The photo above was taken in a Jewish refugee camp outside of Frankfurt, Germany a few years after the end of World War 2. I thought it was appropriate given the subject if the weeks readings. Both articles are focused on what happened to those who were displaced by the war, mostly in Europe, and what the UN and the Allies did to resolve the issue. The first article, “A Human Treasure” by Tara Zahra, is more focused on displaced children, specifically those who were taken and adopted by Germans as part of their resettlement plan. The second article,”In Wars Wake” by S. Gemie and L. Rees, has a broader focus and discuses what the U.N and U.S did to deal with the refugees after the war. One organization that both articles take a strong look at is the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) and the role it played in aiding refugees.
The article “A Human Treasure” takes a focused look at what the Allied Powers and the U.N did with displaced children after the war. The task of returning children to their native homes proved to be difficult for UNRRA and the Allies. Many were taken by the Germans while they were young and adopted by German families so that they could, “enrich their demographic power through the forcible Germanization of Slavic children,” (Zahra, 340). When doing this the German military would destroy the children’s records, making it very difficult for the UNRRA to return these children to their original homes. One idea that the article discusses is that many of these displaced children were viewed as “national property.” (340). Many states, such as Germany and France, saw it in their interest to take in as many displaced children as possible. France and Germany both tried to take in refugee children who were of both French and German dissent, seeing them as a solution to rebuild their respective populations. Another complicating factor to resettlement was the rising tension between the U.S and the Soviet Union.
Refugee resettlement in Eastern Europe became difficult for the U.S and UNRRA after the Soviet Union began to establish its hold in that region. This tension between the U.S and U.S.S.R is a common theme in these two articles. “In Wars Wake” focuses on this theme more than “A Human Treasure” and goes more in depth into the issues in Eastern Europe. Gemie and Rees discuss at length how refugees were treated by Soviets during this time. Many were forced into labor since, “the Five Year Plan demanded an enormous amount of conscripted labor,” and the Soviet Union still wanted revenge on Germany for their actions during the war. (Gemie and Rees, 23). Despite their differing focuses, both articles provide a broad look into what happened to those who were forced to leave their homes because of the war.
Sources:
Gerard Daniel Cohen, In War’s Wake: Europe’s Displaced Persons in the Postwar Order (2011).
T Zahra, ‘A Human Treasure’ – Europe’s Displaced Children Between Nationalism and Internationalism, Past and Present 210, supp. 6, (2011).
After clicking the link to picture and reading the caption, you get a sense of how tense it must have been for Displaced Persons who wanted to leave but were forced to stay, either by the country they were in or the country they wanted to enter. This large group and the little kids in military-like uniforms almost seem like the boys during the Nazi regime, but these were Jews who wanted to desperately leave this place for the possibility of a better home. I don’t know if these people were allowed to leave or not, but it just shows how desperate some governments were about pushing people out and keeping them in.
The information on the treatment of refugees were treated by the Soviets was interesting. I think it added an extra layer to the cold war. If you’re looking for more evidence of the western bloc being in support of humanitarianism and the eastern bloc be in support of punishment this could be used for that, to strengthen the Cohen argument.