Post-Holocaust France and the Jews, 1945-1955

Post-Holocaust France and the Jews, 1945-1955
Author: Seán Hand
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2015-06-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 1479835048

Despite an outpouring of scholarship on the Holocaust, little work has focused on what happened to Europe’s Jewish communities after the war ended. And unlike many other European nations in which the majority of the Jewish population perished, France had a significant post‑war Jewish community that numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Post-Holocaust France and the Jews, 1945–1955 offers new insight on key aspects of French Jewish life in the decades following the end of World War II. How Jews had been treated during the war continued to influence both Jewish and non-Jewish society in the post-war years. The volume examines the ways in which moral and political issues of responsibility combined with the urgent problems and practicalities of restoration, and it illustrates how national imperatives, international dynamics, and a changed self-perception all profoundly helped to shape the fortunes of postwar French Judaism.Comprehensive and informed, this volume offers a rich variety of perspectives on Jewish studies, modern and contemporary history, literary and cultural analysis, philosophy, sociology, and theology. With contributions from leading scholars, including Edward Kaplan, Susan Rubin Suleiman, and Jay Winter, the book establishes multiple connections between such different areas of concern as the running of orphanages, the establishment of new social and political organisations, the restoration of teaching and religious facilities, and the development of intellectual responses to the Holocaust. Comprehensive and informed, this volume will be invaluable to readers working in Jewish studies, modern and contemporary history, literary and cultural analysis, philosophy, sociology, and theology.

The Last Million

The Last Million
Author: David Nasaw
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 673
Release: 2021-09-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 0143110993

From bestselling author David Nasaw, a sweeping new history of the one million refugees left behind in Germany after WWII In May 1945, after German forces surrendered to the Allied powers, millions of concentration camp survivors, POWs, slave laborers, political prisoners, and Nazi collaborators were left behind in Germany, a nation in ruins. British and American soldiers attempted to repatriate the refugees, but more than a million displaced persons remained in Germany: Jews, Poles, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, and other Eastern Europeans who refused to go home or had no homes to return to. Most would eventually be resettled in lands suffering from postwar labor shortages, but no nation, including the United States, was willing to accept more than a handful of the 200,000 to 250,000 Jewish men, women, and children who remained trapped in Germany. When in June, 1948, the United States Congress passed legislation permitting the immigration of displaced persons, visas were granted to sizable numbers of war criminals and Nazi collaborators, but denied to 90% of the Jewish displaced persons. A masterwork from acclaimed historian David Nasaw, The Last Million tells the gripping but until now hidden story of postwar displacement and statelessness and of the Last Million, as they crossed from a broken past into an unknowable future, carrying with them their wounds, their fears, their hope, and their secrets. Here for the first time, Nasaw illuminates their incredible history and shows us how it is our history as well.

World War I and the Jews

World War I and the Jews
Author: Marsha L. Rozenblit
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2017-08-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1785335936

World War I utterly transformed the lives of Jews around the world: it allowed them to display their patriotism, to dispel antisemitic myths about Jewish cowardice, and to fight for Jewish rights. Yet Jews also suffered as refugees and deportees, at times catastrophically. And in the aftermath of the war, the replacement of the Habsburg Monarchy and the Russian and Ottoman Empires with a system of nation-states confronted Jews with a new set of challenges. This book provides a fascinating survey of the ways in which Jewish communities participated in and were changed by the Great War, focusing on the dramatic circumstances they faced in Europe, North America, and the Middle East during and after the conflict.

The Jews are Coming Back

The Jews are Coming Back
Author: David Bankier
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2005
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781571815279

In 14 papers delivered at or sent to a May 2001 conference in Jerusalem, historians specializing in Jews in various European countries examine the views about the return or prospective return of the Jews to their countries of origin after World War II. Among the countries are France, the Netherlands, Italy, Poland, and Hungary. Places and names are

German Angst

German Angst
Author: Frank Biess
Publisher: Emotions in History
Total Pages: 428
Release: 2020
Genre: History
ISBN: 0198714181

While fear and anxiety have historically been associated with authoritarian regimes, Frank Biess demonstrates the ambivalent role of these emotions in the democratization of West Germany, where fears and anxieties about the country's catastrophic past and uncertain future both undermined democracy and stabilized the emerging Federal Republic.

A Deadly Legacy

A Deadly Legacy
Author: Tim Grady
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2017-09-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 0300231237

Shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize 2018 This book is the first to offer a full account of the varied contributions of German Jews to Imperial Germany’s endeavors during the Great War. Historian Tim Grady examines the efforts of the 100,000 Jewish soldiers who served in the German military (12,000 of whom died), as well as the various activities Jewish communities supported at home, such as raising funds for the war effort and securing vital food supplies. However, Grady’s research goes much deeper: he shows that German Jews were never at the periphery of Germany’s warfare, but were in fact heavily involved. The author finds that many German Jews were committed to the same brutal and destructive war that other Germans endorsed, and he discusses how the conflict was in many ways lived by both groups alike. What none could have foreseen was the dangerous legacy they created together, a legacy that enabled Hitler’s rise to power and planted the seeds of the Holocaust to come.

X Troop

X Troop
Author: Leah Garrett
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 373
Release: 2021-05-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 0358177421

WALL STREET JOURNAL BOOK OF THE MONTH "This is the incredible World War II saga of the German-Jewish commandos who fought in Britain’s most secretive special-forces unit—but whose story has gone untold until now." —Wall Street Journal “Brilliantly researched, utterly gripping history: the first full account of a remarkable group of Jewish refugees—a top-secret band of brothers—who waged war on Hitler.”—Alex Kershaw, New York Times best-selling author of The Longest Winter and The Liberator The incredible World War II saga of the German-Jewish commandos who fought in Britain’s most secretive special-forces unit—but whose story has gone untold until now June 1942. The shadow of the Third Reich has fallen across the European continent. In desperation, Winston Churchill and his chief of staff form an unusual plan: a new commando unit made up of Jewish refugees who have escaped to Britain. The resulting volunteers are a motley group of intellectuals, artists, and athletes, most from Germany and Austria. Many have been interned as enemy aliens, and have lost their families, their homes—their whole worlds. They will stop at nothing to defeat the Nazis. Trained in counterintelligence and advanced combat, this top secret unit becomes known as X Troop. Some simply call them a suicide squad. Drawing on extensive original research, including interviews with the last surviving members, Leah Garrett follows this unique band of brothers from Germany to England and back again, with stops at British internment camps, the beaches of Normandy, the battlefields of Italy and Holland, and the hellscape of Terezin concentration camp—the scene of one of the most dramatic, untold rescues of the war. For the first time, X Troop tells the astonishing story of these secret shock troops and their devastating blows against the Nazis. “Garrett’s detective work is stunning, and her storytelling is masterful. This is an original account of Jewish rescue, resistance, and revenge.”—Wendy Lower, author of The Ravine and National Book Award finalist Hitler’s Furies

Displaced Persons

Displaced Persons
Author: Joseph Berger
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 502
Release: 2010-05-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 1439122083

In this touching account, veteran New York Times reporter Joseph Berger describes how his own family of Polish Jews -- with one son born at the close of World War II and the other in a "displaced persons" camp outside Berlin -- managed against all odds to make a life for themselves in the utterly foreign landscape of post-World War II America. Paying eloquent homage to his parents' extraordinary courage, luck, and hard work while illuminating as never before the experience of 140,000 refugees who came to the United States between 1947 and 1953, Joseph Berger has captured a defining moment in history in a riveting and deeply personal chronicle.