Displaced persons camps are camps established to temporarily host refugees and displaced persons during and especially after a war. In the context of the Holocaust and World War II, displaced persons camps were set up in the territories of Germany, Austria and Italy in order to host refugees from Eastern Europe and former inmates of Nazi concentration camps. Many of these were established by the Allies in the locations of former concentration and extermination camps, albeit with a different purpose - to become places for rehabilitation, recovery, and integration into the day-to-day life of the survivors. It is estimated that around 850,000 people lived in displaced persons camps across Europe, 250,000 of them being Jews.[1] Most of these displaced person camps operated between 1945-1952 in Germany, Austria, and Italy. While most of the survivors left the camps by 1952, some survivors remained until 1957, when Foehrenwald, the third largest Jewish displaced persons camp in the US-administered Zone of Germany, was closed.[2]
Many of the survivors experienced two dilemmas: on the one hand, the hope of reuniting with family members they thought they died in the Holocaust, and on the other hand, the desire to move on and rebuild their lives from scratch.[3] Many of the Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust fled to he Soviet Union, mostly thinking their family members had died during the war. Under the communist regime of the Soviet Union and satellite states, Jews adopted a low profile, changed their surnames and did everything they could to avoid being identified as Jews, which means that they stopped searching for their family members and could not be found, either. After the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, which caused the mass immigration of Soviet Jews to Israel in the 1990s, many families separated after more than 45 years managed to reunite.[4]
Research your ancestors on MyHeritage
Relocation of survivors from displaced persons camps
The Allies set up field hospitals in concentration and extermination camps, in order to heal the survivors. Survivors of different camps like Bergen-Belsen, Neuengamme, Dachau, Mauthausen and Theresienstadt, were sent to Sweden, which was a neutral country during the war. The Red Cross and the Swedish government conducted an operation called "The White Buses". This operation transported the patients on buses to the coast in northern Germany and from there in rowboats to Sweden. These buses were painted white with red crosses painted on the roof, side, front and back. [5][6] Once they had arrived to Sweden, the recovery treatments lasted between one and four years, the survivors received not only physical and mental care, but also professional advancement according to the profession before the divorce - if it existed - and if not, they were directed and taught some profession that could support them in the future. It is possible to obtain lists and names of survivors from the Swedish Red Cross or the International Red Cross. However, one problem with this repository of information is that the Swedes did not register next to the name of every survivor their religion; besides Jews, there were also captive soldiers[3] who were sent to Sweden and due to the high assimilation of German Jews, it might not always be clear what the person's religion is by just reading their names.
Life inside the displaced persons camps
.jpg)
In the displaced persons camps there were soldiers and prisoners from other nations who were brought to Germany as forced laborers. Their presence at the camp next to the Jews caused the continuation of anti-Semitic incidents and re-ignited the question of "who is a Jew?". They were a kind of bubble that grew over time and the number of residents constantly fluctuating, as many camp residents were trying to leave for all corners of the world to start a new life - most of them to the British Mandate of Palestine. The mere existence of these camps for the Jews after the Holocaust, expresses their pursue of recovery, revival, renewal, continuity and above all, hope. The day-to-day life of the survivors began to take shape with the establishment of schools, the development of culture through orchestras and theater groups, including the publication of a local newspaper in each camp, and discussions about the future of immigrating to Israel, training for kibbutz life, preparing activities for the youth movements, continuing from where they had been forced to stop by the Nazi regime, especially in Poland. These camps were also the place where the number of weddings and births between the years 1945-1948 in the displaced persons camps was amongst the highest number in the world.[7][3] These camps also contained cemeteries.
The Bericha movement in the displaced persons camps
In addition to the Allies, another organization was active since the last years of the war, known as the "Bericha Movement", from the Hebrew word בריחה ("escape") and which operated between 1944 and 1948, rescuing Jews, mainly children, from Europe and bringing them to Israel. The Bericha movement arrived in the displaced persons camps in 1945 and organized the Jews on their way to Israel; this task was not easy because of the "White Book", a document published in 1939 from the English Mandate Office in London, which stated the prohibition of Jewish immigration to Israel in mass numbers, but only in controlled numbers.[8] Around 150 former soldiers of the Jewish Brigade of the British Army were secretly sent to organize the escape points in Austria and Germany and to help with the preparations for the illegal immigration to Palestine.[9]
As the gates to immigrate to the British Mandate of Palestine were closed, immigration to Israel developed through this underground effort. This wave of immigration is called Aliyah B or Ha'apala (הַעְפָּלָה, "ascension"), a wave that was countered by the sinking of ships with survivors, among them the Struma, a boat with 10 crew and about 781 refugees on board, most of them of Romanian origin; two people survived its sinking.[10] There were about 300 people on board the Mefküre, which was sunk on 5 August 1944 by a Soviet submarine after failing to identify; 5 Jews and 6 crew members survived in the only available lifeboat.[11] On board the Exodus 1947, there were 4,515 survivors; after her arrival to Haifa and a struggle with British forces that began with its interception in the Mediterranean,[12] they were all returned to Germany on board the smaller boats Empire Rival, Ocean Vigour and Runnymede Park, to the displaced persons camps in Am Stau and Pöppendorf, and in November 1947 to Sengwarden and Emden, after being sent to France, where the local authorities refused to remove the refugees by force, being left on board for three weeks until they were sent to the British-administered zone of Germany, causing a wave of international protests and complaints against the British government.[13] Of the 4,515 refugees on board of the Exodus, around 2,700 managed to escape the displaced persons camps by April 1948 into the US-controlled zone of Germany with the help of the Bericha movement, from where they would immigrate to Palestine. Many of them were detained by the British authorities upon arrival and sent to camps in Cyprus, with the last one closed by February 11, 1949.[14]
See more
References
- ↑ Wyman, Mark. DP Camps in Europe. DPs Europe's Displaced Persons, 1945-1951
- ↑ JDC in the Displaced Persons (DP) Camps (1945-1957). Joint Distribution Committee Archives
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 The Return to Life in the Displaced Persons Camps, 1945-1956. Yad Vashem
- ↑ "Remember Your New Names": Jews who Survived the Holocaust Using False Identities. Yad Vashem.
- ↑ Specifikation över antal räddade/transporterade med de Vita bussarna. Swedish Red Cross
- ↑ Greayer, Agneta; Sjöstrand, Sonja. The White Buses - The Swedish Red Cross rescue action in Germany during the Second World War. Swedish Red Cross
- ↑ After WWII, Survivors of Nazi Horrors Found Community in Displaced-Persons Camps. History Channel
- ↑ Edelheit, Hershel. History of Zionism: A Handbook And Dictionary. Routledge, 2000. ISBN:9780813329819
- ↑ Escape from Europe - the "Bericha" - A Learning Environment. Yad Vashem
- ↑ Food Packages Sent to Struma Victims Arrive in Palestine After Two-year Delay. Jewish Telegraphic Agency
- ↑ Danacıoğlu, Esra. Unutulmuş Bir Trajedi: Karadeniz'de Batırılan Mefkûre - II
- ↑ Brown, Alexander Crosby (1961). Steam Packets on the Chesapeake. Cambridge, MD: Tidewater Publishers. p. 112. ISBN 0-87033-111-6.
- ↑ EXODUS 1947. Holocaust Encyclopedia. United States Holocaust Museum
- ↑ Tucker, Spencer C. The Encyclopedia of the Arab-Israeli Conflict: A Political, Social, and Military History. 2008