The Yellow Certificate (2012/13)
The Yellow CertificateGirl Trafficking 1860 to 1930
Millions of girls and young women from Europe left their homes around 1900: They traveled from Hesse to California, from Russia to New York, or from Galicia to Buenos Aires to seek their fortune and a new existence. For tens of thousands of them, the path led to prostitution.
“The Yellow Certificate. Girl Trafficking 1860 to 1930” is a joint exhibition of the Stiftung Neue Synagoge Berlin – Centrum Judaicum and the German Emigration Center in Bremerhaven. It addresses an unwritten and largely unknown chapter of European mass emigration. “The Yellow Certificate,” a colloquial expression for the prostitute ID in pre-revolutionary Russia, is a symbol of the plight of many young women during that time: A move from the shtetl to cities like Moscow or St. Petersburg was officially only allowed for Jewish women in Russia if they registered as prostitutes. In Austria-Hungary and the German Empire, young girls from poorer population groups often had no other chance of survival than to sell their bodies. Emigrating to the New World often became a precarious balancing act for them: They sought work in private households, taverns, or dance halls and ended up in brothels. Were they forcibly abducted, lured by fairy-tale promises, or was it voluntary? The discussion about this was already fervently debated back then. Around the turn of the 20th century, numerous committees and initiatives were formed to combat “international girl trafficking.”
In years of research, the exhibition team led by curator Irene Stratenwerth searched for traces telling the story of these girls and young women – and of the men and women who made money with them. Often, nothing more than a single fragment remains: a photo, a police or court protocol, a newspaper notice, a letter. Yet, from the artifacts obtained from archives, including in Berlin, Hamburg, Geneva, and Vienna, in Czernowitz, Odessa, and Buenos Aires, a touching exhibition emerges, designed and organized by Studio Andreas Heller, Architects and Designers in Hamburg. With images, texts, maps, letters, and audio documents, an approach to the life stories of the “young women emigrating alone” is achieved. For the first time, two variants of the “Yellow Certificate” from 1875 and 1894 found in an archive in St. Petersburg will be presented in Germany.
The exhibition, which will be shown simultaneously in Berlin and Bremerhaven, but with different focuses, also addresses an important aspect of Jewish social history: Almost four million Jews emigrated from Eastern Europe up to 1930. Most of them belonged to the poorest of the poor.
The project was made possible by the Federal Cultural Foundation.
A companion volume was published in the series of writings of the German Emigration Center.
Curator: Irene Stratenwerth – with the participation of the directors and scientific staff of the Stiftung Neue Synagoge Berlin – Centrum Judaicum as well as the German Emigration Center in Bremerhaven.
Rosa Nelken with two men, traveling from Lemberg to New York, around 1920