Paths on Foreign Terrain

German-Jewish encounters after the holocaust

After 1933 the German Jews lived as refugees, scattered throughout the world. Although very few of them wished to return after the Second World War, around 250,000 holocaust survivors were living as displaced persons in occupied Germany – surrounded by Germans who also saw themselves as victims of the war. In her essays, Atina Grossmann examines aspects of these various experiences in foreign places. She is interested in life after the catastrophe: loss of homeland, grief over the murder of family members and the destruction of the Jewish social environment in Europe. She also turns her attention towards the traumatic after-effects of the holocaust and attempts at making a new start, especially from the perspective of women and their experiences of violence and motherhood.
Furthermore Atina Grossmann, born in New York as the daughter of a Jewish family who emigrated from Berlin, reflects in enlightening discussions not only on her own intellectual biography, but also on that of the development of gender history, to which she has made considerable contributions.

The Authoress
Atina Grossmann, born in 1950, Professor of Modern German and European History and Gender History at the Cooper Union for the Advancement o Science and Art. Publications include: Reforming Sex: The German Movement for Birth Control and Abortion Reform, 1920-1950 (1995), (as co-editor) After the Nazi Racial State: Difference and Democracy in Germany and Europe (2009).