Schaeffer, Tauber, and Holger: Emotional and cultural strategies for coping with a temporary stay in British India as refugees from National Socialism

• In Event: Jewish Refugees’ Responses to Entrapment in Places of Temporary Sojourn during Flight from Holocaust Persecution

Abstract

The paper focuses on three different persons with three very different strategies and approaches to be a temporary refugee in colonial British India. Due to a difficult climate and health situation, a multi-hierarchical society, an unique social and economic system, and a political system in transition to independence, India was no favourite” exile destination for refugees from Central Europe. Ernst Schaeffer arrived as an “early” refugee in Bombay in 1933, where he walked repeatedly through the city, using them to develop a new view of Bombay. He took many photos and started writing stories, resulting in one of the first modern city-guides of Bombay. Stephan Tauber arrived as a very young refugee to Bombay, on his way to Bikaner, where his father became the surgeon of the maharaja. With his technical and lively mind, this five year-old boy developed a curious view on India and indulged in the adventures of an exotic lifestyle, even when it included internment. Hilde Holger arrived as a single woman in Bombay and faced the hardship of a
patriarchal and male-dominated, colonized Indian and colonial British society. She developed her expressionist dance performances to adapt to India. These three people stand for a wide range of personal experience of India as a transit exile destination in a global system of changes and early decolonization attempts.

Author

• Margit Franz, Clio Graz