Migration, Memory, and New Beginnings: The Post-war Jewish Community in Frankfurt am Main, 1945-1960

Although Jews all over the world strongly opposed any renewal of Jewish life in Germany after World War II and the Holocaust, a small group of Jews decided – for very different reasons - to stay in the land of the perpetrators and on the “bloodstained soil of Germany”. This paper focuses on Jewish life in postwar Frankfurt am Main, where one of the largest Jewish communities in West Germany was re-established. First of all, the paper highlights a history of migration: while the Jewish community in fact was rebuilt by Jews from Frankfurt who had survived the Holocaust, a much larger number of members of the new community came to Frankfurt only after the war as Displaced Persons from Eastern Europe. A third group of Jews migrated to Frankfurt from Israel during the 1950s. Secondly, the paper explores the relationship between the Jewish community and the city of Frankfurt. Particularly, it asks how local Jewish history was commemorated and to what extent the Third Reich and the Holocaust were discussed. Finally, the paper focuses on certain “new beginnings” of Jewish life in postwar Frankfurt, which aimed at social integration above all in the field of religious life.