Abstract: This article addresses the interrelation between the state and its ethnic minorities, and the ideological labor furnished by these minorities, as it applies to postwar German Jewry. The German Jewish community of today is not organically related to German Jewry as it existed before 1933; although, to ennoble its genealogy, its representatives lay claim to that Jewish past. There is a contradiction, therefore, between attempts to connect to prewar German Jewry on the one hand and, on the other, the community’s signaling, for many years at least, a rupture with this past with statements such as “this is not my country” and “sitting on packed suitcases.” However, with significant immigration of Jews from the former Soviet Union since the late 1980s, a viable new Jewish community in Germany has come into being. It is increasingly characterized by uniform and central institutions as well as—especially since the war in Gaza and an escalation of antisemitism—an increasingly close relationship to German society and politics.
Abstract: In all, 90% of Polish Jews, more than 3 million people, were murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust, and 90% of the survivors left Poland. The survivors and their heirs, most of them not currently living in Poland, saw their land confiscated by the Nazis, nationalized by the communists and reprivatized and sold to others. Poland is the only country in the EU not to have a comprehensive restitution law. The issue of land restitution is still present in current debate in Poland, as part of a broader discussion over the Second World War, communism, privatization and corruption. While Poland blocked all restitution claims in 2021, Jewish communities as well as other governments called Poland to adopt a comprehensive restitution law for everyone. Now, 30 years after the fall of communism, what justifies such claims? This paper argues that forward-looking collective responsibility is the most helpful concept to understand the Jewish restitution problem in Poland today, and claims that any future settlement of this issue should be based on it. By applying this concept, as developed by Iris Marion Young, to the Polish restitution case, we look into the past – not to look for people to blame, but to look for social connections that have implications for the present. This way, we can remember the past, learn from it and heal relationships between people without being slaves to it.
Abstract: This paper uses archival and ethnological research to analyze the fates of former synagogues during two totalitarian regimes in present-day Slovakia. The processes described here were catalyzed by the Holocaust. Between 1938 and 1945, over 100,000 Jews from Slovakia were murdered. Out of the 228 Jewish religious communities (JRCs) active before the war, only 79 were reconstituted after liberation. Most were later disbanded because of aliyah to Palestine/Israel. Their abandoned synagogues passed into the administration of the newly founded Central Union of Jewish Religious Communities (CUJRC). During the Communist era (1948-1989), the majority of these synagogues were sold because the CUJRC did not have sufficient resources for their maintenance.
The second section of this paper discusses synagogues in different parts of Slovakia to show how representatives of the CUJRC tried to ensure the temples’ new owners did not violate their religious dignity. Purchase and sale agreements generally prohibited using the synagogues for entertainment purposes, instead preferring their conversion into warehouses, silos, workshops, etc. Although, as soon as the 1940s, part of the community requested that the synagogues be used as cultural centers, this did not happen on a large scale until after the revolution of 1989. A synagogue is not defined by its four walls but rather by the activities that take place inside it. The repurposed buildings are frequently located in regions with no active Jewish organizations. They are mere relics of the past and, bar a few exceptions, do not contribute to the renewal of traditional Jewish life. Believers nevertheless tend to have a negative view of the events that are held in the former synagogues, with some going as far as to consider them disrespectful. Even many secular Jews feel that the former synagogues do not fulfil their original purpose and have definitively transformed into non-synagogues.
Abstract: Historian Gavin Schaffer wrestles Jewish history away from the question of what others have thought about Jews, focusing instead on the experiences of Jewish people themselves.
Exploring the complexities of inclusion and exclusion, he shines a light on groups that have been marginalised within Jewish history and culture, such as queer Jews, Jews married to non-Jews, Israel-critical Jews and even Messianic Jews, while offering a fresh look at Jewish activism, Jewish religiosity and Zionism.
Weaving these stories together, Schaffer argues that there are good reasons to consider Jewish Britons as a unitary whole, even as debates rage about who is entitled to call themselves a Jew. Challenging the idea that British Jewish life is in terminal decline, An unorthodox history demonstrates that Jewish Britain is thriving and that Jewishness is deeply embedded in the country's history and culture.
