Responses of Eastern European Holocaust Survivors to Liberation, 1944/1945

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel focuses on the Jewish experience of the liberation of 1944/1945. The arrival of Soviet troops into East-Central Europe put an end to the Nazi occupation and enabled Jewish survivors to emerge from hiding, return from the camps or the evacuation, and try to rebuild their lives. The reality liberated Jews faced in 1944/45 was, however, not only one of psychological trauma, physical exhaustion and economic hardship, but also one of continuing antisemitism, injustice and violence. In this transformative moment, Jewish returnees could for the first time fully fathom the dimensions of the Holocaust and the degree to which their communities had been shattered by destruction and violence. But they also faced the immediate necessity to organize, to fulfil their duties towards their dead, and to act in defense of the interests of the living. This panel concentrates on Jewish actors in this particular period of transition, examining the contexts in which they mobilized their strength, networks and resources to challenge the status quo, reclaim their possessions, honor their traditions and fight for dignity and justice. The degree to which the new communist authorities were willing (or unwilling) to support them inspired new strategies of seeking justice, commemorating the dead, and providing for the living. With three papers concentrating on Jewish survivors confronting the aftermath of mass killing and mass dispossession, this panel addresses the wider questions of retribution, repossession and redress in the volatile context of post-conflict Eastern-European societies.

Sub Unit

• Jewish Studies

Chair

• Magdalena Waligorska, Humboldt U Berlin (Germany)

Papers

• Minority Forensics: Survivor-Led Exhumations and Violence against the Dead in Early Post-Holocaust Poland - Zuzanna Dziuban, Austrian Academy of Sciences (Austria)

• Reclaiming Plundered Lives: Intimate Dispossession and Its Aftermath - Magdalena Waligorska, Humboldt U Berlin (Germany)

• Jewish Return and Property Restitution: Jewish Survivors Confronting the Postwar Social Order in Poland - Marta Duch-Dyngosz, Jagiellonian University

Discussant

• Veronika Duma, Goethe U Frankfurt (Germany)

Session Manager

• Tetiana Shyshkina, Justus Liebig U Giessen (Germany)