After the liberation

Mass grave in the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen, 1 May, 1945, USHMM #32072.

The Allied troops were met with a horrible sight, when they arrived in the extermination- and concentration camps in 1945: piles of dead, bones, and ashes.

The survivors in the concentration camps were barely alive. The prisoners suffered from hunger and disease – and many thousands died in the first months after the liberation.

In many cases the surviving Jews refused to return to their homes – or their homes had simply ceased to exist. The local residents often persecuted those Jews that tried to return. As in Poland, where Jews returning to Kielce in 1946 fell victim to pogroms committed by Poles. 42 Jews were killed in the Kielce pogrom of 1946.

Thus, hundreds of thousands of Jews were without a home in a Europe destroyed and impoverished by war. For a second time, the Jews had to be placed in camps. Frequently, it was the same camps that they had been placed in during the war. The Jews had become ‘displaced persons’, and for most governments and nations a Jew was persona non grata – that is, decidedly unwanted.

On the Jewish wish list the United States and the British mandate in Palestine were big hits. But in both places there were strong restrictions on how many Jews could immigrate, although the United States did receive more than 80,000 Jews before 1952. Many Jews went illegally to Palestine. After the foundation of Israel, a large number of Jews – including Jews that were not ‘displaced persons’ – emigrated there.