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In the Shadow of the holocauSt the changing Image of German Jewry after 1945 Michael Brenner In the Shadow of the Holocaust The Changing Image of German Jewry after 1945 Michael Brenner INA LEVINE ANNUAL LECTURE 31 JANUARY 2008 The assertions, opinions, and conclusions in this occasional paper are those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect those of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. First Printing, August 2010 Copyright © 2010 by Michael Brenner THE INA LEVINE INVITATIONAL SCHOLAR AWARD, endowed by the William S. and Ina Levine Foundation of Phoenix, Arizona, enables the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies to bring a distinguished scholar to the Museum each year to conduct innovative research on the Holocaust and to disseminate this work to the American public. The Ina Levine Invitational Scholar also leads seminars, lectures at universities in the United States, and serves as a resource for the Museum, educators, students, and the general public. At its first postwar congress, in Montreux, Switzerland, in July 1948, the political commission of the World Jewish Congress passed a resolution stressing ―the determination of the Jewish people never again to settle on the bloodstained soil of Germany.‖1 These words expressed world Jewry‘s widespread, almost unanimous feeling about the prospect of postwar Jewish life in Germany. And yet, sixty years later, Germany is the only country outside Israel with a rapidly growing Jewish community. Within the last fifteen years its Jewish community has quadrupled from 30,000 affiliated Jews to approximately 120,000, with at least another 50,000 unaffiliated Jews. How did this change come about? 2 • Michael Brenner It belongs to one of the ironies of history that Germany, whose death machine some Jews had just escaped, became a center for Jewish life in post-war Europe.
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