Travels through German-Jewish History
Click here below for a synopsis of the virtual exhibitions awaiting you in the Rafael Roth Learning Center. The stories embrace a multiplicity of exceptional documents, films, photos and audios. You may read, listen, or watch extracts here on the website as well as experiencing them in full at the museum.
Nesthäkchen
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Nivea
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Eastern European Jews in Germany
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The Revolution of 1848
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Longing for Zion
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Transit to America (1881-1914)
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Survival through Music
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Exile in Shanghai
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As the author of the well-known “Nesthäkchen” series (1913–1925), Else Ury (1877–1943), the Berlin-born author of books for youths, still enjoys great popularity. Ury identified with the German middleclass and was at home in the Jewish tradition. Her recognition was systematically surpressed after the Nazi rise to power. Else Ury died in Auschwitz. 
The Jewish pharmacist Oscar Troplowitz (1863–1918), born in Gliwice, transformed the Beiersdorf pharmaceutical laboratory in Hamburg—a producer of medicated plasters—into a modern pharmaceutical and cosmetics group. A number of its brands, including Nivea, Hansaplast and Tesa, are still sold all over the world today. 
Between 1880 and 1924 Jews emigrated to Germany from Eastern Europe to escape poverty and persecution in their home countries. Although they met with hostility and discrimination, many were able to create a new life for themselves. Representing the different fates of migrants are the lives of Chaim Weizmann, Cecylie and Heinrich Bien, Alexander Granach, Joseph Budko, the Friedmann and Goldstein families, and the Mandelbaum family. 
During the 1848 Revolution Jews became active in European politics. The progress of Jewish emancipation was dependent on its outcome. However, before the Jews could enjoy the fruits of the revolution, they became victims of anti–Semitic violence in many areas. 
The desire to return to the land of Israel is as old as Jewish exile, and it is expressed in a wide variety of Jewish festivals, prayers and traditions. Many Jews realized their dream of traveling to the Holy Land and recorded their impressions in travel reports and images. 
Eastern European Jews traveled in their hundreds of thousands on appointed paths through Germany to reach the ships to America in Hamburg and Bremen. Fleeing poverty and pogroms, the "golden country," the USA, promised a better life. 
The Berlin jazz guitarist Coco Schumann (b. 1924) suffered under the repression in Berlin in the 1930s and 1940s before he was deported to Theresienstadt in 1943 and Auschwitz in 1944. Music saved his life in both camps. He is still a highly respected jazz musician today. 
After the 1938 November Pogrom, Shanghai became one of the most important sanctuaries for Jewish emigrants. In the period up to 1941, some 20,000 refugees, most of them German Jews, made their way to the infamous city on the East China Sea. 
