Survivors of Nazi Persecution in Europe After the Second World War - 9780853039020

This collection of original essays brings together the work of both established researchers and young scholars in an area that is increasingly recognized as the crucible of post-war Europe. This new work on the neglected experience of survivors in the immediate aftermath of the war is characterized by sensitive explorations of individual stories, rigorously contextualized and informed by an acute awareness of how national and international policies, as well as age, gender, ethnicity and nationality, affected the fate of ordinary people. They show how almost every category that seems fixed and familiar now was actually in a state of flux in the turbulent post-war world. The crystallization of identities was never inevitable; choices and decisions made between 1945 and 1950 had profound consequences for nations, groups and individuals. Yet it took decades for these processes to become apparent. It was only with the end of the Cold War that researchers in the east and the west began to collaborate, explore archives and excavate memories that were once closed.

This innovative and often moving body of work draws on the results of research in a dozen countries spanning Eastern and Western Europe.

Suzanne Bardgett is Head of Holocaust and Genocide History at the Imperial War Museum London and is also developing the Museum's internal research strategy. She led the team which created the Holocaust Exhibition at the IWM London (1996-2000) and subsequently project-directed Crimes against Humanity: an exploration of genocide and ethnic violence (opened at the IWM in 2002), and was consultant Project Director on the Srebrenica Memorial Room, Potocari in Bosnia-Hercegovina (2007).

David Cesarani is Research Professor in History at Royal Holloway, University of London. His books include Major Farran's Hat: Murder, Scandal, and Britain's War against Jewish Terrorism, 1945-1948 (2009); Eichmann. His Life and Crimes (2004); Arthur Koestler. The Homeless Mind (1998); The Jewish Chronicle 'and Anglo-Jewry 1841-1991 (1994); Justice Delayed. How Britain became a Refuge for Nazi War Criminals (1992).

Jessica Reinisch is Lecturer in Contemporary History at Birkbeck College, University of London. Her research interests lie in European and international social, political and intellectual history, and she has published on Europe's post-war reconstruction, population movements and migration, and internationalism and international organizations. Johannes-Dieter Steinert is Professor of Modern European History and Migration Studies at the University of Wolverhampton. He has published widely on German, British and European social and political history, with special emphasis on international migration and minorities, forced migration, child forced labour, survivors of Nazi persecution, and international humanitarian assistance; and has co-organized four major international multidisciplinary conferences: 'European Immigrants in Britain 1933-1950' (2000); and on 'Beyond Camps and Forced Labour: Current International Research on Survivors of Nazi Persecution' (2003, 2006 and 2009).