Michael Meng

Ph.D. Student (ABD)
meng@email.unc.edu

Major Field: European History

Other Fields: East European History; Jewish History

Co-Advisors: Christopher Browning and Konrad Jarausch

Research Interests: My dissertation, "From Preservation to Destruction: Jewish Sites in Germany and Poland after the Holocaust," explores the appropriation and use of abandoned Jewish spaces. I explore a transnational challenge that emerged in Central East Europe after the ruptures of war and genocide: what to do with empty, damaged Jewish sites ­­ the synagogues, cemeteries, and districts scattered about the urban landscape. Moving across the postwar period from 1945 to 1989, I trace the shifting fate of these spaces in the cities of Warsaw, Berlin, Wroclaw, Potsdam, and Essen. In the decades just after the war, city officials cleared away many empty Jewish sites despite numerous protests from Jewish leaders, but by the late 1970s church groups, local residents, political dissidents, and Jews from abroad had started preserving the few left standing. My study analyzes this transformation in order to address broader questions about historical temporality, urban reconstruction, historic preservation, and the dynamics of Jewish-gentile relations after the Holocaust.