German-Jewish Families in Flight

Digital archives are making documents widely available to scholars and contain valuable information for the construction of family biographies. The biographies of German-Jewish families seeking to immigrate to the United States in the 1930s reveal patterns that illuminate the impact of Nazi and U.S. policies on Jewish families, including the separation of parents and children and the corruption of some bureaucrats. Making use of German-Jewish biographical materials from digitized collections and some published autobiographical documents, this article demonstrates the usefulness of biographical research and digital archives in assessing the ways in which Nazi persecution tore apart and, on occasion, brought together Jewish families.