TY - JOUR
AU - Hilton, Laura J
AB - Abstract This article situates the experiences of Baltic, Jewish, and Polish Displaced Persons within the overlapping stories of occupation policy, refugee circumstances, the gathering Cold War, and the process of rebuilding Germany. Using evidence from both the British and American Zones of Occupation, it explains the symbiotic processes of labeling the various groups of the uprooted and the shifting feelings of empathy that occupation authorities experienced for them. The connections between logistics and policy during mass population movements figure in this account, but the author focuses on shortages in housing and employment to trace reevaluations of who was most deserving of assistance. The scale of population movement into, within, and from Germany during the period 1945–1948 was enormous. The Second World War had uprooted millions, including enemy and ex-enemy Displaced Persons (DPs),1 German expellees from Eastern Europe,2 German POWs,3 and internally displaced Germans (evacuees).4 When the Allies occupied Germany they also encountered approximately nine million foreign laborers, inmates of concentration or death camps, and Allied POWs, most of whom became United Nations Displaced Persons (UNDPs).5 In the immediate postwar period the UNDPs were a highly visible group amid the larger uprooted population. These groups coexisted amid the mountains of rubble. Food shortages remained acute. The vast majority of the UNDPs wanted transportation home, yet Allied bombing had heavily damaged roads and railways. More than one hundred major urban areas lay in ruins, utilities too had suffered heavy damage, and communication systems were virtually non-existent.6 Within this ravaged landscape, UNDPs competed with one another and with the other uprooted populations for scarce resources until legal resettlement schemes emerged to deal with mass populations. The following article situates the experiences of Baltic, Jewish, and Polish UNDPs within the intertwined narratives of occupation policies and inter-governmental and international responses to the refugee crisis. It focuses on a comparison of British and American policy because the Soviet Union quickly declared its zone free of UNDPs and the French Zone harbored very few.7 First, the article examines the process of establishing labels for the various groups of uprooted, focusing on the three largest. These categories became more fluid during the 1945–1948 period, and the accompanying hierarchy of empathy for these groups shifted and influenced policy. Second, it describes the phases of mass population movement in Germany. Each of these phases developed piecemeal, creating entangled logistics, politics, and policy decisions. Occupation officials made decisions about who would go home first. As part of this process, they established a hierarchy of who had the right to remain and receive United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) care. Then, my analysis shifts to the crucial issue of resources. As Germany struggled to rebuild, the non-repatriable UNDP population placed serious strains on housing and access to employment. Occupation officials and staff of inter-governmental organizations created policies on housing and employment that highlight their shifting perceptions of, and levels of empathy for, UNDPs. Last, the growing East-West ideological battle, the future of Palestine, and German economic needs also informed the debates, thereby intertwining the histories of occupied Germany and the fates of the various groups of UNDPs. Initially, high levels of empathy for some groups of UNDPs drove favorable labeling, resource, and policy decisions. However, as the interests of the Western Allies shifted, empathy for Jewish and Polish UNDPs waned, resulting in a leveling effect by 1948. Since the 1980s, scholarship on DPs has expanded greatly. From early broad works,8 historians moved on to study localized experiences,9 single DP groups within Germany,10 the development of resettlement policies, and ties between DPs and their co-ethnic diasporas.11 The field now needs both syntheses and contextualization within German history and refugee studies. The outpouring of books, articles, and anthologies over the past decade has highlighted underexplored topics at the local, national, and international levels.12 Rather than entering a period of “refugee fatigue,” the field stands before the construction of more diverse and trans-national historical understandings, to which this study contributes.13 Classifying the Displaced In the chaos of immediate postwar Europe, uprooted people formed one element of uncertainty out of many, but one that Allied authorities, national governments, and UNRRA identified as a serious challenge to recovery and reconstruction.14 Their presence pushed the international community to formulate definitions that determined the refugees’ standing. These definitions illustrate the dynamic and sometimes competing goals of the occupation authorities. They acquired positive and negative connotations, lent credibility to government-sponsored population shifts, and recast “refugees” as individuals persecuted because of political, religious, and/or racial reasons.15 Therefore they are crucial for understanding the place of UNDPs vis-à-vis other uprooted populations. As Matthew Frank has noted, population disentanglement that favored homogenization was a major task of the post-World War II period. Governments were willing to shift both populations and frontiers to achieve demographic stability.16 Population experts, Allied governments, and inter-governmental organizations sought a “durable solution”; by re-sorting populations according to nationality, they hoped to create lasting order.17 As the postwar occupation continued, non-repatriable UNDPs presented a major hurdle toward achieving this larger goal. At the first session of UNRRA’s directing council in November 1943, the agency distinguished between UNDPs and other uprooted populations, thereby drawing lines between who was eligible for its care and who was not. Initially, UNDPs were UN nationals displaced by the war and currently in another country, UN nationals displaced by war within their own countries, stateless persons, or non-UN nationals who were victims of Nazi persecution.18 Essentially, UNRRA committed to assist the displaced citizens of its member nations (including POWs), those who had lost citizenship, and those whom the defeated powers had persecuted. Being displaced did not guarantee assistance from UNRRA. For example, German expellees never fell under its protection: German civil authorities were responsible for their care. In any case, the initial definitions assumed a clarity that did not exist on the ground. The large number of DPs who declared themselves stateless, the question of how to classify Jews, and the issue of the sovereignty of the Baltic states all complicated the determination of citizenship. Occupation authorities and UNRRA staff originally had shared the same goal: to get people where they “belonged” as quickly as possible. Yet, not everyone agreed about who belonged where, answers changed over time, and politics intervened. Should registration officials classify a Balt who fought as a member of the Wehrmacht as an ex-enemy POW or as a UNDP?19 If the Germans had captured a Pole as a POW and then used him for forced labor, was he a UNDP or did he fall within the category Recovered Allied Military Personnel (RAMP)?20 If the Germans forced a Ukrainian to labor in Germany, was she a Soviet national whom the military would be required to repatriate, or a political refugee? Military decisions on such questions bred a complicated system. They privileged some groups over others and blurred the lines between UNDPs and other DPs. It was at times contradictory, but never was it static. It also encouraged the development of what historian Tony Judt has called “memory holes,” selective remembering and forgetting by both occupation authorities and UNDPs21 as groups vied for recognition, scarce resources, and resettlement (or flight) opportunities. Following the mass repatriations of 1945, these definitions lumped together hundreds of thousands of people who shared little in common besides being in Germany, refusing to repatriate, and wishing to resettle elsewhere.22 The desires of a Jewish survivor who had crossed into Germany in 1946 from the USSR through Poland, those of an Estonian who had entered Germany in 1944 ahead of Soviet troops, and those of a Pole who had performed forced labor in Germany since 1942 may seem the same: resettlement in a new land. All of them could acquire the label of UNDP. However, their wartime experiences and their place within the emerging international context differed greatly. The majority of Jewish UNDPs had not been on German soil at war’s end, and Allied authorities pejoratively labeled them “infiltrees.”23 Some Baltic DPs retained the label of UNDP throughout the postwar