The Post-War Berlin Frauengruppe: A Forgotten Chapter of German-Jewish Women’s History

Abstract This article examines the contribution of German-Jewish women to rebuilding Jewish community life in Berlin following the Second World War. In 1948, five years before the re-establishment of the Jüdischer Frauenbund (JFB), Berlin’s Jewish women had organized themselves into a local Frauengruppe. This women’s group provided crucial support to the community’s needy, but unlike before the war, no longer championed demands for equal representation in the community. This article argues that the women’s inclination to pursue charitable work conforming to traditional gender norms—leaving community administration to their husbands—stemmed from their desire to recreate familiar pre-war conditions. Due to persecution under National Socialism, gender roles had become inverted, so that focusing on ‘feminine’ charitable work and empowering male leadership provided a sense of the ways of the past that helped to foster a feeling of return to pre-war normality.