Abstract: There is a rich body of research concerning Jews who lived in Germany before 1933. Publications on the Holocaust are equally numerous, a significant proportion of this output tackling historical (and contemporary) antisemitism in Germany from a non-Jewish perspective. Much less is known about the post-1945 Jewish population of the former East and West (now reunited) Germany: in terms of Jewish socio-demography, life-worlds, cultural heritage, praxes and about Jewish perspectives on antisemitism. The aim of this article is threefold. Content-wise, it sets out to summarise the existing social scientific research on the post-1945ers, and to identify gaps therein in terms of empirical research, both quantitative and qualitative. Structurally, it seeks to determine the scope and frame of research concerning the post-1945 Jewish population of Germany, demonstrating thus that the study of contemporary Jews is replete with lacunae. Practically, the article outlines the consequences of patchy knowledge, and the hampered knowledge transfer within academia and to the public – consequences which have become painfully clear in the wake of October 7, 2023.
Abstract: While the liberation of Europe in 1945 did not result in the end of antisemitism, Jews, Judaism, and Jewishness acquired new value in the aftermath of the Shoah. In democratic Europe, the Jew became at the very least the “enemy that we now must love”. Like antisemitism, European philosemitic discourse mutated over time. To counteract the image of the Jewish enemy, secular and Christian philosemites imagined various types of loveable “good Jews”. This newfound sympathy was not devoid of ambiguities. Philosemitism, broadly conceived as positive discourse on Jews, can indeed easily recycle antisemitic themes, recreate Jewish otherness, or strategically compensate for Holocaust guilt. However, while the Israeli or cosmopolitan Jew continues to fuel antisemitic paranoia, post-Holocaust ‘philosemitism’ has redefined the relationship between contemporary Europe and its Jews.
Abstract: The tradition of Jewish studies in Poland has been drastically interrupted by the Second World War and the Holocaust. In the immediate postwar period the process of re-establishing research on Jewish history and heritage was undertaken by the Jewish Historical Commissions and later Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw. More examples of the individual and group initiatives can be traced only in the 1970s and 1980s. The real happened in the late 1980s with Kraków as one of the first and main centers of revitalized Jewish studies in Poland. The first postwar academic institution in Krakow specializing in Jewish studies – Research Center for Jewish History and Culture in Poland – was established already in 1986 in the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. More than a decade later, in 2000, it was transformed into the first Poland’s Department of Jewish Studies (Katedra Judaistyki) – now the Institute of Jewish Studies. Nowadays there are more similar programs and institutions – at the universities in Warsaw, Wrocław and Lublin (UMCS). Also other academic centers tend to have at least individual scholars, programs, classes or projects focusing on widely understood “Jewish topics.” Jewish studies in Poland, along with the revival of Jewish culture, reflect the contemporary Polish attitude to the Jewish heritage, and their scale and intensity remains unique in the European context. The growing interest in Jewish studies in Poland can be seen as a sign of respect for the role of Jewish Poles in the country’s history, and as an attempt to recreate the missing Jewish part of Poland through research, education and commemoration, accompanied by slow but promising revival of Jewish life in Poland.
Abstract: The present study examines Jewish politics in Communist Hungary. As it is widely known, politicians of Jewish origin played an important role in the political life of post-war Hungary as leaders of the Communist party or as officials in the Communist governments. Their activity had a considerable effect, both directly and indirectly, on the life of Hungarian Jews. "Judeo-Bolshevic" rule is still a favorite topic of contemporary antisemitic publiciations. No doubt, the question of whether the Jewish origin of these politicians had an impact on their decisions, and if so, to what extent, could be a relevant subject for historical study. However, this essay deals with a different topic. It is concerned only with those politicians in post-war Hungary who identified themselves publicly as Jews or openly
represented Jewish causes. How did these politicians, who viewed Jews as a collectivity and sought to defend the Jews’ collective interests, act in the troublesome post-war decades?
Abstract: From the Middle Ages until World War II, Poland was host to Europe's largest and most vibrant Jewish population. By 1970, the combination of Nazi genocide, postwar pogroms, mass emigration, and communist repression had virtually destroyed Poland's Jewish community. Although the Poles themselves were subjected to enormous cruelties in the twentieth century, questions about the extent of their antisemitism and its role in the fate of Polish Jewry are today hotly disputed.
Antisemitism and Its Opponents in Modern Poland serves as an effective guide to some of the most complex and controversial issues of Poland's troubled past. Fourteen original essays by a team of distinguished Polish and American scholars explore the different meanings, forms of expression, content, and social range of antisemitism in modern Poland from the late nineteenth century to the present. The contributors focus on both the variations in antisemitic sentiment and those Poles who opposed such prejudices.