years; UNRRA screened and rejected others, removing them from its camps, which shifted responsibility for their care to the German civil authorities. Although Polish UNDPs fiercely objected to Communism’s hold over their nation, this resonated little with American and British officials, who often believed the Poles were refusing to return for economic rather than political reasons. The result was tremendous pressure on them to repatriate, a demand with which neither Baltic nor Jewish UNDPs had to contend. The uprooted Jews, both foreign and German, presented a unique set of challenges. Initially, both British and American occupiers rejected requests to classify Jews as a separate nationality. As the chief of staff of the British Occupation Zone in Germany stated in July of 1945, “the policy should continue … to emphasize a Jew’s political nationality rather than his race and religious persuasion.”24 Both rejected the “dangerous” idea of Jewish liaison officers.25 Responding to one such appeal, Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force (SCAEF) Dwight D. Eisenhower was blunt: “Liaison Officers attached to this Headquarters are selected on nationality basis and it is considered undesirable on many grounds to have one specially designated for Jews.”26 In July 1945, a newly created Central Committee for Liberated Jews (CCLJ) held two meetings and a very public demonstration in Munich, both of which focused world attention on their complaints. President Harry S. Truman then sent Earl G. Harrison, former commissioner of immigration and naturalization, to investigate. Following Harrison’s report, with its pointed criticisms, U.S. policy mandated housing Jews in separate UNRRA assembly centers.27 At first, the British refused to respond in kind, but by December 1945 they relented, agreeing to allot Jews separate areas within camps. Belsen became a de-facto Jewish-only camp.28 Both the U.S. and Britain did agree that Jews should be exempted from forcible repatriation, regardless of nationality, and both accepted an “Adviser on Jewish Affairs” attached to their headquarters.29 View largeDownload slide Then Military Governor of the U.S. Occupation Zone Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower; Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Forces of Occupation in Germany Gen. Joseph T. McNarney; and Carl Atkin, UNRRA director of the Deggendorf DP camp, visit kindergarten in either Deggendorf or Neu Freimann DP camp, prob. November 1945. U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy Herbert Friedman. View largeDownload slide Then Military Governor of the U.S. Occupation Zone Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower; Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Forces of Occupation in Germany Gen. Joseph T. McNarney; and Carl Atkin, UNRRA director of the Deggendorf DP camp, visit kindergarten in either Deggendorf or Neu Freimann DP camp, prob. November 1945. U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy Herbert Friedman. View largeDownload slide Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Forces of Occupation in Germany Gen. Joseph T. McNarney hands Dr. Samuel Gringauz, chairman of the Central Committee of Liberated Jews in the U.S. Zone of Germany, the signed charter of recognition acknowledging the Committee as the official representative of Jewish DPs in the American Zone; Frankfurt-am-Main, September 7, 1946. U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy Herbert Friedman. View largeDownload slide Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Forces of Occupation in Germany Gen. Joseph T. McNarney hands Dr. Samuel Gringauz, chairman of the Central Committee of Liberated Jews in the U.S. Zone of Germany, the signed charter of recognition acknowledging the Committee as the official representative of Jewish DPs in the American Zone; Frankfurt-am-Main, September 7, 1946. U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy Herbert Friedman. Another major policy decision regarding classification of Jews was the issue of the cutoff date for UNRRA care. Occupation officials determined this, because they were responsible for controlling who moved across boundaries, but after the cutoff UNRRA would no longer allow new arrivals into its camps or provide other care.30 Initially December 22, 1945, U.S. authorities pushed the Allied Control Council (ACC) to extend that cutoff into 1946, over British opposition. They subsequently extended the term to April 21, 1947, but stipulated that any DP who entered Germany thereafter would be ineligible for admission to UNRRA assembly centers unless there was evidence of extreme hardship, inability to acquire employment, and/or pending repatriation or resettlement. The story of the specific treatment of German Jews demonstrates a similar pattern of shifting and sometimes competing approaches. Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) DP policy explicitly stated that anyone (including Germans) who had faced persecution and/or incarceration for supporting the Allies or due to their “race, language, religion, political opinions, or non-conformity with Nazi practices” would receive basic care and maintenance. However, this did not always occur.31 At first, British guidelines limited preferential treatment to those literally in camps at the end of the war, stating, “German Jews are treated as any other Germans, except where we found them in concentration camps.”32 They feared that providing preferred treatment would lead to “irritation and anti-Jewish feeling which might well have far-reaching results and give rise to persecution at a later date.”33 In December 1945, British authorities issued a new policy, broadening the pool of German Jews eligible for assistance and bringing it more in line with those of SHAEF and UNRRA. Yet it also required that German Jews file claims within sixty days to justify their requests for assistance. It limited said assistance to “those persons who are ex-inmates of concentration camps and other victims of oppression in Germany,” and who were not then living in an UNRRA camp.34 In 1946, the British authorities revisited this policy, noting that “there were many others who suffered some form of oppression, such as loss of civil rights, starvation by food cuts, terrorism, bodily injury, and particularly those who lost a member of their family, on whom they were dependent for maintenance, by reason of his being sent to a concentration camp.”35 This strongly contrasts with the straightforward U.S. policy toward German Jews. In July 1945, the Combined Displaced Person’s Executive (CDPX)36 reiterated earlier policy saying that German Jews “will be given the same assistance granted to United Nations displaced persons.”37 Even so, a wide gulf between official policy and practice left many German Jews dependent on local authorities for assistance, particularly in the immediate postwar months. The question of how to label Balts caused tension between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union, raised questions about collaboration with the Third Reich, and highlighted the multiple paths that Balts followed to displacement.38 In August 1945 both the U.S. and Britain exempted Balts from forced repatriation, since the USSR had forcibly annexed their countries after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of August 23, 1939.39 However, the Soviets saw Balts in the Western zones as Soviet citizens and demanded their return.40 Balts in Germany in 1945 fell into one of four groups. A small number had moved into Germany between 1939 and 1941, fearing Soviet rule.41 Germany brought Balts into the Reich as forced laborers during the period 1941–1944.42 Balts who had participated in a branch of the German armed forces, in a Sicherheitsdienst (SD) unit, or in a Hilfswillige (Hiwi, collaborationist) unit made up the third group.43 The largest group had fled into Germany as the Red Army pushed the Wehrmacht westward in 1944.44 All of this made for a picture murkier than the original definitions had anticipated, and meant that registration officials could not focus simply on the Baltic UNDPs’ former nationality to determine eligibility. Another important dimension of the labeling process was both UNRRA’s and the military authorities’ initial privileging of UNDPs over other uprooted populations (after repatriation of most POWs). Therefore, historians must be precise with their use of labels such as UNDP. Labels determined access to resources. If UNRRA reclassified a camp resident, he or she would become a charge on the German economy45 while still a foreigner in an occupied land. This would limit not only their access to rations but also their ability to emigrate. Occupation authorities’ perceptions of Baltic, Jewish, and Polish UNDPs colored their policies. In December 1945 British Zone Chief of Staff Brian Robertson identified two groups: one “whose desire to remain would seem to be based on reasonable grounds,” consisting of those who