Holocaust 3

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...