UNC Jewish Center lecture connects refugee history to today

The Carolina Center for Jewish Studies hosted Tabea Linhard on Monday for a public lecture about Jewish writers who found refuge in Mexico during the Second World War. 

Linhard is the director of global studies and a Spanish professor at Washington University. She has published several books, most recently “Unexpected Routes Refugee Writers in Mexico,” which was the basis of her lecture.  

The title was an intentional play on the homophone ‘routes’ and ‘roots’ she said. The book details the lives of six writers who fled from fascism in their countries during the 1930s-40s and their journey to find new homes. Many went to Mexico because it was one of the few countries that allowed people entry at that time. 

“I call it unexpected roots, because the book really plays with this notion of ‘routes’ as in a route to a place, but also ‘roots’ as in being rooted,” Linhard said. 

As someone who was born in Germany, grew up in Spain, then studied and now teaches in the United States, she said she connected personally with the theme of building new roots.

During the talk on Monday, Linhard honed in on two of the writers, Ruth Rewald and Egon Erwin Kisch, who both made homes in nations new to them.  

Rewald was a children’s book author born in Germany and hid in France during the War. Her refuge in Mexico was literary, not literal since she wrote a kid’s book about the country, but never made it there herself. In 1942, she was captured and killed at Auschwitz. 

Kisch was a journalist born in 1885 in Austria-Hungary to Jewish parents. He made it to Mexico and lived there until the end of World War II.  

During the lecture, Linhard shared excerpts from Kisch’s writing about his home country and new life in Mexico. 

“I think the works themselves of these writers really make us think of how we construct our national identity, who we consider to be part of our community, and who we consider to be the other,” Leslie Daniel, an attendee and Ph.D. student at UNC said afterward. 

Adam Cohn, a Jewish Studies professor who nominated Linhard to give the lecture, said that while these writers lived decades ago, their stories still speak to what people seeking refuge across the globe are experiencing. 

“I think it's important that we look at these historical stories to better understand what individuals today are going through,” Cohn said. 

The struggle that people like Kisch and Rewald faced in finding safety during WWII was what led to the Refugee Convention in 1951, Linhard said. The international law outlines protections for people fleeing persecution, but has typically been broken. 

Linhard has volunteered since 2016 as an interpreter for the Migrant and Immigrant Community Action Project, an organization in St. Louis that provides low-cost or pro bono aid to migrants and asylum seekers. Through her experience there, she said she learned firsthand how difficult it still is for people to gain asylum in the U.S.

Linhard said that in her lecture and talk, she wanted to portray the writers as more than just their refugee status. Similarly, she said that people should think about the dignity of those seeking refuge today.

“These individuals are not just their migration story,” she said. “They shouldn't be reduced to that.”

Cohn encouraged people to visit the Jewish Studies website for information about future public lectures open to the community.

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