Rehabilitation of Jewish Concentration Camp Victims

[Kitchen Wench]

I watched the Band of Brothers marathon last night. Excellent series. In one of the last episodes, Easy Company stumbles across a Concentration Camp. The soldiers immediately find food and water for the prisoners, but a few minutes later were ordered to stop giving sustainance because the prisoners were starving, and they'd, "eat themselves to death." Naturally, the soldier (he himself a Jew)who gave the announcement hated doing so, and wept.

Every time I watch a movie depicting the Jewish point of view on WWII, or actual footage showing the Death Camps, I feel as though my heart is being torn out. Seeing that episode of Band of Brothers last night allowed me to go beyond the initial shock, horror and heartache reactions, and form some real questions I, personally have never heard addressed.

What did the Allies do with the Jewish prisoners? How did they rehabilitate them back to health? What happened to the orphans in the camps? What happened to the adults who found themselves the lone survivor of their family? Jeez, it's hard for me to even type this out without getting emotional.

[bonzer]

At least in the case of orphans, the obvious problem was that nobody knew for certain that they were orphans. My understanding is that they were therefore passed into the care of the Red Cross, that having taken on the job of acting as a clearinghouse for reuniting dislocated relatives.

While one may like to think that the survivors' suffering was over when they were liberated, that was often far from the case. Primo Levi's The Truce is recommended as one Auschwitz survivor's classic account of trying to make it back to Turin. (It's the immediate sequel to Survival in Auschwitz/If This Is A Man, which relates the story of his imprisonment.)

[Kitchen Wench]

Thanks for the reply, bonzer. I'll check that out.

[violacrane]

My Dad was in the (British) RAF during WWII, flying transport planes. my Mum told me that a few days after liberation he was flying Belsen survivors to field hospitals set up elsewhere.

I read one story (no cite, sorry) of a young woman who had fled to Britain with her mother, leaving behind her father and brother, who were sent to one of the camps. About six months after the war ended she was watching a newsreel of concentration camp survivors boarding a ship bound to the USA. She recognised her father and brother, stood up in the cinema and shouted with joy then ran home to fetch her mother for the next screening. As they knew the name of the ship they were easily reunited via the Red Cross. Some reunions took much longer, there are still sories of families finding each other today.

[hajario]

My sister was married in 1995. At one of the pre-wedding get togethers a good friend of my father and the father of the groom got to talking. They were first cousins who hadn't seen each other since they were kids over 50 years before, both of them were Jewish children from Germany hidden during the War.

There are stories of Polish Jews surviving the Camps and making their way back to their villiage. Some were beaten to death for having the audacity to want their home back or for being the "cause" of the war and being responsible for the years of misery that the villagers suffered.

Haj

[Kitchen Wench]

But were there any sort of programs implimented by the allies to get the prisoners on their way to health? There must have been places they were taken for shelter, clothing, nourishment. I would hate to think that these poor people were just set free in their diminished state, many I'm sure, with nowhere to go.

Sorry to keep going on about it, but it's really nagging me.

[Mops]

The umbrella term for ex-concentration camp prisoners, forced laboureres and other people from all over German-occupied Europe who found themselves far from home at the end of the war was "Displaced Persons". A lot of them lived in Displaced Person camps (former concentration camps/army barracks/requisitioned housing/purpose-built camps) in Germany and other countries as long as into the early 1950s. A site with disparate information about these camps (http://www.dpcamps.org/dpcamps/)

[Kitchen Wench]

The umbrella term for ex-concentration camp prisoners, forced laboureres and other people from all over German-occupied Europe who found themselves far from home at the end of the war was "Displaced Persons". A lot of them lived in Displaced Person camps (former concentration camps/army barracks/requisitioned housing/purpose-built camps) in Germany and other countries as long as into the early 1950s. A site with disparate information about these camps (http://www.dpcamps.org/dpcamps/)


Thank you, tschild. That term has proven a better key word for looking up the information I'm interested in.

[gum]

This (http://www.holocaust-trc.org/wmp24.htm) is another site that answers your question, Seeker74.

As you can read, after surviving the holocaust, the anguish of the Jewish people, Roma etc. weren't over by a long shot.

More sites:

http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/albums/palbum/p00/a0021p2.html

http://www.remember.org/witness/

http://history1900s.about.com/library/holocaust/blcampsebensee.htm

Warning, contains shocking images

[don't ask]

Some of the camps were set up as DP camps with American Jewish pastors as this resource (http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/dp/resourc7.htm) outlines.

[Jane D'oh!]

My dad was an American POW in Germany during WWII. He spent time in a camp and on a train. In total about 120 days.

After he was liberated from the camp, he and his fellow soldiers, maybe a dozen or so, were taken to a hospital and fed, kept under observation until the docs thought they were well enough, maybe about a month or so, then he was flown back to the states.

To this day, there are things about his time in the camp that he will not talk about. And he had a support network to come home to, family and friends. I could not imagine how difficult it was for those who lost everything

[Hello Again]

My paternal grandfather/grandmother were survivors of Auschwitz/Birkenau (I believe the name Auschwitz can only be properly applied to the mens camp.) They were moved to a DP camp in Germany, where they met (they were from the same town in Poland). My father was born in Germany in 1948, and it took till 1952 for them to get to America (AND they were sponsored by relatives!).

On my grandmother's deathbed she told my father the story of her liberation (she never never nevernever spoke of it during her life). When the Russian front approached the camp, the guards rounded up as many inmates as they could and took them out in the woods and shot them. My grandmother (20?) saw the writing on the wall and convinced her sister (17) to try and bust away from the Death March. They did -- the guards either didn't care enough to shoot them or just plain missed. They hid in a barn for 3? days while the whole area was shelled to hell and back again. When the shelling ended they found out the camp had been liberated by the Russians.

Even though my grandmother was Polish she always thought well of Russians for that reason.

My grandmother had 13 brothers and sisters, of which only she and her younger sister survived the war (I believe some died in the Ludz ghetto previous to the concentration camps). I think my grandfather had a whole previous family that didn't make it either (file under: things he wouldn't talk about). They were definitely screwed up emotionally for the rest of their lives -- oy, the stories I could tell -- and inclined towards insane packratittude as well. They received reparations from the German government.

[Kitchen Wench]

My own Grandfather was an American POW in Germany. I have no idea how long he was there, as he will not talk to any of the girls in the family about his ordeal. I have heard snippets relayed through my brother, though. Mainly about how the POWs were made to evacuate one camp and go to another in the dead of winter, wearing only their underwear. He also got down to 83 pounds before the liberation. He still speaks a bit of the German he learned through it all. Even though he refuses to talk about it to most of the family, the overall vibe I get from him is that not all the German soldiers were cruel and heartless. I'm horrified by the idea that my sweet grandpa had to endure inhumane treatment, but I'm glad to know that he encountered at least a few German soldiers who tried to make his time there at least a bit more tolerable.