Holocaust Education and Displaced Persons (DP) Camps

Abstract

A bulk of focus regarding Holocaust education is laid on concentration camps while information about displaced persons (DP) camps is scarce. For reasons that are not clear, Holocaust education generally neglects the crucial question of how the surviving remnants managed in the first year or two after 1945 and materials about how people coped with surviving survival are not plentiful. It is important because in the initial years after liberation, the DPs needed help in returning to life, in relearning to make choices, in confronting the empty reality of their new existence, in trusting other human beings, and in becoming trustworthy themselves. Holocaust education must address the loss of human values by the perpetrators and the incongruous position of the victims who were then forced to live among them. The incongruity was compounded by the fact that victor, victim, and perpetrator did not have a common language.