Holocaust Aftermath
By Jonathan Mccarthy
In 1945, when Anglo-American and Soviet troops entered the concentration camps,
they discovered piles of corpses, bones, and human ashes, testimony to Nazi mass murder. Soldiers also
found thousands of survivors, Jews and non-Jews, suffering from starvation and disease. For survivors,
the prospect of rebuilding their lives was daunting. After liberation, many Jewish survivors feared to
return to their former homes because of the antisemitism that persisted in parts of
Europe and the trauma they had suffered. Some who returned home feared for their lives. In postwar
Poland, for example, there were a number of pogroms. The largest of these occurred in the town of
Kielce in 1946 when Polish rioters killed at least 42 Jews and beat many others. With few possibilities
for emigration, tens of thousands of homeless Holocaust survivors migrated
westward to other European territories liberated by the western Allies. There they were housed in
hundreds of refugee centers and displaced persons camps such as Bergen-Belsen in Germany. The
United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration and the occupying armies of the
United States, Great Britain, and France administered these camps. A considerable number and variety
of Jewish agencies worked to assist the Jewish displaced persons. The American Jewish Joint
Distribution Committee provided Holocaust survivors with food and clothing, while the Organization
for Rehabilitation through Training offered vocational training. Refugees also formed their own
organizations, and many labored for the establishment of an independent Jewish state in Palestine. The
largest survivor organization, Sh'erit ha-Pletah (Hebrew for "surviving remnant"), pressed for greater
emigration opportunities. Yet opportunities for legal immigration to the United States above the
existing quota restrictions were still limited. The British...
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