faced Soviet persecution upon return and/or whose countries had ceased to exist; and all other DPs, whom he labeled “potential troublemakers,” noting that their refusal to return home “derive[s] from a desire to remain in the comparative comfort of a DP camp in Germany.”46 Robertson characterized both the Poles and the Jews as “recusant.” The core signifier of that word is refusal to accept authority. The Balts were doing the same thing, but their rejection of return was acceptable, even laudable, to Robertson. Robertson placed both Jewish and non-Jewish Poles together in the intransigent category, and so proposed limiting how long these could remain, suggesting April 1, 1946 as a deadline and recommending that any remaining after that be resettled on the German economy.47 The British Foreign Office rejected all of his ideas, stating that neither they nor the Americans could unilaterally impose a deadline to close the UNRRA camps in their respective zones. The U.S. also rejected closure anytime soon; Secretary of State James F. Byrnes announced that that the U.S. was deferring any proposals to liquidate the camps until the UN had developed an international policy for resettlement of non-repatriable DPs.48 This subsumed the question of Jewish resettlement, which remained in flux until the Anglo-American Commission (established in January 1946 to consider solutions regarding the future of Palestine) completed its work.49 In 1947 official policy still mandated that the UNDPs receive preferential treatment, but commitment to this had waned, diluted by shifting political and economic concerns. Conflicting Western and Soviet paths to German economic recovery and the issue of non-repatriable UNDPs had increased tensions. As British and American perceptions of the Germans as aggressors evolved to potential allies, the Western Allies increasingly saw the UNDPs as a roadblock, best solved via resettlement overseas. As British and American levels of empathy shifted, so too did their labels and policies.50 In a Stuttgart speech of September 1946, Byrnes stated that it was time to focus on building a positive future for Germany, rather than exclusively dwelling on its destructive past.51 The U.S. consequently refined its occupation policy through directive JCS (Joint Chiefs of Staff) 1779, which superseded JCS 1067. The latter instrument had based the attainment of peace on demilitarization and deindustrialization. JCS 1779 officially prioritized rebuilding through fusion of the British and American Zones.52 The Marshall Plan, announced in June 1947, buttressed this shift. The USSR criticized “Bizonia,” called for the unification of all of Germany, began radically transforming the economy within its own zone, and demanded the return of all of its citizens.53 Another key development was the December 1946 creation of the International Refugee Organization (IRO) by a sub-set of UNRRA’s members after lengthy and bitter debate between the Soviets and the Western Allies. Established to care for the “hard core” and resettle the non-repatriable UNDPs, the IRO sought to deal with those uprooted by the war and its aftermath, but only those on the “winning” side, whose suffering the IRO members deemed legitimate.54 In her official history of the IRO, the German-born American political scientist Louise Holborn acknowledged this a few years later, noting that UNDPs had “earned” the right to a free existence.55 Meanwhile, the Western Allies increasingly posited the remaining UNDPs, especially the Poles and Balts, more as victims of Communism than of Nazism.56 While the Balts retained their position at the top of the hierarchy, Poles leap-frogged over other groups, especially Jews. In the postwar world, the public associated DP with being Jewish. The IRO moved away from using this label, which in 1945 had assured privileged status. Instead, they utilized the less-specific term “refugee.”57 Coping with Population Movement Within SHAEF, the Displaced Persons Executive (DPX) initially coordinated repatriation.58 Although the DPX did not have a clear blueprint in May 1945, it soon prioritized repatriation efforts according to military needs, the ease of movement, and Allied agreements. In addition, it gave clear priority to UNDP movements over those of other uprooted populations. This first phase of repatriation focused on using the trains that took Allied soldiers and supplies into Germany to repatriate displaced French, Belgian, and Dutch. Categorization of these UNDPs was easier given the relative stability of their homelands’ geographic boundaries and the fact that most desired to return home.59 In May 1945 alone, SHAEF repatriated an average of 200,000 Western Europeans every week.60 This occurred quickly and with few problems, dominating transportation networks during the late spring. It also established an important policy and precedent: logistical reciprocity. The DPX utilized empty trains to repatriate UNDPs as long as this movement did not interfere with military needs.61 The summer ushered in the second phase of mass movement, which, due to sheer numbers and Allied agreements, focused on enemy POWs in their custody. The Americans, British, and Soviets housed, interrogated, and demobilized millions of German POWs whom they had captured within Greater Germany, as well as hundreds of thousands returning from POW camps abroad. However, recovering their own POWs was their top priority. In addition, given their better living conditions and higher food rations, repatriating Allied POWs would substantially alleviate housing and food shortages in Germany. The initial focus was on the massive number of Soviet POWs. In May, building on the Yalta protocols on repatriation,62 SHAEF and Soviet officials signed a follow-up agreement that established the process and affirmed this movement’s priority.63 By September 1, 1945, they had collectively repatriated more than five million Soviet citizens (POWs and civilians).64 This staggering figure and logistical feat highlights both the immense number of uprooted and the commitment to disentangle peoples. It placed all other eastward repatriation of UNDPs on hold—a costly delay for Poles who wanted to return—while the entwined policy of forcible repatriation pushed many UNDPs who were Soviet citizens to identify themselves as members of other nationalities.65 Last, it focused international attention on those who remained, especially UNDPs refusing repatriation. By late August 1945, the third phase focused on completing westward repatriation, shifting eastward repatriation to the Poles, and consolidating the remaining UNDPs into fewer UNRRA camps. SHAEF transitioned into the ACC, the military occupation’s governing body in Germany and Austria. As part of this transition, the Directorate of Prisoners of War and Displaced Persons (PW&DP) replaced DPX.66 In October 1945, this directorate unveiled a plan that still prioritized the needs of UNDPs over all other uprooted populations. It formalized the hierarchy for allocating resources to the uprooted populations and made Germans a second-tier priority.67 As both Allied priorities and the international landscape shifted, one thing was clear: in the eyes of the occupying powers, not all UNDPs were as worthy of care and assistance as others. As one British official explained, “It is difficult to devise a uniform method of treatment for these people, and some have a much higher claim to our help and consideration than others.”68 This phase was dominated by populations moving westward into Germany, a smaller outflow of repatriants eastward, and movement within Germany into the zones of the Western Allies, especially the American. In 1946, pressure to repatriate additional UNDPs increased with the arrival of tens of thousands of “infiltrees” from the East. Rather than repatriation continuing to be the defining feature in this phase, population exchanges became a balancing act. The largest ethnic group of UNDPs awaiting repatriation in the late summer of 1945 were the Poles. Although Poland had been an active military ally of the Allies, its citizens remained in POW and UNRRA camps longer. Within the hierarchy of empathy, Polish UNDPs were above German citizens, but initially below some of their DP peers, a reality with serious consequences. In April 1945, Eisenhower had prioritized the repatriation of other Allied POWs and Western UNDPs over the Poles.69 In addition, ex-enemy POWs went home before most of the Poles.70 While small-scale repatriation of Polish RAMPs and UNDPs had begun in July, the focus on Soviet repatriation delayed these efforts.71 Planning was complicated; it involved coordination of train routes and timetables between the Western Allies and the Soviet, Polish, and Czechoslovakian governments.72 In the summer of 1945, according to Quaker relief worker Margaret McNeill, in the summer of 1945, Polish UNDPs in the camp near Brunswick begged to go home. One of her UNRRA team colleagues declared: “If you asked me, we’ve missed