Between Berlin and Madrid: Jewish Women in the Spanish Civil War

Linda Maeding presents the Berlin-born author of children's and young adult literature Ruth Rewald. In 1937–38, Rewald spent several months working at the Ernst Thälmann Children's Home near Madrid and wrote Four Spanish Boys, the only German-language youth novel about the Spanish Civil War. She was murdered in Auschwitz in 1942.

Raanan Rein presents the biographies of four women from the British Mandate of Palestine: Dora Levin, Haya Meites, Ruth Meites, and Yael Gerson, who volunteered in support of the Spanish Republic. Their commitment took them to Spain and France, where they contributed to the Republican cause in different ways.

Susanne Zepp-Zwirner 

Susanne Zepp-Zwirner has been Professor of Spanish and Latin American Literatures at the University of Duisburg-Essen since 2023. Previously, she served as Professor of Romance Philology at the Free University of Berlin (2011–2023) and as Deputy Director of the Simon Dubnow Institute for Jewish History and Culture at the University of Leipzig (2003–2015). Her research focuses on Spanish literature from the Middle Ages to the present, as well as Latin American, Portuguese- and French-language literatures, Jewish literatures, and the interdisciplinary field of law and literature. In 2023, she was awarded the Order of Isabella the Catholic, one of Spain’s highest honors.

Linda Maeding

Linda Maeding ist is Associate Professor (Profesora titular) of German Studies at the Complutense University of Madrid. Previously, she was a DAAD Lecturer at the University of Barcelona and a Fellow at the Klassik Stiftung Weimar in 2025. Her research focuses on German-language literature from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century in its transnational dimensions, with particular emphasis on exile literatures, migration and diaspora, German–Hispanic cultural relations, and utopian thought. A special focus of her work is on intertwined histories of violence in the contexts of displacement and the Shoah. She is co-editor of Europe in Crisis, Latin America as Utopia: Perspectives on Jewish Writing between the “Old” and the “New” World (Krisenhaftes Europa, Utopie Lateinamerika. Positionen jüdischen Schreibens zwischen „Alter" und „Neuer" Welt. De Gruyter, 2026; with Liliana Ruth Feierstein and Andrea Acle-Kreysing).

Dr. Raanan Rein

Dr. Raanan Rein is the Alexander Grass Chair in Jewish Studies at the University of Florida, Gainesville, and the Elías Sourasky Professor of Latin American and Spanish History at Tel Aviv University. Former Vice President of Tel Aviv University and ex-President of the Latin American Jewish Studies Association (LAJSA), Rein is the author and editor of dozens of books, most recently the forthcoming Anti-Fascism on Both Sides of the Mediterranean: Jewish Volunteers from Palestine in the Spanish Civil War (Rutgers University Press, 2027). The Argentine government awarded him the title of Commander in the Order of the Liberator San Martin for his contribution to Argentine culture. The Spanish King awarded him the title of Commander in the Order of the Civil Merit.