Sorry for a while when I was not writing - things got in a way, but I am back with my blog and you :).
Today I want to go back to the end of II WW. The end of war has found approximately 9 million displaced persons all over Europe, and more were to be added due to border changes. Their fates were different depending on where the end of the war has found them, who they were and also how much personal luck they had. First I want to scatch a general picture and than move to one, specific group of people - displaced Jews.
There were many groups who for various reasons couldn't or wouldn't return "home" after the end of the war. The obvious one was not having abywhere to go, other (as obvvious) was fear that returning where one came from could mean only death (or labour camp at best). Some 5 million people originating from USSR and territories annexed by USSR as a result of the war (Lithuania, Latva, Esthonia to name a few) constituted one large group. Mostly they were former camp prisoners or forced laborers taken by Germans. They were treated as "traitors" by Stalinist USSR and either shot or sent to gulags on return. Yet they had no way of legally applying for a right to stay on the West. Many ships with such people have been sent to USSR - for most it was journey to their death. Another group were citizens of countries under Soviet occupation (like Poland) - those who took part in war together with Western allies (battle for Great Britain, Anders' army fighting along Alexander's one, tank divisions liberating Netherlands and so on) faced death sentencies or life-long prison on returning to Soviet-occupied Poland (only after 1956 it has changed). There were also German civilians thrown from the territories that were annexed by Poland and Chechoslovakia, and people considered to be Germans (sometimes just because of wrong name or wrong church and being accused of treason after fighting with German forces on resistance movement side). But during 2 years after the war their fate - for good or bad or sometimes horrible - was somehow resolved.
There was one group of people who were left as nobody seemed to know what to do about them. And they were among most horribly affected by the war, the most victimized and the most neglected (if it is possible to build such statements with regards to those horrors) - they were Jewish citizens of Germany, Austria and Eastern European countries who found themselves on the western side of the iron curtain (or were quick enough to cross to the western side when it was still possible during first months after the war).
They survived Shoah, they survived camps and atrocities in ghettoes yet they had nowhere to go. For obvious reasons those who held before the war German or Austrian citizenship were very reluctant to go back - their families murdered, their neighbours turned into their murderers, their homes non-existent, their humanity questioned (at best) by their co-patriots for many years they wanted to go away from what was one big cementary. The USA and UK were not allowing any refugees and in fact they were getting rid of those on their territory (at least UK was, I remember the tale of Polish pilot taking part in Battle for Great Britain, having recieved his high medals yet given 3 days in 1945 to leave UK when it was obvious he could apply for Swiss citizenship - he was turned into persona non grata overnight). Those who came from Eastern Europe didn't want to return to Soviet occupied territory with Nazi built and run camps still standing. Palestine under British mandate remaind off-limits as Britons didn't want to offend Arabs (despite the fact that grand mufti of Jerusalem spent war years in Berlin as personal guest and friend of Adolf Hitler). So they stayed in camps - former concentration camps - trying to cross illigally to British Palestine or find a way to go to the USA or just wait for what will happen to them after all those horrible years.
Earl Harrison - special emmissary of President Truman to European DP camps -was trying to open the way for the Jews to go to Palestine but UK was blocking it with whole might. Many former Nazi concentration camps inmates were living behind barbered wire in Cyprus camps or were sent to Mauritius by British if caught trying to enter Palestine - many died in those camps seeing just turning Nazi guards to British ones (yes, they were fed and clothed and they were still kept as prisoners) - many British soldiers who witnessed liberation of camps in Nazi Germany objected to being turned into camp guards themselves - to no avail. It added to the horror that many of the camps for DPs were former concentration camps.
There is the story of Ulysses - the ship that tried to bring DPs (many women and children) and met tragic end. You know the story...
When Polish II Army under general Anders (later deprived of Polish citizenship by Soviets as "traitor" after the army faught under Tobruk and Monte Cassino) consisting from former Polish gulag inmates, many Jewish, was crossing British Palestine in 1942-1943 the personal order of general was to turn blind eye to desertions of Polish Jews in order to join Hagganah.
Only after creation of Israel and partly (due to British influence) only after the end of War of Independance, the DP camps in Europe gradually disappeared. The last one - in Germany - was closed in 1953, 8 years after the war. The last people to leave it were all Jews - not wanted by anybody.
Countries forming allience against Nazi Germany and fighting the war were horrified that somehow they might be offered the chance to give asylum for those being murdered. They wanted no refugees - not before the war during persecution, not during the war, not after the war.
And this is one of the saddest and most shameful histories in Europe's history, but the one we have to know and remember....
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