The aftermath

Prof. Sergio DellaPergola, Dr. Juliane Wetzel

The Holocaust had completely changed the demographic profile of the Jewish people worldwide, reducing its numbers greatly. The physical, psychological, and cultural loss was immense and is still impossible to grasp. However, the horrific outcomes of wartime antisemitism did not put an end to antisemitic rhetoric and actions taken throughout the continent.

How was antisemitism expressed in the immediate postwar years?

For additional visual materials please see “downloads” below.

• Bankier, David, ed., The Jews Are Coming Back: The Return of the Jews to Their Countries of Origin after WWII (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2005).

• Brenner, Michael, After the Holocaust: Rebuilding Jewish Lives in Postwar Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997).

• Buruma, Ian, Year Zero: A History of 1945 (New York: The Penguin Press, 2014).

• DellaPergola, Sergio, “Between Science and Fiction: Notes on the Demography of the Holocaust,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies, vol. 10, no. 1 (1996), pp. 34 – 51.

• DellaPergola, Sergio, “Growth, Calamity and Continuity – the Jewish People before and after the Shoah: a Demographic Overview,” Legacy, vol. 2 (2010), pp. 32 – 43.

• Engel, David, “Patterns Of Anti-Jewish Violence In Poland, 1944-1946,” Yad Vashem Studies vol. 26 (1998), pp 43 – 85.

• Grynberg, Anne, “Des signes de resurgence de l’antisémitisme dans la France de l’après-guerre (1945–1953),” Les Cahiers de la Shoah, vol. 1, no. 5 (2001), pp. 171 – 223.

• Königseder, Angelika and Juliane Wetzel, Waiting for Hope: Jewish Displaced Persons in Post-World War II Germany (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2001).