At the end of World War II, the Allied powers found approximately 7 million to 9 million people who had been uprooted from their homes. Before the end of 1945, more than 6 million had been repatriated, leaving 1.5 million to 2 million displaced persons (DPs) who refused to return to their prewar homes - either out of free choice, or because they feared retribution. On VE Day, May 8, 1945, the DPs included about 100,000 Jews - survivors of the forced-labor camps, concentration camps, extermination camps, and death marches.
She'erit ha-Pletah
Many Jewish survivors and refugees were not prepared to return and resume their lives in Holocaust-haunted Europe. Most of these survivors gathered in displaced persons' (DP) camps and organized as a group with its own national consciousness and political objective: to be enabled to emigrate from Europe, primarily to settle in Palestine. The Jews organized under the Hebrew name She'erit ha-Pletah ("surviving remnant"; 1 Chr. 4:43), existing as such from the end of the war in Europe in 1945 until December 1950, when this organization's Central Committee went out of existence.
Converging on the Allied Zones of Occupation
Many thousands of Jews were at the very end of their strength by the time they were liberated, and died from exhaustion, disease, as well as from the shock of liberation and from the effects of eating food that their emaciated bodies were not able to assimilate. Others, by the thousands, made their way to their countries of origin, within the Allies' repatriation program. About 50,000 persons converged on camps in the Allied zones of occupation in Germany and Austria. Before long, they were joined by a great number of Jewish refugees fleeing from Eastern Europe with the Beriha (the organized exodus) movement. These were mostly Jews from Poland, including repatriates from the Soviet Union, and refugees from Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Romania. At the end of 1946, the number of Jewish DPs was estimated at 250,000 - 185,000 of whom were in Germany, 45,000 in Austria, and 20,000 in Italy.
Demographic Characteristics of DPs
The DPs were largely Jews from Eastern Europe, primarily Poland, whereas most of the survivors from Western Europe returned to their countries of origin. The great new influx changed the demographic composition of the DP population. At the time they were liberated, they consisted exclusively of single young persons. Among the repatriates from the Soviet Union, however, was a large number of family units and children.
Zionism and the DPs
The struggle for a solution of the DP problem was a part and parcel of the Zionist struggle for the immigration of Jews to Palestine and for the establishment of a Jewish state there. She'erit ha-Pletah played an active and important role in that struggle, together with the greater part of the Jews in the world, led by American Jewry. The following are the stages in the struggle.
The Harrison Mission
Because of the intense publicity given to the DP problem, President Harry S. Truman sent Earl G. Harrison as his personal envoy, in the summer of 1945, to inquire into the conditions of the Jews in the DP camps in the American zone in Germany. In his report, Harrison described the situation in the DP camps as awful, accused the American military administration of responsibility for this horrible situation, and was convinced that the only solution to the problem was the emigration of the Jewish DPs to Palestine. He therefore recommended that the British be asked to issue, without delay, 100,000 entry permits ("certificates"), without waiting for an overall settlement of the Palestine question.
The Effect of the Harrison Mission
Following the Harrison mission and the subsequent implementation of his recommendations, living conditions in the American zone improved considerably, compared to those that continued to prevail in the British zone. In the American zone, the Jewish DPs gained recognition as a special ethnic group that had its own requirements. They were put into separate camps, where they had a wide degree of autonomy. A special adviser on Jewish affairs was appointed to American military headquarters in Germany, and living conditions in the camps were greatly improved.
UNRRA and Other Relief Organizations
Although the DP camps were under the control of the military authorities, care of the DPs was entrusted to UNRRA (which had been set up as far back as 1943) and, as of July 1947, the International Refugee Organization (IRO). UNRRA supplied the basic necessities of life and also acted as the principal coordinating and supervisory agency of the nongovernmental welfare agencies. A considerable number and variety of Jewish agencies were active among the DPs. First to reach the Jewish survivors were the Jewish military chaplains, and it was they who established the first link between the survivors and the outside world. In June 1945, a delegation of the Jewish Brigade Group arrived in the DP camps - the first group of Palestinian Jews to establish contact with the survivors. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (known as the Joint), headed by its European director, Joseph J. Schwartz, sent its first teams to the camps in June 1945. By August 1945, its operations gained official recognition and were expanded. In the British zone, a Jewish Relief Unit sponsored by British Jewry was engaged in welfare operations. Also active in the DP camps were emissaries of Jewish youth movements and agricultural settlement organizations from Palestine, a teachers' delegation (arriving in 1947) also from Palestine, and a delegation of the Jewish Agency headed by Haim Yahil.
Autonomous Jewish DP Camps
Once the Jewish survivors were separated from the others and had their own autonomous camps (in the summer of 1945), each camp elected a camp committee. While they did not have a budget of their own, the committees were supported by the Joint and the Jewish Agency emissaries and assumed responsibility for the camps' internal administration, including hygiene and sanitation, cultural activities, and education and religious life.
Zionist Activities in the Camps
As soon as the war ended, the drive to unify the Zionist movement among the groups organized by the surviving partisans and ghetto fighters of Eastern Europe gained momentum. In addition to the Zionist parties, the non-Zionist religious movements - Agudat Israel and Po'alei Agudat Israel - were active in the DP camps. An elaborate school system was established in the camps, initiated under great difficulties by the survivors. The system, assisted by Jewish Brigade Group soldiers, by emissaries of the Jewish Agency and of the Palestine Jewish community, and by the different welfare agencies, grew rapidly. Despite all of the difficulties and shortcomings, the dedicated teachers and instructors coped successfully with the extraordinary problems of the mental and emotional rehabilitation of the children of the Holocaust. The educational institutions and kibbutzim were the centers of cultural life in the camps. The kibbutzim became the main instrument of preparing the youth for immigration to Palestine, by means of the agricultural training they established on farms that the authorities requisitioned for this purpose.
Newspapers, Commemoration and Documentation Projects
The acute and highly developed political sense of the DPs found its expression in more than seventy newspapers that they published, some in Hebrew but most in Yiddish. Commemoration and documentation projects included the work of the Tsentraler Historisher Komisiye (Central Historical Commission), established in December 1945 by the Central Committee in Munich, to assist in bringing Nazi criminals to trial.
The End of the DP Camps
The DP chapter came to an end with the establishment of the State of Israel, when the survivors living in the camps in Europe and in Cyprus began to converge en masse on the Jewish state. About two-thirds of them made their way to Israel after the long struggle; the rest emigrated to the United States, who now relaxing its immigration regulations. In late 1949 and early 1950, the adviser on Jewish affairs, the Jewish Agency mission, and the Central Committee, one by one wound up their operations and in 1953 the last Jewish DP camp in existence in Germany was disbanded.