HIST103: World History (1600–Present)

Displaced Persons and the State of Israel

The Holocaust and its aftermath left millions of refugees, including many Jews who had lost most or all of their family members and possessions and often faced persistent anti-Semitism in their home countries.

The original plan of the Allies was to repatriate these "Displaced Persons" to their country of origin, but many refused to return or were unable to as their homes or communities had been destroyed. As a result, more than 250,000 languished in DP camps for years after the war ended.

While Zionism had been prominent before the Holocaust, afterward, it became almost universally accepted among Jews. Many Zionists, pointing to the fact that Jewish refugees from Germany and Nazi-occupied lands had been turned away by other countries, argued that if a Jewish state had existed at the time, the Holocaust could not have occurred on the scale it did.

With the rise of Zionism, Palestine became the destination of choice for Jewish refugees. However, as local Arabs opposed the immigration, the United Kingdom placed restrictions on the number of Jewish refugees allowed into Palestine. 

Former Jewish partisans in Europe, along with the Haganah in Palestine, organized a massive effort to smuggle Jews into Palestine, called Berihah, which eventually transported 250,000 Jews (both DPs and those who hid during the war) to the Mandate. By 1952, the Displaced Persons camps were closed, with over 80,000 Jewish DPs in the United States, about 136,000 in Israel, and another 20,000 in other nations, including Canada and South Africa.

Legal Proceedings Against Nazis

Defendants at the Nuremberg Trials – Front row: Göring, Heß, von Ribbentrop, and Keitel. Second row: Dönitz, Raeder, Schirach, Sauckel.

The juridical notion of crimes against humanity was invented following the Holocaust. There were a number of legal efforts established to bring Nazis and their collaborators to justice. Some of the higher-ranking Nazi officials were tried as part of the Nuremberg Trials, presided over by an Allied court, the first international tribunal of its kind.

In total, 5,025 Nazi criminals were convicted between 1945-1949 in the American, British and French zones of Germany. Other trials were conducted in the countries in which the defendants were citizens. In West Germany and Austria, many Nazis were let off with light sentences, with the claim that "following orders" ruled a mitigating circumstance, and many returned to society soon afterward.

An ongoing effort to pursue Nazis and collaborators resulted, famously, in the capture of Holocaust organizer Adolf Eichmann in Argentina (an operation led by Rafi Eitan) and in his subsequent trial in Israel in 1961. Simon Wiesenthal became one of the most famous Nazi hunters.

Some former Nazis, however, escaped any charges. Thus, Reinhard Gehlen, a former intelligence officer of the Wehrmacht, set up the network that helped many ex-Nazis escape to Spain (under Franco), Latin America, or the Middle East. Gehlen later worked for the CIA and, in 1956, created the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), the German intelligence agency, which he directed until 1968. Klaus Barbie, known as "the Butcher of Lyon" for his role as the head of the Gestapo, was protected from 1945 to 1955 by the MI-5 (British Security Service) and the CIA before fleeing to South America. Barbie was finally arrested in 1983 and sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity in 1987.

In October 2005, Aribert Heim (aka "Doctor Death") was found to be living for 20 years in Spain, protected by Gehlen's network. Paul Schäfer, who had founded Colonia Dignidad in Chile, was arrested in 2005 on child sex abuse charges.

Furthermore, some "enlightened" Nazis were pardoned and permitted to become members of the Christian Democrats in Germany. These included Kurt Georg Kiesinger, who became Germany's Chancellor for a period in the 1960s, Hans Filbinger, who became Minister-President of Baden-Württemberg, and Kurt Waldheim, who became Secretary-General of the United Nations and President of Austria. 

Many Jews have been critical of the trials that have been conducted, suggesting that often the judges had Nazi leanings. One Sobibor survivor, recounting her experiences as a witness, responded to the question, "Was justice done?" by saying:

Until recently, Germany refused to allow access to massive Holocaust-related archives located in Bad Arolsen due to, among other factors, privacy concerns. However, in May 2006, a 20-year effort by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum led to the announcement that 30-50 million pages would be made accessible to historians and survivors.

Legal Action Against Genocide

The Holocaust also galvanized the international community to take action against future genocide, including the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in 1948.

While international human rights law moved forward quickly in the wake of the Holocaust, international criminal law has been slower to advance; after the Nuremberg trials and the Japanese war crime trials, it was over 40 years until the next such international criminal procedures in 1993 in Yugoslavia. In 2002, the International Criminal Court was set up.