Travelling Heroes—A Transcultural Re-evaluation of Kurt R. Grossmann’s Unbesungene Helden (1957), an Early Compilation of Rescue Stories

Abstract

Abstract This article concentrates on the first German-language compilation of ‘rescue stories’, narratives of Jews who survived the Holocaust with the help of non-Jews. While Kurt R. Grossmann’s 1957 book Die unbesungene Helden: Menschen in Deutschlands dunklen Tagen (The Unsung Heroes: Humans in Germany’s Dark Days) has received some scholarly attention, its original sources have not yet been examined. Previous research on the remembrance of the ‘rescue of Jews’ in Germany has tended to read Grossmann’s anthology within a single national—that is, German—context. This article provides a short introduction to Grossmann’s biography and the development history of The Unsung Heroes. It then traces the editorial history of four chapters in the anthology dealing with German cases: ‘Mieze’, ‘The Block Warden and the Eastern-Jewish Tailor’, ‘The Yellow Badge—A Symbol of Protest’ and ‘The Case of Schindler’. The article proposes that in light of its collection of material, its various sources and its production context of formerly German Jews in the United States, the text serves as a superb example of ‘transcultural’ remembrance or ‘travelling memory’.