Liberation and DP Camps

When the Red Army arrived at the gates of the Auschwitz concentration camp on 27 January 1945, they had no idea what lay behind the barbed wire.

Although over 55,000 prisoners had been death marched out of the camp as the Red Army advanced, 7,000 sick prisoners and tiny children remained in the main concentration camp complex.

The Polish Red Cross soon arrived to offer medical care and food. About 4,500 survivors were cared for in Red Army hospitals. Many of the survivors were moved to Katowice but 300 survivors remained in the camp until June 1945.

To find out more about the death marches from Auschwitz concentration camp complex click here. To find out more about the camp complex itself click here.

On 15 April 1945, the British Army liberated about 55,000 prisoners, who were held in the Bergen Belsen concentration camp. Among them were many members of the Boys. The Germans had agreed to surrender peacefully on 12 April 1945.

The British soldiers were totally unprepared for what they found. The prisoners were emaciated and sick. Thousands of corpses lay littered around the camp. Many of the prisoners had been brought to the camp in the closing months of the war and endured horrendous death marches.

The newsreel and newspaper reports of the liberation made a deep impression in the UK and as a result many of the Boys were known as the Belsen Boys after they arrived in Britain, even if they had never been in the camp.

As the US Army advanced across Germany, on 11 April 1945, the SS were ordered to leave the camp. The resistance movement within the camp mobilised as the SS fled and distributed hidden weapons held in the camp.

American tanks arrived in the early afternoon as the camp underground took control of Buchenwald. Among 21,000 prisoners liberated in the camp were about 900 young boys, some of whom would become members of the Boys.

The Buchenwald subcamps had been evacuated in the last weeks of the war. Prisoners were sent on death marches and death trains.

Josef Perl in Hove in 1954.

“Throughout that day, there had been a great feeling of expectation rippling through the camp and I was lying on the ground outside block 66, warming myself in the spring sun and trying to comprehend the events unfolding around me. When I saw the American soldiers, I struggled to sit up and saw them standing in horrified disbelief at the site that confronted them.

The tempo of the camp suddenly altered and people were hurrying in all directions. The three layers of fine meshed wire fencing had been pulled down by the arrival of the American tanks, and those inmates who were strong enough were making their way out of the camp, even for a few seconds – they wanted to be on the other side of the fence and try to absorb the feeling of freedom.

I looked at the Americans with their guns and clean uniforms and I looked down at myself in the filthy rags, wondering,

‘Who am I? Where do I belong?”

Josef Perl with Arthur C Benjamin, Faces in the Smoke: The Story of Josef Perl (1998).

Perl had just turned 15 years old when he was liberated.

On 29 April 1945, prisoners in Dachau were liberated by US Army soldiers.

When Allied troops approached Dachau in 1945, the SS guards responded by forcing over 7,000 prisoners to take part in a death march, which included members of the Boys. When the Americans entered the camp, they found thousands of weak and starving inmates, and an entire train full of corpses – deportees to Dachau who had been left locked in the train to die of starvation and disease.

Days after their arrival in the camp, Allied forces liberated survivors of the death march. The München-Allach subcamp was liberated by US soldiers on the morning of 30 April 1945, a day after the liberation of the main camp.

On 3 May 1945, the last members of the SS abandoned both the Mauthausen concentration camp and the Gusen subcamp.

On 5 May a reconnaissance unit of the US Army arrived. On the following day, units of the 3rd US Army finally liberated around 40,000 prisoners in the two camps.

American soldiers found the bodies of hundreds of prisoners who had died in the days before liberation. Thousands more were so weak and frail that they died in the weeks and months following liberation, despite the medical care provided by the US Army medical units. Over 3,000 were buried in cemeteries next to the former camps.

The last roll call in the Ebensee subcamp took place on 4 May 1945. The prisoners were ordered into the tunnels where, it was rumoured, the Nazi guards planned to blow them up in the tunnels, but the prisoners refused to leave the roll-call area.

That night the guards fled the camp, which was liberated by the US Army the next day, 5 May 1945.

The Gunskirchen subcamp was liberated by the US Army on 4 May 1945. 15,000 starving prisoners were in the camp of whom 1,500 would die in the days after the liberation.

Sam Gontarz, one of the Boys, later recalled, “We were liberated but we didn’t know it. We were too poorly to know and although the very thing that we had been dreaming of for years was now a reality, we couldn’t enjoy it because we were too dazed.”

