Duncan Bowie on displaced persons and the Cold War
Lost Souls by Sheila Fitzpatrick published by Princeton University Press
This is a study of the resettlement and repatriation of displaced persons from Germany, Austria and Eastern Europe after the Second World War. The basic premise of the author is that this was a rare successful case of a refugee crisis which was largely resolved, in contrast with the failure of current European governments to manage the recent migration of seekers of asylum. Fitzpatrick is an Australian academic who has written several books on Russian politics, most recently On Stalin’s Team and The Shortest History of the Soviet Union.
This is an excellently researched book, using a wide range of sources – official documents and personal memoirs, the latter significantly enhancing the narrative.
A million displaced persons were in the western occupied zones of Germany, a mix of Western Ukrainians and Balts (whose territories were incorporated into the Soviet Union), as well as Russians. The Soviet Union wanted its former citizens back, yet many did not wish to return to their homelands and wanted to stay in the West.
The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) was established in 1944, before the UN was itself inaugurated, and was based on the assumption that displaced persons, after being housed in camps in Germany and Austria, would be repatriated. However, against vigorous opposition from the Soviet Union, UNRRA found itself organising resettlement programmes, first informally and then officially. Displaced persons were initially housed in former concentration camps, such as Belsen, former army barracks, and, in some cases, ordinary houses. Living conditions were surprisingly good (certainly compared with conditions in some contemporary refugee camps and hostels). Food rations were actually higher than for the indigenous German population, who were treated badly by the occupying forces, with social, leisure and education facilities, including free university education and employment.
The UNRRA operation was led by Americans and the Soviets, who had their own repatriation officers in the occupied zones, who were trying to persuade or force displaced persons to repatriate. Being marginalised, the UN set up a new organisation, the International Refugee Organisation (IRO) in early 1947, which was also largely US led, to focus on resettling the displaced persons in western countries, notably the US, Canada, Australia and, to a lesser extent, the UK and Latin America. The UK‘s curiously named ‘Westward Ho!’ programme initially took Balts and Western Ukrainians, but was later extended to Poles, Yugoslavs, Bulgarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Russians (including pre-war émigrés), Jews and Armenians, totalling 77,000 people between 1946 and 1949. Most Jewish displaced persons moved to the US or to Israel, the latter despite Britain, as the mandatory power, seeking to restrict resettlement in Israel prior to Israel’s independence in 1948.
An interesting feature of the story, seen from the current perspective, is the willingness of the receiving countries to accept such large numbers of migrants. The displaced persons were initially viewed as victims of Nazism, but as the rivalry between the West (primarily the US) and Soviet Russia developed into a Cold War, the displaced persons, including those who had collaborated with the Nazis and had initially been excluded from resettlement programmes, were increasingly viewed as victims of Communism and therefore to be welcomed. There appears to have been neither political nor popular resistance to the large numbers of people involved – western countries wanted additional workers and were happy to deny the Soviets the citizens they wanted to replace the cohort killed during the war.
This could have been a very grim book – other studies of postwar Germany and Eastern Europe I have recently read are grim, but much of the memoirs used by Fitzpatrick, including some from the author’s own relatives and their friends who resettled in Australia, are positive and even uplifting. Many of the displaced persons had agency regarding where they moved to – many were resettled in the country of their choice. What a contrast with the current refugee situation, where national politicians in both the US and Europe, including Britain, spend so much effort on excluding refugees and displaced people and where there is such popular fear of countries being “swamped”. This is a book well worth reading.