the psychological moment as far as the Poles are concerned. People who suffered during the war years as they suffered should all have been sent back in a triumphant body, prisoners of war and DPs all together and welcomed in Poland with bands playing and flags flying. If they’d done that I don’t believe that a single Pole would have stayed away.”73 Unlike their acceptance of the Baltic UNDPs’ non-repatriation stance, neither British nor American authorities acknowledged the legitimacy of politically-based refusal by Poles to return home.74 Occupation officials underestimated it, assuming that most would accept repatriation eventually: British officials stated in fall 1945 that seventy-five percent of the 500,000 Polish UNDPs in their Zone would accept repatriation.75 While 224,000 Poles from across all the Western zones did return home that autumn, the predictions were overly optimistic.76 Overlapping with this third phase of repatriation, the ACC devised a plan for the organized movement of German expellees into Germany, to comply with the Potsdam Agreement. In its Article 12, the Potsdam Treaty called for the transfer of ethnic Germans from Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary, noting that the process should occur in an “orderly and humane manner.”77 For their zones, the British agreed to accept 22.5 percent of the incoming Germans, the U.S. 33.75, the French 2.25, and the Soviets 41.5.78 This balanced plan never materialized, and the transfer of millions of expellees caused seismic demographic changes. The first postwar census in Germany documented 5,645,000 Reichsdeutsche Germans from former “Reich” lands. In addition, more than six million Volksdeutsche expelled from Czechoslovakia, Poland, and other Eastern European countries brought the total to close to twelve million.79 Due to both geography and urban destruction, the expellees disproportionately found themselves in northern and rural regions. The French Zone had by far the fewest, only 1.9 percent of its population.80 The British dubbed their portion of this movement “Operation Swallow.”81 Similarly to practice during earlier logistical efforts, British authorities coordinated their efforts to maximize resources. The British used Operation Swallow trains to bring expellees from Poland into Germany and returned the trains to Poland with more than 11,000 Polish UNDPs in March 1946 alone.82 An unexpected element of Operation Swallow was that Eastern European Jews used these trains to access Germany. Pretending to be expellees, they claimed birth in one of the larger cities, but rarely could name a specific street for their residence or their synagogue; many could not even speak German.83 After arriving in the British Zone, many then sought entry into UNRRA camps in the U.S. Zone. The picture of the uprooted in Germany by 1946 differed drastically from that of May 1945. By June, UNRRA was assisting about 710,000 UNDPs in Germany. For the first time, the overall numbers in the U.S. Zone outstripped those in the British Zone.84 Britain had a more aggressive repatriation program; by this point, of the 330,260 Polish UNDPs repatriated, two-thirds had “originated” in its occupation zone.85 To reduce the UNDP population, both British and American officials chose the Poles as their primary target. They were the largest remaining national population in the camps, and the group whom the authorities believed had the least legitimate reasons for refusing repatriation. To forestall the organization of resistance, officials curtailed the Polish UNDPs’ communications and shifted them from camp to camp within their respective zones. UNRRA told Polish UNDPs that occupation authorities were closing their camps and reallocating their housing for use by military personnel. It warned that if they remained in Germany the Poles would have to survive on 1,300 calories per day and live on the German economy.86 Yet these efforts failed. In September 1946, UNRRA still was caring for more than 695,000 DPs, of whom forty-four percent were Poles.87 U.S. authorities responded by establishing “Operation Carrot,” a program exclusively aimed at Polish UNDPs in the U.S. Zone. Essentially, UNRRA shipped the equivalent of food rations at 2,000 calories per day for sixty days to Poland and distributed them to all UNDPs who arrived there between October 1 and December 31, 1946.88 This initially increased repatriation rates; 50,000 Polish UNDPs returned home from the American Zone in the last quarter of 1946.89 In turn, this reinforced perceptions that the Poles were not truly “non-repatriable.” During this period, the flow of Eastern European Jews into the U.S. Zone increased. On July 6, 1945, the USSR and Poland signed a treaty dealing with border issues and population exchanges. Within a short time, more than 110,000 Jews who had moved eastward into the Soviet Union during the war had registered to return. Many of these spent little time on Polish soil. A survivor of Ravensbrück who returned to Łódź wrote, “In spite of everything we didn’t have a peaceful life in Poland. A Jew couldn’t go peacefully on the street. Carnages [sic] and slaughters [a reference to postwar pogroms] had begun again.”90 One British report stated, “The Jews feel the psychological after-effects of the wholesale massacre perpetrated by the Germans more than others, with the result that they do not wish to continue residence in what is for them one huge cemetery.”91 An American reflected poignantly, “There must be something wrong if people with small children, pregnant women, elderly people, young persons, well-to-do merchants, poor uneducated farm workers, all want to leave their ‘homes’ with their barest possessions in midwinter, leaving a country of comparative plenty, just to get away, no matter where to. The tension and insecurity must be very bad.”92 Due to the continuing violence and the devastating consequences of the Holocaust, many Polish Jews continued westward.93 From late 1945 onward, more than 200,000 Jews from Eastern Europe entered Germany. Their arrival renewed serious tensions between the British and the American authorities, and challenged the initial definitions of UNDPs. As an interim measure, all four members of the ACC agreed to assign infiltrees to their zones on a percentage basis and provide them with necessities including food, clothing, medical care, and housing. However, the British initially wanted to call them “emigrants” rather than refugees or UNDPs.94 The word emigrant implied that their entry into Germany was voluntary and stripped them of the protection accorded refugees and UNDPs. The British did relent on the wording, but banned the Eastern European Jews from entering UNRRA camps in their zone and stated that the Jews would have to live off the German economy.95 The U.S. developed a more empathetic policy, declaring, “In absence of proof to the contrary, we are prepared to assume that all persons falling within categories known to have been the object of Nazi persecution or discriminatory legislation (for example Jews) were displaced from their homes during the war and are therefore eligible for UNRRA assistance. For other persons, evidence of displacement should be required.”96 British officials characterized this policy and the separate camps for Jews that the Americans established as “encouragement” to leave Poland, and vowed that their own goal was “maximum discouragement.”97 The demographic result was striking: by September 1947, ninety-one percent of all Jewish DPs in Germany were living in the U.S. Zone.98 Resources The intertwined issues of employment and housing illustrate the intersection of Western policy, demands on resources, and the effort to rebuild the German economy. Postwar Germany possessed 24 percent less territory than it had had within its 1937 borders, and the Allies had required considerable reparations.99 The military authorities quickly established a hierarchy of needs―with their own at the top. The remaining UNDPs frustrated both the occupation authorities and the German population, especially by their involvement in the black and gray markets.100 The struggle UNDPs confronted when seeking employment and housing also faced millions of German expellees.101 Occupation authorities came under mounting German criticism.102 A letter from the administrator of Bergstrasse county (Landkreis) requested the closure of all nearby UNRRA camps, stating “that the DP’s accommodation constituted an intolerable burden.”103 Aggravation increasingly replaced the occupiers’ initial empathy; consequently, they eroded the UNDPs’ status until the latter were on a footing equal to or even lesser than that of the Germans by 1947. Since the occupiers had assumed that the vast majority of UNDPs would return home as soon as possible, employing them was not a major priority immediately after the war. SHAEF policy did allow UNDPs to hold jobs, if this did not discourage repatriation. In fact, it privileged their employment over that of Germans. Employment