After Liberation

In 1944, World War II was coming to an end. The Nazis were losing, and they began to panic. The war was won by armies of Russia, Great Britain, France, and the United States. The armies began to liberate the suffering camps at the brink of the Nazi defeat. Even after liberation, many things still needed to be settled, and the journey was not easy.

The Russian army reached Majdanek on July 24, 1944. This was a Nazi death camp created in 1941. This was only the first camp to be liberated during the Holocaust. At the end of the war, all camps were liberated and brought relief.

Some liberators even forced former Nazis and Nazi supporters to bury victims of the camps and witness what they had done to so many people. They spent days, maybe weeks digging mass graves and burying the corpses. Most bodies were found totally starved to death, or crawling with lice and fleas. The majority were stripped of any clothing. Even as they were being buried, they were not give much respect because they were dragged around and thrown on to big piles of other corpses. None were identified that were buried, but a very few.

At first, the American and British liberators had no idea what to do with the remaining survivors of the camps. Most former prisoners were infected with many diseases, and showed great threat for starting an epidemic. They did not want to release them into general population immediately, but instead bring them care and medical attention. They also feared revenge killing occurring after release. The temporary decided solution was to keep them in the camps.

Even the survivors faced much death. Some died of their terrible diseases, or were far too starved to have the strength to eat. Some even were so mentally ill th...

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...eek bluff”. They could show Red Cross forged documents claiming them to be Greeks that were in the camps now heading for Greece. This allowed them to cross the Czechoslovakian border.

Jewish people and other survivors had suffered through such hard times, but even after liberation life was hard. For years, they were still discriminated and not given the best treatment. Countries that allowed immigration had very low numbers of surviving Jews. At the end of it all though, 748,540 of Jews fled to Israel. Jews were what was now considered home, and that may have solved the most problems. Even though it was hard to move on from the Holocaust, much was learned from the past, and Jews found a better home.

Works Cited

Gotfried, Ted. Displaced Persons: The Liberation and Abuse of Holocaust Survivors.

Brookfield, Connecticut: Twenty-First Century Books, 2001.