Abbreviated from Wikipedia.com:
After the ethic cleansing and genocide of the Second World War, there were over 11 million displaced people in Europe, many from Nazi Concentration camps, Labour Camps and prisoner of war camps that were freed by Allied armies. There were classified into categories: evacuees, political prisoners, forced workers, war refugees, deportees, ex prisoners of war and stateless persons. Good solutions were hard to find: it wasn’t possible, in many cases, to return them to their homes.
Nearly all of them were malnourished, a great number were ill, and some were dying. Shelter was often improvised and many military personel shared their rations to help them. Those easily classified were sent to their country of origin. Many were in DP facilities: accommodations primarily included former military barracks, but also included summer camps for children, hotels, castles, hospitals, private homes, and even partly destroyed structures. Although there were continuous efforts to sort and consolidate populations, there were hundreds of DP facilities in Germany, Austria, Italy, and other European countries by the end of 1945. One camp was set up even in Guanajuato in Mexico.
The UNRRA moved quickly to field teams to take over administration of the camps from the military forces.A number of DP camps became more or less permanent homes for these individuals. Conditions were varied and sometimes harsh. Rations were restricted, frequently curfews were imposed. Camps were shut down as refugees found new homes, and there was continuous consolidation of remaining refugees into fewer camps.
By 1952 all but one DP camp was closed. The last DP camp, Föhrenwald, closed in 1957.
[edit] The needs of displaced persons
All displaced persons had to varying degrees experienced hardship, including a constant fear for their lives, neglect, abuse, torture, and often attempted murder. The immediate concern was to provide shelter, nutrition and basic health care. Most DPs had persisted on diets of far less than 1,500 calories a day. Sanitary conditions had been improvised at best, and there had been minimal medical care. As a result, they suffered from malnutrition, a variety of diseases, and were often unclean, lice-ridden, and prone to illness.
In addition, most of the refugees suffered from psychological difficulties. They were often distrustful and apprehensive around authorities, and many were depressed and traumatized.
Displaced persons were anxious to be reunited with families they had been separated from in the course of the war. Improvised efforts to identify survivors were refined to become formalized through the UNRRA’s Central Tracking Bureau and facilities of the International Red Cross. The organization collected over one million names in the course of the DP era and eventually became the International Tracing Service.
Displaced persons often moved from camp to camp, looking for family, countrymen, or better food, accommodations, etc. Over time, ethnic and religious groups concentrated in certain camps.
The difficulties of repatriation
Over one million refugees could not be repatriated to their original countries and were left homeless as a result of fear of persecution. These included: ethnic groups such as jews, poles/czechs fearing persecution by the soviet army, those whose countries were still occupied by the soviet union, Croatians, Slovenians and Serbs who feared persecution by thte communist goverment set up by Tito. Many resisted going back to their homelands, and when they did, faced torture and death, arrest and executution.
Resettlement of DPs
Once it became obvious that repatriation plans left a large number of DPs who needed homes, it took time for countries to commit to accepting refugees. Existing refugee quotas were completely inadequate, and by the fall of 1946, it was not clear whether the remaining DPs would ever find a home.
Between 1947 and 1953, the vast majority of the “non-repatriables” would find new homes around the world, particularly among these countries: Belgium (calling for coal mine workers), the UK (for labor import), Canada, and Australia, who had initially launched an immigration program targeting refugees of British stock, but expanded this in late 1947 to include other refugees. Australia accepted a total of 182,159 refugees, principally of Polish and Baltic origins.
By 1953, over 250,000 refugees were still in Europe, most of them old, infirm, crippled, or otherwise disabled. Many found resolution through suicide. Some European countries accepted these refugees on a humanitarian basis. Norway accepted 200 refugees who were blind or had tuberculosis, and Sweden also accepted a limited number. In the end most of them were accepted by Germany and Austria for their care and ultimately full resettlement as citizens. The last DP camp – Föhrenwald – closed in 1957.
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