This book introduces the unique archive of letters, textiles, hand-drawn maps, emails and photographs from asylum seekers held indefinitely in offshore detention at Topside Camp, Nauru 2001-5. These artefacts introduce the distinctive and creative forms of resistance produced by asylum seekers in the remote Pacific camps on Nauru and Manus Island, and they expose their experiential histories of radical suffering and trauma. Paying due deference to the creative and aesthetic agency of these various documents and artefacts created by the undocumented here, Gillian Whitlock generates a cultural biography of the Nauru camp that humanizes those who have remained unseen and unheard, and features the activist campaigns and the political resistance that assert the agency of witnessing refugees. Structured around the collections of various artefacts exchanged between detainees and humanitarian activists, Refugee Lives in the Archives draws on emerging theories from detention centres and the asylum seekers themselves in a distinctive and expansive Pacific imaginary of refugee life narrative. Building on Whitlock's substantial body of work in testimonial, documentary and archive practices, this book focuses on the 'testimony of things' and probes an approach to archival studies that moves life writing in new directions, to respond collaboratively to the diverse materiality of story-telling and exchanges in the unique and creative forms of asylum seekers' voices, stories and epistemologies.

This volume gives an extensive overview of current developments in the field of archival collections relating to German-speaking refugees located in Germany, Austria, the USA, Ireland and the UK. The contributions illustrate the three interlinked areas of refugee archives, Exile and Migration Studies research and related databases and other resources. The articles investigate their interrelationship as well as the future challenges facing all three areas by focussing on larger archival holdings as well as collections relating to individuals and organisations and more recently established electronic and online resources and finding aids. The volume is aimed at researchers and archival practioners alike and should be especially useful for anyone starting out in the field.

The astonishing accounts offered in More than Parcels add texture and depth to the story of organized Jewish responses to wartime persecution that will be of interest to students and scholars of Holocaust studies and modern Jewish history, as well as members of professional associations with a focus on humanitarianism and human rights.

Documents from the UNESCO Memory of the World Programme.

Fearing an imminent Nazi invasion, the British government interned 28,000 men and women of enemy nationality living in Britain in the spring of 1940. Most were Jewish refugees who, having fled Nazi persecution, were appalled to find themselves imprisoned as potential Nazi spies. Using oral histories, unpublished letters and memoirs, artifacts and newspapers from the camps, and government documents, We Built Up Our Lives tells the compelling story of sixty-three of these internees. It is a seldom-told part of the history of World War II and the Holocaust and a classic tale of human courage and resilience. We Built Up Our Lives describes the survival mechanisms relied upon by the Jewish refugees. Although the internees, imprisoned in Britain, the Isle of Man, Canada, and Australia, were adequately housed and fed and rarely mistreated, they were cut off from family, friends, school, and work--everything that had given meaning to their lives. Resisting boredom, anger, and despair, the internees made the best of a bad situation by creating education, culture, and community within the camps. Before and after as well as during the internment--in Nazi Germany and in Britain--educational resources and social networks were essential to the refugees' efforts to build up their lives. Equally important were personal qualities of courage, ingenuity, assertiveness, and resilience.