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
19 - Chicken Farming: Not a Dream but a Nightmare: An Eyewitness Report
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
Eva Berurin Neisserwas born in Breslau in 1920, the daughter and granddaughter of business owners. After the Nazis confiscated her father's business, the family fled Germany, arriving in New York in October 1938. Under the auspices of the Jewish Agricultural Society, they moved to a chicken farm in Vineland, New Jersey, in 1941. In 1944 Eva obtained American citizenship and was able to join her fiance of seven years, who had escaped to Peru. She worked in the main accounting office of Pan American-Grace Airways for three years. In 1948 she returned with her husband to New Jersey, where they started a chicken farm but gave up and opened a travel agency in 1956. After her younger of two children left for college, she returned to school, earning a B.S. in accounting and an M.A. in communications/public relations. She taught at Glassboro State College (now Rowan College of New Jersey) as a member of the adjunct faculty until her husband's terminal illness, when she took over full-time management of the travel agency. She continues to work six days a week, writes a weekly newspaper travel column, and spends time with her three grandchildren. This report was written in 1991.
The German-Jewish refugees who managed to reach New York or other large American cities in the 1930s arrived in the midst of the Great Depression, with unemployment rampant. Men found hardly any work, and the women were lucky if they obtained housecleaning jobs where, for a dollar a day, they did what back at home, their cooks, maids, and washerwomen had done for them.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Between Sorrow and StrengthWomen Refugees of the Nazi Period, pp. 283 - 288Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995