was not compulsory unless military government deemed the work “essential.”104 Initially, UNRRA found jobs for UNDPs within its camps and encouraged the military and local German businesses to utilize them. However, it limited its training programs to thirty days, sensitive to their potentially negative impact on repatriation. Later, the IRO emphasized employable skills as a path to resettlement and expanded training opportunities.105 Complementing the efforts of voluntary agencies, the IRO established vocational preparation in thirty basic courses, most commonly involving construction, mechanical training, agriculture, garment manufacturing, and clerical work.106 U.S. military officials also worried that work in their guard and labor units could be a barrier to emptying the camps, particularly for Polish UNDPs. In July 1947 they began phasing out these jobs and turned over authority for guarding installations to Germans or to African-American troops.107 In December 1945 the controversial UNRRA Director of Operations, British Lieutenant-General Frederick E. Morgan, considered a “don’t work, don’t eat” policy. However, he conceded that such a policy would “bristle with difficulties.”108 Since many UNDPs had endured forced or slave labor under the Third Reich, they were loath to work directly for or with Germans, especially on rebuilding projects. In turn, German employers were reluctant to hire UNDPs, a group over whom they had little authority. In the British Zone, high-ranking officials also recommended that UNDPs find employment within the German economy. However, they took matters a step further by proposing a reduction in the standard of living within UNRRA camps to the German level.109 In June 1946 A.G. Kenchington, the head of the PW&DP Division in the British Zone, stated, “the scale on which these people are being maintained is altogether too high, thus discouraging repatriation and the desire to work.”110 Other British officials echoed Kenchington’s critique, describing life in UNRRA camps as “tolerable (sometimes excellent) accommodation, assured supplies of food and tobacco and no compulsion to work.”111 The UNDPs seemed to be thwarting Allied goals both by refusing to repatriate and by refusing to rebuild the German economy. View largeDownload slide DPs receive professional training from machinist Sucher (later Sol) Rubin; prob. Föhrenwald DP camp, ca. 1945–1949. U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy Jack Rubin. View largeDownload slide DPs receive professional training from machinist Sucher (later Sol) Rubin; prob. Föhrenwald DP camp, ca. 1945–1949. U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy Jack Rubin. Throughout 1946 across the Western zones, calls for more assembly camp-housed UNDPs to go to work grew more prevalent. In February, French occupation officials made work for UNDPs compulsory, although they did not force them to work for Germans.112 While it stopped short of mandating employment, OMGUS (Office of Military Government, U.S.) did unveil an ambitious plan for its zone. Mainly by expanding opportunities in its own administration, it attempted to provide every able-bodied UNDP with a job. It also supported small manufacturing enterprises and marketed their products in Army stores.113 The focus in the British Zone was on employing UNDPs for public works: clearing debris, cutting timber, construction, driving, laying communication wires.114 By late 1946, across all three Western zones forty-five percent of employable DPs had jobs, with more than 243,000 working at UNRRA centers, on military installations, or in civilian jobs under military control.115 Within the British Zone, it was fifty-four percent, a consequence of the U.K.’s more aggressive strategy.116 There was no similar overarching plan to ensure that able-bodied Germans had employment. In 1947, British and American occupation officials continued to push for full UNDP employment, dovetailing with economic rebuilding in Bizonia. By February, the British required UNDPs to accept any “reasonable offer” of work or face prosecution and penalties, though refusal could not result in loss of UNDP status. If UNDPs worked for German businesses they were entitled to treatment equal to that of Germans and could join labor unions.117 In the American Zone, the U.S. Army, the IRO, voluntary agencies, and German businesses and farms began to employ larger numbers of UNDPs in the latter half of 1947.118 All of these policy changes could displace Germans, sometimes from coveted positions. Previously, U.S. Army installations had hired German citizens more often than UNDPs.119 In conjunction with the currency reform of June 1948, in its zone the U.S. implemented measures to subtract the costs of the UNDPs’ care and maintenance from their pay; the British already had instituted this policy in January 1947.120 The pressure to reduce the costs of caring for UNDPs dovetailed with the push for German economic recovery. The results thus erased UNDPs privileged place over Germans that had prevailed during the earlier occupation years. The continuing housing shortage exacerbated the thorny issue of employment, given that jobs near the UNRRA camps were rarely plentiful.121 While many accommodations for native Germans were overcrowded and/or damaged from the war, they provided greater privacy, autonomy, and flexibility in terms of location than the spaces allocated to UNDPs. After the flurry of requisitions in 1945, Allied authorities were reluctant to take additional housing from Germans, although directives clearly prioritized housing DPs.122 When they requisitioned private homes, they most often allocated these to their own personnel and/or dependents. By 1947, U.S. officials cautioned staff to “use discretion in assigning German billets to DPs,”123 not wanting to antagonize Germans further: circumstances differed from those in 1945.124 However, while they resisted requisitioning additional space, occupation officials remained reluctant to return housing to German control. When the minister president of Hessen requested the use of the UNRRA camp at Hanau to house expellees, the Army explained that most of the 6,500 UNDPs either worked in the camp or at nearby businesses, and, therefore, they could not be moved.125 In another instance, in which Jewish DPs had vacated workers’ quarters at a rubber plant, German authorities sought the return of the buildings to the company to provide additional jobs and increase production.126 However, Allied authorities retained control of the barracks, moving German expellees into them. Thanks to the Americans’ more generous policy toward “infiltrees,” Jews became the largest group of UNDPs remaining in their zone by 1946. Room remained available for them in part because “Operation Carrot” had moved 50,000 Poles out of Germany, and because of the early release of German POWs.127 In late winter 1947, U.S. military authorities held on to emptied camps in anticipation of additional Jewish DPs arriving from the East.128 In the British Zone, the Pöppendorf camps in Schleswig-Holstein became one of the major transit centers for “Operation Swallow” expellees brought from Stettin via Lübeck in 1946. When the British suspended this program, the main camp began to house German POWs in transit. Later that year, its satellite camps held unofficial refugees, particularly German expellees illegally entering from the Soviet Zone.129 By September 1947, the Pöppendorf camps held more than 4,300 Jews from the Exodus (the refugee ship turned away from Palestine).130 As their own needs shifted, OMGUS moved more than 10,000 DPs from UNRRA camps as they consolidated DP populations in 1948, but then requisitioned these camps for its own personnel.131 Such stories of repurposing housing knit together the experiences of the uprooted, in particular their movements into, out of, or within Germany. Conclusion As the UNDP population changed, the process of status-leveling and shifting empathy that began in 1946 came to fruition. In December 1945, 14,000 Jews, 427,407 Poles, and 132,098 Balts lived in UNRRA camps across the three Western zones as UNDPs. In contrast, by June 1947, 134,864 Jewish, 136,180 Polish, and 148,776 Baltic UNDPs remained.132 While the number of Jews had jumped dramatically and that of Balts inched upward, the number of UNDPs who claimed to be Poles decreased by two-thirds―if in part due to re-classification of many as “Polish Ukrainians.”133 The year 1948 proved a watershed as the development of significant labor schemes, the establishment of Israel, and the U.S. DP Act of 1948 all opened new paths to resettlement. The IRO facilitated this movement, relocating hundreds of thousands of DPs from Germany.134 By 1949 the ACC had given way to the High Commission for Occupied Germany (HICOG), the IRO was devising its exit strategy, and two Germanys had emerged. However, the persistence of the “hard core” DPs hampered bringing all three of these transitions to fruition. The question