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This volume features 72 documents (in Yiddish, English, Hebrew, and German) created between 1945 and 1949, that complicate standard representations of the highly variegated community of Jewish Displaced Persons (DPs) in Allied-occupied Germany, who came to be known as the surviving remnant or She'erit Hapletah. These documents shed light on efforts to organize Jewish DPs upon liberation, attempts to cope with displacement and trauma, relations with the Allied occupation authorities, and the organization of relief and rehabilitation in the weeks, months, and years after liberation. They highlight the DPs' struggle to organize political responses to their situation and their remarkable cultural creativity with examples on literature, sport, theatre, humor, education, history, and religion. The volume thus reflects the complexities of the Jewish DPs living on "cursed soil" in the aftermath of the war as well as their prospects for a political future.
About the author
Atina Grossmann is Professor of History in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Cooper Union in New York City where she teaches courses in modern European and global history, gender studies and feminist theory, Holocaust, genocide and refugee studies.Alexandra M. Kramen is a doctoral candidate at the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University in Worcester, MA. She is a member of the Association of Jewish Studies.Tamar Lewinsky is Curator of Audiovisual Media at the Jewish Museum Berlin since 2015.Avinoam J. Patt is the Maurice Greenberg Professor of Holocaust Studies at New York University where he also serves as Director of the Center for the Study of Antisemitism. He is a member of the Association for Jewish Studies and the Association for Israel Studies. He also serves on the Academic Advisory Board of the Holocaust Educational Foundation of Northwestern University.
Summary
This volume features 72 documents (in Yiddish, English, Hebrew, and German) created between 1945 and 1949, that complicate standard representations of the highly variegated community of Jewish Displaced Persons (DPs) in Allied-occupied Germany, who came to be known as the surviving remnant or She’erit Hapletah. These documents shed light on efforts to organize Jewish DPs upon liberation, attempts to cope with displacement and trauma, relations with the Allied occupation authorities, and the organization of relief and rehabilitation in the weeks, months, and years after liberation. They highlight the DPs’ struggle to organize political responses to their situation and their remarkable cultural creativity with examples on literature, sport, theatre, humor, education, history, and religion. The volume thus reflects the complexities of the Jewish DPs living on “cursed soil” in the aftermath of the war as well as their prospects for a political future.
Foreword
This volume features 72 documents created between 1945 and 1949 that complicate standard representations of the highly variegated community of Jewish Displaced Persons (DPs) in Allied-occupied Germany. These documents shed light on efforts to organize Jewish DPs upon liberation, attempts to cope with displacement and trauma, relations with the Allied occupation authorities, and the organization of relief and rehabilitation in the weeks, months, and years after liberation. They highlight the DPs’ struggle to organize political responses to their situation and their remarkable cultural creativity. The volume thus reflects the complexities of the Jewish DPs living on “cursed soil” in the aftermath of the war as well as their prospects for a political future.
