For too long, refugees from Nazi Germany have been little more than a footnote in the history of the Holocaust. Over the last two decades, this general disregard has finally begun to change, yet large gaps remain. This lecture examines a recently discovered collection of fifty letters written to Kurt David Baum, a Jewish teenager who fled Nazi Germany for America in 1937. Through close analysis of these personal documents  — kept secret until Baum's death in 2004 — Barry Trachtenberg’s innovative research challenges prevailing narratives about Jewish refugee experiences in America. While emigration to the United States is often portrayed as a clear path to safety, the Baum letters reveal a more complex reality marked by continued trauma, isolation, and powerlessness on both sides of the Atlantic.

Barry Trachtenberg is the Rubin Presidential Chair of Jewish History at Wake Forest University. In addition to numerous articles, he has authored, most recently, “The United States and the Holocaust: Race, Refuge, and Remembrance” (2018) and “The Holocaust and the Exile of Yiddish: A History of the Algemeyne Entsiklopedye” (2022).

This event is generously sponsored by Judi Gottschalk.

About the Series

The Holocaust Living History Workshop (HLHW) is an education and outreach program co-sponsored by the UC San Diego Library and the Jewish Studies Program. It aims to preserve the memories of the victims and survivors of the Holocaust by offering public events involving witnesses, descendants and scholars and through the use of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute’s Visual History Archive. Past HLHW workshops are now part of the Library’s digital collections and can be accessed online.