Yiddish in the Aftermath: Speech Community and Cultural Continuity in Displaced Persons Camps

Abstract

This chapter looks at the experience of survivors in displaced persons (DP) camps as a cultural anomaly, when Yiddish language and literature formed the basis for cultural continuity in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Jews in the DP camps produced a number of Yiddish publications whose aim was to renew Jewish cultural life. But even as the camp setting fostered the use of Yiddish as a lingua franca, survivors recognized that the role of the language and its culture was changing. Despite the efforts of Yiddishist writers and cultural activists to sustain it, Yiddish stood at a critical juncture: the debate over the adoption of a common language to unify Jewish civilization was not new, but in the DP camps it set the stage for the future development of Jewish culture. The chapter then explores the Yiddish DP camp publications to interpret the choices and loyalties that shaped the language practices of the time and the policies the intelligentsia of the camps articulated. It looks, first, at factors internal to the DP camps and, second, at external factors influencing language use, especially political and Zionist organizations and agencies.