ABSTRACT
The German-Jewish community of Washington Heights in New York City was by far the largest settlement of refugees from Nazi Germany in the United States. Only in that section of Upper Manhattan could one find a neighbourhood with a German-Jewish character, a well-developed immigrant culture and a network of immigrant institutions. A person in search of German refugee life "on the streets" would have to direct their attention to Washington Heights. Yet Washington Heights was not really representative of the refugee wave of immigration as a whole. It represented one pole of a heterogeneous and complex German-Jewish immigrant spectrum. The other pole of that spectrum, one about which a great deal has been written, was made up of the distinguished intellectual emigres who fled Nazi Germany and had much influence on American intellectual life. 1 Neither this relatively small group of luminaries, nor the much more numerous residents of Washington Heights, were typical; yet each of the two poles represented a self-selection of certain elements within German Jewry. An analysis of the community least like the elite intellectuals will help highlight the range of the German-Jewish immigration.
