After The Holocaust

Never before has an event in history been as tragic and as catastrophic as the Holocaust of Eastern Europe in the early 1940s. It is generally believed that a total of twelve million people were murdered by the Nazi regime, including political opponents, Gypsies, the mentally ill, homosexuals, and other "undesirables." An estimated six of the seven million Jews of Europe were killed just because they were Jewish. For the first time in history, an entire people were targeted for annihilation by a government. The Nazi state systematically implemented a plan to destroy all Jews simply because they existed. The destruction of European Jewry stands as the archetype of genocide in human history.

Not all of the Jews in Europe were murdered in the Holocaust. After the fall of the Third Reich, Europe was war-torn shambles. Hundreds of thousands of people were homeless and seeking a new life. These were known at the time as "displaced persons." Among them

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“Unlike, all the non-Jewish DPs, who had mostly left Germany by 1945, the number of Jewish DPs in the American Occupational Zone in Germany increased during 1946 from just 40,000 to over 145,000. Sanitation and an overall sense of cleanliness were virtually unknown. By constructing a Jewish society clearly distinguished from its German environment, the Jewish DPs lightened the psychological burden of being held in Germany after the Liberation. ” Very few children survived the concentration camps. “On April 18th, 1945, only three days after the Liberation, a committee of former Jewish prisoners was formed in Bergen-Belsen and elected Josef Rosensaft chairman. The people of these camps were starved for culture and remember they had no work or occupation. You have to fight for the right to live freely and peacefully. ” “Rosensaft outlined his four major tasks as the search for family members, the physical and psychological rehabilitation of the survivors, and the struggle for their rights. “On September 17th, 1945, a high school with 60 students opened, whose curriculum included Jewish subjects like the Bible, Talmud, and Hebrew, along with physical education, natural science, general history, anatomy, and archaeology. ”

The Jews beat the odds in surviving and revitalizing their dead culture in these DP camps. Nor was their any revival of East European Jewish culture in the countries of immigration. Weddings were one of the joyous experiences in camp life and were hardly rare events. Most Jews just blended in with the norm, which was Christianity. Now, the policy of the Allied occupation forces was intended to return all the DPs to their countries of origin as soon as possible, which pleased most non-Jewish Displaced Persons, who had been driven out of their homelands by force. The press dedicated a great deal of space to publishing the experiences and memoirs of the survivors.

Common topics in this essay:
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Approximate Word count = 2510
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page double spaced)

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