‘I think he will be able to adjust’. Letters of Recommendation Accompanying Jewish Refugees in Transit during National Socialism

Abstract

Letters of recommendation are a specific subgenre of professional writing that both have their own history and shape the histories of the people they recommend. In the context of National Socialist persecution, recommendations typically accompanied well-educated German-Jewish refugees fleeing from Germany. Such letters can be seen as relics of an established support system, trying to enable and/or ease the period of internal transit into new and mostly unknown territories. Many Jews experienced a phase of internal transit as they adjusted to new demands and new social structures. This phase was usually a difficult one, as they not only had to adjust to a new country but also to process the events leading up to their forced migration, as well as navigating the psychological and often financial difficulties of organizing refuge. This article aims to show what kinds of information such letters of recommendation contained about transit. Focusing on the United States and on Palestine, the article challenges the understanding of these countries purely as ‘destination countries’, and shows how immigrants had to live through processes of internal transit. It also asks what content was the most useful to include in letters of recommendation—what kind of armour of good words was needed in transit—and how that content may have differed between the United States and Palestine.