Safe among the Germans : liberated Jews after World War II / Ruth Gay.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gay, Ruth.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Holocaust survivors--Germany.

Holocaust survivors.

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Influence.

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945).

Jews--Germany--History--1945-1990.

Jews.

Jews, East European--Germany--History--20th century.

Jews, East European.

Jewish refugees--Germany--History--20th century.

Jewish refugees.

Germany--Ethnic relations.

Germany.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (1 online resource (xiv, 347 p.) ) ill., facsims., ports.

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New Haven : Yale University Press, c2002.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This book tells the little-known story of why a quarter-million Jews, survivors of death camps and forced labor, sought refuge in Germany after World War II. Those who had ventured to return to Poland after liberation soon found that their homeland had become a new killing ground, where some 1,500 Jews were murdered in pogroms between 1945 and 1947. Facing death at home, and with Palestine and the rest of the world largely closed to them, they looked for a place to be safe and found it in the shelter of the Allied Occupation Forces in Germany. By 1950 a little community of 20,000 Jews remained in Germany: 8,000 native German Jews and 12,000 from Eastern Europe. Ruth Gay examines their contrasting lives in the two postwar Germanies. After the fall of Communism, the Jewish community was suddenly overwhelmed by tens of thousands of former Soviet Jews. Now there are some 100,000 Jews in Germany. The old, somewhat nostalgic life of the first postwar decades is being swept aside by radical forces from the Lubavitcher at one end to Reform and feminism at the other. What started in 1945 as a "remnant" community has become a dynamic new center of Jewish life.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Introduction

ONE. Where They Came From

TWO. Return to the World

THREE.

FOUR. Jews Again in Berlin

FIVE.

SIX. New Generations in Germany

Notes

Acknowledgments

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographic references (p. 309-330) and index.

ISBN:

9786611731328

9781281731326

1281731323

9780300133127

030013312X

OCLC:

1024014884