HeritageandHistory Zurich

Our projects and activities

Women in solidarity: a network woven by many hands

Froien Farain’s 100 years tell several stories. Recording these stories in a commemorative publication is also recording the memory of the Jewish community in Rio de Janeiro and Brazil. The bilingual publication (Portuguese and English), launched on August 25, 2024, shows that Froien Farain activists are today, individually and collectively, an important link in the Jewish heritage and tradition of solidarity and women’s participation. Brazil had just celebrated its 100 years of independence and the young Republic, free from slavery, reorganized its society, with more integration and religious freedom. In the federal capital, new public and private buildings transformed Rio into the Marvelous City and the migratory flow intensified, with the arrival of ships bringing immigrants from all over the world, including a considerable number of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. In this context, immigrant Jewish women, gathered for the first time in 1923, organized themselves into a society and...

Rabbi Dr. Lemle’s life and work

Rabbi Dr. Lemle started his career as a Rabbi in Mannheim, Germany, on April 1st, 1933 – the day of the boycott of Jewish establishments, businesses, doctors and lawyers’ practices. His uncle, father of his future wife Margot, was one of the first victims of Nazi persecution during a pogrom in Creglingen at the end of March of 1933. Hired by the Liberal Congregation in Frankfurt am Main in 1934, Lemle was the first ever Rabbi for the Youth in Germany and worked there until his deportation to the KZ Buchenwald as a consequence of the pogrom in the night from 9th to 10th of November, known as Reichspogromnacht, mostly referred as Kristallnacht. He could be saved from Buchenwald through the intervention of the World Union for Progressive Judaism (London) and could escape to England, where he later again was interned as „enemy alien“ in a camp after the outburst of the...

The first moments of German Jewish immigrants in Rio de Janeiro

The history of the União Associação Beneficente Israelita (Jewish Beneficent Society) goes back before its foundation in 1937 and has its origins in the mid 1930’s, with the arrival of the first Jewish refugees from Germany to Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. They are assisted and accommodated by a group of activists of different origins, especially from Eastern Europe, already domiciled in Brazil, in the old headquarter of the Relief Society, at Joaquim Palhares street, in the former Jewish neighbourhood Praça XI. Over 100 refugees are housed there, while others are put up in inns and private homes. In 1933, a small group of German Jewish immigrants gets together into a club they name “Centro 33” in the Marques de Paraná street, to exchange experience and information, but also to revive cultural e religious habits of the lost homeland. In the year to follow they organize by their own...

Family destinies: the letters to Ruth Springer

Gerhard Springer was born on March 22, 1889 in Culmsee, today’s Poland (Chełmża). His family represented a standard German Jewish family that, in the 19th century as a result of Hazkala (Jewish Enlightenment), was included in German society, assimilated its cultural and social values ​​and enjoyed full citizenship in its cities. The engagement of German Jews in World War I reflected this movement. In his letters from the front to his family and his sister Ruth, Gerhard dealt with everyday matters, such as on March 16, 1915: “Dear parents! I would like to draw your attention that yesterday on a night march I had to stay behind because of my backpack, which was very heavy. The next day, I fell ill due to tachycardia and now I was prescribed rest. Within 10 days, I received 40 packages from you and another forty from I don’t know who, that makes 80...

The Haberers: an example of continuity

Originally from the Offenburg region, the Haberer family settled in Konstanz, in southern Germany, in the 19th century. There, Leo Haberer, started his shoe business at Bodanstrasse 22-26. Today, just as at the beginning of the century, Konstanz (Germany) and Kreuzlingen (Switzerland) are border cities and, in the daily lives of their inhabitants, there is, in fact, no barrier: Swiss and Germans share bus lines, cultural and sports centers and move from one place to the other for leisure and business. This situation was only suspended twice: first, during the years of the National Socialist regime, with the installation of a physical border that interrupted this exchange and recently during the COVID19-pandemic. During and after World War I, several Jewish families migrated from Konstanz to Kreuzlingen in search of better business opportunities and, probably, Switzerland’s wartime neutrality. This migration grew from 1933 with the installation of the Nazi regime, increased...

Digital recording of the ARI’s historical membership register

Heritage and History (H&H) and the Associação Religiosa Israelita do Rio de Janeiro (ARI) are collaborating to digitally record the historical membership register of the German-Jewish community of Rio de Janeiro from the 1940s. The digitization of this index creates a collection of information about a specific group whose history has not yet been adequately evaluated and researched in the context of the immigration movements of the Jewish population in the 20th century. The data collection of individuals and the resulting creation of their biographies enable a better understanding of their own fate and that of their family members, but at the same time also knowledge about the fate of certain population groups.

Jews in Brazil: immigration and diversity

Given the importance of expanding museum collections that represent the different facettes of the Brazilian historical experience, the project “Jews in Brazil: immigration and diversity” aims to develop a critical look at the collection of the National Historical Museum (MHN, Museu Histórico Nacional) from the point of view of the history of Jews in Brazil and build a collection of three-dimensional objects, valuing the material culture of the immigration experience and construction processes of Jewish communities in Brazil. These communities, due to their ethnic diversity and origin, mark culturally and historically the Brazilian society, being an important element of “brasilinidade” (Brazilianness) little represented in the current MHN collection. The National Historical Museum was created in 1922 as part of the celebrations of the centenary of Brazilian Independence. Its first collections indicated a way of reading history that praised military, religious, and national state achievements and those of its government agents....