From its title alone, one would expect this book to be a straightforward biography. Delightfully, it is much more than that. Joachim Schlör has written a richly contextualized and thoroughly researched narrative of the world of Alice Schwab (née Liesel Rosenthal), based on the letters she received between 1937 and 1947. It reveals the steadily increasing pressure on German Jews stranded in Germany as well as those already abroad. Alice Schwab, a young refugee who made her way to London, worked at Woburn House with her future mother-in-law, Anna Schwab, a key player in the organized efforts to assist German- Jewish refugees scrambling to escape Germany. Global and local events unfold through the eyes of letter writers across Alice Schwab's vast personal and professional network of friendships, extended family, and romantic interests.
Schlör adheres to the chronological order of the letters sent to Schwab (who he refers to as Liesel) during the pivotal years of the Nazi persecution of Jews. Even when Schlör is tempted to digress into an intriguing tangent, such as Heilbronn's Nazi past or the Jewish refugee community of India, he remains committed to exploring the letters in the order they were received. Early on, Schlör acknowledges the challenge of using letters to (rather than from) a subject as historical sources and reminds us of the need to think critically about “ego-driven” sources (93). He uses other primary sources, such as regional newspapers and BBC broadcasts to help contextualize the unique perspectives and circumstances of individual letter writers from India, Palestine, Switzerland, the United States, and, of course, Germany. In doing so, he writes a story of exile of more than just “one woman” as the title suggests. Rather, the book reveals the vast multitudes of experience within the ever-expanding and shifting German-Jewish diaspora.
The author's enthusiasm for hands-on historical research is palpable. He leaves no stone unturned, interviewing original letter writers and their descendants and combing collections and estates for reciprocal correspondence written by Schwab herself, to little avail. He follows the paths and ultimate fates of many of the letter writers, using a creative range of sources including genealogy websites and local newspaper obituaries. The most painful parts of the book are excerpts of letters from family and friends trapped in Germany, such as Hans Eisig and Minni Stern, who were ultimately killed by the Nazis. Typically, historians of refugees focus on the experiences of those who made it out. A project like this, by its very nature, includes the voices of those who were left behind. Schwab's parents’ desperate criticism and outright anger at her for not marrying a German Jew in Mumbai make their letters difficult to read, even after they arrived in the UK and saw her happily married there. The way Schlör contrasts the tone of this correspondence with the sunnier, transcribed interview Alice Schwab herself gave forty years later reminds us of the necessity to corroborate memoirs and oral history accounts with contemporaneous sources such as diaries and letters.
Throughout the book, Schlör takes an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on anthropology, cultural geography, and material history in his analysis. His observation that Schwab's life is almost novelistic, with plenty of drama, passion, and emotion lies outside the scope of traditional historical analysis but is certainly spot-on. One strategy that is more hit-or-miss is the use of ethnographic-type reflections throughout parts of the narrative. Schlör intersperses his own personal connections to the narrative, such as his youth in Heilbronn or his relatives in the wine trade there. However, this kind of self-reflection would have gone a long way, had he explored his own family's role in Nazi Germany and their postwar perceptions of what happened to their Jewish counterparts. The personal connections he does make to the material are especially engaging but are notably absent in his discussions of wartime and postwar Heilbronn.
The last quarter of the book takes a sharp turn from Alice Schwab's world, with London at its center, to Heilbronn itself. At this point, the southern German city becomes a leading character in its own right. The primacy of the city for the author is evident throughout, as the term “City Archives” is continually used to mean Heilbronn's City Archives (114), and not London's. Schlör explores the idea of a remembered Heilbronn as a “thirdspace” (187), created by the diaspora of former Jewish residents, who are unfortunately called “foreign Heilbronners” (185). Perhaps a more appropriate name would be “expelled Heilbronners,” “persecuted Jewish Heilbronners,” or “refugee Heilbronners” rather than “foreign,” as though they willingly chose to live abroad. This misnomer offers a clue to the inappropriateness with which postwar German communities have reckoned with their own culpability for Nazism. Thankfully, Schlör casts a critical eye on Heilbronn's “Weeks of Encounter” (205) held in the 1980s and 1990s, when Jewish refugees were invited to revisit the rebuilt city and cemeteries. The book's last section raises more questions than answers, namely: How do descendants of ordinary Heilbronners reconcile their parents’, grandparents’, and great-grandparents’ complicity in the expulsion? What work has been done in Heilbronn to trace the stolen money and property of expelled Jews – not in terms of reparations, but for current residents to reconcile with their own families’ complicity in the plunder? What percentage of expelled Jewish Heilbronners and Holocaust survivors from the city actually attended these Exploration Weeks? (This reviewer's own refugee grandparents refused to ever set foot in Germany again after they left in 1938.) The disconnect and raw anger toward postwar Germany is only evidenced in a single letter cited by the author. Perhaps the focus of the last quarter of the book could have centered the expelled Heilbronn diaspora who refused to return, the non-responses to the invitations in the 1980s, rather than primarily the polite letters written to city officials. An analysis of the number of visits to Heilbronn by second- and third-generation Jewish refugees would also be a useful area to explore.
Despite the unanswered questions above, I found this book to be provocative, well researched, and extremely engaging. Joachim Schlör is clearly a generous scholar, sharing archival materials he found that he thought other historians might be interested in exploring in the future. My own approach to comparative studies of German-Jewish refugee communities has been deeply enhanced by Schlör's unique analysis of a single individual's world.
