The Search for Home: How European Jews Reconstructed Belonging After 1945

Rebecca Blaier

Co-Presenters: Individual Presentation

College: College of Liberal Arts

Major: MA.HOLOCAUSTGENOCIDE

Faculty Research Mentor: Adara Goldberg  

Abstract:

“The Search for Home: How Holocaust Survivors Reconstructed Belonging after 1945” examines how survivors navigated the question of where and how to rebuild their lives after liberation. This study argues that during post-Holocaust migration, Jewish survivors engaged in a deliberate process of decision-making to construct their views on the meaning of “home”. Utilizing survivor diaries and other testimonies, this research will analyze how Holocaust survivors weighed factors such as consistent antisemitism, statelessness, immigration, sovereignty, and economy to redefine what “home” means to them.For many survivors, attempts to return to their homes and communities of origin revealed that they no longer belonged or could live safely among former neighbors. This reality prompted survivors to reassess what their next move was and how they would achieve safety and security. The experience of “home” varied widely based on survivors’ immediate postwar surroundings and their envisioned futures, whether in Germany, Israel, or the United States. In Allied-operated Displaced Persons camps, home was intentionally temporary, and immigration to Israel was conceptualized through the collective protection of the Jewish community. On the contrary, resettling in the United States was often framed as a private, stable form of living.By focusing on survivor language and decision-making in oral histories and memoirs, this paper demonstrates that “home” after the Holocaust could not be restored. Instead, it had to be reconstructed. The purpose of this work is to reveal how survivors transformed the concept of belonging from a memory of the past into a framework for survival.