Displaced Persons (DPs)
Displaced Persons (DPs)
Term
The term ‘Displaced Persons’ (DPs) was coined at the end of the Second World War to describe the millions of people in Central Europe who had been forcibly removed or deported and who, following their liberation by the Allies, found themselves outside the borders of their home countries. This group comprised primarily forced labourers, but also included foreign contract workers, (mostly Jewish) survivors of concentration camps, as well as political prisoners and prisoners of war held by the Nazis and their allies.
The terms ‘displaced persons’, ‘refugees’ and ‘displaced persons’ have points of overlap (such as the – at least temporary – involuntary abandonment of one’s homeland), but were not, and are not, used synonymously.
Foreign-language equivalents, translations, loanwords
The English term ‘Displaced Persons’ has, to some extent, become established in other languages either in place of or alongside its translation. In Germany, equivalents such as ‘entheimatete Personen’ have failed to gain acceptance.
Furthermore: French: personnes déplacées; Italian: sfollati; Polish: dipisi/wysiedleńcy; Romanian: persoană deplasată.
2. Definition
The sociologist and migration researcher Eugene M. Kulischer (1881–1956), who had himself fled from Russia via Europe to the USA, published the book *The Displacement of Population in Europe* there in 1943. It was he who coined the term ‘displaced person’ at that time.
In June 1944, the issue of DPs then featured intheso-called‘Outline Plan’drawn up by the Allied armies. TheSupreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Forces (SHAEF) SHAEF) defined ‘Displaced Persons’ in its‘Administrative Memorandum No. 39’in November 1944 as ‘civilians who, as a result of the war, find themselves outside their own country; who, whilst wishing to return or find a new home, are unable to do so without assistance’. This wording emphasised that the DPs, as victims of the war, found themselves in their situation against their will and were in need of assistance. Their liberation, care and repatriation were established as a ‘high Allied objective’. It was not, however, intended that they should settle permanently in their current places of residence.
Furthermore, DPs were categorised by SHAEF according to their country of origin. A distinction was made between DPs from ‘enemy’ countries (Germany, Austria, Japan) or ‘formerly enemy’ countries (Italy, Finland, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria) and those from UN member states. Those who did not belong to any of these groups, or where such affiliation could not be proven, were usually classified as ‘stateless’.
In the subsequent ‘Act on the Legal Status of Stateless Foreigners within the Federal Territory’ of 25 April 1951, the definition of ‘displaced person’ read as follows:
a foreign national or stateless person who (a) proves that they are under the care of the international organisation entrusted by the United Nations with the care of displaced persons and refugees, and (b) is not a German national within the meaning of Article 116 of the Basic Law, and (c) on 30 June 1950 was resident within the territory covered by the Basic Law or in West Berlin, or who acquires the legal status of a stateless foreigner pursuant to the provisions of Section 2(3).[1]
The situation at the end of the war
Statistics from the months before and after the end of the war are in some cases incomplete or unreliable; at the time, the Allies estimated the number of DPs in Central Europe at 10.8 million. The majority of them were to be found within the territory of the collapsing German Reich.
Amidst the chaos following the end of the war, theUnited Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UN RRA ) opened a so-called CentralTracing Bureau to assist displaced persons in their search for relatives.
The majority of displaced persons from Western Europe returned to their home countries relatively quickly. By the end of 1946, almost six million displaced persons had left Germany. For a further million people in the West German zones, however, the return journey remained impossible, or they expressly resisted repatriation.
The special role of displaced persons from Eastern Europe
The situation was particularly different for displaced persons from Poland, the Soviet Union, Hungary, the Baltic states or Yugoslavia compared, for example, with citizens of France, the Netherlands or Belgium, who had often organised their own return immediately after the liberation. At the end of the war, the Soviet Union had carried out the repatriation of its nationals at a rapid pace, based, amongst other things, on the ‘Leipzig Agreement’ of 22 May 1945. Coercion was frequently used in the process, and there were repeated violent incidents resulting in deaths (often suicides) and injuries. In February 1946, the United Nations decided, against the opposition of the Soviet Union, that repatriation must take place on a voluntary basis.
Most of the displaced persons who remained in the Western zones argued that a return would be dangerous and unreasonable for them due to the communist regimes in their countries of origin. This was the case regardless of the political views held by those affected, given that Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin (1878–1953) had labelled forced labourers and prisoners of war from the Soviet Union as traitors to the motherland. They therefore had to expect, following their repatriation, to face interrogation, strict surveillance and even deportation to gulags, as they were suspected of collaborating with Nazi Germany. The situation of Polish displaced persons was also considered particularly problematic, especially that of those who, due to the shifting of borders in their homeland, would now have had to return to Soviet territory.
Living conditions of the DPs
The accommodation of displaced persons (DPs) in the occupation zones was organised by the Allies and took place primarily in three types of accommodation, officially known asassembly centres: former barracks, huts (primarily in former concentration and forced-labour camps) and requisitioned or abandoned private houses and flats. These accommodation facilities were managed by UNRRA, partly supported by international aid organisations. They often had a capacity of several thousand people and were intended as temporary arrangements, but it was not uncommon for them to remain in use for several years. The initial risk of epidemics was quickly contained, but general living conditions often remained problematic. The DPs were generally grouped according to nationality. However, this repeatedly led to conflicts, until, for example, Jewish DPs were housed separately to spare them from having to live alongside former collaborators and to enable them to exercise a high degree of self-government.
