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Jews, Germans, and Allies: Close Encounters in Occupied Germany
In the immediate aftermath of World War II, more than a quarter million Jewish survivors of the Holocaust lived among their defeated persecutors in the chaotic society of Allied-occupied Germany. Jews, Germans, and Allies draws upon the wealth of diary and memoir literature by the people who lived through postwar reconstruction to trace the conflicting ways Jews and Germans defined their own victimization and survival, comprehended the trauma of war and genocide, and struggled to rebuild their lives.
In gripping and unforgettable detail, Atina Grossmann describes Berlin in the days following Germany's surrender--the mass rape of German women by the Red Army, the liberated slave laborers and homecoming soldiers, returning political exiles, Jews emerging from hiding, and ethnic German refugees fleeing the East. She chronicles the hunger, disease, and homelessness, the fraternization with Allied occupiers, and the complexities of navigating a world where the commonplace mingled with the horrific. Grossmann untangles the stories of Jewish survivors inside and outside the displaced-persons camps of the American zone as they built families and reconstructed identities while awaiting emigration to Palestine or the United States. She examines how Germans and Jews interacted and competed for Allied favor, benefits, and victim status, and how they sought to restore normality--in work, in their relationships, and in their everyday encounters.
Jews, Germans, and Allies shows how Jews were integral participants in postwar Germany and bridges the divide that still exists today between German history and Jewish studies.
In gripping and unforgettable detail, Atina Grossmann describes Berlin in the days following Germany's surrender--the mass rape of German women by the Red Army, the liberated slave laborers and homecoming soldiers, returning political exiles, Jews emerging from hiding, and ethnic German refugees fleeing the East. She chronicles the hunger, disease, and homelessness, the fraternization with Allied occupiers, and the complexities of navigating a world where the commonplace mingled with the horrific. Grossmann untangles the stories of Jewish survivors inside and outside the displaced-persons camps of the American zone as they built families and reconstructed identities while awaiting emigration to Palestine or the United States. She examines how Germans and Jews interacted and competed for Allied favor, benefits, and victim status, and how they sought to restore normality--in work, in their relationships, and in their everyday encounters.
Jews, Germans, and Allies shows how Jews were integral participants in postwar Germany and bridges the divide that still exists today between German history and Jewish studies.
416 pages, Paperback
First published September 4, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 24, 2021
Most of this book is about post World War II "D.P." (displaced persons) camps in Germany. I had always thought most D.Ps were Jews, but in fact many of them where non-Jewish refugees from newly Communist Eastern Europe. This book focuses on Jewish D.Ps. Some of the surprisin things I learned were:
1. I had always thought that most Jewish D.Ps had been in concentration camps; the author thinks, however, that many of them fled to the Soviet Union to avoid Nazism, survived the war in the Soviet Union, discovered after the war that their Eastern European hometowns were unwelcoming or dangerous, and then fled to the D.P. camps.
2. I had always thought of D.P. camps as sealed off from their German neighbors; but in fact they needed Germans in a wide variety of service jobs (e.g. plumbers, doctors etc). About 20 percent of D.Ps lived on their own in German towns, where they interacted even more with local Germans.
3. I was vaguely aware that Jews in the D.P. camps were eager to make up for lost time by getting married and having children- but I had no idea how eager. One estimate was that Jewish D.Ps had 50 births per 1000 people in 1947- roughly seven times the German birth rate at the time. Jews also had about ten times as many weddings as Germans.
The book also discusses Germans (who were very traumatized by the war in Berlin, but often were unaffected if they lived in rural areas far from combat) and surviving Berlin Jews (most of whom were elderly and highly assimilated).
1. I had always thought that most Jewish D.Ps had been in concentration camps; the author thinks, however, that many of them fled to the Soviet Union to avoid Nazism, survived the war in the Soviet Union, discovered after the war that their Eastern European hometowns were unwelcoming or dangerous, and then fled to the D.P. camps.
2. I had always thought of D.P. camps as sealed off from their German neighbors; but in fact they needed Germans in a wide variety of service jobs (e.g. plumbers, doctors etc). About 20 percent of D.Ps lived on their own in German towns, where they interacted even more with local Germans.
3. I was vaguely aware that Jews in the D.P. camps were eager to make up for lost time by getting married and having children- but I had no idea how eager. One estimate was that Jewish D.Ps had 50 births per 1000 people in 1947- roughly seven times the German birth rate at the time. Jews also had about ten times as many weddings as Germans.
The book also discusses Germans (who were very traumatized by the war in Berlin, but often were unaffected if they lived in rural areas far from combat) and surviving Berlin Jews (most of whom were elderly and highly assimilated).
September 27, 2025
it’s a little thin on material
It’s actually half the length, half is footnotes. It’s an easy read, and interesting, but it feels very sparse which makes sense of course if the period wasn’t well documented, but I felt the author could have done more with the information she did have. She falls into the trap of laundry listing dates and places several times. And the end is extremely abrupt.
It’s actually half the length, half is footnotes. It’s an easy read, and interesting, but it feels very sparse which makes sense of course if the period wasn’t well documented, but I felt the author could have done more with the information she did have. She falls into the trap of laundry listing dates and places several times. And the end is extremely abrupt.
April 30, 2009
Exactly what good history is supposed to be, or so I think. Takes peoples often studied in isolation, places them in a realistic context where they obviously intermingled on a daily basis (in this case, immediate postwar Germany, 1945-1948) and sees what comes of it. Grossmann has a remarkable sensitivity to her major actors, and turns up personal stories from the most unlikely of places. Her grasp of Jewish identity post-Holocaust and pre-1948 Israel is fascinating, and her attention to the particularities of women's experience (Jewish, German and American) at this time probably unrivaled.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews