Renegotiating Jewish sites and quarters: Jewish urban landscapes in post-war Europe

After World War II, all over Europe many places which had born a distinctively Jewish character but to which no Jews returned, from buildings and streets to entire neighbourhoods were either repurposed, torn down in urban renewal schemes, or disappeared from the map entirely. Meanwhile, survivors of the Holocaust asked themselves whether there was any future for Jews in European cities at all, or whether rebuilding a life would only be possible in the new urban centres of Jewish life, particularly in the Americas and Palestine/Israel. We focus on Jewish sites and quarters in the immediate post-war period, putting central stage the liminal character of the era and Jewish agency in shaping urban spaces and attributing new meanings to them. This essay serves as the introduction to a special issue on Jewish spaces as locales where various actors articulated their perspectives on the past, present, and future of Jews in Europe.