Reviewed by:

• Germany on their Minds: German Jewish Refugees in the United States and their Relationships with Germany, 1938–1988 by Anne C. Schenderlein
• Jeffrey S. Gurock (bio)

My late mother-in-law, a native of Frankfurt, Germany, left the fatherland in 1937 and spent the war years in London before gaining admission to the United States. Until the day she died some sixty years later, she always wore a necklace that on one side bore an image of her erstwhile hometown and on the obverse depicted the great metropolis of New York. After reading Anne C. Schenderlein's study of the life experiences of German Jewish refugees—not of the famous, but of the rank and file of the some hundreds of thousands of fortunates who made it to America's shores—I now have a somewhat better understanding of how typical her residual affinity was for a country and culture that rejected her and her family. Though Schenderlein's focus is on Los Angeles—the second largest immigrant community—and not New York, even though she often relies on Gotham-based sources like the all important Aufbau newspaper to tell her story, I discerned from this book striking similarities among these newcomers in approaches to life and attitudes toward their old and new worlds, coast to coast.

Among the most resonant findings is the author's useful take on the ambivalence of those whom she calls "Beiunskis." She carefully points out that even those who earned their "name because of their frequent lamentations that 'bei uns' [meaning at home in Germany] everything was better," these Jews "discussed, questioned, negotiated and practiced how to act and represent themselves in the United States" (19). Predictably, one of the foremost points of disagreement was over the question of to what extent families should speak German both within and outside their homes. At issue was, for example, the desire not to sound different from other Americans out in the streets and neighborhoods of often mixed ethnicities where they would be perceived as foreigners as opposed to vocally expressing their deeply-held belief that their native tongue bespoke the superiority of German culture when compared to America's arts and culture. In other words, the latter devotees refused to abandon "the cultural elements they grew up with" even as they were sure to condemn, in no uncertain terms, the Nazis' denigration of all that previously was good in Central European life (34).

Throughout the book, Schenderlein presents innumerable examples of the range of opinion—from the Aufbau and from her interviews—on this weighty subject. But regrettably, she does not offer any quantitative data establishing which of these divergent points of view was most regnant, either in New York or Los Angeles. Indeed, the modifying words "many" [End Page 653] or "some" are the closest we get to ascertaining which sort of behavior pattern was most characteristic of this large-scale immigrant group. This significant lacuna left me wondering still whether my in-laws' decision to speak only English to my wife in their home as she was growing up but, when they were alone, to converse with an idiosyncratic mixture of languages was typical or substantially different from what their friends and relatives did all in close proximity to each other within that major immigrant hub of New York's Upper West Side.

To be sure, all too often in books published today, the enumeration of numbers with graphs and charts detracts from the flow of intriguing narratives. But within this study, a sense of proportionality among ranges of opinions would have been very useful. Schenderlein's work would have benefited from some well-placed statistics. She was aware of that option, as she borrowed and properly acknowledged quantification about a religious attitude from Steve Lowenstein's important study of Washington Heights immigrants, Frankfurt on the Hudson (1989). I would have appreciated her following suit, even if her findings might have ended up in a footnote.

One particular theme, occupying almost...

审核人：

• 德国的思想：美国的德国犹太难民及其与德国的关系，1938年至1988年，安妮·C·森德莱因（Anne C. Schenderlein）
• 杰弗里·古洛克（生物）

我已故的婆婆是德国法兰克福人，于1937年离开祖国，在伦敦度过了多年的战争，然后才被美国接纳。直到大约60年后她去世的那一天，她一直戴着一条项链，该项链的一侧刻有她曾经的故乡的图像，而正面则描绘了纽约的大都市。在阅读了安妮·C·申德莱因对德国犹太难民的生活经历的研究后，我对美国犹太难民的生活经历有了更深入的了解。她对一个拒绝她和她的家人的国家和文化残酷的亲和力是多么典型。尽管Schenderlein的重点是第二大移民社区洛杉矶，而不是纽约，在Aufbau报纸上讲她的故事时，我从这本书中看出了这些新来者在生活方式和对待新旧世界的态度上的相似之处，从海岸到海岸。

在最令人共鸣的发现之中，是作者对那些她称之为“贝恩斯基斯”的矛盾情绪的有益研究。她仔细地指出，即使是那些因“经常感叹'bei uns'（在德国在家中的意思是：一切都更好）而得名的人”，这些犹太人“也讨论，质疑，谈判和练习如何表现自己和代表自己在美国”（19个）。可以预见的是，最大的分歧之一是关于家庭在家庭内外应该在多大程度上说德语的问题。例如，有争议的是 希望在经常混血的种族的街道和街区不与其他美国人听起来不同，他们被认为是外国人，而不是口头表达他们深信不疑的信念，即与美国相比，他们的母语彰显了德国文化的优越性。艺术和文化。换句话说，后者的奉献者拒绝放弃“与他们一起成长的文化元素”，尽管他们肯定会毫不含糊地谴责纳粹对中欧生活中过去所有美好事物的den视（34）。

在整本书中，Schenderlein都提供了无数关于该重要主题的观点的例子-来自Aufbau和她的访谈。但遗憾的是，她没有提供任何定量数据来确定在纽约或洛杉矶，这些不同观点中哪一个最令人讨厌。确实，修饰词“很多” [结束页653]我们最接近地确定这种行为模式是该大规模移民群体最典型的特征。这一巨大的空白使我仍然想知道，公婆决定长大后在家里只对我的妻子说英语，但是当他们独自一人时，与特殊语言混合交谈是典型的还是与实际不同的？他们的朋友和亲戚在纽约上西区的那个主要移民枢纽中彼此之间都非常接近。

可以肯定的是，在当今出版的书籍中，经常用图形和图表对数字进行枚举会降低耐人寻味的叙述的流动性。但是在这项研究中，意见范围之间的比例感将非常有用。Schenderlein的工作本可以从一些位置合适的统计数据中受益。她借用并适当地承认了史蒂夫·洛文斯坦（Steve Lowenstein）对华盛顿高地移民的重要研究（哈德森，法兰克福， 1989年）中对宗教态度的量化后，她意识到了这种选择。即使她的调查结果可能以脚注结尾，我也很感激她的追随。

一个特别的主题，几乎占据了...