of what would happen with the still-remaining DPs once the IRO ceased operations, originally scheduled for June 30, 1950, pressed; the agency estimated that 105,000 UNDPs would yet remain in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1950.135 The initial plan called for the government to assume responsibility for all remaining DPs by the end of June 1950, but the implications of this for the victimized population were tremendous.136 Leveling the status of UNDPs with that of the overall population officially occurred with the April 1951 Gesetz über die Rechtstellung heimatloser Ausländer im Bundesgebiet, by which the West German government formally adopted responsibility for the “hard core” of the remaining Displaced Persons in its territory and guaranteed them economic and social rights and protection. View largeDownload slide Supervisor of UNRRA DP camps in Bavaria Samuel B. Zisman bids farewell to DPs leaving Germany on a decorated U.S. Army train; ca. 1945–1947. U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy Samuel B. Zisman. View largeDownload slide Supervisor of UNRRA DP camps in Bavaria Samuel B. Zisman bids farewell to DPs leaving Germany on a decorated U.S. Army train; ca. 1945–1947. U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy Samuel B. Zisman. Intertwining historical narratives illustrate the ways in which multiple competing groups, policies, and priorities co-existed. British and American programs did not remain static and often competed. Studying labels, logistics, employment, shifting levels of protection and empathy, and other thorny questions provides us today insight into the postwar world. By prioritizing the eastward movement of Soviet citizens, the Western Allies created space for a larger pool of Polish (and other) UNDPs and RAMPs who refused repatriation. Timing mattered. In a region swamped by uprooted populations who were most readily cared for in barrack-style housing and who needed the skills to make them employable, officials sought to balance the inward and outward flows of people and to decide whose needs to prioritize. Space and resources mattered. Moving UNDPs from camps onto the German economy or onward to overseas resettlement was not just about reducing the costs of their care and maintenance; it was about reorganizing American and British forces within Germany for the developing Cold War. Politics mattered. By placing the intermingled stories of the DPs among the layered narratives of postwar population disentanglement, historians more clearly can see the myriad factors at play. Laura J. Hilton is professor of history at Muskingum University. She earned her Ph.D. in modern European history in 2001 from Ohio State University. She writes on the experiences of Jewish, Latvian, and Polish DPs in postwar Germany. Her works include “The Black Market in History and Memory: German Perceptions of Victimhood from 1945 to 1948” (2010), and she now works on the culture of rumors in Germany between 1945 and 1949. She currently is co-editing a forthcoming volume entitled Understanding and Teaching the Holocaust. Footnotes 1 Enemy and ex-enemy DPs included (but were not limited to) Italians, Romanians, Bulgarians, Hungarians, and Austrians. 2 Millions of ethnic Germans had left their homes in Eastern Europe even before war’s end. Ben Shephard estimates that 3.5 million such refugees had already reached Germany by April 1945. The Long Road Home: The Aftermath of the Second World War (New York: Knopf, 2011), 122. 3 As of early May 1945, Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) estimated that it had approximately “five million prisoners of war and disarmed enemy troops in … custody, well over 3 million of them being held by U.S. forces.” Earl F. Ziemke, The U.S. Army in the Occupation of Germany, 1944–1946 (Washington: The U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1975), 291. Adam Tooze estimates that 11 million men in Wehrmacht uniform spent time in POW camps: The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy (New York: Penguin, 2008), 672. See also Keith Lowe, Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II (New York: St. Martin’s, 2012), 111–24. 4 Evacuees numbered about five million out of a total German population, at the war’s end, of seventy million. See Paul F. Myers and W. Parker Mauldin, Population of the Federal Republic of Germany and West Berlin (Washington, DC: GPO, 1952), 18. 5 Martin Weinmann, ed., Das nationalsozialistiche Lagersystem, 2nd ed. (Berlin: Kohler and Leberfinger, 1990), 138; Eugene Kulischer, Europe on the Move: War and Population Changes, 1917–1947 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1948), 64. Given the mobile nature of this population, exact numbers remain elusive. See Anna Holian, Between National Socialism and Soviet Communism: Displaced Persons in Postwar Germany (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011), 37-40. 6 Jeffry M. Diefendorf, In the Wake of War: The Reconstruction of German Cities after World War II (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993) 13–17. 7 Eugene Kulischer, “Displaced Persons in the Modern World,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 262 (1949): 166–77; 170–71. By September 1945, the USSR had repatriated from its zone over four million DPs, 79 percent of whom it identified as Soviet citizens. 8 Wolfgang Jacobmeyer, Vom Zwangsarbeiter zum heimatlosen Ausländer: Die Displaced Persons in Westdeutschland, 1945–1951 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1985); Michael R. Marrus, The Unwanted: European Refugees from the First World War Through the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); Mark Wyman, DPs: Europe’s Displaced Persons, 1945–1951 (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 1989). 9 See for example Andreas Lembeck with Klaus Wessels, Befreit aber nicht in Freiheit: Displaced Persons in Emsland, 1945–1950 (Bremen: Temmen, 1997); Stefan Schröder, Displaced Persons im Landkreis und in der Stadt Münster, 1945–1951 (Münster: Aschendorff, 2005); and Patrick Wagner, Displaced Persons in Hamburg: Stationen einer halbherzigen Integration 1945 bis 1958 (Hamburg: Dölling und Galitz, 1997). The most thorough, fairly recent work examining Bavaria is Holian, Between National Socialism and Soviet Communism. 10 Among the most important relevant works on Jewish DPs are Margarete Myers Feinstein, Holocaust Survivors in Postwar Germany, 1945–1957 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Angelika Königseder and Juliane Wetzel, Lebensmut im Wartesaal: Die jüdischen DPs (Displaced Persons) im Nachkriegsdeutschland (Frankfurt/M: Fischer Taschenbuch, 1995); Hagit Lavsky, New Beginnings: Holocaust Survivors in Bergen-Belsen and the British Zone in Germany, 1945–1950 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2002); and Zeev W. Mankowitz, Life between Memory and Hope: The Survivors of the Holocaust in Occupied Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 11 On resettlement, see Anna D. Jaroszyńska-Kirchmann, The Exile Mission: The Polish Political Diaspora and Polish Americans, 1939–1956 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2004); Arieh J. Kochavi, Post-Holocaust Politics: Britain, the United States, and Jewish Refugees, 1945–1948 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001); and Lubomyr Luciuk, Searching for Place: Ukrainian Displaced Persons, Canada, and the Migration of Memory (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001). 12 For integration of the DP narrative into German history, see especially: Atina Grossman, Jews, Germans, and Allies: Close Encounters in Occupied Germany (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007); and Adam R. Seipp, Strangers in the Wild Place: Refugees, Americans, and a German Town, 1945–1952 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013). Recent books by Gerard Daniel Cohen and by Peter Gatrell integrate the DP experience into the larger context of refugee studies and within a longer chronological framework: see respectively In War’s Wake: Europe’s Displaced Persons in the Postwar Order (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); and The Making of the Modern Refugee (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). In addition, the following edited collections are essential reading: Peter Gatrell and Nick Baron, eds., Warlands: Population Resettlement and State Reconstruction in the Soviet-East European Borderlands, 1945–50 (Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); and Jessica Reinisch and Elizabeth White, eds., The Disentanglement of Populations: Migration, Expulsion and Displacement in Postwar Europe, 1944–9 (Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). I seek to bridge the local/national/international divide of which Reinisch writes. See “Introduction,” in ibid., xv–xvi. 13 Matthew Frank and Jessica Reinisch, “Refugees and the Nation-State in Europe, 1919–59,” Journal of Contemporary History 49, no. 3 (2014): 478–79. 