic essay, Karam Alhamad describes his thoughts about belonging and feelings to Berlin. He feels as a Syrian in Berlin only in…
İsa Can Artar and Daryna Axxi Degtiarova depict the objects of refugees that have a special meaning for them in the photo series “Home…
Hertha Nathorff, née Einstein (1895-1993) was a German pediatrician, psychotherapist and social worker. Until 1934 she worked as a senior physician at the Red…
In his novel Exile, Lion Feuchtwanger describes the grim situation of the German refugee community living in Paris.
Martin Wagner, former city planner of Berlin, who went into exile in Turkey from 1935 and worked as an urban planning consultant for the…
In a diary entry from September 1939, the poet Mascha Kaléko (1907-1975) reflects on the outbreak of the war in Europe and her own…
Alaa Muhrez talks about the new friendships she has made in Berlin and about the potential as well as difficulty when it comes to…
Hussam Al Zaher, founder and editor-in-chief of kohero magazine, on public discourse around refugees in Germany, self-determination and external perceptions. The article was originally…
In her famous interview with Günter Gaus, Hannah Arendt talks about her time in Paris, where she had fled from Nazi Germany in 1933…
In an interview with Sender Freies Berlin on 1 June 1956, the poet Mascha Kaléko (1907-1975) looks back on her first years of emigration…
Alaa Muhrez talks about her experiences of arriving and everyday life in exile, about questions of identity and experiences of exclusion.
Nazeeha Saeed, a journalist from Bahrain who has been living in Berlin since 2019, talks about what opportunities the new home gives, how one…
Kefah Ali Deeb came to Berlin in 2014 and spent six years writing a taz column about her old home country Syria and her…
In an interview with the We Refugees Archive Team, Chinese human rights activist and political exilee Teng Biao talks about being a refugee as…
Harry Asher- originally Georg Auscher – born in Vienna in 1907. In 1920 the family moved to Czechoslovakia, where his parents came from. At…
On November 16, 1939, Owsiej Bułkin was the seventh refugee stranded in Vilnius who gave a report to the Komitet tsu zamlen materialn vegn…
Joint Funding Agreement for the “Project for Investigating the Destruction of Jewish Population in Poland and its Current Situation” of the YIVO, 20 November…
The Austrian writer Joseph Roth (1894–1939) did not wait long and left Berlin shortly after Hitler’s rise to power. By February 1933, he was…
Dina is 27 years old and comes from Aleppo. She lost her home because of the war and does not know if she will…
In diary entries, the writer and journalist Paul-Adolphe Löffler (1901-1979) describes his relationship with the Hungarian community in Paris, which is shaped by longing…
In this interview, Alexandra Sadownik reports on her relationship with the Russian language and what it was like for her to learn German. As…
Poem by Mascha Kaléko (ca. 1938)
Benzion Benshalom wrote in the winter of 1939/40 about the desperate atmosphere and the sad cityscape in Vilnius.
Abdul S. – name changed, is an exiled professor of epidemiology at Kabul University of Medical Science and the first Afghan scholar to accept a…
On 22 June 1941, Herman Kruk writes about the National Socialists’ invasion of Vilnius and his decision to stay in Vilnius despite all.
Else Pappenheim was an Austrian-American physician born in 1911 in Vienna to a Jewish family. She left Vienna in 1938 after the revocation of…
Diawara B. tells of the futility of his integration efforts in the hostile Italian immigration system – especially in view of the “security decree”.
In March 1933, Ernst Eduard Hirsch was dismissed from his position as a tenured judge in Frankfurt am Main and as a private lecturer…
Kefah Ali Deeb reflects on her arrival, integration expectations and her experiences in a refugee shelter.
Polish-Jewish refugee journalists and writers having dinner in their dormitory in Sadowa Street 9, 1939/40.
Because of his political and journalistic activities, İsa Artar came under state pressure and police observation in Turkey. Before he was sentenced to a…
In November 1939, a group of Polish-Jewish refugee writers and journalists formed the “Committee to Collect Material about the Destruction of Polish Jewry 1939”…
Yurdanus shares two recipes from her home country and tells her story of flight.
Traugott Fuchs, in protest against his dismissal by the Nazis and out of political convictions, followed his teacher Leo Spitzer into exile in Turkey,…
In March 1933, Ernst Eduard Hirsch was dismissed from his position as a tenured judge in Frankfurt am Main and as a private lecturer…
Fatima D. is from Gambia and came to Palermo in May 2017. She is one of many refugee minors who came unaccompanied by adults.…
In excerpts from the diary Berlin-New York Aufzeichnungen 1933 bis 1945, Hertha Nathorff describes her inconceivable displacement from her homeland and the destruction of…
In the letter of May 8, 1936, Ernst Loewy tells his parents about his life in the Kwuzah (Kibbutz). The initial anticipation gives way…
On the night of September 5-6, 1939, only a few days after the German attack on Poland, a group of Jewish journalists and writers…
M. talks about her volunteer work: her tasks in a welfare and social institution and her commute by public transport. While doing so she…
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Fred Stein (1909-1967) began to make photography his profession after his escape from Nazi Germany to Paris in 1933. On his photographic wanderings he…