‘Personal letters – to keep’: managing the emotions of forced migration

Abstract

This article, part of a larger project, explores ways in which a private collection of personal papers, official letters and documents can be used to construct the lived experience of the author’s parents, Lotte and Wolja, two German Jewish refugees. Making use of letters written between May and September 1938, when Wolja was on a temporary visa in London and Lotte still in Berlin, the article focuses on how it felt in 1938 to be forced to leave Germany, the gendered strategies they used to manage their feelings and the importance of their letters for keeping them going through the fear and uncertainty.