Procedures in the individual occupation zones
Policy towards the DPs varied considerably depending on their nationalities and the remit of the military governments. From mid-July 1945 onwards, the occupation zones took over from SHAEF as the body responsible for the DPs. Nor were there uniform rules governing who was granted DP status. In general, in the months and years following the end of the war, it became more complicated to obtain or retain this status. Depending on their location, those affected had to undergo repeated status checks – known as ‘screenings’ – of varying rigour in order to substantiate their personal history and safeguard their right to a place in a DP camp. The Allies’ stated aim was to identify war criminals, collaborators, ‘enemy’ or ‘formerly enemy’ DPs, and so-called‘imposters’.
From ‘Repatriation’ to ‘Resettlement’
By the end of 1946, it was no longer possible to deny that hundreds of thousands of DPs would not be returning to their countries of origin as planned. UNRRA was subsequently replaced by theInternational Refugee Organisation( IRO ), whose ‘resettlement’ approach now aimed either to integrate the remaining DPs into post-war German society or to facilitate their emigration to third countries such as the USA, Canada, Australia or Palestine. Yet even after this change in strategy, many people remained in the DP camps. The last such camps in the Federal Republic of Germany were not closed until the early 1960s.
‘DPs’ become ‘stateless foreigners’
The SHAEF’s definition had a significant influence on subsequent formulations by other institutions. The first German Federal Government, however, coined a new term: ‘stateless foreigners’. Under the ‘Act on the Legal Status of Stateless Foreigners’ of 25 April 1951, these individuals were treated as equivalent to German nationals in many crucial respects. Consequently, privileges granted to German displaced persons or refugees were denied to DPs. At that time, around 130,000 people with this status remained in the country.
According to historians, this change in terminology was linked to “a deliberate shift in meaning”. It should be understood against the backdrop of Germany’s efforts at the time “to obscure German responsibility for the DP problem and, at the same time – successfully, incidentally – to fend off claims for reparations from this group of people”[2].
4. Discourses/Controversies
The DPs are among the aspects of the Second World War and the post-war period that have received comparatively little attention, particularly in German-speaking academic circles. In 1985, Jacobmeyer noted “that German historical research has not recognised the issue of ‘displaced persons’ as a subject worthy of scrutiny and in need of further investigation”[3]. However, his analysis – now regarded as a standard work – helped to draw greater attention to the subject and to revitalise the discourse within German research. Since then, a series of historical studies at local and regional levels, in particular, have provided a more comprehensive documentation of the history of the DPs.[4]
Bibliography
- Fritz Bauer Institute (ed.): Survivors on the Move: Jewish Displaced Persons in Post-War Germany. Frankfurt am Main, New York 1997 (Yearbook on the History and Impact of the Holocaust).
- Wolfgang Jacobmeyer: From Forced Labourer to Stateless Foreigner. Displaced Persons in West Germany 1945–1951. Göttingen 1985 (Critical Studies in History 65).
- Aryē Y. Kôḵāvî: Post-Holocaust Politics: Britain, the United States & Jewish Refugees, 1945–1948. Chapel Hill, North Carolina 2001.
- Mark Wyman: DP. Europe’s Displaced Persons, 1945–1951. Philadelphia 1989.
Web links
- www.its-arolsen.org/de/das-archiv/bestaende/uebersicht-nach-themen/displaced-persons/index.html (Website of the International Tracing Service, the successor organisation to the Central Tracing Bureau, providing an overview of the complete inventory of the Displaced Persons archive)
- www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=znEQoE7FYXPs.kwUWz_BF2Zb0&ie=UTF8&hl=de&msa=0&ll=47.80034%2C11.474146&spn=10.331977%2C18.676758&z=5&source=embed (Map showing all DP camps with predominantly Jewish DPs in Germany and Austria)
- www.dpcamps.org/dpcampmap.jpg (Map showing the occupation zones and key DP camps in Central Europe in 1946)
- www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bundesrecht/hauslg/gesamt.pdf (Full text of the ‘Act on the Legal Status of Stateless Foreigners within the Federal Territory’ of 25 April 1951)
Notes
[1] ‘Act on the Legal Status of Stateless Foreigners within the Federal Territory’: www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bundesrecht/hauslg/gesamt.pdf (accessed 28 September 2020).
[2] Jacobmeyer: From Forced Labourer to Stateless Foreigner, p. 17.
[3] Jacobmeyer: From Forced Labourer to Stateless Foreigner, p. 15.
[4] See, for example, Tamar Lewinsky: Jewish Displaced Persons in Post-War Munich. In: Munich Contributions to Jewish History and Culture 1 (2010), pp. 17–25; Stefan Schröder: Displaced Persons in the District and City of Münster 1945–1951. Münster 2005 (Publications of the Historical Commission for Westphalia 22; Historical Studies on Westphalian Regional Research 22); Roman Paul Smolorz: Displaced Persons (DPs). Authorities and Leaders in the Dawn of the Cold War in Eastern Bavaria. 2nd revised and expanded edition. Regensburg 2009 (Regensburg Studies 11).
Citation
Christoph Schnellbach: Displaced Persons (DPs). In: Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe, 2015. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/p32833 (as at 28 September 2020).
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