Resettlement of the Jewish displaced persons (DPs) outside continental Europe proved to be a nearly impassible political obstacle immediately after liberation. The Allies were prepared to help the Sh'erit ha-Pletah reclaim their homes, but no one was ready to open their gates and offer the DPs new homes. Influenced by outright antisemitism, stereotypes that identified Jews as communists, and notions that the survivors would only hamper already war-weakened domestic environments, the Allies deliberated and procrastinated for years before resolving the emigration crisis.

Proposed solutions to the Allies' quandary were presented months after liberation. Earl Harrison, in his 1945 report to President Truman, recommended mass "Evacuation from Europe" for the Sh'erit ha-Pletah, and resettlement in British-controlled Palestine or the United States. The report convinced President Truman to order that preference for U.S. immigration quotas be given to DPs, especially widows and orphans. But Great Britain bristled at the plan, claiming that the United States had no right to dictate British policy. "America's request would be more impressive had she opened her doors wide to Hitler's victims," stated the British New Statesman and Nation.

Truman could not raise the restrictive U.S. and British immigration quotas alone, but did succeed in pressuring Great Britain into sponsoring the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, a bi-national delegation whose suggestions included admission of 100,000 Jewish DPs to Palestine.

England rejected the report, thereby compounding the resolve of many Jews to reach Palestine. In 1945-48, a mass illegal immigration scheme called Bricha, organized and transported more than 100,000 Jews past British patrols and into Palestine. The mass movement, staffed jointly by members of the Sh'erit ha-Pletah and the Jewish armed forces from Palestine, used hachsharot (vocational training farms) and assembly centers in Europe as the staging grounds for moving survivors onto boats and across the Mediterranean Sea.

Sometimes Bricha's efforts failed. British seamen captured many covert transport ships, and interred the passengers in transit prisons on the island of Cyprus. The Exodus 1947 was carrying 4,515 Jewish DPs when it was stopped by British forces on July 17, 1947. The crew and passengers resisted surrender, prompting a British attack in which three men from the Exodus 1947 were killed and many others wounded. The debacle attracted worldwide publicity, embarrassing the British and garnering support for the DPs' struggle to emigrate.

By mid-1948, the United Nations, with both American and Soviet support, recognized the State of Israel, and Congress passed the Displaced Persons Act, authorizing 200,000 DPs to enter the United States. Though the law's stipulations made it unfavorable at first to members of the Sh'erit ha-Pletah, Congress amended the bill with the DP Act of 1950, and by 1952, over 80,000 Jewish DPs had immigrated to the United States with the aid of Jewish agencies.

With over 80,000 Jewish DPs in the United States, roughly 136,000 in Israel, and another 20,000 in other nations, including Canada and South Africa, the emigration crisis came to an end. Almost all of the DP camps were closed by 1952, and in countries around the world, the Sh'erit ha-Pletah began new lives in their new homelands.