Jewish Child Integration in Britain: A Comparative Examination of Russian-Jewish and German-Jewish Refugees

Abstract

By adopting a comparative approach to the lives of Russian-Jewish and German-Jewish refugee children in Britain, this article explores the extent to which Jewish refugee children were able to successfully integrate into British society. After stating the difference between the integration and assimilation of the Jewish refugees, this article examines how the education, religion and familial relations of the refugee children all acted as indicators of their desire to integrate. As a result of utilising the oral testimonies of both refugee groups, a personal insight is gained in relation to how each individual refugee child navigated the themes of belonging and identity from adolescence to adulthood. These oral testimonies, combined with the use of newspaper articles and autobiographical accounts, illustrate how the refugee children were both voluntarily and involuntarily involved in the integration process. Whilst assimilation did occur, particularly in the case of the German-Jewish refugee children who were placed in non-Jewish foster homes during the Second World War, it did not characterise the experiences of all Jewish refugee children. Instead, across both refugee groups, the children actively adapted their Jewish identity to serve their own individual aspirations. Thus, when evaluating the success of Jewish child integration in Britain, the lives of the Russian-Jewish and German-Jewish refugee children were characterised by their heterogeneity rather than their homogeneity.