Transgenerational memories of Jewish exile in Sosúa

At the beginning of World War II, Sosa, a small town in the north of the Dominican Republic, was one of the few places of refuge for Jews who fled from Europe and the Nazi regime. The island state, then ruled by one of the most repressive dictators in Latin America, opened up a new life to the Jewish settlers by offering them participation in an agricultural project. To the present day, this part of Sosa`s history is remembered in various ways across generations and borders. The research project, which is embedded in transnational memory studies, engages with the memory work of descendants of the Sosa settlers. The research takes place in the Dominican Republic, anddue to new residences of the descendants in the USA, Germany and Austria, and will try to answer the following questions: How do the descendants of Sosa settlers deal with the family experience of exile? What significance does family history have in relation to individual biography? What practices are used to remember the family experience of exile? Which sites of memory shape the individual memory work? How do increasing anti-Semitic tendencies across the globe affect memory work? Through biographical interviews, participant observation, sensobiographic walking (go-alongs), as well as archival research, the interdependencies between collective, family, and individual life stories will be ethnographically explored. Additionally, the everyday culture, family memories, traditions and social narratives that shape post-settlement biographies will be shared. Collaboration with interviewees will be sought by involving them in the research process and in decisions on how to represent their memory cultures and stories in the research. Observations and interpretations will be discussed together, and the results will be presented in a collaboratively initiated traveling exhibition. In addition, the research process will be developed through ongoing exchange with researchers in the Americas and Jewish Studies. The objective of the research project is to gain a multifaceted insight from a decolonial perspective into traveling memory negotiations and the telling of transgenerational family stories and memories, as well as to bring marginalized stories of Jewish exile into public.