A sociohistorical analysis of the construction of Jewish life and national identity in post-Holocaust Germany.

New Beginnings offers an unprecedented historical inquiry into how Jewish in Germany began to rebuild their social and cultural networks immediately following World War II. Prompted by the recent dynamic development of the Jewish community in Germany, social analyses of the German Jewish experience have focused primarily on current trends. But here Hagit Lavsky looks at the early history of the postwar German Jewish community, while considering how German Jews intermingled with Jews from other countries who, after the war, ended up in Germany's Displaced Persons camps.

Lavsky concentrates on the British Zone of occupation in northwest Germany where some of the most important Jewish communities developed and laid the foundation for a central Jewish communities developed and laid the foundation for a central Jewish organization in the Federal German Republic. It was here that the biggest DP camp -- Bergen-Belsen -- was located, with about 10,000 Jews and a flourishing DP community. And it was here, through a unique cooperation of "camp and community, " that a new Jewish post-Holocaust nationalism began to take shape.

As the first in-depth analysis of the combined development of "camp and community, " New Beginnings examines the history of both groups within the context of the Jewish world, the emergence of Palestine-Israel, and the international arena. In so doing, it reveals that the Jewish presence in Germany was not only an issue to be tackled by external powers but also an active force shaping the Jewish post-Holocaust stance worldwide.