Conception: Jan C. Behrends, Potsdam; Juliane Fürst, Potsdam; Mischa Gabowitsch, Potsdam; Semion Goldin, Jerusalem
Participants: Samuel Barnai, Jerusalem; Stefano Bottoni, Budapest; Naida-Michal Brandl, Zagreb; Kateřina Čapková, Prague; Diana Dumitru, Chișinău; Konstanty Gebert, Warsaw; Zvi Gitelman, Ann Arbor; Jan T. Gross, Berlin; Pavel Kolář, Konstanz; Ilse Josepha Lazaroms, Frankfurt am Main/Utrecht; Joanna Nalewajko-Kulikov, Warsaw; Pól Ó Dochartaigh, Galway; Andrea Pető, Budapest; Iryna Ramanava, Vilnius; Joshua Rubenstein, Cambridge, Mass.; Dariusz Stola, Warsaw

The Holocaust decimated Eastern Europe’s Jewish communities, but it didn’t obliterate them. Several million Jews were living in the Soviet Union and its newly expanded sphere of influence after the end of the Second World War. Their postwar experiences are often seen as an epilogue to the Shoah, or else portrayed as an interlude cut short by the communist regimes’ anti-Zionist campaigns and the renewed wave of emigration they caused. Fifty years later, this conference reconsiders Jewish experiences before 1968 and places them in the wider context of postwar European societies.