Julia Kocsis

Miss Schmidt

Honors English 9

February 27, 2018

An Annotated Bibliography: Displacement

“The Aftermath of the Holocaust.” ​United States Holocaust Memorial Museum​, United States

Holocaust Memorial Museum,www.ushmm.org

The US was working to liberate all the camps in Europe and save as many Jews as

possible. While going camp to camp they continued to find mounds of decaying bodies

all around them. The survivors were thin, weak, and broken. Even once liberated, the

Jews that survived refused to go back to their old homes. They feared what would happen

to them and knew they weren’t wanted. The Jews also knew there was no point in going

home because all of their belongings would be gone anyways. There were also many

teenagers that lost all of their family and didn’t know where to begin. People provided

food and clothing for the survivors. One of the organizations that did this was The

American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. Other organizations were created by

refugees to establish the Jewish state in Palestine. By 1953 several hundred thousand

Jews had made their way to Israel. A little less than 30,000 Jews immigrated to the

United States. Different laws were being placed to allow Jews to go wherever they
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wanted. One of the Acts passed was the Displaced Persons Act. After this act was placed,

another 68,000 Jews went to the United States.

“Echoing Voices.” ​The Center for Holocaust and Humanity Education RSS​,

www.holocaustandhumanity.org/education/echoing-voices/.

On May 7, 1945, Germany surrendered it’s battle in World War II. Those who had been

held prisoner were now free. What did freedom mean, however? Said Viktor Frankl, a

Holocaust survivor in Austria, “Freedom -- we repeated it to ourselves and yet we could

not grasp it …” Two-thirds of the Jewish population, roughly six million lives, had been

taken away. At the end of the war, however, thousands remained in displaced persons

(DP) camps. In 1948, Israel was declared the Jewish state. Many of the DPs who

remained in Germany and Austria’s camps found their way there. Others emigrated to the

United States and elsewhere throughout Europe. Many had to face the reality that they

had no family remaining. Every Jew had to try to rebuild their life. They finally saw some

justice during the Nuremberg Trials, which began in 1945. Certain Nazis were held

accountable for their horrific acts and the world proclaimed, “Never again!” Sadly, the

world has seen many other atrocities against humanity since the Holocaust in other

countries such as Rwanda, Cambodia, Guatemala, Darfur, and Syria. “Stand up against

hate and prejudice, even if it doesn’t affect you,” is the plea of

Holocaust Survivor William Coppel of Germany.

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“Holocaust survivors in post-War Europe.” ​ORT and the DP Camps​,

dpcamps.ort.org/dp-stories/holocaust-survivors-in-post-war-europe/.

In November, 1944, assembly centers for displaced persons (DP Camps) were established

by the Allied armies. The DP Camps were overseen by the United Nations Relief and

Rehabilitation Administration. The primary goal of the camps, which were established

amid the ruins of the broken, bombed land where these same people had survived for

seven years, was to return the DPs to their home countries as quickly as possible. It was

expected that repatriation of the DPs out of Germany would take approximately six

months. Between May and September, 1945, six million DPs had left. Two million DPs,

including 50,000 Jews refused to return to their homelands, however. This number grew

as Jews fleeing from anti-Semitic violence in countries such as Poland, Hungary,

Czechoslovakia, and Romania began illegally entering the DP Camps in Germany’s

American Zone. By the end of 1946, two-thirds of the Jewish DPs in Germany and

Austria were people who had survived the Holocaust not in German concentration camps,

but in hiding or in the USSR. Emigration was the main unresolved problem for these

250,000 Jews. The longer they remained in the camps, the more a mood of desperation

took hold. Eventually Belgium, Great Britain, and the US began admitting Jewish DPs.

Ninety-seven percent of the Jews wished to emigrate to Palestine, however, which was

not admitting them. As a result, Haganah, the semi-official Jewish defense force, started

underground work smuggling Jews out of the DP camps. The largest clandestine

movement of people in history, the Birchah, was formed, transferring an estimated

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150,000 Jews through treacherous means to Palestine. Many did not survive or were

intercepted and sent back to the DP Camps in Germany.

“Survivor Stories.” ​Holocaust Survivors​, Jewish Community Center of New Orleans,

www.holocaustsurvivors.org
.

After the war was over, Joseph Sher returned with his wife to their town Czestochowa.

Two Russian captains enlisted him to sew new underwear for the Russian soldiers, which

he did happily until other soldiers did not believe Joseph Sher was who he said he was

and threw him into the prison with 5,000 German soldiers who were to be sent to Siberia.

Joseph Sher was subsequently rescued by one of the captains before they left for Siberia,

but forty-two Jews who had returned to their town were mistakenly killed. Joseph’s wife

and himself got Swedish passports and went to Czechoslovakia, where they stayed with

the Red Cross for a month. They had to crawl across the border to get across the iron

curtain into a Displaced Persons camp in the US zone in Germany. In the camp, Joseph

taught 22 girls to sew. Joseph and his wife had their first child in Germany and in 1949

they went by ship to live with Joseph’s wife’s aunt in New Orleans. His wife was so

seasick that she was in the sick bay for ten days. There was no place to clean the cloth

diapers so Joseph filled his suitcase with the soiled ones. He was so ashamed to open it

for the inspectors at the dock! He was interviewed by a newspaper reporter about their

ordeal and few days later, Joseph received a letter. His cousin refused to translate it for

him, but years later he learned that it said, “If Hitler did not get you over there we are
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going to get you over here.” When there was a Nazi march in New Orleans the survivors

got together and formed a group called The New American Social Club, which is still in

existence today. They have told their children their story little by little, and some

mornings Joseph wakes up so worn out that he cannot go to work. He is free but still in

the concentration camp.

Wiesel, Elie, and Marion Wiesel. ​Night​. Hill and Wang, a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux,

2017.

In ​Night​ Elie Wiesel is left alone in the end. Elie and his family were forced out of their

home and into concentration camps. At this point, Elie and his father would never see

Elie’s mother or younger sister ever again. Elie and his father stuck together. They

worked long and hard through miserable conditions. They preformed difficult labor with

little food and water. Together, they almost made it until Elie’s father could no longer

hang on to life. He was very sick and couldn’t continue. He told Elie before he died

where the families belongings were hidden. He knew his son was going to make it out of

there alive. Eventually the war came to an end and Elie was freed. Soon he realized that

freedom wasn’t that rewarding afterall. He was starving and had nowhere to go. Not very

long after being liberated, Elie became sick most likely by food he was eating and was

sent to the hospital where he almost died. He ends up recovering from his illness and

finds the strength to stand up. When he stood up he went to a mirror and for the first time

since his time in the ghetto, saw his reflection. Elie mentions that was he saw was not
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him, but simply a corpse. Being in the hospital gave Elie a time to recover and gain back

strength before going back into the world for the first time in years.