SUMMARY:

Usually, students of the Russian Jewish emigration to Germany assume as the natural chronological limit for their inquiry the year 1933, which marked the establishment of the Nazi regime. The article by Oleg Budnitskii is a rare attempt to go beyond this limit in the history of Russian Jews in Germany. He reconsiders the view according to which the events of 1933 inaugurated a mass and speedy emigration of Russian Jews to other European countries. Budnitskii shows that Jewish public life in Germany continued until the early 1940s. These years are the focus of his analysis. He treats in detail the response of the Russian emigrants to the Nazi rise to power. This political change split the Russian emigre community along both political and “racial” lines. He considers the reasons that kept many Russian Jews in Germany throughout the 1930s. Finally, the article tells the story of the philanthropic activities of Jewish organizations (first of all, the Union of Russian Jews in Germany). The latter discussion is based on a thorough investigation of the unpublished exchanges of Alexei Alexandrovich Goldenweiser, a distinguished representative of Russian-Jewish Berlin and legal adviser to the Union of Russian Jews in Germany, with his many correspondents.