Refuge in the Heights: Migration, Memory and Authoritarianism in the Twentieth Century: A Zoom Panel Discussion
By Robert W. Snyder
Immigrants travel with baggage, and some of the most important things they carry are their memories of life in their original homes. In Washington Heights and Inwood, where immigrants include German Jews, Dominicans, and Jews from the former Soviet Union, personal and collective memories embrace an unusual cast of characters: some of the most brutal dictators of the 20th century.
George Washington Bridge and Washington Heights, Photo Credit, Rob W. Snyder
Upper Manhattan is haunted, you might say, by memories of Hitler, Trujillo, and Stalin. Out of this experience comes everything from reticence to resilience, all of which were discussed May 28, 2020 in a Zoom panel, Refuge in the Heights: Migration, Memory and Authoritarianism in the Twentieth Century, sponsored by the Leo Baeck Institute and the Young Men’s-Young Women’s Hebrew Association of Washington Heights and Inwood.
The panel, an outgrowth of the Leo Baeck Institute’s exhibit Refuge in the Heights: The German Jews of Washington Heights, featured: Lori Gemeiner Bihler, granddaughter of German-Jewish refugees who settled in Washington Heights, Associate Professor of History at Framingham State University in Massachusetts, and the author of Cities of Refuge: German Jews in London and New York, 1935-1945; Cynthia Carrion, Director of Community Development at the charter school School in the Square, and former deputy director of the Northern Manhattan Coalition for Immigrant Rights; and Victoria Neznansky, LCSW, Chief Development and Social Services Officer at the YM&YWHA of Washington Heights & Inwood (henceforth referred to as “the Y”). I was the moderator, drawing on what I learned writing Crossing Broadway: Washington Heights and the Promise of New York and serving as a consultant on Refuge in the Heights: The German Jews of Washington Heights.
Lower Washington Heights, Once Heart of German Jewish Refugee Community, Photo Credit: Robert W. Snyder
Our panel took the form of a conversation that delivered specific details about German Jews, Dominicans, and Soviet Jews and then explored differences and similarities among all three groups. Bihler, a historian with grandparents from Germany who lived in the Heights, focused on the 1930s and early 1940s — a period of great uncertainty for German Jews uptown who had escaped from the Nazis but could not yet know the fate of their friends and relatives in Europe. Carrion explored the multi-generational trauma of immigration among Dominicans, many of whom intended to live in New York temporarily to escape political repression or earn money, only to learn that New York — with its inequalities and racism — had become home. Neznansky, who immigrated from Ukraine in the former Soviet Union and has worked at the Y for eleven years, discussed the double weight of the Holocaust and Soviet communism on Soviet Jews.
For all of New York’s reputation as a city of immigrants, each group’s arrival in Washington Heights was something more complex than a hearty welcome. The relationship of German Jews with more settled Eastern European Jews in Upper Manhattan was not always cordial, Bihler related, and they both had to cope with anti-Semitism that scarred New York City in the 1930s and 1940s. Dominicans brought with them an ambivalence about the USA — excitement about getting a share of its economic prosperity, but bitterness, Carrion pointed out, at how American imperialism had shaped their country as recently as the US intervention of 1965. Soviet Jews, with little grounding in Judaism as a religion, were not inclined to join the neighborhood synagogues that wanted to welcome them, Neznansky said, and were more concerned with starting life over and finding work in an unfamiliar and ethnically diverse neighborhood.
Dominicans and German Jews, for all their differences, coped in the new neighborhood by applying their talents for organizational life. Both groups created organizations for everything from sports to mutual aid. Soviet Jews, on the other hand, applied the emphasis on family life that many had first cultivated in the Soviet Union, where a close family was compensation for the lies and injustices of the Soviet regime.
Ethnic Succession, Photo Credit, Rob W. Snyder
As decades passed German Jews, Dominicans, and Soviet Jews nurtured ways of remembering and forgetting that helped them sustain their new lives. German Jews, Bihler points, out, could recall their time in Washington Heights with a degree of nostalgia that obscured the hardships of their early years in the neighborhood before the end of World War II. Dominicans remembered their opposition to Trujillo, but Carrion pointed out that she never heard about the Dominican massacre of Haitians in 1937 until she went to college. Soviet Jews, Neznasky said, remembered the USSR’s victory over Nazi Germany with a mixture of pride and loss that reminded them of their ability to overcome hardships.
Dare to Dance Together, Credit: YM-YWHA of Washington Heights and Inwood
All of these memories converged, Neznansky recalled with pride, in the musical play Sosua: Dare to Dance Together. Neznansky, noting the Jewish experience with Hitler and the Dominican experience with Trujillo, conceived the play and worked with Liz Swados to craft it for a cast of Jewish and Dominican young people from Upper Manhattan, who formed the cast. First performed at the Y in 2010, the play explores how German Jews were granted sanctuary from Nazi Germany in Trujillo’s Dominican Republic. Trujillo’s motives included increasing the white population in his country, but the story stands out in a time when Jews found almost no safe harbors. In the play, and a documentary about it directed by Peter Miller and Renee Silverman — Sosua: Make a Better World — Jews of German and Soviet ancestry played Dominicans, Dominicans played Jews, and both groups increased their stock of empathy.
The success of the play and film about Sosua suggested that despite the trauma that German Jews, Dominican Jews and Soviet Jews endured — before, during and after immigration — a significant number of them were strengthened by the experience. They passed through years of trial and emerged with greater resilience. Washington Heights and Inwood are stronger neighborhoods for their presence.
Prompted by Carrion, I recalled how Upper Manhattan’s resilience, along with strength and an appreciation of pluralism, was on display in 2018, when the white nationalist group Identity Europa stalked through Fort Tryon Park on Saturday, July 28, taunting passersby, and hung out a large banner condemning immigration.
On the following Tuesday, July 31, hundreds of all people of all nationalities, religions, races, and ethnic groups gathered in the park to denounce Identity Europa. Especially moving were the comments of Congressman Adriano Espaillat, the first Dominican American elected to the House of Representatives. Speaking to the assembled crowd, but focusing on a rabbi from Yeshiva University, Rep. Espaillat told the rabbi that he remembered how Yeshiva University remained in Upper Manhattan in the years of high crime. “You stood with us then,” he said, “and we stand with you now.” And with that, Rep. Espaillat vowed that the hateful ideologies that once drove Jews from Europe would never find a home in Washington Heights. The rabbi was near tears, and he was not alone.
Russian Food in Washington Heights, Photo Credit, Rob W. Snyder
The discussion concluded with reflections on how Upper Manhattan, and the Y in particular, have responded to the pandemic. Neznansky proudly noted that the Y has distributed more than $230,000 in emergency cash assistance to families in need and undocumented immigrants (with another $225,000 to come). Combing nutrition and support for local businesses, the Y has also worked with restaurants to purchase and deliver 300 hot meals a day — 150 kosher and 150 Dominican.
When Bihler suggested that we make an online donation to the Y to help further its good work, it seemed like a very good idea and a great note to end on.
Robert W. Snyder is a professor of American Studies and Journalism at Rutgers University-Newark and Manhattan Borough Historian. He is the author of Crossing Broadway: Washington Heights and the Promise of New York and the co-author of All the Nations Under Heaven: Immigrants, Migrants and the Making of New York.