A Community of Suffering: Jewish Holocaust Survivor Networks in Postwar America

Within months of arriving in the United States in 1946, Jewish Holocaust survivors began to organize themselves to help with the process of resettlement. The small band of socialists who established the Farband fun Geveyzene Yidishe Katsetler un Partizaner (United Jewish Survivors of Nazi Persecution) initiated a dual process of identity formation and memorialization of the Holocaust. The first survivor network founded in the United States, the Katsetler Farband developed a memorial culture that included commemorations and publications, replete with its own rituals and calendar. Moreover, the organization was part of a broader process of defining what experiences constituted the Holocaust and who was to be considered a survivor. Ultimately, they were among a host of survivor networks in the United States to lay the foundation for Holocaust memorialization.