The Yellow Ticket
"The Yellow Ticket" - a joint exhibition by the Centrum Judaicum Berlin and the German Emigration Center Bremerhaven - addresses a previously unknown chapter of European mass emigration and Jewish social history.
Enlarge image
Paula Waismann, 19 years old, 1925 arrested in Gdansk on the way to Mexico
(© UNOG Library, League of Nations Archive)
"The yellow ticket" was a pass carried by the prostitutes in Russia before 1917. For Jewish women it often provided the only legal chance of survival in a Russian city. It is also a symbol for the predicament of many young women at the turn of the last century. Tens of thousands of them emigrated from Europe between 1860 and 1930.
They looked for work in private homes, restaurants or dance halls but they often ended up as prostitutes. Were they forcibly abducted, tempted by fantastic promises or did they go voluntarily? This was already a subject of argument back then.
The exhibition presents evidence and documents of their lives: photographs, letters, police reports, newspaper articles and audio documents form a moving exhibition that reveals their hopes, fears and hardships.
The exhibit, which runs simultaneously in Berlin and Bremerhaven, each with a different emphasis, has been made possible by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation).
"The Yellow Ticket: Traffic in Girls 1860 to 1930"
German Emigration Center Bremerhaven:
August 27, 2012 – February 28, 2013
New Synagogue Berlin – Centrum Judaicum Foundation:
August 19, 2012 – December 30, 2012
