More than 10,000 refugees from Germany and Europe found refuge in Chile during the Nazi regime. Most of them were persecuted by the Nazis as Jews and arrived in Latin America under the most difficult of circumstances. Among them were also politically persecuted people who found asylum in the Andean country and a few of whom became active in political exile organisations such as “Free Germany” and “Other Germany”.
The collection (approx. 1.5 metres) was created during the research for the book “Exile in Chile” by the historian Irmtrud Wojak) and contains files (copies) of the immigration authorities in Chile (immigration lists of German-Jewish emigration to Chile, which were compiled by the Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores ), letters, photographs, newspaper cuttings and numerous oral history interviews with German, Austrian and Hungarian emigrants and Holocaust survivors who arrived in Chile during the National Socialist era or immediately after 1945. Most of them were persecuted people of German origin, some were of Austrian or Czech origin. The vast majority arrived in Chile after the pogrom of 9 November 1938 and had to build a new life for themselves as the persecuted people were dispossessed.
The collection also contains files (copies) from the holdings of the B’ne Yisroel (the German-Jewish community founded in 1939) in Chile and about the Kidma , the youth organisation of the socialist-Zionist Hashomer Hatzair . This also includes a – probably complete – collection of articles by Hans Kaufmann, editor-in-chief of the Boletín Informativo of the B’ne Yisroel community and author of the Monats-Spiegel , from 1949 to 1952 and again from 1955 to 1970. His articles can be seen as a chronicle of the German-Jewish community and almost all the events that moved it during this time. They shed light on the history of the Hashomer Hatzair in Chile and the Chawerim who gradually left there for Israel and were involved in founding kibbutzes in what was then Palestine.
Cataloguing is carried out using a finding aid. Partial collections are digitised for users in the archive. The collection is accessible to the public with major restrictions.
See also the Adele and Wilhelm Halberstam estate in the archive of the Fritz Bauer Forum, whose children and grandchildren emigrated to Chile.
Duration: 1933-1995
Scope: Approx. 1.5 m
