Documentary reveals

stories of Jewish

professors who

escaped Nazi

oppression to join

blacks in another

struggle for freedom.

FRAN HELLER
Special to the Jewish News

I

n 1933, the Nazi regime expelled huge num-
bers of Jewish professors from German uni-
versities. Among those who eventually fled to
the United States, many found anti-Jewish
and anti-German sentiment a stumbling block to
employment.
A new one-hour documentary, From Swastika to
Jim Crow, traces the journey of a handful of these
German Jewish professors who could only obtain
teaching positions at small, rural all-black colleges
in the South. It airs nationwide Feb. 1 on some
PBS stations (see box) and will be screened Jan.
31 at Detroit's Museum of African American
History.
Based on in-depth interviews with these
"refugee scholars," their black students and rich
archival material, this fascinating window into a
little-known chapter of American history shows
how two persecuted races once forged a bond
from a shared past of oppression and discrimina-
tion. Revelatory in its subject matter, objective in

its analysis, From Swastika to Jim Crow travels far
in illuminating the rich and complex tapestry of
black-Jewish relationships.

Defiling Segregation

Donald and Lore Rasmussen came to Talladega
College in Alabama in 1942. The two met at the
University of Illinois. Donald was teaching sociology
and Lore, who had escaped Nazi Germany in 1938,
was his student. They were married the day after
Lore's final exam in 1940.
It was no accident that brought the Rasmussens to
Talladega. The couple had been activists at the
University of Illinois, a hotbed of racism, where they
participated in sit-ins and Lore worked with elderly
black women in the community.
A shared involvement in anti-discrimination activ-
ities and race relations at Central Michigan
University, where Donald was teaching in 1942, led
them to the all-black campus and biracial teaching

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2001

74

Fran Heller is a Cleveland based freelance writer.

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staff at Talladega College, 60 miles southeast of
Birmingham.
"As a refugee from Germany, where I had tasted
and experienced discrimination because I was
Jewish, I was very sensitive to that issue," says Lore,
from their retirement home in Berkeley, Calif.
Not even a leaky roof and a salary cut could dis-
suade the Rasmussens from their fervent desire to
live and work in an interracial community. The
severe Jim Crow segregationist laws that prevailed in
Alabama were not enforced on the campus where
the Rasmussens would teach and reside.
The totally unsegregated college was like an oasis
in a town rampant with racism, including separate
fountains and even grocery checkout lines for black
and white customers. The Rasmussens continued to
show their opposition whenever possible.
The couple got their introduction to the South
two months after their arrival, when they went to
lunch with a black friend at a black restaurant in
Birmingham. The three were arrested and spent the
night in the Birmingham jail.
The police commissioner in Birmingham was
Eugene "Bull" Connor, infamous for his brutal repres-

sion of black people. The Rasmussens were threatened
with physical violence and lynching. They were fined
$25, which made headline news in the local paper.
Lore was 17 in 1937, when she was separated
from her family in Germany and came to the United
States with $4 in her pocket. While many family
members were later exterminated in the concentra-
tion camps, her parents and brother, denied U.S.
entry, were able to make their way to Chile.
As a refugee from the Nazis, Lore recalls feelings
of terror when she and her husband were being led
away in a Birmingham police car. "We didn't know
where they were taking us and whether we were
going to be lynched," she recalls.
The authorities put Lore in a cell with white pros-
titutes. When Lore told them the reason behind her
arrest, they would have nothing more to do with
her. "The crime of fraternizing with black people
was worse than prostitution or shoplifting," she says.
At first, Lore's accent and German origin made the
couple's interrogators think she was a spy sent by
Hitler to foment unrest among blacks in the United

