About

Sheer Ganor is an assistant professor of history at the University of Minnesota, specializing in German-speaking Jewry and modern Germany. Her research focuses on the nexus of forced migration, memory, and cultural identities, with a particular emphasis on the displacement of German-speaking Jews during the Nazi era. She is working on a book manuscript titled "Somewhere from Long Ago: The Global Displacement of German-Speaking Jews," which traces the emergence of a transnational diasporic network of Jewish refugees who escaped Nazi Germany and its annexed territories. Ganor holds a PhD in History from UC Berkeley, with a focus on Modern European History and Jewish History, earned in 2019. Her scholarly work has been published in prominent journals such as Central European History, the Journal of Contemporary History, and the Journal of German History. She has held a postdoctoral research fellowship at the German Historical Institute and has received research support from institutions including the Leo Baeck Institution, the Central European History Society, and the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes. Ganor is an affiliate faculty member of multiple centers at the university, including the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, the Center for Jewish Studies, the Center for Austrian Studies, the Human Rights Program, the Immigration History Research Center, and the Department of German, Nordic, Slavic & Dutch.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Law
• Gender studies
• History
• Physics
• Environmental science
• Materials science
• Metallurgy
• Geography

Selected publications

• In Search of the Migrant Child: An Introduction to the Entangled Histories of Childhood and Migration

  Journal of Contemporary History · 2025-03-14

  articleSenior author

  This special section examines the history of child migration and historiographical debates on the place of children in the history of migration. The contributions demonstrate how studying the intersection of factors such as age, mobility, agency and emotions can significantly enrich both historical childhood studies and migration studies. In varying ways, each article identifies migrant children and mobile young people as historical actors who are not mere passive participants or objects managed by adults in the process of migration. Rather, the analyses presented in this section illustrate how young migrants exercised a range of different forms of agency – whether they were available to them or actively created by them. Additionally, this special section pays close attention to the various sources that allow scholars in migration history and childhood studies to explore the lived experiences and actions of young mobile individuals.

  PublisherDOI

• Learning Forced Migration: Guidance for Prospective Jewish Refugees in Nazi Germany

  Central European History · 2025-03-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract How does one prepare for flight? Is it possible to plan for such a disruptive event? This article explores a unique publication project established precisely for that purpose: migration manuals published by a German-Jewish organization to support the masses of Jews fleeing Nazi persecution in the 1930s. These manuals consolidated elaborate information from all over the world to prepare Jews for impending displacement. They encompassed not only essential details but also impressions, recommendations, and complaints. The manuals’ editors assembled reports from individuals already settled in refuge, generating a collaborative self-help effort on a global scale. Analyzing their content, this article shows that the process of guiding readers into forced migration extended in this case beyond technical migration procedures to include knowledge transfer about the politics of race, class, and gender, reflecting how German-Jewish refugees studied and situated themselves within these categories.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• <i>Resettlers and Survivors: Bukovina and the Politics of Belonging in West Germany and Israel, 1945–1989</i>. Gaëlle Fisher

  Holocaust and Genocide Studies · 2024

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  PublisherDOI

• No Longer Ladies and Gentlemen: Gender and the German-Jewish Migration to Mandatory Palestine Viola Alianov-Rautenberg. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2023. Pp. 336. Hardcover $65.00. ISBN: 9781503636330.

  Central European History · 2024-12-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  No Longer Ladies and Gentlemen: Gender and the German-Jewish Migration to Mandatory Palestine Viola Alianov-Rautenberg. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2023. Pp. 336. Hardcover $65.00. ISBN: 9781503636330. - Volume 57 Issue 4

  PublisherDOI

• Book Review: <i>Fighter, Worker, and Family Man. German-Jewish Men and Their Gendered Experiences in Nazi Germany, 1933–1941</i> by Sebastian Huebel

  Journal of Family History · 2023-01-22

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Sheer Ganor. Review of "Envisioning Evil: “The Nazi Drawings” by Mauricio Lasansky" by Rachel McGarry.

