Read Online Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 by Tony Judt - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Tony Judt
Tags: European History
Ads: Link
Jews who survived the war, all but 16,000 would leave by 1950. The ancient diasporas of Europe—Greeks and Turks in the south Balkans and around the Black Sea, Italians in Dalmatia, Hungarians in Transylvania and the north Balkans, Poles in Volhynia (Ukraine), Lithuania and the Bukovina, Germans from the Baltic to the Black Sea, from the Rhine to the Volga, and Jews everywhere—shriveled and disappeared. A new, ‘tidier’ Europe was being born.
Most of the initial management of the displaced persons and refugees—gathering them up, establishing camps for them and providing food, clothing and medical help was undertaken by the Allied armies occupying Germany, the US Army especially. There was no other authority in Germany but also in Austria and in northern Italy, the other areas in which refugees congregated. Only the army had the resources and the organizational capacity to administer the demographic equivalent of a medium-sized country. This was an unprecedented charge for a huge military machine that, just a few weeks before, had been devoted almost exclusively to the business of fighting the Wehrmacht. As General Dwight D. Eisenhower (the Supreme Allied Commander) expressed it, reporting to President Harry Truman on October 8th 1945 in response to criticisms directed at the military’s handling of refugees and concentration camp survivors: ‘In certain instances we have fallen below standard, but I should like to point out that a whole army has been faced with the intricate problem of adjusting from combat to mass repatriation and then to the present static phase with its unique welfare problems.’
Once the system of camps had been set in place, however, responsibility for the care and eventual repatriation or resettlement of the displaced millions fell increasingly on the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. UNRRA was founded in November 9th 1943 at a Washington meeting of representatives from 44 future UN members, held in anticipation of likely post-war needs, and went on to play a vital role in the post-war emergency. The agency spent $10 billion between July 1945 and June 1947, almost all of it furnished by the governments of the USA, Canada and the United Kingdom. A lot of that aid went directly to former allies in eastern Europe—Poland, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia—and to the Soviet Union, as well as to the administration of displaced persons in Germany and elsewhere. Of the former Axis countries only Hungary received UNRRA assistance, and not very much at that.
In late 1945 UNRRA was operating 227 camps and relief centers for displaced persons and refugees in Germany, with a further 25 in neighbouring Austria and a handful in France and the Benelux countries. By June 1947 it had 762 such units in Western Europe, the overwhelming majority in the Western Zones of Germany. At its peak, in September 1945, the number of liberated United Nations civilians (i.e. not including citizens of former Axis countries) being cared for or repatriated by UNRRA and other Allied agencies was 6,795,000—to whom should be added a further 7 million under Soviet authority and many millions of displaced Germans. In nationality the largest groups were from the Soviet Union: released prisoners and former forced labourers. Then came 2 million French (prisoners of war, labourers and deportees), 1.6 million Poles, 700,000 Italians, 350,000 Czechs, more than 300,000 Dutch, 300,000 Belgians and countless others.
UNRRA food supplies played a vital part in feeding Yugoslavia especially: without the agency’s contributions, many more people would have died in the years 1945-47. In Poland UNRRA helped maintain food consumption at 60 percent of pre-war levels, in Czechoslovakia at 80 percent. In Germany and Austria it shared responsibility for handling displaced persons and refugees with the International Refugee Organisation (IRO), whose statutes were approved by the General Assembly of the UN in December
Most of the initial management of the displaced persons and refugees—gathering them up, establishing camps for them and providing food, clothing and medical help was undertaken by the Allied armies occupying Germany, the US Army especially. There was no other authority in Germany but also in Austria and in northern Italy, the other areas in which refugees congregated. Only the army had the resources and the organizational capacity to administer the demographic equivalent of a medium-sized country. This was an unprecedented charge for a huge military machine that, just a few weeks before, had been devoted almost exclusively to the business of fighting the Wehrmacht. As General Dwight D. Eisenhower (the Supreme Allied Commander) expressed it, reporting to President Harry Truman on October 8th 1945 in response to criticisms directed at the military’s handling of refugees and concentration camp survivors: ‘In certain instances we have fallen below standard, but I should like to point out that a whole army has been faced with the intricate problem of adjusting from combat to mass repatriation and then to the present static phase with its unique welfare problems.’
Once the system of camps had been set in place, however, responsibility for the care and eventual repatriation or resettlement of the displaced millions fell increasingly on the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. UNRRA was founded in November 9th 1943 at a Washington meeting of representatives from 44 future UN members, held in anticipation of likely post-war needs, and went on to play a vital role in the post-war emergency. The agency spent $10 billion between July 1945 and June 1947, almost all of it furnished by the governments of the USA, Canada and the United Kingdom. A lot of that aid went directly to former allies in eastern Europe—Poland, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia—and to the Soviet Union, as well as to the administration of displaced persons in Germany and elsewhere. Of the former Axis countries only Hungary received UNRRA assistance, and not very much at that.
In late 1945 UNRRA was operating 227 camps and relief centers for displaced persons and refugees in Germany, with a further 25 in neighbouring Austria and a handful in France and the Benelux countries. By June 1947 it had 762 such units in Western Europe, the overwhelming majority in the Western Zones of Germany. At its peak, in September 1945, the number of liberated United Nations civilians (i.e. not including citizens of former Axis countries) being cared for or repatriated by UNRRA and other Allied agencies was 6,795,000—to whom should be added a further 7 million under Soviet authority and many millions of displaced Germans. In nationality the largest groups were from the Soviet Union: released prisoners and former forced labourers. Then came 2 million French (prisoners of war, labourers and deportees), 1.6 million Poles, 700,000 Italians, 350,000 Czechs, more than 300,000 Dutch, 300,000 Belgians and countless others.
UNRRA food supplies played a vital part in feeding Yugoslavia especially: without the agency’s contributions, many more people would have died in the years 1945-47. In Poland UNRRA helped maintain food consumption at 60 percent of pre-war levels, in Czechoslovakia at 80 percent. In Germany and Austria it shared responsibility for handling displaced persons and refugees with the International Refugee Organisation (IRO), whose statutes were approved by the General Assembly of the UN in December
Similar Books
