The International School for Holocaust Studies

Lesson 8

Survivors and Liberators

In this lesson, you learn about liberators of the extermination camps and about the political, social, legal and emotional status of the Jewish survivors in Europe following the Holocaust. You also learn about Displaced Persons' (DP) Camps.

For more information about the DP Camps, click here.

In this lesson, you also learn about the complex dilemmas Jewish survivors faced in the shadow of the Holocaust. Most Holocaust survivors made the decision to leave Europe, and rebuild their lives on different continents. The majority of them immigrated to Israel (then Palestine, ruled by the British until 1947) to establish a Jewish national homeland. For more information on the State of Israel, click here.

Key Words

• Displaced Persons
• Holocaust Survivors
• Refugees
• Return to Life (The Pain of Liberation)

Encyclopedia

• Liberation
• Repatriates

Photographs

• Berlin, Germany, April 4, 1945, A Soldier Raising the Russian Flag on the Reichstag
• A Survivor Sitting Alone in Bergen-Belsen after Liberation, April 1945
• Bergen-Belsen, Germany, April 1945, Women Inside a Barrack
• Bergen-Belsen, Germany, April 1945, Two Survivors after Liberation
• Bergen-Belsen, Germany, Female Prisoners in a Barrack at Liberation
• Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland, Children at the Time of Liberation
• Auschwitz, Poland, 1945, Children after Their Liberation by the Red Army
• Former Inmates after Liberation, Majdanek, Poland, 1944
• Sarel Nechemya, About 14-Years-Old,Saying Kaddish Immediately after Vilna is Liberated, Ponar, Lithuania
• Klooga, Estonia, Survivors from the Camp
• Bergen-Belsen, Germany, A Group of Jewish Brigade Soldiers with Dr. Hadassah (Bimko) Rosensaft in the DP Camp
• Leipheim, Germany, Jewish Soldiers in a DP Camp after the War
• Feldafing, Bavaria, Germany, Registering the Population of the DP Camp
• Landsberg, Germany, 1947, The Camp's Boxing Team
• Nizniow, Poland, Judith Mirski with Her Brothers and Sisters after Liberation
• Sweden, Girls Who Survived Bergen-Belsen, after Liberation
• Lodz, Poland, 1947, Seven-Year-Old Gal'e Banek, after the War
• Lodz, Poland, 1947, Ludwig Tzelniker, Postwar
• Piotrolesie, Poland, August 1949, A Child in an Orphanage
• The Orphanage at the DP Camp, Bergen-Belsen, Germany
• Bergen-Belsen, Germany, The Sports Team 'Hatikva' after the War
• Inmates on Bunks, at the Time of Liberation, Buchenwald
• Pocking, Germany, A wedding at Kibbutz Beitar in the DP camp, 1947
• The Transferring of Child Survivors from Bergen-Belsen to Sweden after the War
• A Hanukkah Party for Child Survivors, Salonika, Greece, Postwar

Documents

• "We Don't Want Revenge" - From a Speech Given by Dr. Zalman Grinberg, a Holocaust Survivor.

Artifacts

• A Page from a Memoir Written in a Convalescence Home in Sweden after the War by a Jewish Child.

Online Exhibitions

• Private Zinovii Tolkatchev at the Gates of Hell
• Return to Life

Diaries and Letters

• From the Testimony of Dr. Dov Levin about Returning Home and Encountering the Destruction
• From the Diary of Dr. David Wdowinski about the Disappointment of the Liberated Prisoners
• Edi Weinstein on Being Liberated by Russian Soldiers