A much smaller group of post-Cold War immigrants from the USSR has, by contrast with the Aussiedler, received a lot of public attention: Jewish “quota refugees.” This is mainly because of history: how could Germany of all places (after the Holocaust!) become a popular destination for Jewish emigration? Using autobiographical accounts (Dmitrij Belkin, Dmitrij Kapitelman) and fiction (Olga Grjasnowa et al.), the chapter reconstructs the history and – largely secular – identities of Jews in the Soviet Union, the push factors (economic hardship, antisemitism) and pull factors (Europe, no military service requirement as in Israel, a strong welfare state) for emigration to Germany, the relationship with the existing Jewish community (composed of the descendants of Polish DPs and down to 30,000 people in 1990), and the often difficult locus in mainstream German society. It explores a Soviet Jewish memory of the Second World War that emphasizes victory and heroism, not victimhood, but also shows how widespread poverty is among retirees – in contradistinction to Gentile German antisemitic stereotypes of Jewish wealth.

This snapshot is a tapestry of voices from the major groups who came after the second great caesura, 1989, the end of Cold War and the opening toward the East: the ethnic Germans (2.3 million after 1987 and Gorbachev’s Perestroika) and 230,000 Jewish “quota refugees” (from 1990 onwards), both from the former Soviet Union and subjects of subsequent chapters; and many others, such as the ethnic Germans from Poland or Polish labor migrants who work in Germany but continue to live in Poland. It also touches on the 400,000 Soviet soldiers who left the former GDR until 1994 and the Eastern German “interior” migrants who began commuting to jobs in Western Germany.