Holocaust Memorial Day Event: Starting Over: Reconstituted Jewish Families After the Holocaust

With an introduction by the Mayor of Camden, Councillor Nadia Shah

To mark the week of Holocaust Memorial Day 2017, The Wiener Library will host a special lecture by Dr Beth Cohen to reflect on the theme of ‘How can life go on?’.

In the postwar Displaced Persons camps, the birth rate of Jewish babies born to survivors was historically high. While this was true, Cohen provides an alternative narrative to the post-Holocaust picture of survivors’ renewal. She argues that many postwar Jewish families were built on the remnants of ruptured ones: widowed parents who remarried and became blended families of survivors that included children born before or during the war. What did this mean to child survivors who found themselves in new reconfigured groups composed of two-generations of survivors now under one roof? Synthesizing oral testimonies and archival documents, Cohen’s talk will highlight the complexity and long-lasting repercussions of rebuilt families from the children’s perspective.