Posted in #1 Displaced Persons

The Movement of Displaced Persons Across Europe

  Published Date: September 12, 2017  6 Comments on The Movement of Displaced Persons Across Europe

This map shows the movements of different groups of people across Europe from 1944-1952

  In the years following the end of World War II in Europe, the entire continent had to deal with massive efforts of reconstruction and reorganization to get the broken nations of Europe back on their feet. Many of the countries faced unparalleled damage to infrastructure and administrative institutions that made healing an even more difficult task. However, the most dire task of the relief efforts was to find, relocate, and if possible/necessary repatriate the millions of people that had been scattered across Europe. As shown in the map above, the movement of displaced persons (DP’s) following the war was a complicated task that had moral, philosophical, and political implications for the entire region. The selections from Zahra and Cohen both deal with the issue of DP’s following the war, but they approach the topic from different perspectives and address some of the different attitudes facing the postwar resettlement of refugees. In “A Human Treasure: Europe’s Displaced Children Between Nationalism and Internationalism”, Tara Zahra discusses the matters of different groups of displaced children following the war, specifically children that were forcibly repatriated into France and the famous “lost children of Lidice” that were returned to their homes in Czechoslovakia. In the first instance, Zahra explains how the French government unsuccessfully attempted to reclaim thousands of children from Germany that had French origins or relatives. Their ultimate goal was to rebuild their population to better assist the national reconstruction, while at the same time depriving Germany of individuals who could aid their own efforts. In the second situation, Zahra examines the plight of children that were taken from the Czechoslovakian city of Lidice during the war and the large international effort to see them returned home. Some of these children were put into Germanisation programs and grew up in German households, never knowing that they had a family in another country. Many of them were returned, but the Nazi endeavors to destroy birth certificates and records made finding some of the children an impossible task. Zahra’s article shows some of the good and bad sides of relocating DP’s during the postwar years. In the case of Lidice, some children were returned to their families and they were able to begin the process of rebuilding their lives in the country in which they were born and raised. However, the overwhelming idea that jumped out from this article was that even after the atrocities committed by the Nazi’s during the war, some organizations and governments still used entire groups of people as political tools to further agendas and shape the future of the continent. Cohen also addresses the issue of DP’s in the selection from In War’s Wake. While he does not specifically focus on children during the postwar period, Cohen instead examines how the changing policies regarding DP’s in the years immediately following the war were significant in creating tensions between the Soviet Union and the Western powers. The main point that I took away was that to begin with, the International Refugee Organization was created to repatriate as many of the “last million” that they were able to. However, as they became aware of the reasons some DP’s fled the Soviet Union, specifically those fleeing labor camps and communist policies, the IRO started to change their plans in an effort to prevent DP’s from being forced back into harsh and inhospitable situations.    

Author: wward

6 thoughts on “The Movement of Displaced Persons Across Europe”

  1. The compare and contrast of Zahra’s and Cohen’s articles work well for making a point. For my own post, I also touched on the ideas of Soviet powers being a driving force. Like you mentioned in your first paragraph Europe was greatly damaged. So, taking action in the minds of other countries likely seemed all well and good. What do you believe would have happened if each European or Allied country was left to their own devices?

    Christopher Jackson

  2. Your description of what the IRO was supposed to do originally vs. what they actually were able to accomplish realistically was a good point to make. It’s important to realize this about many international organizations too. The situation may look different from different perspectives, and are probably easy to talk about solving in theory, but in practice are much more difficult to solve. I think the IRO definitely realized once they started going that it was nearly impossible to return all DPs back to their home of origin because some of them actually wanted to stay. It become a struggle to decide what was right for those individuals, their countries, and Europe as a whole.

    Tana Putnam

  3. You mentioned that some children from Lidice were returned to their families however based off the the readings I viewed that there’s more to the story. Many children did not want to be returned to their origin home land. Many of them were germanized and believed they were German. On top of that many children did not speak their native tongue.

  4. I would like to pose the question is it not still a form of cultural genocide to remove children from what they have grown up knowing? While these children may not have been born German many of them grew to think of themselves as German and gained a German culture of sorts. By forcing these children back to countries they have never know culture was still being destroyed.

  5. I really enjoyed your analysis of the articles, particularly the last portion where you touched on the broader significance of these international relief agencies and how they went on to play an integral role in the Cold War. It really helps to place the issue in a clearer context and I think that this is especially important when we are talking about all the different legacies of WWII and their interconnectedness. I noticed when you were talking about the different instances of forced repatriation of children you touched briefly on one distinction that stuck out to me in my initial reading and that was the difference in bring the children back to a place that they remembered and felt at home in versus taking children to a place that was almost foreign to them. I think this distinction is an important one to make when framing our discussion of this ethical dilemma. Great job!

    Joy Pierce

  6. This map and your explanation of it greatly help my understanding of this process. Sometimes visuals further the discussion and this one did just that. It’s hard to understand these large of numbers and how Europe was reconstructed . I think your point about the IRO was on point. The fact that the IRO noticed a problem and attempted to fix it by not returning people to the Soviets showed that it was not all ill- intentioned even though some of their plan execution was not the most effective.

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