What Will Become of Us

Hitler’s goal in the "Final Solution" was to see that not a single Jew survived. He came frighteningly close to realizing his goal. Approximately 6 million of the 11 million Jews living in Europe before World War II were dead by the war’s end.  

The Jews who somehow managed to survive the war, whether in concentration camps, in hiding, or in exile in the Soviet Union and other countries, now faced a new nightmare. They had to deal with the loss of their friends, families, homes,  and sometimes entire communities. They were alive-but most were alone, with no place to go. Many were plagued by guilt, feeling that they did not deserve to live when so many others had been killed. 

Among those murdered in the Holocaust were one and a half million children. There were also many war orphans: thousands of children who survived, but without their parents. In many parts of war-torn Europe, orphanages were set up to care for these youngsters. 

Beaten Both Spiritually and Physically 

To help survivors, the Allies set up Displaced Persons (DP) camps, where people could get food, medical care, a place to sleep, and ideally news of loved ones. But, often, conditions were nearly as bad in the DP camps as they had been in the concentration camp. As stated in Holocaust: From the Ashes: May 1945 and After:  

Unlike the other Allies, the Soviets, who had driven dozens of Nazis out of Poland, did not establish Displaced Persons Camps. Instead, they maintained that there was no refugee problem. As a result, nearly one million people liberated from the Nazi camps in Poland were left completely on their own to find food and shelter. Weak, downtrodden, and confused, many simply wandered before finally succumbing to death. 

Europe in Tatters 

Nearly all of Europe had been devastated by the six long years of war. Millions of Europeans desperately needed food and fuel. Medical supplies, too, were scarce. Disease was rampant across the continent.  

There were nearly 10 million Displaced Persons when the war ended. No one in the Allied command had ever anticipated there would be so many DPs in need of help. The Allies faced the formidable problem of not only feeding and clothing these people but also providing shelter for them. 

Because of the enormity of the DP problem, Holocaust survivors were not immediately offered special care. In the meantime, malnutrition and infectious diseases continued to take a deadly toll on camp survivors. Conditions for the people at many camps had deteriorated dramatically near the end of the war. Of the people liberated at Bergen-Belsen in April 1945, tens of thousands had died by June. 

In addition to the acute physical needs of survivors, there were also serious psychological needs that required attention. After liberation, some survivors were confined within the same fences that had previously been patrolled by Nazis. With clothes in short supply, many still wore their concentration camp-issue striped uniforms; others could find no clothing other than German SS uniforms-the very items that had once clothed their oppressors. In many cases, Jewish camps were confined in the same quarters with former camp guards and Nazi collaborators. 

The Civilized World Owes It… 

In 1945, the U.S. State Department, under pressure from the American public, sent Earl Harrison, a former U.S. immigration commissioner, to Europe. It was his responsibility to report firsthand on the conditions in the refugee camps in the American sector of occupied Germany.  

Harrison confirmed what had already been told in various newspaper accounts. He wrote in his report to the U.S. President Harry Truman: “…they are in need of attention and help. Up to this point, they have been ‘liberated’ more in a military sense than actually.” Harrison delivered harsh criticism, writing, “As matters now stand, we appear to be treating the Jews as the Nazis treated them, except that we do not exterminate them.” He then summarized various avenues that he felt would improve the situation: 

Upon receiving the report, Truman immediately issued a series of orders to address the situation. In Europe, General Eisenhower himself oversaw their implementation. To begin, U.S. military officials relieved Germans of their positions administering certain camps. They also relieved the overcrowding, improved unsanitary conditions, and increased daily food rations. A tracing bureau was created to assist survivors in locating family members who might have survived, but this was largely ineffective. 

By the fall of 1945, thanks largely to Harrison’s report and Truman’s response, life for Jewish survivors in the DP camps had improved somewhat. Plans were also under way to establish camps specifically for Jewish survivors. But still no progress had been made in finding the Jews a permanent home.   

By September 1945, the Allies had returned approximately seven million DPs to their homelands. Just under two million remained in Germany.  

Hatred at Home 

Antisemitism had not ended in Europe simply because the armies of Nazi Germany had been defeated. Numerous pogroms – organized mob violence – against Jews still took place across Poland between September and December. 
 
In the Polish town of Piekuszow, a mob pulled a 70-year-old Jewish woman from a train and stoned her to death. Six other Jews also lost their lives there. Several hundred Polish Jews who had managed to live through years of the Holocaust were murdered in similar incidents immediately following the war. But Jews continued to return to their homes in Poland. Where else could they go? 

An estimated 175,000 Jews, a small fraction of the more than 3.5 million Jews who had lived in Poland before the war, had taken refuge in the Soviet Union during the war. Early in 1946, they returned home. In the Polish town of Kielce, 150 Jews returned with the hope of re-establishing their community. Within months, however, it became clear that coming home would not be easy. In July, a mob of townspeople attacked the returned Jews, killing 42, and wounding 50 more. 

 When word of this attack spread, Jews once again began fleeing Poland. More than 100,000 sought refruge in the British and American sectors of occupied Germany. By 1947, the number of Jews in DP camps was well over 200,000. 

To Where? 

In his report to the State Department, Harrison had urged the United States to help get the Jews out of Germany. But neither the British nor the Americans were willing to raise their immigration quotas to allow more Jewish refugees into their countries. 

President Truman urged the British government to allow Jewish DPs into Palestine, a land in the Middle East under British control. But the situation there was complex. The British, fearful of repercussions from Palestinian Arabs, were restricting Jewish immigration to Palestine. 

As late as 1947, two years after the end of the war, the Jewish refugee problem remained unsolved. More than 200,000 European Jews were still in need of a home or a homeland. At that point, Jewish refugees comprised nearly one-quarter of the remaining DP population. Many dreamed of going to Palestine. Others desperately wanted to begin a new life in the United States. Most would have been happy just to leave Europe forever. The situation remained unresolved into 1948.