Wir sind Juden aus Breslau

Prior to the Second World War, Breslau was home to the third-biggest Jewish community in Germany. The Nazi seizure of power meant persecution for these young Breslau Jews, some of whom managed to escape, very few of whom survived the concentration camps however. Fifteen contemporary witnesses provide insight into a generation in this work that, by drawing on oral testimony from individuals now based in countries as diverse as the USA, Great Britain, France and Israel, illustrates the dispersion that occurred amongst the Breslau Jews in the post-war period.

Some of the protagonists resolve to undertake the journey home, where they encounter a group of German-Polish youths, thus building a bridge between the past and present, with a revival of the local Jewish community in Wrocław currently underway. This is no longer a German Jewish community however: after the war German-Jewish returnees were given a hard time by both the Soviet military and then the authorities of communist Poland, as a result of which many of them emigrated. JG