Displaced Persons

At the latest, with the surrender of Germany on 8 May 1945, the Allies would have liberated all forced labourers. However, they were still far from their homes and often had no money. The Allies came upon around 12 million people outside their countries of origin. They called this very diverse group of people Displaced Persons (DPs). DPs included former forced labourers, concentration camp prisoners and prisoners of war, as well as Jewish and Romani survivors.

Initial Care and Stations of Transition

Initially, the Allied military authorities took over the care of the DPs. In the spring of 1946, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRRA) and, from July 1947, the International Refugee Organisation (IRO) took their place in the western occupation zones. The DPs were housed in specially set up “DP camps” in hospitals, schools, former barracks, in existing former prisoner-of-war and forced labour camps or even on the grounds of former concentration camps. By the end of 1945, UNRRA was already in charge of 227 DP camps on the territory of what would later become the Federal Republic of Germany. In the camps, the people received food, clothing, and support for their journey home or their emigration. In the parts of Germany occupied by the Soviet Union, there was neither DP status nor DP camps.

Returning

A Soviet-American agreement stipulated that all DPs were to return to their home countries as early as February 1945. For people from Western Europe, repatriation went relatively smoothly and quickly after the end of the war.

For Jewish DPs, on the other hand, repatriation was only an option if they came from Western countries. A return to Central and Eastern Europe was usually unthinkable: Entire Jewish communities there had been destroyed in the Holocaust. Even after liberation, there were antisemitic pogroms by the local population in Eastern Europe. Most Jewish survivors from Eastern Europe, therefore, waited for the opportunity to emigrate to Palestine or overseas.

Many former forced labourers from Eastern Europe also did not want to return to their countries, which had now become Communist dictatorships or were controlled by the Soviet Union. Behind this was also the fear of being seen as “accomplices” of the Nazis and being punished. Many former forced labourers were considered collaborators in their home countries. The involuntary nature of their labour did not play a role; the mere fact that they had worked “for the enemy” in Germany made them suspect. The Soviet Union, in particular, initially forced people to return with the support of the Western Allies; they were not allowed to immigrate to other countries. The Soviet Union screened those travelling home in filtration camps. Almost half of them were not allowed to return home but were sent to Soviet penal camps. When the Western Allies realised the consequences of the forced repatriation, they ceased their support. A 1946 United Nations regulation then stipulated that no one could be forced to return. From 1947, DPs could theoretically immigrate almost freely to almost any country of their choice. In practice, however, many people – especially Jews – did not receive visas for the countries they wanted to move to.

DP camps as permanent institutions

By September 1946, millions of DPs had already returned to their countries of origin, and by the end of 1951, over 700,000 DPs had immigrated to other countries. However, the DP camps became a permanent “home” for around 200,000 people, as emigration did not work out for age, health or professional reasons, or they were denied visas. Like before their liberation, they often lived on the margins of society and were met with substantial prejudice. This is also reflected in the fact that they were labelled “homeless foreigners” by the German government from 1949 onwards.

Many former forced labourers suffered from the experience of forced labour for the rest of their lives, even after leaving Germany. Both in the Soviet Union and in Western European countries such as the Netherlands, they were suspected of having voluntarily collaborated with the “enemy” during the war and suffered social discrimination. Some forced labourers had to struggle with health problems as a result of poor nutrition or working conditions. All former forced labourers had lost months or even several years of their lives and received neither a decent wage nor entitlements to pension payments for their forced labour.

Further Reading:

Holger Köhn, Die Lage der Lager. Displaced Persons in der amerikanischen Besatzungszone Deutschlands, Essen 2012.

Jacobmeyer, Wolfgang: Vom Zwangsarbeiter zum heimatlosen Ausländer, die Displaced Persons in Westdeutschland 1945 - 1951, Göttingen, 1985.

Jim G. Tobias, Vorübergehende Heimat im Land der Täter: Jüdische DP-Camps in Franken 1945-1949, Nürnberg 2002.