The Wisdom of Hanna Silver: Jewish Survival and Social-Democratic Faith in Holocaust-Era Berlin

Abstract

Survival narratives from the Holocaust are universally poignant and filled with tragedy, but they also vary in unexpected and noteworthy ways. As one of a few thousand so-called U-boaters, Hanna Bornowski Silver stayed in place with her mother throughout the war and ultimately connected to a larger Berlin-centred circle of survivors, both Jews and non-Jews. Most distinctive about this story in comparison to other treatments on the subject, however, is Hanna's and her friends’ reliance – under Nazi occupation and after – on a network of politically sympathetic friends formed through connections to the German Social Democratic Party. In short, against the grain of a dominant narrative of isolated, individual or, at best, family-linked struggles, theirs suggests that the Jews’ rescue from Nazi Germany was also linked to the interrelated efforts, sacrifice and cooperation of a political community with shared values.