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 with a reality that they ignore, that of the Nazi concentration camp universe made of mass graves, dying and skeletal bodies in striped uniforms, 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 is released by chance by the Red Army in the afternoon of January 27, 1945. It finds about 7,000 survivors there. A few days earlier, the Nazis had thrown on the roads the detainees still able-bodied in order to evacuate them to other camps. Those who survive these death marches are scattered 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 a third of the world’s Jewish population and more than half of Europe’s Jews disappeared in the Holocaust.

The camps of displaced persons (D. P.)

From the end of the war, the survivors set off across Europe to return to their homes, find their families and try to rebuild their lives. The slow pace of repatriation 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), in Austria (45,000) and in Italy (20,000).

Many survivors of the Holocaust refuse to return to Central and Eastern Europe, due to the anti-Semitism present or the destruction of their community of origin during the Holocaust. Among them are those who have returned to Poland but who, faced with a wave of anti-Semitism, particularly in Kielce where in July 1946, 41 Jews were put to death during a pogrom, renounce to resettle. These survivors do not wish 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 the American president Truman, the living conditions in these camps are difficult: overcrowding, poor sanitary equipment and clumsiness of the military who keep the DP like prisoners. Psychologically, the prolonged stay of these survivors is akin to a new imprisonment behind the barbed wire. Sometimes, the Jews still dressed in their striped outfits rub shoulders within the confines of the Nazi camps and their collaborators.

President Truman personally intervenes on behalf of refugees and war orphans through 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 asks Great Britain to welcome 100,000 D.P. in Palestine, but the latter refuses, 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 in front of the portrait of Theodore Herzl, founder of Zionism, 1946.
© Shoah Memorial/CDJC, Rachel Jedinak coll.

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 leaves from Romania on 13 July 1939 with more than 800 people on board. Short of coal and water, the boat is parked off the Turkish coast in disastrous sanitary conditions. The Turkish authorities order the quarantine of the boat. Despite this, the Parita continues on its way and on August 23, the boat runs 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.