In January 2021, with the digital reprint of Martha Glass’ Theresienstadt Diaries, we introduced a new format within the Key Documents Edition: the thematic dossier. The dossier format offers room to make available extensive source material and to introduce a specific topic close to the source. The diaries of Martha Glass were particularly suitable for this purpose: They constitute a rare testimony of everyday life in the Theresienstadt Ghetto, moreover from the perspective of a woman, and at the same time a rich source that allows exemplary insights into the survival strategies of a Hamburg Jewish woman in the face of inhuman living conditions. Martha Glass, who was born as Martha Stern on January 31, 1887, and who in 1903 married Hermann Glass, a native of Stanowitz near Breslau (today Stanowice near Wrocław in Poland), was deported to Theresienstadt (Terezin) together with her husband in July 1942 at the age of 60. After Hermann Glass died on January 19, 1943, a few months after his arrival in the camp, due to the abysmal conditions, Martha Glass began to record her feelings, experiences, and thoughts in three notebooks. Martha Glass survived, being able to join her daughter Edith in Berlin after her liberation in 1945, and from there she traveled to New York to join her second daughter Inge.
Both during her departure for the USA and during her temporary return to Hamburg and Austria, she recorded her impressions in writing. Having been preserved in the family, these notes were thankfully given to the Institute for the History of the German Jews by Dr. Barbara Müller-Wesemann. Barbara Müller-Wesemann conducted extensive research about Martha Glass and she was able to meet Martha Glass’ daughter Inge Tuteur while the latter still resided in New York. After publishing the first edition of the Theresienstadt Diaries in cooperation with the Hamburg State Agency for Civic Education (Landeszentrale für Politische Bildung Hamburg) and initiating the new digital edition together with the Institute for the History of the German Jews, she also provided the impetus for an edition of the two travelogues written in the immediate post-war period.
It is precisely the synopsis of the three reports, i.e., the Theresienstadt Diaries and the two post-war reports covering the emigration to the USA and the trip to Europe, that provides a great deal of insight by revealing continuities and parallels as well as changes and disjunctures. Therefore, it quickly became clear that the Key Documents Edition was once again the right framework for this undertaking. The reports on the passage from Bremerhaven to New York and on the temporary return to Hamburg during the 1953 trip to Europe are not only a continuation of Martha Glass’ writing; they also open up new topics, such as the aftermath of the Shoah or the history of survival, including the complex question of the relationship to the former homeland. The fact that we take the testimonies of a person who did not return to reside in Hamburg as the starting point for this dossier corresponds on the one hand to the historical circumstances, since only a fraction of those who managed to emigrate settled back in Germany; and on the other hand, this approach underscores our concern to understand remigration in all its facets: In our opinion, this includes not only actual return migration, but also reflection on returning per se as well as conceptual grappling with the former homeland, temporary forms of return, and conscious decision against return migration.[1]
[1] On this understanding of remigration, see the anthology by Irmela von der Lühe / Axel Schildt / Stefanie Schüler-Springorum (eds.), ‘Auch in Deutschland waren wir nicht wirklich zu Hause.’ Jüdische Remigration nach 1945, Göttingen 2008, Hamburger Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Juden 34.
