Home » News » New York: Emigrants at the regulars’ table since 1943 | SA | 19 06 2021 | 9:05

New York: Emigrants at the regulars’ table since 1943 | SA | 19 06 2021 | 9:05

Hearing pictures

“The special thing is simply that it exists.”
The New York get-together for emigrants
Feature by Katharina Menschick

Survivors who fled Nazi persecution to the USA have been meeting in Manhattan’s Upper East Side since 1943. In the weekly get-togethers, people eat, laugh and talk together, about culture, politics and personal matters, the past and the present – in person and in German. After the death of the long-time hostess Gaby Glückselig in 2015, Trudy Jeremias took over this role.

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“I really wanted to save the regulars’ table and I still do,” says Trudy Jeremias in her cozy apartment in the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The regulars’ table, to which the 95-year-old invites every Wednesday, has existed since 1943. It was founded by emigrants from Germany and Austria. In addition to the language, the regulars share “memories of similar events in life. Of the escape or emigration and also of the time before 1938,” as Arnold Greissle-Schönberg relates. The grandson of the composer Arnold Schönberg, born in 1923, was, like Trudy, expelled from Austria shortly after the “Anschluss” due to his Jewish origins. Marion House is also one of the regular regulars’ table guests. She recently celebrated her 98th birthday. At the age of 16, she fled Berlin on a Kindertransport.

Over the years, numerous New Yorkers by choice and visitors from Austria and Germany have been included in the round of regulars. Just like the annually changing young volunteers from Austria who record the stories of survivors of the Shoah in interviews for the memorial service association.

The regulars’ table is a fixed point in the everyday life of its members. When face-to-face meetings were no longer possible in March 2020 due to the corona pandemic, it was moved to the Internet. The young historian Katharina Menschick was our guest for over a year and talked to Arnold, Trudy and Marion about their lives.

Editor: Elisabeth Stratka

Service

Oral History Interview with Trudy Jeremias in the Austrian Heritage Archive of the GEDENKDIENST Association and the Wiener Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies: https://austrianheritagearchive.at/de/interviews/person/577
Oral History Interview with Arnold Greissle-Schöneberg in the online archive of the Leo Baeck Institute: https://links.cjh.org/primo/lbi/CJH_ALEPH005558449
Book: Arnold Greissle-Schönberg: Arnold Schönberg and his Vienna Circle – memories of his grandson (Böhlau Verlag, 1998, out of print)
Book: Emil Rennert, Shani Bar On: Almost a ritual – Gaby Glückselig’s regulars’ table for emigrants in New York (Edition Exil, 2015): https://www.editionexil.at/kopie-von-die-kinder-des-genossen-r
Book: Patricia Paweletz: At Trudy Jeremias in New York – An emigrant from Vienna tells (point books, 2020): https://www.punktum-buecher.de/bei-trudy-jeremias-in-new-york/index.php
Stella Schuhamcher: Stammtisch der Sehnsucht (Der Standard, 2019): https://www.derstandard.at/story/2000103732952/stammtisch-der-sehnsucht

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1 thought on “New York: Emigrants at the regulars’ table since 1943 | SA | 19 06 2021 | 9:05”

  1. Very passionate and engaged personalities linking their history with a difficult present.
    Wishing them to come back to their regular
    salon.
    My name is Evelyn Dürmayer, on visit in New York(CSW 66) I loved to meet Trudy.
    My parents met in Auschwitz: my father Heinrich Dürmayer and my mother Judith Kahan came from Kesmarok: they met in the international resistance movement, fell in love and met again in 1945 in Vienna.
    I was born in 1946 and cherish their memories and straight forward spirit with my daughter Sofia Judith.
    All the best to you all, Evelyn

    Reply

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