Displaced Persons

While planning for the postwar refugee crisis, the Allies coined the term displaced persons to identify the uprooted people who were eligible for Allied care. The term recognized that some refugees would seek new citizenship rather than repatriation, yet the phrase still indicated a policy of classifying refugees by prewar nationality. For the stateless Jews of Eastern Europe whose homes had been confiscated, families destroyed, and lives crushed during six years of war, this meant classification and housing with non-Jewish nationals whose presence they could no longer suffer.

"No we are not Poles, even though we were born in Poland; we are not Lithuanians, even if our cradles may once have been in Lithuania; we are not Romanians even if we first saw light of day in Romania. We are Jews! . . . We demand that the gates of Palestine be opened wide for us so we can live there as free, independent, and self-reliant people."

--Jacob Olejski, Landsberg "Peace-Victory Rally," August 24, 1945

As the Allies herded Jewish survivors together with non-Jewish DPs, many of whom had been Nazi collaborators or sympathizers, clashes between the two groups became common. In one incident, a stabbing occurred after a Jewish team won a soccer game between Jewish and non-Jewish Poles. In another, non-Jewish residents in liberated Dachau threatened riots if Jews held Sabbath services in the main square. The problem was compounded by allegations of guilt that flared tempers nearly every day. The need to recognize Jews as a unique and stateless group of DPs was urgent and obvious to the Americans. They created the first exclusively Jewish DP camp at Feldafing, which began absorbing Jews from Dachau in the summer of 1945. Most DP camps had been designated either Jewish or non-Jewish by the end of 1945.