Alexander Dallin papers

Alexander Dallin (formerly Dalin, 1924-2000) was born on 21 May 1924 in Berlin, Germany to David (1889-1962) and Eugenia (Jenya, née Bein, 1889-1973) Dallin. Dallin’s father, David (formerly David Levin), a prominent leader of the Menshevik group in Russia, was forced into exile in Berlin, Germany in 1921. Alexander’s parents separated when he was very young, though he continued to see his father frequently. Alexander and his mother lived in a three-story house in Berlin with his paternal grandmother, a few cousins, and other relatives. They gathered for Shabbat every Friday and carried on some Jewish cultural traditions. While Alexander spoke German at school, he spoke Russian with his mother and family at home. His grandmother spoke Yiddish. Towards the end of the 1930s, as Hitler came to power, Alexander experienced various instances of antisemitism in school, which eventually lead his mother to pull him out of public school and enroll him in a private Jewish secular school at the Goldsmith School in Berlin. By 1938, some of Alexander’s relatives had already left Berlin for America, settling in New York mainly. Shortly after Kristallnacht, Alexander and his family learned of their expulsion from Germany as his mother’s Russian passport expired, and Alexander was not considered a German citizen. By that point, his father David had already resettled in Warsaw in 1935. Alexander and Eugenia left Berlin for Paris in January 1939 and then eventually headed for Toulouse in June 1940 where Alexander was detained at a camp for 24 hours once they entered the South of France. He was eventually released. A couple of months later, he and his mother moved to Marseille where they tried to gather the visa paperwork necessary to exit France, travel through Spain, and then sail via Lisbon, Portugal to America. They were reunited with David and his girlfriend Lola (a fellow Menshevik) in Southern France. As a result, their names were included on a list of labor and political leaders sent by the AFL to the U.S. Secretary of State for emigration. Despite the request and without the required French exit permits, Alexander and his mother left Marseille on foot and were eventually stopped by Spanish soldiers and subsequently sent back to France, where they settled in the town of Perpignan. After ten days, they were able to cross the borders successfully when a French government worker stamped their passports with exit visas. They sailed from Lisbon on the SS Excalibur and arrived in New York November 1940. Alexander became a naturalized citizen in 1943 and a second “l” was added to the family’s last name. Alexander went on to earn an undergraduate degree from the City College of New York in the 1940s and then his M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University. In 1957, he won the Wolfson Prize for History for his book “German Rule in Russia, 1941-1945.” At the time of his death in 2000, he was celebrated as a prominent American historian of the Soviet Union and prolific contributor to the field of Soviet and Eastern European studies.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum collection, gift of Andy Dallin

Donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2019 by Andy Dallin, son of Alexander Dallin, on behalf of the Dallin family.