Shattered Spaces: Encountering Jewish Ruins in Postwar Germany and Poland [Hardcover] Meng, Michael

Shattered Spaces: Encountering Jewish Ruins in Postwar Germany and Poland [Hardcover] Meng, Michael

Book is in very good condition! There is only light wear from use. The pages are clean with no marks.

After the Holocaust, the once vibrant Jewish districts, synagogues, and cemeteries in German and Polish cities were left as silent, empty spaces amid the rubble. These cities, once rich with Jewish life, bore scars that prompted the question: what became of these landscapes, and how have Germans, Poles, and Jews engaged with these ruins over the past sixty years?

In the years following the war, many sites were demolished by city officials despite protests from Jewish leaders. However, by the late 1970s, church groups, locals, political dissidents, and tourists began advocating for the preservation of the remaining ruins. Since the Soviet Union's collapse in 1989, efforts to preserve and restore these spaces have intensified. One of the most remarkable and understudied changes in postwar European history has been the rediscovery of a long-neglected Jewish past, fueled by heritage tourism, nostalgia for ruins, global Holocaust conversations, and a growing desire for cosmopolitanism in an increasingly interconnected 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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