Tödliche Razzia. Antisemitismus, Polizeigewalt und die Erschießung des Auschwitz-Überlebenden Shmuel Dancyger in Stuttgart am 29. März 1946

Book presentation with Io Josefine Geib (Frankfurt am Main)

Stuttgart, March 29, 1946: In the course of a black market raid, Auschwitz survivor Shmuel Dancyger is shot dead by a German policeman. He had only recently reunited with his family: His wife and children had also survived the extermination camp. They lived together in a room in the upper Reinsburgstraße. From 1945 to 1949, hundreds of Polish-Jewish Holocaust survivors lived here in a displaced persons camp consisting of confiscated private apartments. Hoping to emigrate to Israel or the USA soon, they established a diverse, self-managed everyday and cultural life in the west of Stuttgart under Allied protection.

The deadly raid in March 1946 was a brutal attack on this protected space. How was this possible, barely a year after the end of the war? How could the Stuttgart police carry out a raid largely on their own authority - after all, they were subordinate to the US Allies? Why was the perpetrator never identified, even though the Americans carried out investigations afterwards? How did the Jewish survivors react to the raid? These questions are at the heart of the book, which is primarily dedicated to the connection between anti-Semitism and police resovereignization and the self-assertion of the Jewish survivors in the DP camp.

Io Josefine Geib studied history at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) Paris, specializing in anti-Semitism and Holocaust research. She is currently working on a dissertation on the reparation of Nazi book theft in France. This book about the events on March 29, 1946 in Reinsburgstraße in Stuttgart is a revised version of her master's thesis.