Recovering a Voice: West European Jewish Communities after the HolocaustDavid Weinberg

Abstract

Recovering a Voice is a meticulously detailed analysis of the reconstruction of Jewish life in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands between 1945 and the early 1960s. In six chapters, David Weinberg shows how the foundations were laid for Jews to remain in Europe after the Holocaust. The strength of the book lies in its nuanced analysis of similarities and differences among the French, Belgian, and Dutch Jewish communities as they grappled with their postwar reconstruction. Chapters one (“Return, Relief, and Rehabilitation”) and two (“Restructuring European Jewish Communities: Hopes and Realities”) look at the role of international and American Jewish relief organizations and their interactions with local leaders as they worked to lay the foundation for future Jewish life. Local authorities often resisted when British and American relief organizations demanded that they initiate a professional bureaucracy and centralize fundraising. The communities faced many challenges as they struggled to rebuild materially and institutionally. The Nazis and local authorities had confiscated approximately 70,000 apartments formerly occupied by Jews in the three countries, two-thirds of them in France (p. 40). Returning survivors found their homes occupied by people who had gained ownership during the war, or by squatters who had taken up residence because of the postwar housing shortage. New owners rarely relinquished the apartments readily, arguing disingenuously that they had secured the dwellings “in good faith” and should not be penalized for having been duped. In Paris returnees and wartime occupants frequently came to blows, and in many cases the new homeowners banded together to defend their rights.