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Miss Schmidt
Honors English 9
“The Aftermath of the Holocaust.” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, United States
The US was working to liberate all the camps in Europe and save as many Jews as
possible. While going camp to camp they continued to find mounds of decaying bodies
all around them. The survivors were thin, weak, and broken. Even once liberated, the
Jews that survived refused to go back to their old homes. They feared what would happen
to them and knew they weren’t wanted. The Jews also knew there was no point in going
home because all of their belongings would be gone anyways. There were also many
teenagers that lost all of their family and didn’t know where to begin. People provided
food and clothing for the survivors. One of the organizations that did this was The
refugees to establish the Jewish state in Palestine. By 1953 several hundred thousand
Jews had made their way to Israel. A little less than 30,000 Jews immigrated to the
United States. Different laws were being placed to allow Jews to go wherever they
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wanted. One of the Acts passed was the Displaced Persons Act. After this act was placed,
“Echoing Voices.” The Center for Holocaust and Humanity Education RSS,
www.holocaustandhumanity.org/education/echoing-voices/.
On May 7, 1945, Germany surrendered it’s battle in World War II. Those who had been
held prisoner were now free. What did freedom mean, however? Said Viktor Frankl, a
not grasp it …” Two-thirds of the Jewish population, roughly six million lives, had been
taken away. At the end of the war, however, thousands remained in displaced persons
(DP) camps. In 1948, Israel was declared the Jewish state. Many of the DPs who
remained in Germany and Austria’s camps found their way there. Others emigrated to the
United States and elsewhere throughout Europe. Many had to face the reality that they
had no family remaining. Every Jew had to try to rebuild their life. They finally saw some
justice during the Nuremberg Trials, which began in 1945. Certain Nazis were held
accountable for their horrific acts and the world proclaimed, “Never again!” Sadly, the
world has seen many other atrocities against humanity since the Holocaust in other
countries such as Rwanda, Cambodia, Guatemala, Darfur, and Syria. “Stand up against
dpcamps.ort.org/dp-stories/holocaust-survivors-in-post-war-europe/.
In November, 1944, assembly centers for displaced persons (DP Camps) were established
by the Allied armies. The DP Camps were overseen by the United Nations Relief and
Rehabilitation Administration. The primary goal of the camps, which were established
amid the ruins of the broken, bombed land where these same people had survived for
seven years, was to return the DPs to their home countries as quickly as possible. It was
expected that repatriation of the DPs out of Germany would take approximately six
months. Between May and September, 1945, six million DPs had left. Two million DPs,
including 50,000 Jews refused to return to their homelands, however. This number grew
American Zone. By the end of 1946, two-thirds of the Jewish DPs in Germany and
Austria were people who had survived the Holocaust not in German concentration camps,
but in hiding or in the USSR. Emigration was the main unresolved problem for these
250,000 Jews. The longer they remained in the camps, the more a mood of desperation
took hold. Eventually Belgium, Great Britain, and the US began admitting Jewish DPs.
Ninety-seven percent of the Jews wished to emigrate to Palestine, however, which was
not admitting them. As a result, Haganah, the semi-official Jewish defense force, started
underground work smuggling Jews out of the DP camps. The largest clandestine
www.holocaustsurvivors.org
.
After the war was over, Joseph Sher returned with his wife to their town Czestochowa.
Two Russian captains enlisted him to sew new underwear for the Russian soldiers, which
he did happily until other soldiers did not believe Joseph Sher was who he said he was
and threw him into the prison with 5,000 German soldiers who were to be sent to Siberia.
Joseph Sher was subsequently rescued by one of the captains before they left for Siberia,
but forty-two Jews who had returned to their town were mistakenly killed. Joseph’s wife
and himself got Swedish passports and went to Czechoslovakia, where they stayed with
the Red Cross for a month. They had to crawl across the border to get across the iron
curtain into a Displaced Persons camp in the US zone in Germany. In the camp, Joseph
taught 22 girls to sew. Joseph and his wife had their first child in Germany and in 1949
they went by ship to live with Joseph’s wife’s aunt in New Orleans. His wife was so
seasick that she was in the sick bay for ten days. There was no place to clean the cloth
diapers so Joseph filled his suitcase with the soiled ones. He was so ashamed to open it
for the inspectors at the dock! He was interviewed by a newspaper reporter about their
ordeal and few days later, Joseph received a letter. His cousin refused to translate it for
him, but years later he learned that it said, “If Hitler did not get you over there we are
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going to get you over here.” When there was a Nazi march in New Orleans the survivors
got together and formed a group called The New American Social Club, which is still in
existence today. They have told their children their story little by little, and some
mornings Joseph wakes up so worn out that he cannot go to work. He is free but still in
Wiesel, Elie, and Marion Wiesel. Night. Hill and Wang, a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
2017.
In Night Elie Wiesel is left alone in the end. Elie and his family were forced out of their
home and into concentration camps. At this point, Elie and his father would never see
Elie’s mother or younger sister ever again. Elie and his father stuck together. They
worked long and hard through miserable conditions. They preformed difficult labor with
little food and water. Together, they almost made it until Elie’s father could no longer
hang on to life. He was very sick and couldn’t continue. He told Elie before he died
where the families belongings were hidden. He knew his son was going to make it out of
there alive. Eventually the war came to an end and Elie was freed. Soon he realized that
freedom wasn’t that rewarding afterall. He was starving and had nowhere to go. Not very
long after being liberated, Elie became sick most likely by food he was eating and was
sent to the hospital where he almost died. He ends up recovering from his illness and
finds the strength to stand up. When he stood up he went to a mirror and for the first time
since his time in the ghetto, saw his reflection. Elie mentions that was he saw was not
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him, but simply a corpse. Being in the hospital gave Elie a time to recover and gain back
strength before going back into the world for the first time in years.