From the liberation of the camps to the displaced persons' camps (D.P)

The liberation of the camps: the discovery of horror

When the soldiers of the Allied armies enter the camps, they are confronted head on with a reality that they ignore, that of the Nazi concentration camp universe made of mass graves, dying and skeletal bodies in striped outfits, too weak to move.

The main extermination camps were liquidated during the war (Treblinka, Sobibor and Belzec in autumn 1943). The Lublin-Maidanek camp was emptied of its detainees at the end of July 1944 in anticipation of the advance of the Red Army, while the Chelmnö camp was burned on 17 and 18 January 1945.

Auschwitz was released accidentally by the Red Army on the afternoon of 27 January 1945, where it found about 7,000 survivors. A few days earlier, the Nazis had thrown on the roads the prisoners still able to evacuate them to other camps. Those who survive these death marches are dispersed in the German and Austrian concentration camps.

It was in the same improvisation that these camps, located further west, were liberated in April 1945 by the United States (Ohrdruf, Nordhausen, Buchenwald, Dachau, Mauthausen) and the British (Bergen-Belsen).
Nearly one-third of the world’s Jewish population and more than half of Europe’s Jews disappeared in the Holocaust.

Displaced persons camps (D. P.)

As soon as the war ends, survivors set out across Europe to return home, find their families and try to rebuild their lives. The slowness of repatriations organized by the Allies forces some survivors to return from the camps by their own means.

At the end of October 1945, there were one million people, including 250,000 Jews, mainly from Central and Eastern Europe, interned in camps for displaced persons organized by the Americans and the British, mainly in Germany (185,000), Austria (45,000) and in Italy (20,000).

Many Holocaust survivors refuse to return to Central and Eastern Europe, owing to the anti-Semitism present or the destruction of their home communities during the Holocaust. Among them were those who had returned to Poland but, faced with a wave of anti-Semitism, particularly at Kielce where in July 1946 41 Jews were put to death during a pogrom, refused to resettle. These survivors do not want to return to their countries of origin, while the borders of the United States, Palestine and other European countries are closed to them.

According to the report of a commission of inquiry headed by Earl G. Harrison, dean of the faculty of law at the University of Pennsylvania, submitted in August 1945 to US President Truman, living conditions in these camps are difficult: Overcrowding, poor sanitary equipment, and the clumsiness of the soldiers who keep the DPs like prisoners. Psychologically, the prolonged stay of these survivors is similar to a new imprisonment behind the barbed wire. Sometimes, Jews still dressed in their striped outfits rub shoulders with the walls of the Nazi camps and their collaborators.

President Truman personally intervened on behalf of refugees and war orphans by a "Directive of December 22, 1945" allowing 35,515 US visas to be granted in three years to DPs, including 28,000 to Jews. Moreover, the American president asked Great Britain to welcome 100,000 D.P. in Palestine, but the latter refused, faithful to the White Paper of May 1939 and anxious not to alienate the Arab populations.

Des jeunes juifs roumains dans le camp de personnes d�plac�es de Feldafing, en Allemagne

Young Romanian Jews in the displaced persons camp of Feldafing, Germany, pose before the portrait of Theodore Herzl, founder of Zionism, 1946.
© Shoah Memorial/CDJC, coll. Rachel Jedinak.

Le Parita stationne au large des c�tes turques dans des conditions sanitaires d�sastreuses

Chartered in Marseille by the revisionist Zionist organization (Jabotinski), the Parita left Romania on 13 July 1939 with more than 800 people on board. Short of coal and water, the boat parked off the coast of Turkey in disastrous sanitary conditions. The Turkish authorities have ordered the ship to be quarantined. Despite this, the Parita continued on its route and on 23 August the ship ran aground on a beach in Tel Aviv. Many of its passengers will be sent to the Atlit camp near Haifa by the British authorities.
© Yad Vashem.