Verfassungswidrig! Das KPD-Verbot im Kalten Bürgerkrieg By Josef Foschepoth. Second edition. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021. Pp. 494. Hardback €50.00. ISBN: 978-3525311288.

Abstract

and called these narratives into question. Over time, DPs' personal stories reflected the values of the world they wanted to move toone that saw them as worthy and as potentially useful citizens. This is also a story deeply informed by both gender and age, aspects of DP experiences that scholars have addressed less often. Balint investigates how the status of women (single, married, widowed, divorced) dictated their emigration opportunities. Immigration policies categorized women according to their male protector, either their husbands or fathers. She demonstrates how this echoed the Allied determination to reunite families in order to stabilize postwar Europe. While refugee classification had moved from minority groups to individuals, as Balint astutely proves through many specific cases, this system considered women and children alike as dependents, under an individual male. If the oldest male relative had collaborated with the Nazis, then all women and children tied to him were also ineligible for emigration assisted by the IRO. If a German woman married a DP, she became eligible for IRO assistance and resettlement. Conversely, if a female DP married a German or a collaborator, she lost her IRO eligibility. In addition, when IRO review board members heard and read stories of male political agency, specifically anticommunism, they rewarded this, whereas with female DPs, this raised their suspicions, often classifying the women as opportunists. Unwed mothers did not fare well within this world and were often viewed with disdain. For unaccompanied children, postwar realities subsumed their "best interests." Even in cases where the IRO had located biological parents, it allowed the migration of children overseas, often as "rescue efforts." And yet, as Balint painstakingly evidences through multiple stories, for those with disabled children and/or older or infirm relatives, the IRO urged the able-bodied to leave the others behind, a pointed departure from the emphasis on family reunification.This work rests on the intimate stories of DPs and those who offered them assistance. It draws on a vast array of archival sources from five countries (Australia, France, Germany, Switzerland, and the United States), a necessity in transnational scholarship. Balint's work is also constantly in dialogue with key monographs and articles, and she draws upon numerous films made about DPs, to illustrate how contemporaries imagined and portrayed their lives. The strengths of this slim book all stem from its methodology: a bottom-up approach to understanding the decisions and lives of refugees within a system designed for many purposes: European stability, anticommunism, ableism, and patriarchy.