Life between Memory and Hope: The Survivors of the Holocaust in Occupied Germany

Description

This is the remarkable story of the 250,000 Holocaust survivors who converged on the American Zone of Occupied Germany from 1945 to 1948. They envisaged themselves as the living bridge between destruction and rebirth, the last remnants of a world destroyed and the active agents of its return to life. Much of what has been written elsewhere looks at the Surviving Remnant through the eyes of others and thus has often failed to disclose the tragic complexity of their lives together with their remarkable political and social achievements. Despite having lost everyone and everything, they got on with their lives, they married, had children and worked for a better future. They did not surrender to the deformities of suffering and managed to preserve their humanity intact. Mankowitz uses largely inaccessible archival material to give a moving and sensitive account of this neglected area in the aftermath of the Holocaust.

Zeev Mankowitz is a senior lecturer at the Melton Center for Jewish Education, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he has also served as Director. He has also been Director of the Jerusalem Fellows, a programme to develop educational leadership. He is a faculty member of the Rothberg School for overseas students, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Dr Mankowitz has been Visiting Professor at Old Dominion University, Yale University, and the University of Cape Town, as well as a visiting research fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies and a Fellow of the International Institute of Holocaust Research, Yad Vashem. He is also an academic consultant for the New Museum of the Holocaust, Yad Vashem, and has carried out lecture tours in the US, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, South Africa, Australia, Britain, Austria and Poland.

'... Life between Memory and Hope is a compelling achievement that will enrich immeasurably our comprehension of the Holocaust and its aftermath ... Mankowitz's book is virtually in a class of its own, and scholars of German and European history, as well as Jewish and Middle Eastern history, are certain to be enlightened by it.' Michael Berkowitz, H-German 'Life between Memory and Hope is a meticulously researched and well-written study of a period which is often forgotten in the face of the enormous catastrophe before and the Jewish political revival afterwards.' German History '... this is a well-written and well-researched study. It presents an original thesis, which is convincingly argued.' Studies in Contemporary Jewry