The German Jews Who Escaped Hitler, and Made New York Their Home
Lin-Manuel Miranda gives a nod to the Jews of New York’s Washington Heights in his musical—soon to be a movie—In the Heights, about Dominican immigrants. A shopfront sign peels away, revealing one once catering to the area’s Jewish community, 37 percent of the neighborhood at mid-century.
These mixed ethnic layers inform the Leo Baeck Institute for the Study of German-Jewish History and Culture’s Refuge in the Heights: The German Jews of Washington Heights, an exhibit now sadly delayed because of the coronavirus.
Curator Magdalena M. Wrobel said the history of German Jews in Washington Heights was universal, where “many minorities and immigrants in New York and in the US can actually relate and think in a broader context, ‘Oh this was also the story of my parents when they came to the US, or maybe someone will think ‘Oh my mother also could not speak English when she arrived.’”