Where were the displaced persons camps established?
Displaced persons camps in post–World War II Europe were established in Germany, Austria, and Italy, primarily for refugees from Eastern Europe and for the former inmates of the Nazi German concentration camps. A "displaced persons camp" is a temporary facility for displaced persons, whether refugees or internally displaced persons.
How were the DP camps arranged?
The DP camps had, until then, been arranged according to nationality. Army administrators of the camps had thus forced the Jews to live in the camps together with displaced Germans and Austrians, for example, many of whom had been Nazi collaborators.
Where were DP camps in WW2?
Although there were continuous efforts to sort and consolidate populations, there were hundreds of DP facilities in Germany, Austria, Italy, and other European countries by the end of 1945. One camp was even set up in Guanajuato in Mexico.
What happened to the DP camps in Israel?
As with most DP camps, Zionism thrived and enjoyed popular support. Following the establishment of Israel 1948, and the United States Displaced Persons Act, the camps’ population quickly reduced. It closed on 15 October 1950, and shortly afterwards all remaining inhabitants were relocated.
Where were the displaced persons camps?
These displaced persons (DP) camps were in the occupied zones of Germany, Austria and Italy. Until the second half of 1946 there was an increasing movement of refugees from east to west, and at the beginning of 1947 the number of Jewish displaced persons stabilized at around 210,000.
Who directed the documentary "The Displaced Persons Camps"?
Video testimony of Shoshana Roshkovski in The Displaced Persons Camps, 2005, directed by Ayelet Heler.
Why did Harrison conclude that a stronger effort needed to be made to get the Jews out of the camps?
Harrison concluded that a stronger effort needed to be made to get the Jews out of the camps, because “they are sick of living in camps.” 7 In addition, he pointed out the real need for rest homes for those who needed a period of readjustment and training before living in the world.
How many Jewish DPs were there in 1948?
In April 1948, one month before the establishment of the State of Israel, there were still 165,000 Jewish DPs in Germany. With the establishment of the State of Israel about two-thirds of the DPs emigrated to Israel, while most of the others moved to the United States of America. Within five months the number dropped to 30,000. Most DPs followed in the next years; only a small minority stayed behind, unable or unwilling to leave. The last DP camp, in Fohrenwald, closed in February 1957.
What are the stages of assistance to displaced persons?
Four main stages of assistance to displaced persons were defined: rescue, relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction. These stages were not defined by sharp calendar distinctions; in some cases rehabilitation and relief began simultaneously, while in others, one phase extended into the next.
When was Bergen-Belsen liberated?
Belsen. Tel Aviv: Irgun Sheerit Hapletah Me'ezor Habriti, 1958, p. 119. (Hebrew). April 15, 1945 was the date that the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp was liberated by the Allies.
Who was the Jewish representative in the DP camps?
Harrison made a 3-week long inspection tour of the DP camps, accompanied by Dr. Joseph Schwartz, a representative of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (the Joint). 3 Harrison presented his findings in a report to President Truman, quoted below.
Who was the Jewish leader who visited the DP camps?
A visit to the DP camps by David *Ben-Gurion , chairman of the Executive of the Jewish Agency, in October 1945 helped spur the army to concentrate Jews in their own camps and allow the entry of Jews from Poland.
How did the Jewish refugees get to the camps?
The Jewish refugees, after learning how their families had been slaughtered and communities destroyed, could not or would not return to their hometowns and cities, and that feeling only hardened after the pogrom in the Polish town of *Kielce in July 1946 in which 41 Jews were massacred with police help. Many were helped to smuggle themselves across borders and reach the refugee camps in the Allied occupied zones by an organization of partisans and Zionists called *Beriḥah (Flight). Once in the DP camps, the refugees waited for permits that would admit them to Palestine, the United States, Canada, Australia, and a handful of countries that were willing, however grudgingly, to absorb refugees. But with immigration restrictions as stringent as they were the DPS often languished for years. As a result, camps initially set up as a short-term solution lingered as refugee settlements into the early 1950s, with one remaining open until 1957.
Why were the camps surrounded by barbed wire?
Many camps were surrounded with barbed wire as if it were the refugees who represented a threat to the neighboring population. DPS lacked underwear, shoes, toilet paper, toothbrushes and there were reports that refugees were being given less food per day than German prisoners of war had been given.
What is a displaced person?
DISPLACED PERSONS, term for the hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees and millions of non-Jews uprooted by the devastation of World War II, a large proportion of whom wound up in Displaced Persons camps set up by the victorious Allied forces in Germany, Austria, and Italy. Today the term is often synonymous with Jewish Holocaust survivors, ...
What did the refugees do in the camps?