Central themes of this significant, balanced, and timely contribution to a contentious and often emotional debate include the deterioration of Polish-Jewish relations in the era of national awakening for both the Poles and the Jews, the meaning of the various forms of violence against the Jews, intellectual movements in opposition to antisemitism, the role of the Catholic Church in promoting antisemitism, and the prospects for the Church to atone for this shameful chapter in its recent history.
Topics: Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Antisemitism, Holocaust, Holocaust Survivors, Holocaust Survivors: Children of, Holocaust Commemoration, Memory, Memorial, Post-War Reconstruction, Post-1989, Jewish Renewal, Post-War Jewish History
Abstract: When traumatic historical events and transformations coincide with one’s entry into young adulthood, the personal and historical significance of life-course transitions interact and intensify. In this volume, Alena Heitlinger examines identity formation among a generation of Czech and Slovak Jews who grew up under communism, coming of age during the de-Stalinization period of 1962-1968. Heitlinger’s main focus is on the differences and similarities within and between generations, and on the changing historical and political circumstances of state socialism/communism that have shaped an individual’s consciousness and identity—as a Jew, assimilated Czech, Slovak, Czechoslovak and, where relevant, as an émigré or an immigrant. The book addresses a larger set of questions about the formation of Jewish identity in the midst of political upheavals, secularization, assimilation, and modernity: Who is a Jew? How is Jewish identity defined? How does Jewish identity change based on different historical contexts? How is Jewish identity transmitted from one generation to the next? What do the Czech and Slovak cases tell us about similar experiences in other former communist countries, or in established liberal democracies? Heitlinger explores the official and unofficial transmission of Holocaust remembering (and non-remembering), the role of Jewish youth groups, attitudes toward Israel and Zionism, and the impact of the collapse of communism. This volume is rich in both statistical and archival data and in its analysis of historical, institutional, and social factors. Heitlinger’s wide-ranging approach shows how history, generational, and individual biography intertwine in the formation of ethnic identity and its ambiguities.
Abstract: Today, the dominant model for Jewish education is the community-wide, technologically advanced day school, where the Judaic subjects are taught by professional educators using student-friendly, interactive methodologies. Not so long ago, however, most Jewish education consisted of rote repetition of prayers and biblical passages and their translation into awkward English by teachers with no formal pedagogic training, in classes – often located in synagogue basements – held on Sunday or once a week after ‘ordinary’ school.
This book explains the radical reconfiguring of Jewish education in England in historical and sociocultural terms. It explores the transformations that took place in every aspect of Jewish education: curriculum, religious/ideological orientation, school format (afternoon classes vs day schools), funding (private vs state), and more. The author shows that this dramatic transition directly reflects both changes in the socioeconomic profile and self-identity of Anglo-Jewry as well as demographic and cultural changes in British society in general. Tracking the shift from integration to separation, this book maps the effect of competing societal, personal and communal agendas, pedagogic paradigms, and pragmatic constraints on the rise of the Jewish day school in England.
Abstract: Since Polish Catholics embraced some anti-Jewish notions and actions prior to WWII, many intertwined the Nazi death camps in Poland with Polish anti-Semitism. As a result, more so than local non-Jewish population in other Nazi-occupied countries, Polish Catholics were considered active collaborators in the destruction of European Jewry. Through the presentation of these negative images in Holocaust literature, documentaries, and teaching, these stereotypes have been sustained and infect attitudes toward contemporary Poland, impacting on Jewish youth trips there from Israel and the United States. This book focuses on the role of Holocaust-related material in perpetuating anti-Polish images and describes organizational efforts to combat them. Without minimizing contemporary Polish anti-Semitism, it also presents more positive material on contemporary Polish-American organizations and Jewish life in Poland. To our knowledge this will be the first book to document systematically the anti-Polish images in Holocaust material, to describe ongoing efforts to combat these negative stereotypes, and to emphasize the positive role of the Polish Catholic community in the resurgence of Jewish life in Poland. Thus, this book will present new information that will be of value to Holocaust Studies and the 100,000 annual foreign visitors to the German death camps in Poland.
