Jewish Responses to Persecution: 1944–1946

Leah Wolfson is senior program officer and applied research scholar, Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

• Maps Readers’ GuideAbbreviations Introduction and Series PostscriptPART I:THE “FINAL SOLUTION” AND THE END OF THE WAR Chapter One: The End of the War and the Last Throes of Genocide Resistance, Rescue, and Escape The Last Deportations, 1944–1945 The Final Days of the Concentration Camp System Moving Jews: Death Marches and the End of the War Chapter Two: Experiencing “Liberation” American Jewish Soldiers Encounter the Holocaust Responding to the Liberators: Liberation from the Perspective Chapter Three: Adjusting to Peace, Surviving Survival Emerging from the Holocaust: Finding a “Home” in Postwar Europe Surviving as Children, Reclaiming Childhood: Jewish Children after the War PART II:JEWS ON THE MOVE: FINDING AND DEFINING “HOME” IN THE POSTWAR ERA Chapter Four: Returning “Home”: Emigration and the Search for Postwar Normalcy Refugees and the Postwar Landscape: Borders, Citizenship, and Nationality Creating Homeland: Aspirations for Palestine The Other “Promised Land”: Refugees and Survivors in the United States A Home Elsewhere: Emigration outside Palestine and the United States Chapter Five: Jews and Displaced Persons Camps in Postwar Europe Jewish Involvement in DP Camp Administration The Daily Lives of Jewish DPs: Interpreting the Holocaust from the Inside Chapter Six: Citizenship, Nationhood, and Homeland: Jewish and Non-Jewish Encounters and the Zionist Ideal Imagining “Home:” Jewish Displaced Persons and Differing Visions of Zionism Between Tolerance and Antisemitism: Making a Home in the Diaspora PART III:TAKING STOCK, SEARCHING FOR JUSTICE Chapter Seven: The Search for Relatives Creating Lists of the Living and Lists of the Dead “Only Sad News to Report”: Survivor Letters to Family Outside Europe Searching for Jewish Children in the Postwar Period: The Organizational Process Picking Up and Moving On: Grappling with Decimated Families Chapter Eight: Punishing the Perpetrators Official Justice: Allied War Crimes Trials Coverage of Postwar Trials in the Jewish Press In Pursuit of Justice: Statements of the Victims Justice on the Local Level: Claims and Accusations Chapter Nine: Reclaiming Possessions Restitution in Theory and Practice: Legal Considerations The Conversation among Jewish Communal Organizations Restitution on the Local Level: Challenges and Roadblocks Personal Restitution Claims PART IV:FRAMING, DEFINING, AND REMEMBERING THE HOLOCAUST Chapter Ten: Making Memory: Early Memoirs and Reflections Early Histories of the Holocaust: An Emerging Field Between Nostalgia and Destruction: The Role of Yitzkor Memorial Books 3Early Postwar Memoirs and Literary Reflections Unpublished Diaries and Memoirs in the Immediate Postwar Period Chapter Eleven: Commemorating the Victims: Memorializing the HolocaustMarking Graves: Commemorating the Dead In Situ Local Memories, Local Memorials: Memorializing Individual Communities Responding Religiously: The Formation of Post-Holocaust Theologies Emerging Centers of Jewish History and Documentation Memorial as National Identity: The Holocaust and Prestate Israel Chapter Twelve: The Survivors Speak: Collecting and Defining Postwar Testimony Interviewing the Victims: Jewish Historical Commissions Local Testimony Efforts: Interviewing Survivors in Their Former Homes“I Did Not Interview the Dead”: David Boder and the First Recorded Testimony List of Documents Bibliography Glossary Chronology Index About the Author

This impressive series provides a sense of the depth and diversity of contemporary Jewish documents while embedding them in explanatory narratives. . . . Volume V of the series aims to ‘trace and complicate’ the final year of the war and the beginnings of the postwar period. Probing a relatively large amount of Yiddish sources, a substantial number in French and German, as well as a few from a host of other languages, the volume examines how writing and commemorative practices related to the Holocaust first developed. It de-centers iconic experiences in order to reveal just how fraught and complex liberation and survival really were, and how contested the meaning of key concepts such as liberation, home, and return remained shortly after the end of the Holocaust.