Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Prologue: Jewish Women in Nazi Germany Before Emigration
- Part One A Global Search for Refuge
- Part Two Refuge in the United States
- 12 Women's Role in the German-Jewish Immigrant Community
- 13 “Listen sensitively and act spontaneously - but skillfully”: Selfhelp: An Eyewitness Report
- 14 “My only hope”: The National Council of Jewish Women's Rescue and Aid for German-Jewish Refugees
- 15 The Genossinen and the Khaverim: Socialist Women from the German-Speaking Lands and the American Jewish Labor Movement, 1933-1945
- 16 New Women in Exile: German Women Doctors and the Emigration
- 17 Women Emigré Psychologists and Psychoanalysts in the United States
- 18 Destination Social Work: Emigrés in a Women's Profession
- 19 Chicken Farming: Not a Dream but a Nightmare: An Eyewitness Report
- 20 The Occupation of Women Emigrés: Women Lawyers in the United States
- 21 Fashioning Fortuna's Whim: German-Speaking Women Emigrant Historians in the United States
- 22 Exile or Emigration: Social Democratic Women Members of the Reichstag in the United States
- 23 Women's Voices in American Exile
- Epilogue: The First Sex
- Index
13 - “Listen sensitively and act spontaneously - but skillfully”: Selfhelp: An Eyewitness Report
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2013
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Prologue: Jewish Women in Nazi Germany Before Emigration
- Part One A Global Search for Refuge
- Part Two Refuge in the United States
- 12 Women's Role in the German-Jewish Immigrant Community
- 13 “Listen sensitively and act spontaneously - but skillfully”: Selfhelp: An Eyewitness Report
- 14 “My only hope”: The National Council of Jewish Women's Rescue and Aid for German-Jewish Refugees
- 15 The Genossinen and the Khaverim: Socialist Women from the German-Speaking Lands and the American Jewish Labor Movement, 1933-1945
- 16 New Women in Exile: German Women Doctors and the Emigration
- 17 Women Emigré Psychologists and Psychoanalysts in the United States
- 18 Destination Social Work: Emigrés in a Women's Profession
- 19 Chicken Farming: Not a Dream but a Nightmare: An Eyewitness Report
- 20 The Occupation of Women Emigrés: Women Lawyers in the United States
- 21 Fashioning Fortuna's Whim: German-Speaking Women Emigrant Historians in the United States
- 22 Exile or Emigration: Social Democratic Women Members of the Reichstag in the United States
- 23 Women's Voices in American Exile
- Epilogue: The First Sex
- Index
Summary
Gabriele Schiff was born in Hamburg in 1914 and received her high school education in Germany. She came to the United States in 1938, where she received a BA from Swarthmore College and an MSW from the Pennsylvania School of Social Work. She earned her CSW in New York. Schiff served as the secretary to the refugee section of the American Friends Service Committee in Philadelphia and was a social worker for the Springfield State Hospital for the Juvenile Court in New York. After World War II, she spent three years in the displaced persons camps in Europe as a medical and clinical social worker. Upon her return to the United States, she worked as a supervisor with several refugee organizations. Since 1959 Schiff has worked with Selfhelp Community Services, New York City, in various capacities and currently serves as the agency*s deputy director. Today, she makes her home in New York. This report was taken from notes and finalized in 1991.
Selfhelp has been part of my life for thirty-two years, and we still have not gotten tired of each other. Some people have done well-documented studies that explore this social agency's past and present. I can add to this only an eyewitness report demonstrating how a social agency can grow and change, adapt and adjust, and still be loyal to the concept on which it was based.
Selfhelp for Emigrés from Germany was founded in 1936 by émigrés from that country, but it was supported by a group of Quakers and also received support from some outstanding personalities connected with the New School for Social Research, or as it was then called by most people, the “University in Exile.”
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Between Sorrow and StrengthWomen Refugees of the Nazi Period, pp. 185 - 190Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995