Month: October 2016

The new founders of Israel called all able bodied men and women ages seventeen to thirty-five to fulfill their “national duty”. Thousand of young men and women from displacement camps where sent to continue the fight in Palestine and Israel. … Continue reading →

in the Aftermath of World War II there were over 10 million Displaced Persons in Germany.  These people included forced laborers, prisoners of war and Jews who had been forced into concentration camps as part of the “Final Solution”. For most of these people the decision on what to do once they were liberated was … Continue reading “Jewish Postwar Repatriation vs. Relocation”

The faces of the children photographed above read many emotions: fear, uncertainty, confusion; however, the emotion coming across the strongest, in my eyes, is opportunity. Their youth is evident not only in their size but across their faces, and with many years left to spend in countless ways. These children, unlike most, experienced unforeseen horrors […]

“How could we ever have believed that at the end of the war the surviving Jews would have no more worries, that everything would be fine! The world, we had thought, would welcome our few survivors with open arms! We, the first victims of the Nazis. They would love us! Quickly enough, we saw that … Continue reading ““Liberated but Not Free””

 On June 22, 1945 President Harry Truman sent Earl Harrison, the Dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, to Europe to evaluate the condition of displaced persons in Europe. Harrison assessed military and government effectiveness in providing aid to … Continue reading →

In 1933, an mutually beneficial agreement was signed between two unlikely groups:  Zionist groups in Palestine and Nazi Germany. On August 25, the Haavara agreement was made into lawful policy, allowing German Jews to liquidate their assets in Germany, move Continue reading The Zionist Escape from Nazi Germany→

The Second World War left much of the world in ruins. In Europe there were millions of people without homes or hope. These displaced persons were forced out of their homes by destruction, persecution and the search for a better life. The massive numbers of refugees were both a large problem and solution for the … Continue reading “A Laborious Relationship”

Europe and the world in general faced many problems in the postwar time period.  The greatest question that faced world leaders was that of labor.  Over 60 Million people were killed in the war, not only men of fighting age but also women, children and older men.  The war not only devastated the physical cities … Continue reading “The Question of Labor”

After World War II, many European countries were destroyed as well as people’s homes. Europe had a surplus of displaced persons and not enough space or work for everybody who had been moved around during the war. Some people also did not want to return to their homeland and wanted to stay where they were […]

In the photo below the young Japanese girl being caressed by an American soldier in occupied Japan appears wholly dissatisfied. While that may be the case in this photograph, Holly Sanders argues in her article, “Panpan: Streetwalking in Occupied Japan” … Continue reading →