Contents:
Part 1 Foreward
Part 2 Preface
Part 3 Introduction: Confronting Negative Stereotypes: Polish Behavior in Wartime and Contemporary Poland
Part 4 Anti-Polish Stereotypes
Chapter 5 Introduction: Anti-Polish Stereotypes
Chapter 6 Poland and the Poles in the Cinematic Portrayal of the Holocaust
Chapter 7 Cinema in the Crossfire of Jewish-Polish Polemics: Wajda's Korczak and Polanski's The Pianist
Chapter 8 American Press Coverage of Poland's Role in the Holocaust
Chapter 9 Measuring Anti-Polish Biases Among Holocaust Teachers
Part 10 Contextual Understanding and Dialogue
Chapter 11 Introduction: Polish-Jewish Relations in America
Chapter 12 Polish-Jewish Relations during the Holocaust: A Changing Jewish Viewpoint
Chapter 13 Polish and Jewish Historiography of Jewish-Polish Relations during World War II
Chapter 14 The Holocaust: A Continuing Challenge for Polish-Jewish Relations
Chapter 15 Polish-Jewish Relations since 1984: Reflections of a Participant
Part 16 Contemporary Poland
Chapter 17 Introduction: Polish-Jewish Relations in Poland: Where Have We Come From and Where Are We Headed?
Chapter 18 The Evolution of Catholic-Jewish Relations after 1989
Chapter 19 Antisemitism in Contemporary Poland: Does It Matter? And For Whom Does It Matter?
Chapter 20 Polish Historians Respond to Jedwabne
Chapter 21 March of the Living: Confronting Anti-Polish Stereotypes
Chapter 22 Gentiles Doing Jewish Stuff: The Contributions of Polish Non-Jews to Polish Jewish Life
Abstract: Jüdische Gemeinden sind mehr als religiöse Gemeinschaften, sie stellen das jüdische Kollektiv in einzelnen Ländern und Orten dar. Das Erscheinungsbild dieser Kollektive wird einerseits durch ihre Umwelt, andererseits durch innerjüdische Entwicklungen bestimmt. Die in diesem Band ersammelten Essays zeigen, daß die Juden durch Emanzipation, Akkulturation und Säkularisierung zum integralen Bestandteil ihrer Umwelt wurden, was zu neuen Formen religiösen, kulturellen und politischen Lebens geführt hat.
Inhalt
Ariel Muzicant (S. 11–13), 150 Jahre Wiener Kultusgemeinde
Eleonore Lappin (S. 15–20), Vorwort der Herausgeberin
I. Das Erbe der Habsburger Monarchie
Lois C. Dubin (S. 23–42), The Jews of Trieste: Between Mitteleuropa and Mittelmeer, 1719–1939
Mykola Kuschnir (S. 43–52), Czernowitz – Stadt ohne Juden? Das Bukowiner Judentum zwischen Mythos und Realität
Juraj Sedivy (S. 53–62), Im Schatten der großen Geschichte? – Die heutige Gemeinde in Pressburg/Bratislava
Géza Komoróczy (S. 63–101), Israeliten / Juden in ihrer Gemeinde. Juden in der ungarischen Gesellschaft der Nachkriegszeit, 1945–2000
II. Israelitische Kultusgemeinden in Österreich
Marsha L. Rozenblit (S. 105–130), From Habsburg Jews to Austrian Jews: The Jews of Vienna, 1918–1938
Evelyn Adunka (S. 131–137), Die Wiener jüdische Gemeinde
Michael John (S. 139–178), Gebrochene Kontinuität – Die Kultusgemeinde Linz nach 1945
Helga Embacher, Albert Lichtblau (S. 179–198), Die Jüdische Gemeinde in Salzburg seit 1867 – Ein Neubeginn nach 369 Jahren Verbannung
Niko Hofinger (S. 199–210), Eine kleine Gemeinde zwischen Erinnerung und jüdischem Alltag: Die Israelitische Kultusgemeinde für Tirol und Vorarlberg in Innsbruck nach 1945
Dieter A. Binder (S. 211–241), Jüdische Steiermark - Steirisches Judentum
III. Juden auf Wanderschaft
Haim Avni (S. 245–265), „Insular Jewish Communal Life:“ Russian Jews in Argentina and German Jews in Bolivia
Edna Brocke (S. 267–281), Jüdisches Leben in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland
Michel Abitbol (S. 283–294), From an „Israelite“ Identity to a „Jewish“ Identity and Back – French Jewry Forty Years After the Jewish Immigration from North Africa
Mira Katzburg-Yungman (S. 295–319), The New Synagogue in the New World
Renate Meissner (S. 32–345), „Auf den Schwingen des Adlers“ Von Jemen nach Zion
Sergio DellaPergola (S. 347-364), World Jewish Population at the Dawn of the 21st Century: Trends, Prospects and Implications
AutorInnen (S. 365–357)
Abstract: In the English-speaking world, it is generally believed that there are very few Jews living and thriving in Germany. Yet, there has been an unlikely postwar history 1945-2001 that has been somewhat repressed in North America and the United Kingdom. While most people are well-informed about the Holocaust and the consequences that this tragic event has had for the world, very few people know that there has been a steady increase in the population of Jews in Germany since 1945 and that there is a flourishing 'Jewish' culture, certainly a relatively strong Jewish presence, in Germany today. Does this development mean that Jews are playing a significant role in German social life? Does this mean that the great German-Jewish relationship, often referred to as a kind of symbiosis, has re-emerged despite the odds against it? The sixteen essays in this book written by the leading critics in the field cover the fascinating changes that have been made in German society since 1945 in the Jewish communities, literature, theater, film, architecture, and other areas of interest including an examination of the resurgence of anti-Semitism in Austria. For anyone interested in reading about the unpredictable transformations in German-Jewish relations since 1945, Unlikely History will provide information and insights into a history that needs to be told to bring about greater understanding of Jews and Germans in contemporary Germany.
