# What happened in WWII concentration camps immediately after being liberated? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 16, 2009, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-in-wwii-concentration-camps-immediately-after-being-liberated/481646 "2009-01-16T19:46:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![The\_Scrivener](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@The\_Scrivener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Scrivener)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2009, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-in-wwii-concentration-camps-immediately-after-being-liberated/481646/21 "2009-01-17T04:13:20Z")
A great book that addresses the subject of nursing the victims back to health is Marguerite Duras’ memoir The War. Both Duras and her husband had been in the Resistance. The first half of her memoir is about her attempts to find out, in the tortuous final weeks of the war when the camps were being liberated, if her husband had survived his internment which had been known to have begun in Buchenwald (and which turned out to have ended in Dachau); her friends in the Resistance (one of whom was “Francois Morland,” A.K.A. Francois Mitterand) smuggling him out (he’d been left to die in a quarantined part of the camp where the typhus cases were sequestered because the American authorities thought he was too far gone to survive); and his lengthy, agonizing rehab at home in Paris. When he and Marguerite were finally reunited, he weighed 82-84 pounds. For seventeen days, they fed him (under a doctor’s strict supervision) six or seven teaspoons’ worth of gruel a day. Even that tiny amount would nearly choke him. (Yet, she’d also written that en route to Paris, he’d requested and received a trout to eat, and had managed to swallow several mouthfuls.) His neck was so thin, she wrote, you could wrap your hand completely around his neck. As soon as he was put on the gruel diet, he developed a very high fever that lasted for days and nearly killed him. It wasn’t until he’d recovered enough strength (so that he could hold his own spoon or fork) that he was wracked with constant hunger, feebly complaining they didn’t understand, they couldn’t understand, but that he needed more food… ---
**Author:** ![RandMcnally](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b782af/32.png) [@RandMcnally](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RandMcnally)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2009, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-in-wwii-concentration-camps-immediately-after-being-liberated/481646/22 "2009-01-17T05:06:34Z")
German police were used along with Americans in regards to keeping the DP camps orderly and such. After German police raided one barrack and killed a guy (who had survived Auschwitz), they were no longer allowed near the Jewish camp. Honestly, they really should have figured they can’t trust Germans around Jews. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2009, 5:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-in-wwii-concentration-camps-immediately-after-being-liberated/481646/23 "2009-01-17T05:37:06Z")
> [@Cluricaun](#): > > That’s what DP meant to grandma! Every time I saw my grandmother during the winters of my hippie phase she would see my wool socks and Birkenstocks and tell me I looked like a DP. I always thought it rude she thought I looked like filthy porno, now it all comes together. And now you and I share what it is like to be compared to a DP (Displaced Person)! But, in your case, it means little more than “German Tourist.” 😉 ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2009, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-in-wwii-concentration-camps-immediately-after-being-liberated/481646/24 "2009-01-17T18:51:31Z")
> [@bonzer](#): > > For a classic firsthand account, there’s Primo Levi’s _The Truce/The Reawakening_ (the title varies), his direct sequel to _If This Is A Man/Survival in Auschwitz_. Tells his story from the Soviets arriving to him getting back to Turin. > > There’s a film version starring John Turturro, but I haven’t seen it. Seen [the film](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117959/). Very interesting. A long, convoluted way of getting home. Lot’s of surreal things. An uncle of mine was a POW in Germany and, well, it was rough. After liberation the food was carefully limited. Clothing and lice was also an issue. Showered, dusted, new clothes. Wait a couple days, repeat. Several times. Shipped home, the last leg was a bus trip. Got into town late at night. Called his folks for a ride. Can’t imagine who tough it was for people who didn’t get assistance. ---
**Author:** ![WotNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e19b73/32.png) [@WotNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WotNot)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2009, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-in-wwii-concentration-camps-immediately-after-being-liberated/481646/25 "2009-01-17T20:04:00Z")
> [@hibernicus](#): > > There was a food called “Bengal Famine Mix” administered by the British Army to the liberated inmates of Belsen. I can’t seem to find any information online about the nature of this food, but I guess it was a thin gruel of flour in water. According to [Wikipedia,](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belsen#Liberation) it was rice and sugar based – though it seems they had to adapt the formula for europeans. Channel 4 in the UK produced an excellent dramatised documentary, \*The Relief of Belsen, \*in 2007. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2009, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-in-wwii-concentration-camps-immediately-after-being-liberated/481646/26 "2009-01-18T02:48:56Z")
> [@](#): > > That’s what DP meant to grandma! Every time I saw my grandmother during the winters of my hippie phase she would see my wool socks and Birkenstocks and tell me I looked like a DP. I always thought it rude she thought I looked like filthy porno, now it all comes together. Now if you could only figure out what your grandpa meant when he called you a Filthy Sanchez. ---
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2009, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-in-wwii-concentration-camps-immediately-after-being-liberated/481646/27 "2009-01-18T05:23:15Z")
For those who want to see a profound and extensive film documentary on prison camp, the film _Shoah_ is held in high regard by critics and Dopers alike. I did not know about the Holocaust until I was a freshman in college and read a book called **I Cannot Forgive**. Please understand that I came from an isolated small rural town with no Jews. I was born during the war. My history class stopped before WWII. No one close to me was in the military. The Holocaust Museum is worth the time spent there if you are in Washington. There was a lot of thinking that went into the creation of that exhibit. Some things are subtle, but I think I fell into all of their traps. > [@](#): > > **Hello Again** : My father was born in the Displaced Person camp in Landsberg, Germany. My grandparents had been in Auschwitz, and as of 1948, the year my dad was born, they were still trying to figure out what to do. It took until 1952 for them to get to the U.S. (and they actually had family in the U.S. to help them out) and since the camp closed in 1950, I am not sure what happened in the 2 years between. I had no idea that the Displaced Person’s Camps were open that long. I heard about them when I was small, but I didn’t know what they were. Then I forgot about them. It was terrible that they were displaced for so long. I wonder if Europe was rebuilt faster than families were relocated. Your father is five years younger than I am! Maybe it would be a good idea for you to ask your father what happened in those two years between the end of the camp and their coming to America. It is part of your family history. Don’t let it be lost for all time. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2009, 5:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-in-wwii-concentration-camps-immediately-after-being-liberated/481646/28 "2009-01-18T05:44:36Z")
> [@Zoe](#): > > I did not know about the Holocaust until I was a freshman in college… > I had no idea that the Displaced Person’s Camps were open that long. I heard about them when I was small, That seems to be contradictory. ---
**Author:** ![Kyla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/eada6e/32.png) [@Kyla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyla)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2009, 6:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-in-wwii-concentration-camps-immediately-after-being-liberated/481646/29 "2009-01-18T06:35:16Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > That seems to be contradictory. Why is it contradictory? Loads of people, many not involved in the Holocaust in any way, ended up in displaced persons camps. The mother of a former coworker was born in a displaced persons camp; her family were Latvians (ETA: they were Catholic, I think, definitely not Jewish) who had been displaced by the war and ended up in a camp somewhere for years before gaining refugee status and coming to the US. Her grandparents’ experience had had a really profound effect on my coworker and she spoke of it often. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-in-wwii-concentration-camps-immediately-after-being-liberated/481646.md?page=1)