VU Research Portal Survivor, Agitator Geerlings, A.J.M. 2020 document version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Link to publication in VU Research Portal citation for published version (APA) Geerlings, A. J. M. (2020). Survivor, Agitator: Rosey E. Pool and the Transatlantic Century. General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. E-mail address: [email protected] Download date: 05. Oct. 2021 LONNEKE GEERLINGS SURVIVOR,SURVIVOR, AAGITATOR.GITATOR. ROSEYROSEY E.E. POOLPOOL ANDAND THETHE TRANSATLANTICTRANSATLANTIC CENTURYCENTURY VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT SURVIVOR, AGITATOR ROSEY E. POOL AND THE TRANSATLANTIC CENTURY ACADEMISCH PROEFSCHRIFT ter verkrijging van de graad Doctor aan de Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, op gezag van de rector magnificus prof.dr. V. Subramaniam, in het openbaar te verdedigen ten overstaan van de promotiecommissie van de Faculteit der Geesteswetenschappen op woensdag 13 mei 2020 om 15.45 uur in de aula van de universiteit, De Boelelaan 1105 door Apollonia Johanna Maria Geerlings geboren te Noordwijkerhout promotoren: prof.dr. S. Legêne prof.dr. D.M. Oostdijk Lonneke Geerlings SURVIVOR, AGITATOR ROSEY E. POOL AND THE TRANSATLANTIC CENTURY 2019 This dissertation has been financially supported by: Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) The Eccles Centre for American Studies at The British Library European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI) German Historical Institute (GHI) European Association for American Studies (EAAS) Catharina Halkes fonds CLUE+, Research Institute for Culture, Cognition, History and Heritage © 2019 Lonneke Geerlings I have tried to find all copyright holders of the used material in this dissertation. If you believe that material has been used without permission, you are requested to contact the author. Cover photo: Rosey Pool together with (from left to right) Richard Morrison, Samuel W. Allen, Mari Evans, Margaret Burroughs (sitting) and Margaret Danner (outside of cropped area), at the Second Writers' Conference at Alabama A&M College, Normal, Alabama, December 1966. Source: Jewish Historical Museum Amsterdam, F010641. ‘That piece of yellow cotton became my black skin.’ ROSEY E. POOL, ca. 1968 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 13 Historiography 14 Theoretical concepts and definitions 16 Sources 19 Digital tools 22 Chapter overview 24 CHAPTER 1: AMSTERDAM A ‘VAGUE JEWISH ANCESTRY.’ GROWING UP IN AMSTERDAM. 27 From Girls Scouts to the Socialist Youth 33 Among the ‘in-crowd’ of future socialist leaders 39 International comradery 42 Solidarity of a loner 48 CHAPTER 2: BERLIN JEWISH, LESBIAN, REVOLUTIONARY SOCIALIST. RADICALIZATION IN NAZI BERLIN. 51 Political radicalization 56 Anti-fascist activism across borders 58 A peak out of the closet 60 ‘Who of us dares that!!’ 64 A Jewish woman in Nazi Berlin 66 Mass movements, individual decisions 69 CHAPTER 3: WESTERBORK ‘A LITTLE BIT OF LUCK AND A BIT OF PLUCK.’ ESCAPING THE HOLOCAUST. 73 The ‘race madness’ spreads 76 Observing Anne Frank 79 Forging papers and rescuing children 81 In the lion’s den 84 Westerbork, the portal to hell 86 7 A not-so-great escape 89 A literature snob in hiding 98 REAL resistance and women’s work 103 CHAPTER 4: AMSTERDAM ‘WHO’D BE INTERESTED?’ OBESITY AND TRAUMA IN POST HOLOCAUST AMSTERDAM. 107 A ‘consciously living Jewess’ on the run from herself 112 A transatlantic Black-Jewish alliance 114 I, too, am America 116 A heavy burden 119 The thin line between passion and obsession 124 CHAPTER 5: LONDON ‘23A PARADISE,’ A BLACK ATLANTIC SALON. STIMULATING AFRICAN AMERICAN POETRY FROM LONDON. 127 Black and Unknown Bards 134 ‘Everyone knows Rosey’ 142 Spider in a Black Atlantic web 149 CHAPTER 6: HILVERSUM THE ‘RACE QUESTION’ ON DUTCH TELEVISION. OR: HOW TO LEARN DUTCH IN FIVE STEPS. 153 ‘We were both out of our minds’ 157 Audrey Hepburn 162 An intimate dinner with W.E.B. Du Bois 164 High expectations 167 Black emancipation and white innocence 173 CHAPTER 7: THE DEEP SOUTH ‘ANNE FRANK’S TEACHER’ IN THE USA. 1959-1960 LECTURE TOUR (EXTENDED). 177 Up North 180 Going South 186 Media circus 195 CHAPTER 8: MISSISSIPPI SHADOWS OF THE HOLOCAUST OVER MISSISSIPPI. A TRAUMATIZED ‘OUTSIDE AGITATOR’ AT TOUGALOO COLLEGE. 199 8 Ernst Borinski’s ‘stigma management’ 201 Creative writing as ‘group therapy’ 206 Mississippi or Nazi-occupied Europe? 210 ‘She cannot stop now’ 212 Participating in CORE passive resistance classes 215 Confronting her own past 218 CHAPTER 9: ALABAMA MULTIDIRECTIONAL SILENCES IN ROCKET CITY, USA. TEACHING AT ALABAMA A&M COLLEGE. 