The “New Jews”: (Post-)Soviet Migration and the Reinvention of Jewishness in Germany since 1990

Jewish communities in East and West Germany were small and aging in the late 1980s. Only about 400 Jews remained in the Jewish communities of the GDR. This changed dramatically after 1990. Over the subsequent 15 years, about 220,000 Jews and their relatives emigrated from the former Soviet Union to Germany. Frank Bösch’s presentation analyzes how the country that perpetrated the Holocaust became one of the foremost destinations for Jewish migration, alongside Israel and the United States, becoming the leading destination in the early 2000s.

Based on extensive archival research and interviews, the presentation shows how German officials shaped this exceptional immigration program by granting work permits and social security benefits, and how migrants with Soviet backgrounds experienced life in Germany and reshaped their identities. The talk also examines the agency of those seeking to leave the Soviet Union, exploring the strategies they used to emigrate to Germany and how they circumvented bureaucratic rules. The migration process also generated many conflicts, including with established German Jewish communities, which led to new hybrid identities. At least in the 1990s, expectations on all sides remained unfulfilled. Jewish migration thus became a story of broken expectations.

The Gerda Henkel Lecture Tours were established in 2018 by the Pacific Office of the German Historical Institute Washington in cooperation with the Gerda Henkel Foundation. Each year, the series brings leading German historians to the West Coast to present their latest research and to engage in conversations with diverse academic and public audiences across North America.