Winners once a year? How Russian-speaking Jews in Germany make sense of World War II and the Holocaust as part of transnational biographic experience

The complexity of the Russian-Jewish experience as emigrants to Germany is complex. Who were the victors and who were the victims? As Russians the strong message imbued in them through a myriad of communications on all levels, from political speeches to nationalist stereotypes on labels of food. Yet they are also immigrants in Germany experiencing what it means to be an immigrant and subordinate to native Germans. Refusing to recognize that their families were persecuted as Jews in Russia, their identification with Russian superiority and victory gives them an emotional source of strength versus their German neighbours. This situation is full of paradoxes that they carefully balance against each other and can cause confusion about multiple affiliations (such as 'Jewish Soviet winners' dependent on the social welfare in Germany).