the great majority of Jewish DPs however, both staying on German soil and returning to Eastern Europe were out of the question. Some Jews were, in fact, murdered by mobs if and when they tried to return to Poland. Others did not want to return to countries now run as Soviet puppet states. The problem was complicated because many countries refused to allow the survivors to enter. A large number of Jewish survivors wanted to go to Palestine; however, the British were against such immigration and allowed fewer than 100,000 Jews to enter before Israel declared its independence in May 1948. It is surely one of the ironies of history that it was Germany, of all places, that became the haven for Jewish refugees in the first years after the war. "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." In the American Occupational Zone, several large camps were formed, each with some 5,000 inhabitants. These camps included Feldafing, Fohrenwald, Pocking, Landsberg, and Leipheim in Bavaria; as well as Zeilsheim, Wetzlar, and Eschwege in Hesse. The Jews usually spent the first post-war years in these camps near the site of their liberation. Because of the tensions between the Jews and the other Eastern European DPs, they all could not be housed in the same DP camp. The first purely Jewish camp was in Feldafing in Upper Bavaria. "Many of these camps were hopelessly overcrowded and filthy beyond description. Sanitation and an overall sense of cleanliness were virtually unknown. These camps served as a building block to the desirable new life that all Jews yearned for.
             The question remains unanswered of how the Jews actually got back onto their feet again. What did they incorporate into these camps that allowed them to plan for the future while forgetting the fact that they were in Germany. Many histor...