Jews in Leipzig - The University of Texas at Austin

ebuild. They did so, reestablishing institutions, reclaiming property, and beginning
negotiations with the new authorities, the Soviet occupation and then the German
Democratic Republic. The Jews of Leipzig continued some of their old concerns in this
new world, negotiating with the government and among themselves the nature of their
identities as Jews and as Germans.
These negotiations were brought to a halt by a series of anti-Semitic purges in
1952 and 1953. The leadership of the Jewish community fled, as did many of their
fellow-Jews. The behavior of the East German state at this point showed some surprising
commonality with their Nazi predecessors. After the purges were over, those who
remained began another process of rebuilding, this time in constant tension with a
government that wanted to use them for propaganda purposes during the Cold War. With
the fall of the communist regime in 1989-90, the Jewish community of Leipzig was able
to chart its destiny again. The old issues of identity and community—among themselves
and between Jews and their German neighbors—continue in a very different context.
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