The occasion for this five-day meeting was to discuss the present situation of Jews in Western Europe and its North African colonies. A decade after the victory over Nazism, the turmoil that had erupted in the immediate aftermath of World War II appeared to have finally congealed into stable political realities. The timing seemed perfect. For Europe\u2019s Jews, this was a moment to take stock of what had been achieved so far and what yet remained to be done.<\/span><\/p>\n Nine years earlier, in February 1946, a similar conference on the future of European Jews had proceeded in that very same room. In those days, antisemitism was deemed one of the most pressing issues standing in the way of the rebuilding of Jewish life on the continent.<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span>\u00a0But by 1955 things had changed for the better. Like its predecessor, the Consultative Conference of Jewish Organizations devoted an entire panel to the problem. In comparison to the immediate postwar years, however, the outlook appeared far brighter.<\/p>\n The American Jewish Committee, one of the organizers, praised the \u201cvalidity and vitality of the spirit of Western civilization on the continent.\u201d Western Europe, it seemed, served again as a \u201chistoric seat of long-lasting Jewish equality and security.”<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Such optimism, even if at times complemented with words of caution, pervaded the atmosphere in London. There was a consensus among the participants that \u201copen and organized antisemitism poses no major threat to the security of Jews in Western Europe at the present time.”<\/span>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n What had happened in the past decade that justified such a cheerful mood? External factors, above all, economic growth and political stability, had certainly helped to curb a revival of anti-Jewish sentiments in Western Europe. But the delegates\u2019 confidence was also the result of their own doings.<\/span><\/p>\n Thanks to my CJH-Fordham University Fellowship in September 2023, I was able to delve into the world of Jewish politics in postwar Western Europe. What I found were numerous attempts by Jewish leaders and activists to actively combat antisemitism during the first postwar decade. The American Jewish Committee is a case in point. The files of its European Office<\/a>, in the collections of YIVO, illustrates how AJC representatives regularly took record of antisemitic propaganda and supported grassroots defense efforts of local Jewish communities. They also sponsored intergroup relations projects within the context of the Christian-Jewish dialogue and closely worked with governments, universities, and international institutions like UNESCO to overcome racial and religious hatred.<\/p>\n The London conference embodied the success of this form of activism. But it also marked a turning point. During the following decade, the map of \u201cEurope,\u201d so prominently displayed at the conference venue [above<\/em>] , shrunk considerably as Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria gained independence from the French Empire. Decolonization triggered large-scale immigration from Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean to Western European metropoles. These \u201cnewcomers,\u201d alongside millions of so-called \u201cguest workers,\u201d would soon bear the brunt of a new wave of racial hatred and render Jews, whom Hannah Arendt once called Europe\u2019s \u201cminorit\u00e9 par excellence,\u201d one minority among many.”<\/span>4<\/sup><\/a><\/span>\u00a0Such epochal shifts posed a challenge for Jewish defense organizations. The question of how to situate the fight against antisemitism vis-\u00e0-vis the antiracist claims of other marginalized groups now became an important issue for Jews in an increasingly multicultural Europe.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" May 30, 2024 By Ludwig Decke, 2023 CJH-Fordham University Fellow Fighting Antisemitism on the Eve of Decolonization In the late spring of 1955, West London Synagogue\u2019s Stern Hall hummed with a flurry of voices in various languages. Over one hundred representatives of Jewish communities and organizations, originating from twenty countries, huddled behind long rows of tables in the smoke-filled conference room. [image above: Collection…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4259,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1048,1288,1289,1290,372],"class_list":["post-4247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog-post","tag-american-jewish-committee","tag-antisemitism","tag-decolonization","tag-north-africa","tag-yivo-collections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4247"}],"version-history":[{"count":37,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4454,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4247\/revisions\/4454"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/Picture2.jpg\")
<\/a><\/h4>\n