Germany 1946: Save Haven or Forbidden Land for Jews?

Shortly after the Holocaust a quarter million Jews lived in the four occupation zones of what was once Germany. Most of them were East European Holocaust survivors who found a temporary refuge on what many considered a cursed soil. Next to them was a much smaller group of German Jews who survived the Nazi terror or returned from exile to rebuild a “better Germany.” How did they relate to postwar Germany and what was the relationship between these two Jewish communities?

This event is part of Many Promised Lands, LBI's 2026 lecture series covering migration of German-Jewish refugees after 1946.

This programming is made possible through the generous support of the Levi-Thalheimer Fund for Research and Public History.

Michael Brenner is Distinguished Professor of History and Seymour and Lillian Abensohn Chair in Israel Studies at American University in Washington DC, where he serves as director of the Center for Israel Studies. He also holds the chair of Jewish History and Culture at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. He is the International President of the Leo Baeck Institute for the Study of German-Jewish History and Culture and an elected member of the Bavarian Academy of Science, the Accademia Nazionale Virgiliana in Italy and the American Academy for Jewish Research. In 2014 he was awarded the order of merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. In 2020 he was the first recipient of the first Salo W. and Jeannette M. Baron Award for Scholarly Excellence in Research of the Jewish Experience. In 2023 he was awarded the Cultural Prize of Honor of the City of Munich.

He published 9 books, which have been translated in 12 languages, and edited 19 volumes. His latest publications are In Hitler’s Munich: Jews, the Revolution, and the Rise of Nazism (Princeton University Press 2022), In Search of Israel: The History of an Idea (Princeton University Press, 2018), and A Short History of the Jews (Princeton University Press 2010).