For the majority of the surviving Jews who stayed in Germany in the early years after the end of World War II, the country of the perpetrators was merely a transit point on their way to emigration. However, some of them were unable or unwilling to emigrate, while others returned to Germany in the following years. Jewish communities re-emerged in both parts of post-war Germany. What new forms of Jewish self-understanding developed from the ruins of the destroyed living environments, and how did they change over fifty years? One of the findings of this study is that Jewish identities in Germany between 1950 and 2000 cannot be accurately described with the term "Holocaust identity.".