April 10 at 12pm
After (and despite) the Holocaust, about 900,000 Jews remained in Western Europe. While rebuilding their former lives and communities, they realized that the threat of antisemitism had not fully vanished with Hitler’s defeat and still needed to be addressed. In response to this challenge, various Jewish organizations committed themselves to the fight against anti-Jewish prejudice in postwar Europe, ranging from transnational collaborations to local grassroots activism. In his paper, Ludwig Decke will explore the origins of Jewish efforts against antisemitism in post-1945 Europe. By highlighting the work of defense organizations from France, England, West Germany, and the United States between the end of World War II and the so-called “Swastika epidemic” of 1959/60, he discusses the following questions: How did Jewish leaders and activists understand the nature of antisemitism? Which strategies did they choose to combat it? And to what extent did their efforts intersect with the political struggles of other marginalized groups during this period? The paper illuminates a historic crossroads that influenced the future of the Jews on the continent and shaped the ways in which Europeans would grapple with racial and religious discrimination until the present day.
Ludwig Decke is a PhD candidate and a George L. Mosse Fellow in European Cultural History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. As a fellow of the Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies, he is currently conducting research for his dissertation Antiracism after Auschwitz: Jews and the Fight against Discrimination in Postwar Europe.
Ari Joskowicz is Associate Professor of Jewish Studies and History at Vanderbilt University, and chair of the Department of Jewish Studies. His most recent book is Rain of Ash: Roma, Jews, and the Holocaust, which appeared this year with Princeton University Press and won the 2023 Fraenkel Prize in Holocaust History.
