Displaced Persons Camps in Germany and Austria (1945 to 1952)

Where millions of people uprooted by World War II waited to learn where they could go.

After the war

When World War II ended, millions of people in Europe could not or would not go home. They included Holocaust survivors, former forced laborers, and people from the Baltic states, Ukraine, Poland, and Yugoslavia who refused to return to Soviet or Communist rule.

The camps

Allied military authorities and international agencies, first the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration and then the International Refugee Organization, ran hundreds of camps in Germany, Austria, and Italy. Some families lived in them for years.

To America

The Displaced Persons Act of 1948 opened the way to the United States for hundreds of thousands.

Connected stories

• Ints Siliņš lived in a camp in the American zone of Germany before coming to the United States in 1949.
• Roman Popadiuk was born in a displaced persons camp in Austria.
• Alexander Akalovsky came in 1949 under the Displaced Persons Act.