In history, we learn about the horrors of war. We learned in middle school and high school about the Holocaust and other genocides that have occurred in the 20th century. It wasn’t until this class that I realized that the purging of human beings for their race, nationality, or religion still occurred in Eastern Europe even after World War II ended. The corruption in Europe between countries was terrifying and it happened in our grandparent’s lifetime. While we were celebrating our soldiers coming home, orphaned and kidnapped children were being swapped between countries to try and fill the emptiness caused by the deaths of war. “The nationalities of many East European children were ambiguous, since displaced children often came from bilingual regions,” (Zahra, 345)
Trying to figure out what to do with the displaced children was a war in itself. The French believed they should have rights to some of the children to build back up their labor force, while the British and the American’s felt as though removing the children from their German homes may cause them to be “emotionally scarred” (Zahra, 346). Reconstructing Europe after Nazi occupation required affirming a form of national sovereignty that was located as much in the control of children’s futures as in the control of state borders. (Zahra, 350)
Children weren’t the only people who were left homeless. “Millions of people will be scattered over the face of the globe with no home to return to… some of them with no government to protect them.” (Cohen, 3) The war destroyed Europe, but Germany was struggling to grapple with the affects and the terrors of the war. Its people were being terrorized and most of them remained, and wanted to remain stateless. The amount of people that the Allies tried to help was only a small percentage of those that were displaced. Many organizations were created to try and help these refugees, for example the IRO which didn’t allow for any type of persecution.
The DP’s were a cause of worldwide distress, meetings and organizations created to try and place these people where they belonged. A problem began to occur during this time, what we would call a “first world” problem; the idea of DP’s became romanticized in many films, like Casablanca, or A Foreign Affair. Both of these movies discuss and tell beautiful stories about the things that the displaced people went through. The movie, The Search was released and it was a fictional documentary on the lives of the DP’s. It has a simple plot, one that we have read about throughout learning about DP’s, a son and a mother looking for one another like hundreds of other families that were destroyed did. Unlike the other films, there is no romantic interest. Zinneman, the director of The Search, lost both of his parents in the Holocaust. This movie was important during the late 1940’s because it gave people across the world a look into the lives of what people were going through.
Resources:
Cohen, Gerard Daniel. In War’s Wake: Europe’s Displaced Persons in the Postwar Order. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. 3-34.
Gemie, Sharif, and Louise Rees. “Representing and Reconstructing Identities in the Postwar World: Refugees, UNRRA, and Fred Zinnemann’s Film, The Search (1948).” International Review of Social History Int Rev of Soc His 56.03 (2011): 441-73.
Zahra, Tara. “’A Human Treasure’: Europe’s Displaced Children Between Nationalism and Internationalism.” Past and Present 210, supp.6 (2011): 332-350.
I like how you brought up the “first world” problems in the romanticizing of DPs in Hollywood. I think it is interesting how they can take the DPs sad story of being forced to move from their home and give it a happy ending even if that may not have happened in real life. I also was shocked about just recently learning about people being forcibly moved out of Eastern Europe and their children being taken away for adoption in Western European countries. Even though we focused a lot on the displaced children I like how you brought up the other people who were displaced in your post.
I like how you bring up the fact that the idea of displaced persons has been romanticized over time in movies. I think Hollywood definitely took a very sad thing and used it to make money. Great point and great post!
Bringing up the fact that Germany was just as much as a victim was a great point. People tend to always look past that, but it’s still true. Their people, who all didn’t support their countries actions, still are people who were effected sometimes more than others.
I appreciate how you tied in pop-culture of the time and how it related and possibly contributed to DP plights. How people see others on the big and small screens directly affects how they think of them in the real world.
I like this post because it basically was a well rounded summary of what we read touching on many if not all of the important points. There was a lot of key points that you tied into everyday life examples which made it easier for me and most likely others viewers to understand. Also great job on the citing and using the text verbatim.
I like how you mentioned that displaced persons became a world wide problem, not just a European problem. South America saw increased migrants from Europe and Europeans went to the United States and Canada. The creation of Israel came about in the aftermath of the war and was a destination for many displaced persons. The displaced person crisis in Europe also likely contributed to the breakdown of colonial empires around the world because they forced the Europeans to focus inwardly instead of maintaining control elsewhere.