In many camps, the refugees took charge of their fate, setting up camp committees to run practical matters or aiding the Beriḥah network to smuggle people across a gauntlet of European borders to Palestine. Decades later, Menachem Rosensaft, a child of Bergen-Belsen and then a leader in the so-called Second Generation movement of children of survivors, recalled how his father, Joseph, an Auschwitz survivor, governed the Bergen-Belsen camp, organizing cultural and political activities, rooting out collaborators, and defying the British overseers, as he did when they attempted to transfer two groups of refugees to squalid camps. In effect, he said, from 1945 to 1950, his father had been the mayor of a largely autonomous Jewish community with its own schools, hospitals, and police force. In some instances, refugees directed the smuggling of arms to the *Haganah army in Palestine that was pressing the British to give Jews a state or trained for the Haganah using arms given to the refugee camp policemen.
How many Jews were displaced in Europe in 1947?
The Polish and Baltic Jews who found a wartime haven in the Soviet Union and then were allowed to repatriate more than doubled the refugee number so that at its peak in 1947 there were almost 250,000 displaced Jews in Europe.
When did the DPS issue visas to Jews?
President Truman issued a directive in December 1945 mandating preferential treatment in the immigration laws for displaced persons. But as of June 30, 1947, only 22,950 visas had been issued to DPS in Germany, just 15,478 to Jews.
Scope and Content Note
The collection is comprised of photographs of various provenances related to the lives of Jewish displaced persons (DPs) in the period immediately following the Second World War, from 1945 to 1952.
Language of Materials
Inscriptions on the versos of photographs, and occasional textual materials are in Yiddish, English, Hebrew, German, and Polish.
Access Restrictions
The collection is open to the public. Permission to publish part or parts of the collection must be obtained in writing from the YIVO Archives.
Use Restrictions
There may be some restrictions on the use of the collection. For more information, contact:
Historical Note
In the final stages of the Second World War, surviving prisoners in Nazi concentration camps were liberated by the Allies beginning with Majdanek in July 1944, and Auschwitz, in January 1945. Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, and other camps were liberated from April to May 1945. The German unconditional surrender was signed on May 7, 1945.
Abstract
The collection is comprised of photographs of various provenances related to the lives of Jewish displaced persons (DPs) in the period immediately following the Second World War, from 1945 to 1952.
Arrangement
Following the arrangement used in a previous processing, the photographs are arranged primarily according to geographic location, with photographs relating to Germany, Austria, and Italy comprising the first three series, respectively.
Overview
Displaced persons camps in post–World War II Europe were established in Germany, Austria, and Italy, primarily for refugees from Eastern Europe and for the former inmates of the Nazi German concentration camps. A "displaced persons camp" is a temporary facility for displaced persons, whether refugees or internally displaced persons. Two years after the end of World War II in Europe, some 85…
Background
Combat operations, ethnic cleansing, and the fear of genocide uprooted millions of people from their homes over the course of World War II. Between 40 million and 60 million people were displaced. A large number were inmates of Nazi concentration camps, labor camps and prisoner-of-war camps that were freed by the Allied armies. In portions of Eastern Europe, both civilians and military personnel fled their home countries in fear of advancing Soviet armies, who were preced…
Establishing a system for resolving displacement
The original plan for those displaced as a result of World War II was to repatriate them to their countries of origin as quickly as possible. Throughout Austria and Germany, American, French, British, or Soviet forces tended to the immediate needs of the refugees located within their particular Allied Occupation Zone and set in motion repatriation plans.
Camps
Displaced persons began to appear in substantial numbers in the spring of 1945. Allied forces took them into their care by improvising shelter wherever it could be found. Accommodation primarily included former military barracks, but also included summer camps for children, airports, hotels, castles, hospitals, private homes, and even partly destroyed structures. Although there were continuous efforts to sort and consolidate populations, there were hundreds of DP facilitie…
The needs of displaced persons
All displaced persons had experienced trauma, and many had serious health conditions as a result of what they had endured.
The immediate concern was to provide shelter, nutrition and basic health care. Most DPs had subsisted on diets of far less than 1,500 calories a day. Sanitary conditions had been improvised at best, and there had been minimal medical care. As a result, they suffered from malnutrition, a va…
The difficulties of repatriation
Over one million refugees could not be repatriated to their original countries and were left homeless as a result of fear of persecution. These included:
• Ethnic or religious groups that were likely to be persecuted in their countries of origin. These included many Jews (see Sh'erit ha-Pletah), and others.
• Poles, Ukrainians and some Czechs - who feared persecution by the communist regimes installed in their home countries by the Soviet Army, …
Resettlement of DPs
Once it became obvious that repatriation plans left many DPs who needed new homes, it took time for countries to commit to accepting refugees. Existing refugee quotas were completely inadequate, and by the fall of 1946, it was not clear whether the remaining DPs would ever find a home.
Between 1947 and 1953, the vast majority of the "non-repatriables" would find new homes aroun…
See also
• Refugee camp
• Scouting in displaced persons camps
• Internally displaced person
• Tent city
• The Truce, an autobiographical story by Primo Levi, depicts the life of displaced persons in Central and Eastern Europe after World War II.