14 UNRRA was subordinate to the military and then occupation authorities. See Malcolm J. Proudfoot, European Refugees: 1939–1952: A Study in Forced Population Movement (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1956), 230–34 for charts of their respective responsibilities. 15 Jessica Reinisch, “Introduction,” in Reinisch and White, The Disentanglement of Populations, xviii. 16 Matthew Frank, “Reconstructing the Nation State,” in Reinisch and White, The Disentanglement of Populations, 27. 17 Gatrell, The Making of the Modern Refugee, 91–94. 18 UNRRA, “Report of the Subcommittee on Policies with Respect to Assistance to Displaced Persons,” in George Woodbridge, UNRRA (New York: Columbia University Press, 1950), 3:51–52. 19 Proudfoot outlines the registration procedure, conducted by military personnel, not UNRRA staff: European Refugees, 190. 20 Originally, the Allies attempted to separate Polish RAMPs from the general UNDP population, because the former were entitled to better rations. By October of 1945, policy eliminated this separate category. 21 Reinisch, “Introduction,” xviiiff. 22 Cohen, In War’s Wake, 6. 23 The Oxford English Dictionary definition of “infiltrate” is “to penetrate (enemy lines) by the gradual or surreptitious movement of small numbers of troops; to move (one’s own troops) surreptitiously through the enemy’s lines. Also fig[urative], esp. for the purpose of political subversion.” 24 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives (USHMM), RG-59.025M (Reconciliation: Displaced Persons and Emigration, 1937–1951), Foreign Office 1030/300, reel 38, 214. 25 Ibid., 1032/815, reel 40, 1088. 26 Cable S-16667, American Jewish Archives (AJA), World Jewish Congress MS Collection 361 (WJC MS Coll. 361), box D59, folder 5. 27 United Nations Archival Records Management (UNARM), Section S-0400-016-2, AG 354.1 GEC-AGO. For additional information on the Harrison Report and its aftermath, see Grossmann, Jews, Germans, and Allies, 137–42; and Leonard Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust: The Evolution of a United States Displaced Persons Policy, 1945–1950 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 39–50. 28 USHMM, RG-59.025M, FO 1032/815, reel 40, 1042. Some British officials, including Field Marshal Montgomery’s chief of staff Brian Robertson, supported the establishment of separate camps for Jews in the fall of 1945: see Kochavi, Post-Holocaust Politics, 38–40. 29 Military History Institute (MHI), McSherry Papers, box 8, binder volume VI, Department of State, “Displaced Populations and Groups.” 30 UNARM, Section S-0399-1100-11, EUCOM cable no. SX-4301. See also Kochavi, Post-Holocaust Politics, 138–43. 31 Holian, Between National Socialism and Soviet Communism, 59. The initial 1944 policy statement came from SHAEF, so it also applied to the British. In the U.S. Zone in April of 1945, Joint Chiefs of Staff memo 1067 reiterated this, confirming that German Jews were eligible for assistance as DPs. 32 USHMM, RG-59.025M, FO 1030/300, reel 38, 214. See also Kochavi, Post-Holocaust Politics, 56–59. 33 Ibid. 34 USHMM, RG-59.025M, FO 1013/1952, reel 34, 101–105. 35 USHMM, RG-59.025M, FO 1013/1952, reel 34, 77–78. 36 This OMGUS (Office of Military Government, U.S.) entity took over from the DPX to fill the gap between the end of SHAEF and UNRRA’s assumption of authority over the assembly centers in September. Ziemke, U. S. Army in the Occupation, 318. 37 Cable GE CDPX 383.7, dated 20 July 1945, AJA, WJC MS Coll. 36, box D64, folder 7. 38 See Tillmann Tegeler, “Esten, Letten und Litauer in der Britischen Besatzungszone Deutschland,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 53 (2005): 46–49. 39 UNARM, Section S-0399-1100-06, OMGUS Memo, Subject: Determination and Reporting of Nationalities; and Proudfoot, European Refugees, 215–17. See also Tomas Balkelis, “Living in the Displaced Persons Camp: Lithuanian War Refugees in the West, 1944–54,” in Gatrell and Baron, Warlands, 28–31. 40 George Ginsburgs, “The Soviet Union and the Problem of Refugees and Displaced Persons, 1917–1956,” The American Journal of International Law 51, n. 2, (1957): 354–56. 41 Romauld Misiunas and Rein Taagepera, The Baltic States: Years of Dependence, 1940–1980 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 39. 42 Ulrich Herbert, Hitler’s Foreign Workers: Enforced Foreign Labor in Germany under the Third Reich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 171–204. 43 The Hiwis (Hilfswillige―”help willing”) were citizens of occupied territories who collaborated with the Third Reich through participation in auxiliary police units. For a thorough examination of the participation of Latvians in these units, see Andrew Ezergailis, The Holocaust in Latvia, 1941–1944: The Missing Center (Riga: The Historical Institute of Latvia, in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1996). 44 Baltic Refugees and Displaced Persons (London: Boreas, 1947), 9–12. See also Aldis Purs, “‘How those brothers in foreign lands are dividing the Fatherland’: Latvian National Politics in Displaced Persons Camps after the Second World War,” in Gatrell and Baron, Warlands, 51–53; and Raymond Krisciunas, “The Emigrant Experience: The Decision of Lithuanian Refugees to Emigrate,” Lituanas 29, no. 2 (1983): 30–39. 45 On the process of screening and re-screening, see Cohen, In War’s Wake, 35–44. 46 USHMM, RG-59.025M, FO 945/389, reel 31, 11–12. 47 Ibid. 48 UNARM, Section S-0425-1130-10, cable WX-8524. 49 USHMM, RG-59.025M, FO 945/389, reel 31, 13–15. For a thorough discussion of the role of Jewish DPs in British acceptance of the United Nation’s partition of the territory, see Kochavi, Post-Holocaust Politics, esp. 276–84. 50 Tony Kushner Remembering Refugees: Then and Now (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), 5f. On shifting levels of empathy toward the uprooted in Austria, see Robert Knight, “National Construction Work and Hierarchies of Empathy in Postwar Austria,” Journal of Contemporary History 48, no. 3 (2014): 491–513. 51 U.S. State Department, Germany, 1947–1949: The Story in Documents (New York: Greenwood, 1961), 55–62. 52 “Directive to Commander-in-Chief of U.S. Forces of Occupation, Regarding the Military Government of Germany, July 11, 1947,” Appendix B in Carl Friedrich, American Experiences in Military Government in World War II (New York: Rinehart, 1948), 402–15. See also Grossmann, Jews, Germans, and Allies, 174. 53 Norman Naimark, The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945–1949 (Cambridge: Belknap, 1995), 141–204. 54 IRO, “IRO Constitution and Agreement on Interim Measures,” in Louise Holborn, The International Refugee Organization (London: Oxford University Press, 1956), 575–89. Neither the Soviet Union nor any of its satellite states joined the IRO, which smoothed the way for the westward resettlement of their nationals. See also Gatrell, The Making of the Modern Refugee, 107–109. 55 Holborn, The International Refugee Organization, 171. 56 Holian, Between National Socialism and Soviet Communism, 136–37. 57 IRO, The Facts About Refugees (Geneva: IRO, 1948), 1, 19. 58 “Outline Plan for Refugees and Displaced Persons,” National Archives and Records Administration at College Park, MD (NARA), Office of Military Government, U.S. (OMGUS), RG 260, 8/56-1/3, accessed at Hessische Staatsarchive, Marburg, (HSAM), For an overview of this plan, see Proudfoot, European Refugees, 147–50. 59 Some Western DPs who refused repatriation feared retaliation and/or punishment for collaboration with the Third Reich, although government statistics tended to eliminate them as a category. See Pierre Lagrou, The Legacy of Nazi Occupation: Patriotic Memory and National Recovery in Western Europe, 1945–1965 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000): 86–88. 60 Ziemke, U.S. Army in the Occupation, 284. For specifics on each national group, see Proudfoot, European Refugees, 191–203. 61 Ibid., 189. 62 For the complete text, see Julius Epstein, Operation Keelhaul: The Story of Forced Repatriation from 1944 to the Present (Old Greenwich, CT: Devin-Adair, 1973), 23–25. Arieh J. Kochavi provides a thorough overview of the Yalta discussions in Confronting Captivity: Britain and the United States and Their POWs in Nazi Germany (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 233–36. 63 EUCOM, International Aspects of the Occupation (Frankfurt/M: EUCOM, Chief Historian, 1947), 163; Kochavi, Post-Holocaust Politics, 277–79. 64 USHMM, RG-59.025M, FO 1049/259, reel 46, 116. 65 International Aspects, 159–60. See Marta Dyczok, The Grand Alliance and Ukrainian Refugees (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), on Ukrainian DPs and refugees. 66 SHAEF ceased to exist as of July 14, 1945. The ACC consisted of delegates from all four occupation powers. Its headquarters were in Berlin, and it operated from summer 1945 until March 1948. 