Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Prologue: Jewish Women in Nazi Germany Before Emigration
- Part One A Global Search for Refuge
- Part Two Refuge in the United States
- 12 Women's Role in the German-Jewish Immigrant Community
- 13 “Listen sensitively and act spontaneously - but skillfully”: Selfhelp: An Eyewitness Report
- 14 “My only hope”: The National Council of Jewish Women's Rescue and Aid for German-Jewish Refugees
- 15 The Genossinen and the Khaverim: Socialist Women from the German-Speaking Lands and the American Jewish Labor Movement, 1933-1945
- 16 New Women in Exile: German Women Doctors and the Emigration
- 17 Women Emigré Psychologists and Psychoanalysts in the United States
- 18 Destination Social Work: Emigrés in a Women's Profession
- 19 Chicken Farming: Not a Dream but a Nightmare: An Eyewitness Report
- 20 The Occupation of Women Emigrés: Women Lawyers in the United States
- 21 Fashioning Fortuna's Whim: German-Speaking Women Emigrant Historians in the United States
- 22 Exile or Emigration: Social Democratic Women Members of the Reichstag in the United States
- 23 Women's Voices in American Exile
- Epilogue: The First Sex
- Index
16 - New Women in Exile: German Women Doctors and the Emigration
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2013
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Prologue: Jewish Women in Nazi Germany Before Emigration
- Part One A Global Search for Refuge
- Part Two Refuge in the United States
- 12 Women's Role in the German-Jewish Immigrant Community
- 13 “Listen sensitively and act spontaneously - but skillfully”: Selfhelp: An Eyewitness Report
- 14 “My only hope”: The National Council of Jewish Women's Rescue and Aid for German-Jewish Refugees
- 15 The Genossinen and the Khaverim: Socialist Women from the German-Speaking Lands and the American Jewish Labor Movement, 1933-1945
- 16 New Women in Exile: German Women Doctors and the Emigration
- 17 Women Emigré Psychologists and Psychoanalysts in the United States
- 18 Destination Social Work: Emigrés in a Women's Profession
- 19 Chicken Farming: Not a Dream but a Nightmare: An Eyewitness Report
- 20 The Occupation of Women Emigrés: Women Lawyers in the United States
- 21 Fashioning Fortuna's Whim: German-Speaking Women Emigrant Historians in the United States
- 22 Exile or Emigration: Social Democratic Women Members of the Reichstag in the United States
- 23 Women's Voices in American Exile
- Epilogue: The First Sex
- Index
Summary
It was terribly hard the first year. I was tied down with a young child. I was tied down with fatigue. I was tied down with trying . . . professionally I haven't lost anything. All right, I lost something but I got back here.
Alice Nauen, pediatrician, Hamburg/Boston, 1971For both male and female doctors the story of exile from Nazi Germany is one of loss of status and identity and painful, arduous reconstruction. The story of women's experiences, however, is highly complicated by gender. Like men, they confronted professional dis- and requalification. But they also faced intense gender discrimination in addition to prejudices against Jews and foreigners in the medical professions of their host countries. Furthermore, like all women émigrés, they were expected to provide material and emotional support for uprooted family and friends. A remarkable if minority group of refugee women did eventually return to the practice of medicine. However, the unique niche that female physicians had carved out for themselves in the Weimar medical profession proved virtually impossible to replace or re-create.
The focus on exile in this chapter structures a story that is necessarily partial and fragmented. The sources consist to a great extent of records of refugee aid organizations, memoirs, and oral histories. They capture only certain women at very particular moments in their lives. Memoirs were often written by women who assimilated least successfully and felt compelled to tell their bitter story.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Between Sorrow and StrengthWomen Refugees of the Nazi Period, pp. 215 - 238Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995
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