Sh'erit ha-Pletah (, meaning surviving remnant) is a Hebrew term from the Book of Ezra and 1 Chronicles (see ; ) for more than 250,000 Jewish Holocaust survivors living in Displaced Persons (DP) camps after the end of the Holocaust and Second World War, and the organisations they created to act on their behalf with the Allied authorities. These were active between 27 May 1945 and 1950–51, when the last DP camps closed.
A total of more than 250,000 Jewish survivors spent several years following their liberation in DP camps or communities in Germany, Austria, and Italy, since they could not, or would not, be repatriated to their countries of origin. For many of the survivors, Europe had become "a vast cemetery of the Jewish people" and "they wanted to start life over and build a new national Jewish homeland in Eretz Yisrael". Some of those who returned to their countries of origin, for example Poland, were murdered in pogroms upon arrival, such as the 1946 Kielce pogrom in which 42 Jewish Holocaust survivors were murdered upon return to their home towns, an event which accelerated Jewish migration to Eretz Yisrael. The United States imposed stricter immigration quotas in order to prevent them immigrating, while Britain continued to try to prevent them migrating to Palestine, sending more than 50,000 Jewish refugees to DP camps on Cyprus, such as the SS Exodus in 1947.
In time, the refugees became socially and politically organized, advocating at first for their political and human rights in the camps, and then for the right to emigrate to the countries of their choice, preferably British-ruled Mandatory Palestine, the US and Canada. Organised groups such as Bricha were formed by Jews in Palestine in order to facilitate the emigration of European Jews from Displaced Persons camps to Palestine.
With the exception of 10,000–15,000 who chose to make their homes in Germany after the war (see Central Council of Jews in Germany), by 1952 the vast majority of the Jewish DPs ultimately left the camps and settled elsewhere. About 136,000 settled in Israel with the assistance of organised underground efforts by Jewish groups such as the Bricha, 80,000 in the United States, and another 20,000 in other nations, including Canada and South Africa.
Formation of the DP camps
In an effort to destroy the evidence of war crimes, Nazi authorities and military staff accelerated the pace of killings, forced victims on death marches, and attempted to deport many of them away from the rapidly shrinking German front lines. As the German war effort collapsed, survivors were typically left on their own, on trains, by the sides of roads, and in camps. Concentration and death camps were liberated by Allied forces in the final stages of the war, beginning with Majdanek, in July 1944, and Auschwitz, in January 1945; Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, Mauthausen, and other camps were liberated in April and May 1945.United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. "Liberation." Holocaust Encyclopedia. Retrieved 8 June 2014.
At the time of Germany's unconditional surrender on 7 May 1945 there were some 6.5 to 7 million displaced persons in the Allied occupation zones,Königseder, Angelika, and Juliane Wetzel. Waiting for Hope: Jewish Displaced Persons in Post-World War II Germany. Trans. John A. Broadwin. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2001. 15. among them an estimated 55,000 Berger cites historian Yehuda Bauer as estimating that 200,000 Jews in total emerged alive from the concentration camps. to 60,000Pinson, Koppel S. "Jewish Life in Liberated Germany: A Study of the Jewish DP's." Jewish Social Studies 9.2 (April 1947): 101-126; here: 103. Jews. The vast majority of non-Jewish DPs were repatriated in a matter of months.According to Königseder and Wetzel (p. 15), in September 1945 there were a total of approximately one million DPs remaining, who, for various reasons, such as political differences with the new regime in their homeland, or fear of persecution, were considered to be "non-repatriable." The number of Jewish DPs, however, subsequently grew manyfold as Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe and Soviet occupation zone migrated westward. It is estimated that a total of more than 250,000 Jewish DPs resided in camps or communities in Germany, Austria, and ItalyDP Camps and Hachshara Centers in Italy after the War, Yad Vashem website during the period from 1945 to 1952.
In the first weeks after liberation, Allied military forces improvised relief in the form of shelter, food, and medical care. A large number of refugees were in critical condition as a result of malnutrition, abuse, and disease. Many died, but medical material was requisitioned from military stores and German civilian facilities. Military doctors as well as physicians among the survivors themselves used available resources to help a large number recover their physical health. The first proper funerals of Holocaust victims took place during this period with the assistance of Allied forces and military clergy.
Accommodations for refugees of various origins were established on sites that had previously served as barracks, labor camps, hotels, hospitals, schools, apartment buildings, and private homes.