67 USHMM, RG-59.025M, FO 1049/259, reel 46, 106–108. The plan noted that when empty trains were available, authorities could alter the priorities, but that “in all cases United Nations displaced persons enjoy a higher priority than any movement of Germans.” 68 USHMM, RG-59.025M, FO 945/390, reel 32, 129. 69 NARA, Record Group 59 (Department of State), Entry 53 D 307, box 13, folder: DP Poland, April 1945 to June 1946. 70 Letter from OMGB [Office of Military Government, for Bavaria], December 5, 1945, UNARM, Section S-0437-1133-19. See Proudfoot, European Refugees, 204–206 on Italian POWs, whom SHAEF reclassified as “ex-enemy” DPs in May 1945. 71 RAMPs lost this elevated status on October 1, 1945, when they became UNDPs. See EUCOM, Labor Services and Industrial Police in the European Command, 1945–1950 (Karlsruhe: EUCOM, 1952), 5. 72 Constance Acton, Displaced Persons, 1 July 1946–30 June 1947 (Karlsruhe: EUCOM, 1951), 62–64. 73 Margaret McNeill, By the Rivers of Babylon: A Story Based Upon Actual Experiences Among the Displaced Persons of Europe (London: Bannisdale, 1950), 93. 74 See Holian, Between National Socialism and Soviet Communism, 88–99 for more on the Polish DPs’ debate over whether to accept repatriation. 75 USHMM, RG-59.025M, FO 1032/810, reel 40, 87. 76 Proudfoot, European Refugees, 282. 77 The label of “expellee” is significant; the definition is, “one who has been expelled, esp. from his own country,” which served to buttress a sense of dispossession. The Potsdam Agreement is reproduced in R. Dennett and R. Turner, eds. Documents on American Foreign Relations, vol. VIII, 925–38. By the time of the Potsdam Agreement, at least three million expellees already had arrived in Germany. 78 The actual number of expellees in the Western zones far exceeded these percentages due to the surreptitious entry of additional expellees from the Soviet Zone. More than 750,000 refugees who should have been in other zones were in the U.S. Zone as of May 1946. Ziemke, U. S. Army in the Occupation, 409. 79 As of March 1949, the Soviet Zone contained an estimated 4.4 million expellees; that July the Western zones harbored 7.4 million expellees. See Myers and Mauldin, Population of the Federal Republic, 7. 80 Bessel, 1945, 68, 90. 81 USHMM, RG-59.025M, FO 1049/259, reel 46, 83–84. See also, Lowe, Savage Continent, 243. 82 The British called Poles’ eastward movement, Operation Eagle. USHMM, RG-59.025M, FO 1052/321, reel 53, 23–26. 83 USHMM, RG-59.025M, FO 1049/416, reel 46, 346. 84 Woodbridge, UNRRA, 3:422. There were 368,210 UNDPs in the U.S. Zone; 298,981 in the British Zone; and 42,235 in the French Zone. 85 Ibid, 427. 86 UNARM, Section S-0436-1132-46, letter given to Polish Office on April 12, 1946. See also Jaroszyńska-Kirchmann, 68. 87 Woodbridge, UNRRA, 2:498. Of the remaining UNDPs, 25.35% were Balts and 17.37% were Jews. 88 UNARM, Section S-0425-1130-12, “Report on Trip to Poland.” See also Seipp, Strangers in the Wild Place, 90–91; and Shephard, The Long Road Home, 242–44. 89 United States Army, Mission Accomplished (Washington, DC: U.S. Army, 1947), 39. 90 Interview of Hadassah M. in Fresh Wounds: Early Narratives of Holocaust Survival, ed. Donald Niewyk (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 124–25. 91 USHMM, RG-59.025M, FO 1049/416, reel 46, 350–52. 92 USHMM, RG-59.025M, FO 1049/416, reel 46, 385–91. 93 For additional details of the postwar flow of Polish Jews into Germany, see Grossmann Jews, Germans, and Allies, 159–62. 94 USHMM, RG-59.025M, FO 1032/2256, reel 43, 255–266 (US: 34%, British: 22%, French: 3%, Soviet: 41%). 95 Cohen, In War’s Wake, 136–37; Feinstein, Holocaust Survivors in Postwar Germany, 58. 96 UNARM, Section S-0399-1100-05, cable #8855. 97 USHMM, RG-59.025M, FO 1020/2410, reel 36, 307. 98 Holian, Between National Socialism and Soviet Communism, 41. 99 Tooze estimates that the USSR dismantled “at least 30 per cent of its industrial capital stock” and took the equivalent of thirteen percent of its OWN national income in reparations from its Zone: The Wages of Destruction, 673–74. 100 Laura J. Hilton, “The Black Market in History and Memory: German Perceptions of Victimhood from 1945 to 1948,” German History 28, no. 4 (2010): 479–97. 101 For a localized examination of these issues, see Seipp, Strangers in the Wild Place, 116–20; 162–71. See also Rainer Schulze, “Forced Migration of German Populations During and After the Second World War,” in Reinisch and White, The Disentanglement of Populations, 56–57; and Jessica Reinisch, “Refugees and Labour in the Soviet Zone of Germany, 1945–1949,” in ibid., 190–93. 102 UNARM, Section S-0399-1100-11, Report of Conference held at Prisoner of War and Displaced Persons Office for Hessen. 103 NARA, RG 260, 8/63-2/5; accessed at HSAM, folder: Correspondence on Displaced Persons, letter from Der Landrat des Landkreises Bergstrasse, Besatzungskostenamt. 104 SHAEF, Guide to the Care of Displaced Persons in Germany ([n.p.]: G-5 Division, Displaced Persons Branch, revised, May 1945), 57. 105 Woodbridge, UNRRA, 2:519–21. For example, between January 1947 and January 1948, the World ORT Union increased the number of schools in the U.S. Zone from forty-three to sixty, almost doubling the number of students. See Jacob Oleiski, Report on the Activities of World ORT Union in the US Zone of Germany for the Year 1947 ([Munich]: [ORT], 1947), 6, 12. 106 Holborn, International Refugee Organization, 285. 107 NARA, RG 59, Entry 53D307, box 10, folder: DPs, Germany, July–August, 1947. 108 Personal memo no. 7 Morgan to Gale, UNARM, Section S-0425-1130-6. 109 Meeting minutes, Control Office, USHMM, RG-59.025M, FO 945/389, reel 31, 117–20. 110 Ibid. 111 Ibid., FO 1049/367, reel 46, 191–93. 112 Woodbridge, UNRRA, 2:520. The French policy did make allowances for skill-based employment. 113 Report on Displaced Persons in American-Occupied Germany UNARM, Section S-0425-1130-34. 114 Policy Paper, USHMM, RG-59.025M Foreign Office, FO 945/389, reel 31, 144–47. 115 Press clippings relating to the employment programme, UNARM, Section S-0399-1100-12. 116 Silvia Salvatici, “From Displaced Persons to Labourers,” in Reinisch and White, The Disentanglement of Populations, 217–18. 117 USHMM, RG-59.025M, FO 945/390, reel 32, 72–73. 118 R.L. Fisher, “The Army and Displaced Persons,” Military Government Journal 3 (1948): 24. 119 Employment Report for June 1946, UNARM, Section S-0424-1131-09. 120 Salvatici, From Displaced Persons to Labourers, 213–14. 121 Political Division, Control Commission for Germany, British Zone, FO 1049/1886, reel 49, 928–30. 122 USFET, Displaced Persons (Frankfurt-am-Main: EUCOM, 1947), 26. 123 NARA, OMGUS, RG 260, 8/53-2/2, accessed at HSAM, folder: Directives Issued by Public Safety Division, Directive issued October 24, 1945. 124 Military Government Regulations, Title 20: Displaced Persons, Dislodged Germans and Expellees, (para. 20-110.8), 1947. 125 Letter from OMG Hesse to Minister President, NARA, OMGUS, RG 260, 8/63-2/2 (accessed at HSAM), folder: Correspondence on Displaced Persons. See also the refusal to release a Polish DP-occupied camp at Mettenberg. Memo from Economics, PW&DP Division, NARA, OMGUS, RG 260, 8/63-3/3 (accessed at HSAM). 126 Letter from Hermann L. Brill, Head of the Staatskanzlerei of Hesse to OMGHE, NARA, OMGUS, RG 260, 8/63-2/2 (accessed at HSAM), folder: Miscellaneous Correspondence on DPs. 127 Confidential report by Philip Bernstein, AJA, WJC MS Coll. 361, box D63, folder 2, Mission Accomplished, 39. 128 NARA, OMGUS, RG 260, 8/68-1/3 (accessed at HSAM), folder: Quarterly Reports, Displaced Persons. 129 USHMM, RG-59.025M, FO 1052/351, reel 55, 76. 130 Ibid., 94. 131 UNARM, Section S-00439-1134-19. 132 Woodbridge, UNRRA, 2:498. These totals do not include DPs who lived in camps run by the military or who lived on the Germany economy. Shephard estimates that as many as 400,000 DPs lived on the German economy. However, he does not specify how many were UNDPs. Shephard, The Long Road Home, 274. 133 Woodbridge, UNRRA, 2:498. In June 1947 the “new” category of “Polish Ukrainians” existed, which included 99,078 people who earlier had been classified as Poles. See also Seipp, Strangers in the Wild Place, 84–86; and Holian, Between National Socialism and Soviet Communism, 40–41, 99–108. 134 Holborn states that between 1947 and 1951 the IRO resettled 860,656 UNDPs from the three Western zones of Germany. International Refugee Organization, 434. 135 Jacobmeyer, Vom Zwangsarbeiter zum heimatlosen Ausländer, 224. Of the 105,000, the IRO estimated that 60,000 were Poles, 33,000 Balts, and 12,000 Jews. 136 USHMM, RG-59.025M, FO 1049/1886, reel 49, 936–37. © 2018 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/about_us/legal/notices)
TI - Who Was ‘Worthy’? How Empathy Drove Policy Decisions about the Uprooted in Occupied Germany, 1945–1948
JO - Holocaust and Genocide Studies
DO - 10.1093/hgs/dcy011
DA - 2018-04-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/who-was-worthy-how-empathy-drove-policy-decisions-about-the-uprooted-SFeL2Aq0ab
SP - 8
EP - 28
VL - 32
IS - 1
DP - DeepDyve
ER -