221 ‘Bootsie’ 223 Rembrandt and Claude McKay 226 Segregation and isolation 230 ‘Nazi scientists’ in Alabama 232 Silences and gaps 235 CHAPTER 10: LAGOS & DAKAR BEING FRIENDS WITH LANGSTON. A ‘VERY WHITE’ WOMAN AND THE END OF THE SIXTIES. 239 Lagos, Nigeria 244 Between A-list and blacklist 249 Dakar, Senegal 251 The curtain falls 255 CONCLUSIONS 259 Survivor, agitator 260 Contact zones and comfort zones 262 A profound impact on a local scale 263 A versatile stimulator 265 EPILOGUE PURSUING GHOSTS 269 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 272 ENDNOTES 277 SOURCES 345 Justification sources 345 Archives 348 Oral history interviews 354 9 Digitized sources 354 Periodicals 355 Bibliography 356 ABOUT ROSEY E. POOL 379 List of publications 379 Selection of poems 388 Her private library 394 ABBREVIATIONS 422 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 424 ENGLISH SUMMARY 430 NEDERLANDSE SAMENVATTING 432 INDEX 435 10 11 Figure 0.1 Rosey Pool together with Fannie Jude’s granddaughter, Huntsville, Alabama, 1965. Source: JHM. 12 INTRODUCTION Rosey E. Pool (1905-1971) hardly lived an ordinary life. She witnessed the rise of the Nazis in Berlin firsthand; she taught many pupils, including Anne Frank; she operated in a Jewish resistance group; she escaped from a Nazi transit camp; she witnessed independence movements in Nigeria and Senegal; and she was involved in the American Civil Rights Movement. Although each of these moments would have been sufficient for a book in itself, her life as a survivor/agitator culminated in the fifties and sixties. This was the time when all finally seemed to come together for Pool. Her claim about ‘anti-otherisms’ - her thesis that merged together systematic exclusion, whether this was anti- Black racism or anti-Semitism - was finally in vogue with emancipatory movements across the Black diaspora and the western world alike. Simultaneously she was an outcast in all of the places she operated in. After one of her American travels in the early sixties, one poet was amazed that ‘one so removed’ was interested in the Black cause. Pool’s response was swift and clear: ‘believe me: since 1933 I was anything but “removed” from all that,’ she wrote, ‘and the years 1940-45 in Holland under nazi occupation when the yellow jew stars were our darker skins completed my education.’1 This research starts off with a set of puzzling questions. Apart from answering what Pool’s actions were and what her significance was, this dissertation wants to examine how Pool’s life was determined by her own conscious decisions, but also by the specific historical contexts, places, and networks she operated in. This led to one first, basic question: who was Rosey Pool? What did she do, what were her accomplishments, and how can she be characterized? Secondly, I want to find out what her personal motives were. What drove her to each of these hotbeds of history, to take action outside of her own comfort zone and into these historic contact zones? Thirdly, I want to know what Pool’s influence was on the public discourse of race, both within the US and within the Netherlands. Did she transfer ideas, literature, or protest repertoires across the Atlantic, and in what way did her 13 networks play a role in this? And finally, again a basic but pertinent question, related to historiography: how is it possible that this woman has escaped the attention of historians? Historiography This dissertation/biography sheds light on some key issues pertaining to the twentieth century, from the 1910s to the 1970s. Rosey Pool’s life compels us to explore networks of transnational anti-fascist activism, Jewish resistance during the Holocaust, while her postwar life - or, perhaps more appropriately, her post-Holocaust life2 - touches upon some different historical narratives which are often studied in isolation, such as the role of whites and Jews in the Civil Rights Movement, the residues of Old Left activism in the Cold War, LGBT history, but also the double edged role of trauma in political activism. With Pool being at different crossroads in history, this book showcases various entangled histories. It is thereby highly indebted to what Michael Rothberg has called ‘multidirectional memory,’ which argues that debates on the Holocaust enabled the articulation of other histories of victimization, which subsequently became an essential part in the claiming of rights by colonized peoples, women, and minorities alike.3 Pool often united the global and the local in her activism and work. She could easily tell about individual lives, often with a microscopic precision, before moving on to major arguments. She was prone to tell the story of Anne Frank to American audiences to reveal similarities between Nazism and Jim Crow.