This research paper documents the triumphant cultural and political revitalization of a victimized Europe, while providing details on the specifics of the liberation and the life of "displaced persons" particularly Jews, in post-World War II. Never before has an event in history been as tragic and as catastrophic as the Holocaust of Eastern Europe in the early 1940s. It is generally believed that a total of twelve million people were murdered by the Nazi regime, including political opponents, Gypsies, the mentally ill, homosexuals, and other "undesirables." An estimated six of the seven million Jews of Europe were killed just because they were Jewish. For the first time in history, an entire people were targeted for annihilation by a government. The Nazi state systematically implemented a plan to destroy all Jews simply because they existed. The destruction of European Jewry stands as the archetype of genocide in human history.
             Not all of the Jews in Europe were murdered in the Holocaust. After the fall of the Third Reich, Europe was war-torn shambles. Hundreds of thousands of people were homeless and seeking a new life. These were known at the time as "displaced persons." Among them were several hundred thousand Jews who had either survived the horrors of the concentration camps or escaped the Nazis altogether. "The approximately 50,000 liberated Jews were part of some 8 million Displaced Persons who lived in occupied Germany and Austria shortly after the end of the war." The 50,000 Jews shared with these 8 million the fate of being driven from their home by the war. Now, the policy of the Allied occupation forces was intended to return all the DPs to their countries of origin as soon as possible, which pleased most non-Jewish Displaced Persons, who had been driven out of their homelands by force. "By May 1946, 88 percent, that is almost 6 million Displaced Persons, had left Germany and were repatriated in their homelands." For ...