Hear the Voices: The Need for Personal Narratives in Holocaust Studies

Personal narratives can teach us much about aspects of people’s lives that do not enter the documents that historians prefer. In the case of Holocaust survivors, the written documents were often created by outsiders who had their own agendas and prejudices. To ignore the survivors’ memoirs and oral histories would be to create history based on sources no more credible. In some instances, there would be no other documents at all. To ignore the survivors’ testimonies in those cases would be to let their history go untold

Hear the Voices: The Need for Personal Narratives in Holocaust Studies

Personal narratives can teach us much about aspects of people’s lives that do not enter the documents that historians prefer. In the case of Holocaust survivors, the written documents were often created by outsiders who had their own agendas and prejudices. To ignore the survivors’ memoirs and oral histories would be to create history based on sources no more credible. In some instances, there would be no other documents at all. To ignore the survivors’ testimonies in those cases would be to let their history go untold

Without a Home: German Jews as Displaced Persons in Postwar Germany

After the Second World War, some German Jews renounced their German heritage and proclaimed themselves stateless displaced persons (DPs). Unlike other DPs, they shared a common culture, history, and language with the perpetrators of the Holocaust. The language they spoke identified them as Germans, providing them with both opportunities and difficulties as they navigated the complex post-war world. German-language skills allowed for easier border crossings, since Jews could pose as ethnic Germans or as German prisoners of war. For those not wanting to live in displaced persons camps, their language ability facilitated interactions with the German authorities responsible for the housing and ration cards issued to free-living DPs. It also allowed them to seek retribution through assisting in the apprehension and prosecution of war criminals. The disadvantages of being German speakers were most evident outside of Germany’s borders and within the confines of the DP camps. In these locations German was the language of the oppressor, and it was all too easy to confuse German Jews with German perpetrators and to treat them as enemy nationals. Intending to leave Germany, German-Jewish DPs occupied an uncomfortable space between their former fellow countrymen and the predominantly eastern European Jewish DPs

All Under One Roof: Persecutees, DPs, Expellees, and the Housing Shortage in Occupied Germany

In postwar Germany, Allied personnel and displaced populations competed with local Germans for housing. Examining group interactions and conflicting interests in this competition sheds light on issues of responsibility and reconciliation in the occupied country. In the East, Germans quickly grasped the key political interests of the Soviet occupiers: inhospitable landlords were denounced as “Nazis,” and many East Germans rewrote their pasts to claim “victim-of-fascism” status. In the West, Germans cast themselves as allies in the battle against Communism. Wartime and postwar victims in both East and West struggled to gain a moral status that would facilitate access to resources and authority; yet in neither East nor West did they create united fronts. Meanwhile, the alliance between local Germans and ethnic German expellees against the DPs and Communists did facilitate integration of the ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe into western German society, changing the social and political landscape