Escaping Nazi Germany: Jewish refugee dentists and their post-emigration careers in the United States of America

This study is the first to examine the collective of dental lecturers and scientists who emigrated from Nazi Germany to the United States of America. We pay special attention to the socio-demographic characteristics, emigration journeys, and further professional development of these individuals in the country of immigration. The paper is based on primary sources from various German, Austrian, and United States archives and a systematic evaluation of the secondary literature on the persons concerned. We identified a total of eighteen male emigrants. The majority of these dentists left the “Greater” German Reich between 1938 and 1941. Thirteen of the eighteen lecturers were able to find a position in American academia, mainly as full professors. Two-thirds of them settled in New York and Illinois. The study concludes that most of the emigrated dentists studied here succeeded in continuing or even expanding their academic careers in the USA, although they usually had to retake their final dental examinations. No other destination country for immigration offered similarly favorable conditions. Not a single dentist decided to remigrate after 1945.