As Germany and Austria came under Allied military administration, the commanders assumed responsibility for the safety and disposition of all displaced persons. The Allies provided for the DPs according to nationality, and initially did not recognize Jews as constituting a separate group. One significant consequence of this early perspective was that Jewish DPs sometimes found themselves housed in the same quarters with former Nazi collaborators.Königseder and Wetzel, 16.Mankowitz, Zeev W. Life between Memory and Hope: The Survivors of the Holocaust in Occupied Germany. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 13. Also, the general policy of the Allied occupation forces was to repatriate DPs to their country of origin as soon as possible, and there was not necessarily sufficient consideration for exceptions; repatriation policy varied from place to place, but Jewish DPs, for whom repatriation was problematic, were apt to find themselves under pressure to return home.Mankowitz, 12-16.
General George Patton, the commander of the United States Third Army and military governor of Bavaria, where most of the Jewish DPs resided, was known for pursuing a harsh, indiscriminate repatriation policy.Mankowitz, 16.Brenner, Michael. After the Holocaust: Rebuilding Jewish Lives in Postwar Germany. Trans. Barbara Harshav. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997. 15. However, his approach raised objections from the refugees themselves, as well as from American military and civilian parties sympathetic to their plight. In early July 1945, Patton issued a directive that the entire Munich area was to be cleared of displaced persons with an eye toward repatriating them. Joseph Dunner, an American officer who in civilian life was a professor of political science, sent a memorandum to military authorities protesting the order. When 90 trucks of the Third Army arrived at Buchberg to transport the refugees there, they refused to move, citing Dunner's memo. Based on these efforts and blatant antisemitic remarks, Patton was relieved of this command.Jürgen Matthäus (ed). Approaching an Auschwitz Survivor: Holocaust Testimony and its Transformations. Oxford University Press, 2008. 88.
Harrison report
By June 1945 reports had circulated back in the United States concerning overcrowded conditions and insufficient supplies in the DP camps, as well as the ill treatment of Jewish survivors at the hand of the U.S. Army. American Jewish leaders, in particular, felt compelled to act.Königseder and Wetzel, 31.Mankowitz, 52-53. American Earl G. Harrison was sent by president Truman to investigate conditions among the "non-repatriables" in the DP camps. Arriving in Germany in July, he spent several weeks visiting the camps and submitted his final report on 24 August. Harrison's report stated among other things that:
Generally speaking... many Jewish displaced persons and other possibly non-repatriables are living under guard behind barbed-wire fences, in camps of several descriptions (built by the Germans for slave-laborers and Jews), including some of the most notorious of the concentration camps, amidst crowded, frequently unsanitary and generally grim conditions, in complete idleness, with no opportunity, except surreptitiously, to communicate with the outside world, waiting, hoping for some word of encouragement and action in their behalf.... ...While there has been marked improvement in the health of survivors of the Nazi starvation and persecution program, there are many pathetic malnutrition cases both among the hospitalized and in the general population of the camps... at many of the camps and centers including those where serious starvation cases are, there is a marked and serious lack of needed medical supplies... ...many of the Jewish displaced persons, late in July, had no clothing other than their concentration camp garb-a rather hideous striped pajama effect-while others, to their chagrin, were obliged to wear German S.S. uniforms. It is questionable which clothing they hate the more... ...Most of the very little which has been done [to reunite families] has been informal action by the displaced persons themselves with the aid of devoted Army Chaplains, frequently Rabbis, and the American Joint Distribution Committee... ...The first and plainest need of these people is a recognition of their actual status and by this I mean their status as Jews... 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... ...Their desire to leave Germany is an urgent one.... They want to be evacuated to Palestine now, just as other national groups are being repatriated to their homes... Palestine, while clearly the choice of most, is not the only named place of possible emigration. Some, but the number is not large, wish to emigrate to the United States where they have relatives, others to England, the British Dominions, or to South America... ...No other single matter is, therefore, so important from the viewpoint of Jews in Germany and Austria and those elsewhere who have known the horrors of the concentration camps as is the disposition of the Palestine question... ...As matters now stand, we appear to be treating the Jews as the Nazis treated them except that we do not exterminate them. They are in concentration camps in large numbers under our military guard instead of S.S. troops.Report of Earl G. Harrison. As cited in United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, "Resources," Life Reborn: Jewish Displaced Persons, 1945-1951 [online exhibition]. Retrieved 30 May 2014.
Harrison's report was met with consternation in Washington, and its contrast with Patton's position ultimately contributed to Patton being relieved of his command in Germany in September 1945.
Growth of the camps