Abstract: Ten authors from five countries present a variety of fresh analyses of the strategies Germans have adopted in coping with the Nazi past. Through historical, sociological, educational, and cultural approaches the unresolved tensions existing in German society – between the will to be accepted as an integral part of western civilization and to put the Nazi chapter in general and the Holocaust in particular behind, on the one hand, and an awareness of responsibility combined with recurring, sometimes sudden, manifestations of long-term results and implications of the past, on the other – are analyzed. Through its multifaceted approach, this book contributes to a better understanding of present-day German society and of Germany’s delicate relationships with both the United States and Israel.
Contents: Dan Michman: Introduction – Jeffrey Herf: The Holocaust and the Competition of Memories in Germany, 1945-1999 – Gilad Margalit: Divided Memory? Expressions of a United German Memory – Y. Michal Bodemann: The Uncanny Clatter: The Holocaust in Germany before Its Mass Commemoration – Inge Marszolek: Memory and Amnesia: A Comment on the Lectures by Gilad Margalit and Michal Bodemann – Chris Lorenz: Border-crossings: Some Reflections on the Role of German Historians in Recent Public Debates on Nazi History – Dan Diner: The Irreconcilability of an Event: Integrating the Holocaust into the Narrative of the Century – Michael Brenner: The Changing Role of the Holocaust in the German-Jewish Public Voice – Shlomo Shafir: Constantly Disturbing the German Conscience: The Impact of American Jewry – Yehuda Ben-Avner: Ambivalent Cooperation: The German-Israeli Joint Committee on Schoolbooks – Yfaat Weiss: The Vague Echoes of German Discourse in Israel.
Abstract: Erstmals schildert dieser Band auf der Grundlage breiter Archivrecherchen, wie jüdisches Leben sich nach dem Holocaust über sechs Jahrzehnte in Deutschland entfaltete, welche Rolle es für die deutsche Gesellschaft in West und Ost spielte und wie im wiedervereinigten Deutschland durch die Zuwanderung aus der ehemaligen Sowjetunion die am schnellsten wachsende jüdische Gemeinde der Welt entstand.
Nach dem Holocaust galt Deutschland den meisten Juden als „blutgetränkte Erde“, auf der jüdisches Leben unmöglich erschien. Dennoch bildete in den ersten Nachkriegsjahren das besetzte Deutschland eine Durchgangsstation für jüdische Überlebende aus Osteuropa. Ein kleiner Teil von ihnen blieb und baute gemeinsam mit überlebenden und aus dem Exil zurückgekehrten deutschen Juden wieder jüdische Gemeinden auf. International renommierte Zeithistoriker beschreiben die Entwicklung der Gemeinden, die Politik des Zentralrats und seiner Vorsitzenden, die „Wiedergutmachung“ sowie den Umgang mit altem und neuem Antisemitismus.
Die Autorinnen und Autoren: Dan Diner (Jerusalem, Leipzig), Norbert Frei (Jena), Lena Gorelik (München), Constantin Goschler (Bochum), Atina Grossmann (New York), Anthony Kauders (Keele, München), Tamar Lewinsky (Basel), Yfaat Weiss (Jerusalem)
