Jews in Germany after the Holocaust
Memory, Identity, and Jewish-German Relations

Interviews with Jews born in post-Holocaust Germany address questions of collective memory and ethnicity.

Lynn Rapaport (Author)

9780521588096, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 17 July 1997

340 pages, 4 tables
22.9 x 15.4 x 2.8 cm, 0.56 kg

'Rapaport's fine study demonstrates powerfully how a deeply experienced 'otherness' can reproduce itself daily in a situation devoid of any objective differences and ostensible discrimination … excellent book'. American Journal of Sociology

What is it like to be Jewish and to be born and raised in Germany after the Holocaust? Based on remarkably candid interviews with nearly one hundred German Jews, Lynn Rapaport's book reveals a rare understanding of how the memory of the Holocaust shapes Jews' everyday lives. As their views of non-Jewish Germans and of themselves, their political integration into German society, and their friendships and relationships with Germans are subtly uncovered, the obstacles to readjustment when sociocultural memory is still present are better understood. This is also a book about Jewish identity in the midst of modernity. It shows how the boundaries of ethnicity are not marked by how religious Jews are, or their absorption of traditional culture, but by the moral distinctions rooted in Holocaust memory that Jews draw between themselves and other Germans. Jews in Germany after the Holocaust has won an award for being the best book in the sociology of religion from the American Sociological Association.

Prologue: setting the stage: the Jewish community of Frankfurt and the voices of its members
1. Introduction
2. Living in the land of the murderers?: How Jews who live in Germany view Germans
3. Here in Germany I am a Jew: identity images and the criteria for group membership
4. I have German citizenship but I wouldn't call myself a German: ethnic group loyalties and the lack of national affiliations
5. My friends are not typical Germans: the character of Jewish-German friendships
6. Interethnic intimacy: the character of German-Jewish sex, love, and intermarriage
7. Theoretical implications and future research
Appendix: methodology.

Subject Areas: Jewish studies [JFSR1], Cultural studies [JFC]