Girls interrupted : family, community, and identity in the aftermath of the Holocaust in Poland

This thesis examines eleven Polish Jewish women’s Holocaust memoirs, arguing that their Jewish identities were moored to family and community. Because Polish Jewish families and communities were largely destroyed during the war, and because of political and ethno-cultural considerations in postwar Poland, Polish Jewish women who desired to rebuild their lives in their homeland after the war were obliged to conceal or relinquish their ties to Jewish identity. Those who wished to reestablish their ties to Jewish culture and identity in the aftermath of the war were obliged to do so beyond the borders of Poland.