Jews in Germany after the Holocaust: Memory, Identity, and Jewish-German Relations / Edition 1

by Lynn Rapaport

Overview

Jews in Germany After the Holocaust uses extensive interviews to show how Holocaust memory shapes the lives of Jews who were born and raised in Germany after the Holocaust. It focuses on Jews' views of other Germans, of themselves, their integration into German society, and their friendships, sexual and love relationships with Germans. It considers the problem of defining Jewish identity in the context of modernity, and the difficulties Jews in Germany face dealing with Germans in everyday life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521588096
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	07/17/1997
Series:	Cambridge Cultural Social Studies
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	340
Product dimensions:	6.06(w) x 9.02(h) x 1.10(d)

Table of Contents

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.

Editorial Reviews

"Laced with engaging case histories, this well-written account will appeal to the scholarly community as well as educated general readers." G.P. Blum, Choice

"This book is a major addition to the small, but growing, body of scholarship abouth Jewsih life in post-World War II Germany. Rapaport presents a richly textured portrait of Jewish daily life, focusing primarily on the processes that produce and preserve a sense of Jewish identity. Historians...will find in Rapaport a good example of how to understand ethnic menatality as the product of an interaction between collective memory and the dense reality of everyday life." Alan E, Steinweis, Jrnl of Interdisciplinary History

"Rapaport shows nicely how today's Jews in Germany — who, tellingly, would never identify themselves as German Jews — possess all the characteristics of being an indistinguishable segment of German culture and society. In short, they would be indistinguishable from the Germans but for one major fact: their collective memory about the Holocaust. This, as Rapaportdemonstrates in impressive detail, affects all their perceptions of and interactions with Germans: on the job, in private life, as coworkers, friends, and lovers." Andrei S. Markovits, American Journal of Sociology

"This book is a major addition to the small, but growing, body of scholarship about Jewsih life in post-World War II Germany. Rapaport presents a richly textured portrait of Jewish daily life, focusing primarily on the processes that produce and preserve a sense of Jewish identity." Alan E. Steinweis, Journal of Interdisciplinary History

"Lynn Rapaport's stimulating work provides a sociological examination of the Holocaust's impact on the relations between Jews and Germans in the postwar Federal Republic." Gavriel D. Rosenfeld, German Studies Review

From the Publisher