After the Holocaust, the empty, silent spaces of bombed-out
synagogues, cemeteries, and Jewish districts were all that was left
in many German and Polish cities with prewar histories rich in the
sights and sounds of Jewish life. What happened to this scarred
landscape after the war, and how have Germans, Poles, and Jews
encountered these ruins over the past sixty years?
In the postwar period, city officials swept away many sites,
despite protests from Jewish leaders. But in the late 1970s church
groups, local residents, political dissidents, and tourists
demanded the preservation of the few ruins still standing. Since
the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, this desire to preserve
and restore has grown stronger. In one of the most striking and
little-studied shifts in postwar European history, the traces of a
long-neglected Jewish past have gradually been recovered, thanks to
the rise of heritage tourism, nostalgia for ruins, international
discussions about the Holocaust, and a pervasive longing for
cosmopolitanism in a globalizing world.
Examining this transformation from both sides of the Iron
Curtain, Michael Meng finds no divided memory along West-East
lines, but rather a shared memory of tensions and paradoxes that
crosses borders throughout Central Europe. His narrative reveals
the changing dynamics of the local and the transnational, as
Germans, Poles, Americans, and Israelis confront a built
environment that is inevitably altered with the passage of time.
"Shattered Spaces" exemplifies urban history at its best,
uncovering a surprising and moving postwar story of broad
contemporary interest.
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