When WW2 ended and the Nazi occupied territories were liberated, allied soldiers encountered hundreds of thousands of Jews who had survived the Holocaust, now that they were free, many thought of returning to their original countries, but they faced many difficulties. Gradually they realised that most of them had no place to go, their homes, friends and many villages and towns no longer existed, mainly in Eastern Europe the survivors who returned, encountered antisemitism, violence, and in some cases murder, 42 Jews who had survived the Holocaust were killed by locals in a pogrom on July 4 1946.
Rehabilitation of the displaced persons varied in its pace, for the Jews [25% of the displaced] there were many unique problems, therefore their processing was rather prolonged. They were suffering from severe malnutrition, depression and disease, and had narrowly survived when their camps were liberated by the Allied forces, then to add to their distress they continued to be detained in these same camps months after liberation, amounts of food were inadequate, and there were shortages of clothing and medicine. Death rates remained high, in Bergen-Belsen, the infamous concentration camp, which had been transformed into a displaced persons camp, there were over 23,000 deaths within 3 months of the liberation, 90% of them being Jewish.
On January 22 1945, U.S. President Truman appointed Earl G Harrison Dean of the University of Pennsylvania as his personal envoy to prepare a report on the situation of the displaced Jews in Europe, Harrison made a three week inspection tour of the DP camps, and shortly after presented his report to the President. Before giving some detail of Harrison's report, it is very surprising and interesting to note General Patton's behaviour as overseer of displaced camps in Bavaria.
The camps under Patton's control in Bavaria contained mainly Jews who had survived Nazi concentration camps, Patton decided to detain them within the camps, because he thought that releasing them could lead to violence and re-arrests, he also resisted Eisenhower's orders to evict Germans from their homes to provide the Jews with accommodation. After attending a festival of Yom Kippur service in the camp synagogue with Eisenhower, Patton described the Jewish congregation as the “ greatest stinking bunch of humanity” When faced with questions from the press, Patton was of the view that most German people with experience in infrastructure management had been forced to join the Nazi party in the war, he compared Nazis to Democrats and Republicans and when Eisenhower ordered him to hold a press conference to correct his statements, Patton instead repeated them. On September 28 1945, after a heated exchange with Eisenhower over the denazification controversy, Patton was relieved of his military governorship.
Returning to the Harrison report, here are some of the main points “ The first and plainest need of these people [ the Jews] is a recognition of their actual status and by this I mean their status as Jews. Most of them have spent years in the worst of concentration camps, although the full extent is not yet known, they are sole survivors of their families and many have been through the agony of witnessing the destruction of their love ones. Understandably therefore their present condition, physical and mental, is far worse than that of other groups. While admittedly it is not normally desirable to set aside particular racial or religious groups from their nationality categories, the plain truth is that this was done for so long by the Nazis that a group has been created which has special needs,. Jews as Jews [not members of their own nationality groups].They have been more severely victimised than the non-Jewish members of some other nationalities”
Harrison concluded that a stronger effort needed to be made to get the Jews out of the camps, because they are sick of living in the camps, in addition he pointed out the real need for rest homes for those who needed a period of readjustment and training before living in the world.
In April 1948, one month before the State of Israel was established, there were still 165,000 Jewish displaced persons in Germany, with the establishment of the State of Israel about two-thirds of the Jews emigrated to Israel, most of the others ,moved to the U.S.A, a small number stayed behind, unable or unwilling to move, the last DP camp in Fohrenwald Germany, closed in February 1957..
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