The Surviving Remnant : Documents on Jewish Displaced Persons in Postwar Germany 1945–1950

Abstract

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.