  CAA Reviews · 2022-03-14

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Germany on Their Minds: German Jewish Refugees in the United States and Their Relationships with Germany, 1938–1988 by Anne C. Schenderlein

  AJS Review The Journal of the Association for Jewish Studies · 2021

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Political Science

  Reviewed by: Germany on Their Minds: German Jewish Refugees in the United States and Their Relationships with Germany, 1938–1988 by Anne C. Schenderlein Sheer Ganor Anne C. Schenderlein . Germany on Their Minds: German Jewish Refugees in the United States and Their Relationships with Germany, 1938–1988 . New York : Berghahn , 2020 . 254 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009420000616 Anne Schenderlein's engaging book examines closely how Jews displaced from Nazi Germany established a new life in the United States, and how it was informed by their German Jewish identity. Following a brief overview of German Jewish displacement in chapter 1, chapter 2 focuses on the years 1938–1941. Schenderlein argues that during this period German Jews performed a "gradual and selective Americanization" (32), signaling to the American state and public their commitment to the nation. These attitudes revealed more than gratitude, however. Embedded in them was anxiety that any perceived slight against the United States might endanger the lives of Jews stranded in Europe, as well as those already in the country. With their loyalties dually questioned as both Jews and Germans, leaders in the refugee community found it necessary to manage their public image with great caution. This concern became even more pronounced once the United States entered the war. In the third chapter, Schenderlein explores how the refugee population was affected by wartime measures, particularly enemy aliens classification. While German aliens were not targeted with the same vehemence as Japanese and Japanese Americans, Schenderlein shows that the existing literature on German Jewish refugees in the United States has downplayed the significance of enemy aliens policies. This is one area where Schenderlein's focus on the West Coast proves highly [End Page 201] fruitful. Proliferating xenophobia in the area, the presence of military bases, and the proximity of the Pacific theater brought about greater scrutiny of refugees, culminating in curfews, travel restrictions, and an overall atmosphere of distrust. While these conditions were unique to the West Coast, attitudes toward so-called enemy aliens across the United States compelled refugees to highlight their Jewishness and minimize, if not repudiate, any German affinity. The fourth chapter moves from the home front to the ranks of refugee soldiers in the US military. While expediting their integration into American society was an important factor for many enlistees, joining the battle against Nazi Germany was a common motivation. The majority of those whose service had brought them to Germany approached their former homeland with an American perspective, even adopting the habit of referring to the enemy population as "Krauts" (87). But their experiences serving in Germany differed markedly from those of their fellow American soldiers. Schenderlein highlights deep emotional responses that ranged from glee to sorrow, along with great frustration at German society's unwillingness to acknowledge its responsibility for the recent catastrophe. The fifth chapter discusses German Jews' participation in wartime public debates about Germany's future. As early as 1942, leading figures in the refugee community voiced their vision for postwar justice and demanded that the American government pay heed to their concerns. German Jews in the United States may have repeatedly emphasized that they had severed all ties to Germany, but the intensity of these debates indicates that they were very much engaged with the country and with German society. Many would have agreed that Germany was no longer in their hearts, in the words of one refugee, yet Schenderlein's treatment of this discussion shows that the former homeland was indeed very much on their minds. Moving to the postwar era, chapter 6 studies the reemerging ties between the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and German Jewish communities abroad in the 1950s and 1960s. Schenderlein is less concerned with the question of whether the FRG's approach reflected a genuine interest in reconciliation or merely a public relations campaign. Instead, she studies how the exchange between the German government and the German Jewish community in the United States unfolded. The book depicts both sides' hopes and expectations and how the relationship evolved amid Cold War geopolitical developments and the establishment of the State of Israel. While both sides saw these links as advantageous (for different reasons), the contacts were "fraught with...

  PublisherDOI

• Anne C. Schenderlein. Germany on Their Minds: German Jewish Refugees in the United States and Their Relationships with Germany, 1938–1988. New York: Berghahn, 2020. 254 pp.

  AJS Review The Journal of the Association for Jewish Studies · 2021-04-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.

  PublisherDOI

• GENERATION IN FLUX:

  Purdue University Press eBooks · 2020

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Environmental science
  • Physics
  • Materials science
  PublisherDOI

• Forbidden Words, Banished Voices: Jewish Refugees at the Service of BBC Propaganda to Wartime Germany

  Journal of Contemporary History · 2018-07-31

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  During the Second World War, the BBC operated a German Service, which was tasked with broadcasting propaganda programs into Nazi Germany and occupied Europe. Psychological warfare was transmitted through radio waves to spread defeatism on the fighting front and amongst civilians, and to convince the German people that there was no future for the Third Reich. Dozens of German-speaking Jews who fled Central Europe and arrived in England as refugees found employment in the German Service. Many of these individuals worked as journalists, actors, comedians or authors in their previous homelands, some had even earned a degree of fame and recognition before the persecutory policies of National Socialism restricted their lives and forced them into exile. From the perspective of BBC officials, these refugees’ experience in the press and in the performing arts, as well as their intimate knowledge of German society and culture, set them in a unique position to create effective and powerful propaganda. This paper explores how, branded as unwelcome outsiders by their native societies, it was precisely their familiarity as ‘insiders’ that paradoxically primed them to perform the task.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Awards & honors

• Leo Baeck Institution
• Central European History Society
• Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes