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

were several hundred thousand Jews who had either survived the horrors of the concentration camps or escaped the Nazis altogether. "The approximately 50,000 liberated Jews were part of some 8 million Displaced Persons who lived in occupied Germany and Austria shortly after the end of the war." The 50,000 Jews shared with these 8 million the fate of being driven from their home by the war. 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. "By May 1946, 88 percent, that is almost 6 million Displaced Persons, had left Germany and were repatriated in their homelands." For 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 active life of the Jewish DPs in postwar Germany provide a significant illustration of their autonomous attitudes. In Bavaria alone, two Jewish soccer leagues were formed. Other sports like table tennis and boxing were also actively pursued. A contemporary list includes 169 Jewish sport clubs in postwar Germany.

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 historians never focus on what happened after the Holocaust. They simply research what the general public wants to read and watch on television. I define this term as "popular history"; history that appeals to the general population of the world. The most interesting and most appealing to the "general population" is, of course, what went on during the extermination and carnage. To purely focus on the "guts and gore" your overlooking the consequences and the heroic means by which a tiny, emotionally battered, Jewish population rebuilt itself to what it is today. The next few paragraphs will discuss how they developed psychologically, culturally, and politically directly following their liberation in May of 1

Some common words found in the essay are:
Jewish DPs, Upper Bavaria, Hungary Slovakia, Germany Jewish, Fohrenwald February, Eastern Europe, Historical Committees, Occupation Zone, Talmud Hebrew, European Jewry, jewish dps, dp camps, dp camp, concentration camps, displaced persons, jewish survivors, life jewish dps, occupational zone, lists surviving, east european, jewish culture, american occupational zone, life displaced persons, surviving warsaw jews, lists surviving jews,
Approximate Word count = 2510
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page double spaced)