The Long Road Home: The Aftermath of the Second World War

463 Pages·2011·3.81 MB·English

by  Ben Shephard

ALSO BY BEN SHEPHARD
After Daybreak: The Liberation of Bergen-Belsen, 1945
A War of Nerves: Soldiers and Psychiatrists, 1914–1994
Kitty and the Prince: A Victorian Tragedy

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 2010 by Ben Shephard
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by
Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
www.aaknopf.com
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are
registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Originally published in Great Britain in slightly different form by The Bodley Head, the Random House
Group Ltd., London, in 2010.
Portions of this work previously appeared in Journal of Contemporary History.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Edward Denny, Jr., and Lynda Garebedian for permission to reprint
excerpts from The Wild Place and Undiscovered Country, both by Kathryn C. Hulme, as well as excerpts
from the unpublished letters of Kathryn C. Hulme.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Shephard, Ben, [date]
The long road home : the aftermath of the Second World War /
by Ben Shephard. — 1st American ed.
p. cm.
“Originally published in Great Britain in slightly different form by
The Bodley Head, London, 2010”—T.p. verso.
“This is a Borzoi book published by Alfred A. Knopf”—T.p. verso.
eISBN: 978-0-307-59548-5
1. World War, 1939–1945—Refugees. 2. World War, 1939–1945—
Forced repatriation. 3. Repatriation—Europe—History—20th century. 4. Repatriation—Asia—History—
20th century. I. Title.
808. 44 2011
D S
940.53086′914—dc22 2010023894
Jacket art: clockwise, upper left) Crowd of refugees, Germany, 1945. David E. Scherman/Time & Life
Pictures/Getty Images; German soup kitchen, 1944–45. The Granger Collection, N.Y.; East German
refugees, 1945 © dpa/Corbis; East Prussian refugees, 1945. The Granger Collection, N.Y.; Jewish survivors
of the Buchenwald Nazi concentration camp stand on refugee ship Mataroa July 15, 1945, Haifa port,
during the British Mandate of Palestine. Zoltan Kluger/GPO via Getty Images
Jacket design by Jason Booher
v3.1
For Sue
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Map
Author’s Note
Introduction: “An Enormous Deal of Kindness”
1. Feeding the War Machine: Foreign Labor in Germany, 1940–1945
2. Food and Freedom: Preparing for the Aftermath of War, 1940–1943
3. “The Origin of the Perpetual Muddle”: Experience with Relief, 1943–1945
4. “Half the Nationalities of Europe on the March”: Germany, 1945
5. The Psychological Moment: Repatriating the Refugees, 1945
6. The Surviving Remnant: Jewish DPs, 1945
7. “Feed the Brutes?”: German Refugees, 1945
8. Dollars or Death: UNRRA in Germany, 1945
9. “You Pick It Up Fast”: Wildflecken DP Camp, Germany, 1945
10. “Even if the Gates Are Locked”: Jewish DPs, 1946
11. “Skryning”: Repatriating DPs, 1946
12. “Save Them First and Argue After”: La Guardia and UNRRA
13. “We Grossly Underestimated the Destruction”: The Food Crisis in Europe in
the Winter of 1946–1947 and Washington’s Response
14. “Dwell, Eat, Breed, Wait”: Life in DP Camps, 1947–1950
15. “The Best Interests of the Child”: Child Search in Germany, 1945–1950
16. “Good Human Stock”: Resettling DPs, 1947–1950
17. “We Lived to See It”: Jewish DPs and the Creation of Israel, 1947–1949
18. America’s Fair Share: The United States and DPs, 1947–1950
19. Legacies: How DPs Made New Lives
Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Photograph Credits
A Note About the Author
Illustrations

Author’s Note
To avoid drowning the reader in a sea of acronyms, the names of official bodies
have been kept to a minimum. But there remains an irreducible core.
RELIEF
Although the term “United Nations” was first used during the Second World War
in the Atlantic Charter issued at the Anglo-American conference in
Newfoundland in August 1941, the United Nations Organization (United
Nations or UN for short) did not come into existence until October 1945. Before
then, however, several international organizations were created in advance of the
UN, the main ones being the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the
United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), established
in November 1943. UNRRA worked in both Europe and the Far East, but this
book is concerned only with its European operations.