This collection of original essays on the aftermath of the Second World War - edited by four of Europe's leading scholars and practitioners - presents the best, broadest, and newest research in an international enterprise to recover a submerged past that, while half-forgotten, shaped the lives of millions of people. The book is characterized by sensitive explorations of individual stories, rigorously contextualized and informed by an acute awareness of how national and international policies, as well as age, gender, ethnicity, and nationality, affected the fate of ordinary people. Applying multi-disciplinary insights and techniques, the essays show how almost every category, that seems fixed and familiar now, was actually in a state of flux in the turbulent post-war world. This innovative and often moving body of work, originating in a dozen countries, draws on the results of several major European-funded research projects. Crucially, the essays consider experiences from both Eastern and Western Europe.