The article deals with the question of Jews with a Jewish father but a non- Jewish mother, so-called Vaterjuden, who have become more important for the Jewish community in Germany since the 1990s as a result of the immi- gration of Russian-speaking Jews. It portrays three women belonging to this category who experienced how their Jewish affiliations were redefined in the course of migration. The text highlights the spaces and opportunities of self- determination they opened up for themselves and points to the role of (trans)national Jewish organizations established since the 2000s in this process.

Remigration and exchange relationships within the Jewish Diaspora reinforced the self-image of the Jewish community in Germany after 1945. Yet how did these phenomena influence local Jewish community life in divided Germany? The article traces processes of secularization and revitalization of tradition under the influence of remigration within the Jewish communities of Dresden and Würzburg. Taking the political framework during the Cold War into account, the article then examines how transnational networks and spaces influenced life within these respective communities.

This essay examines Eastern European Jewish livelihoods in western Germany during the first years after the Holocaust. It charts the different paths Jewish displaced persons (DPs) took into the world of work, including the Allied economy, the black market and the German economy. Over time, entrepreneurial activity in the formal Germany economy would become the main means of making a living. In the period covered here, however, the consequences of Nazi-era persecution converged with the postwar remnants of a racialized economic order to strongly disadvantage Jewish foreigners seeking to “set up shop.”

After the Second World War, the Polish People’s Republic directed hundreds of thousands of Polish Jews who had survived the Holocaust mainly to those areas that were newly assigned to the Polish state due to its westward shift: Lower Silesia and Farther Pomerania, where vibrant centers of Jewish settle- ment emerged. In the face of antisemitism, though, which was repeatedly activated in internal party disputes and was tolerated and sanctioned by broad swaths of society, much of the Jewish population emigrated or was expelled until 1968. The article analyzes the situation in 1944/45, traces these waves of migration, looks at the political framework, and discusses the underlying push and pull factors for migration.