ww2 nazi camps

[dannyday5821]

when the camps were liberated by the allies at the end of the war... what exactly happened to the survivors? i watched a documentary called memory of the camps, not nice viewing really but its like a first hand account.

so i get it, they go in, give them food, water etc. but what then? if you happen to live nearby... do you just... walk off home? the ones who werent in extreme ill health, what did they do? and what about the children, what did the allies do with them after everything ended?

is there anything i can read online like first hand accounts or watch like another documentary? im trying to imagine myself as one of those survivors, i finally get clean water, i finally get some nurishment, i feel physically and mentally better than i have done for the past few years... what do i do now? where do i go? this was one of the things we were never taught about at school / college but i think its important to understand to get a real feeling for and understanding of exactly what was going through the minds of those who survived...

i always wondered this about the blitz too. there i am, my house was bombed, my family survived, but ive nowhere to live now. where do i go? what do i do?

[boxtops]

There were very few who weren't in extremely poor health, nobody fit... Iused to work with a man who'd been part of the liberation of Belsen, he said he never wanted to see anything like it again in his lifetime. The inmates didn't feel better for years, many never really recovered from the mental strain of being there and knowing family and friends perished in the gas chambers...

[twix123]

There were many problems with the resettlement of the survivors. The following link will give you a series of essays on the subject:

http://www.tlemea.com/postwareurope/essays.asp

Families displaced during the Blitz would be allocated accommodation either in temporary shelters or housed with families with room to spare. Remember that a lot of houses were larger then than the rabbit hutches being built nowadays. Otherwise they would go and live with relatives. The Red Cross would supply essentials such as clothing, blankets and soap.

[Slapshot]

For years after the war Europe became a home for refugees because so many people had been displaced both by the Nazis and all the other collateral damage that conflict does, that's just the ordinary people. Those liberated from the camps were in a worse position. Their homes had either been destroyed, Aryanised or taken over by their own nationals.

When the camps were liberated the biggest problem was helping those left to recover, getting through the inherant disease in the camps, getting food into their digestive systems that they could handle without it killing them. Once in a state of malnutrition you can't just stuff these people full of food and expect them to recover. Once the survivors were ready to be let loose there were transitory camps for them that were clean and they had access to good levels of nutrition and they were assisted back into humanity.

In many cases the Jews primarily wouldn't be allowed back into their own homes. If you try to read Auchwitz, A Warning From History by Laurence Rees it talks to survivors from the Death March out of Auchwitz just before Liberation who went back to their original homes eventually and were forced out of them again by those who had taken over.

After the war was in some cases worse than the periods before the end of the war for many people. You can finds loads of info on Wikipaedia and in your local library

[NOX]

You will get some first hand accounts at Yad Vashem- which will also have scores of links to other survivor sites.

http://www.yadvashem.org/