Between the Lines: Between Two Worlds

Between Two Worlds: Jewish War Brides After the Holocaust

Part of Between the Lines: Author Conversations from The Library of JTS

Wednesday, March 20, 2024
1:00–2:00 p.m. ET

Facing the harrowing task of rebuilding a life in the wake of the Holocaust, many Jewish survivors, community and religious leaders, and Allied soldiers viewed marriage between Jewish women and military personnel as a way to move forward after unspeakable loss. Proponents believed that these unions were more than just a ticket out of war-torn Europe: they would help the Jewish people repopulate after the attempted annihilation of European Jewry. Historian Robin Judd, whose grandmother survived the Holocaust and married an American soldier after liberation, introduces us to the Jewish women who lived through genocide and went on to wed American, Canadian, and British military personnel after the war.

About the Author

Robin E. Judd is a specialist in Jewish, transnational, and gender history, with particular interests in Holocaust studies, the history of antisemitism, the history of religion, the history of leadership, and the history of migration. She is the author of Contested Rituals: Circumcision, Kosher Butchering, and German-Jewish Political Life in Germany, 1843–1933.

Praise for Between Two Worlds

“Between Two Worlds adds a new dimension to the literature on marriage and migration in the context of wartime upheavals and military occupations in the twentieth century . . . researched with care and diligence, the book is absorbing and, at times, powerfully moving.”
—Susan Zeiger, author of Entangling Alliances: Foreign War Brides and American Soldiers in the Twentieth Century

“Judd weaves individual stories throughout her chapters that are compelling, vivid, and poignant.”—Arissa Oh, author of To Save the Children of Korea: The Cold War Origins of International Adoption

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