American soldiers immediately began requisitioning supplies and transportation from the local town to provide the prisoners with food and water.

Prisoners from the Melk subcamp had previously been taken to Gunskirchen via Mauthausen.

Thousands of starving and sick prisoners were sent on death marches and death trains to the Theresienstadt Ghetto in the closing weeks of the war. They brought with them typhus which soon spread.

The Czech Aid Project to Prisoners at Terezín was set up and they began to work with the Red Cross who had taken over the running of the camp on 2 May 1945 prior to the liberation. The German SS fled on 5-6 May 1945.

The Red Army reached Theresienstadt on 8 May 1945. They entered the ghetto on the morning of 9 May 1945. The Soviet military authorities than imposed a quarantine.

Ragdolls by Henry Golde.

“There was nothing unusual about this day. I got up and washed my face in the sink in the hallway. Suddenly, I heard a shot coming from out in the street. After running back to my room, I saw other men looking out of the window to see what was happening. A man screamed out from between the iron bars.

‘The Russians are here!’

Then a Russian shot his gun into the air and ordered the Czech policeman to open the gate. With that, we all crowded onto the balcony to get a better look. A jeep with two Russians, a driver and an officer, was entering the courtyard. When the vehicle stopped, the officer jumped out and looked up at the people on the balcony.

‘You are free! You are free!’, he shouted. All that could be heard at that time were screams of joy. People ran into the courtyard from all parts of the building … it seemed strange, because an hour earlier these people could hardly lift themselves from their cots. The strength must have been coming as a result of newfound hope.”

Henry Golde, Ragdolls (2002).

Golde had endured a death march to the Theresienstadt Ghetto during which he had turned 16 years old.

To find out more about the death marches to the Theresienstadt Ghetto click here. To find out more about the Ghetto itself click here. To find out more about Terezín after the liberation click here.

Immediately after the liberation, Holocaust survivors were categorised by nationality and many found themselves in camps alongside their co-nationals who held antisemitic views and had even persecuted them in the Nazi concentration camps.

Initially life in the DP camps was very harsh especially for Jewish survivors. Many of the camps had been previously used as labour or concentration camps by the Nazis and remained enclosed with barbed wire and under armed guard. Death rates also remained high. In the Belsen-Hohne DP camp there were 23,000 deaths in the first three months after the liberation.

After a campaign by the US Army chaplain, Abraham Klausner, news of the terrible situation Jews endured in the DP camps in the American zone reached the White House, President Truman sent an envoy, Earl G Harrison, the newly-appointed American delegate to the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees, to report on the situation. The Harrison Report published in July 1945 revealed that not only were Jewish survivors living in terrible conditions but they were forced to live with those who had collaborated with the Nazis.

As a result of the Harrison Report, military advisors were appointed to oversee the DP camps in the American zone and conditions improved. One of the first measures implemented was to separate the Jews from the rest of the population of displaced persons. In July 1945, Feldafing became the first exclusively Jewish DP camp. It was the first time that Jews had been recognised as a nationality and thus Feldafing played an important role in Jewish history. Föhrenwald DP camp followed in the late summer of 1945. Camps like Feldafing and Föhrenwald were unique to the American zone.

Daily Life

Despite the tragedy and horror that they had experienced, once they began to physically recover, Jews in the DP camps showed a remarkable zest for life. There was a significant religious, political and Zionist revival. There was an emphasis on education and training, as well as a lively cultural life.

Schools, kindergartens and vocational training centres were set up. Yet, despite the efforts of the Jewish leaders in the DP camps to organise education and sports activities for the young survivors many of them were left to their own devices and they spent time trading on the black market.

Aid workers in the camp and many Jewish leaders saw the pressing need to move the young survivors to a place more suited to their rehabilitation. Young survivors were taken to Mandate Palestine both legally and illegally, as well as to France, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK.

Zionism

The Jewish revival in the camps also brought with it a renewed and reinvigorated Zionist movement.

Jewish survivors in the American zone had, by the summer of 1945, begun to organise themselves into an effective Zionist lobby, as is shown by Rosie Whitehouse in her study of the period The People on the Beach: Journeys to Freedom After the Holocaust (Hurst, 2020).

The Committee of the Liberated Jews of Bavaria lobbied for survivors’ rights and the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine and as a result were opposed to moving the children anywhere but Palestine. It set them on a collision cause with the British government, which had imposed strict limitations on Jewish emigration to Palestine in the 1939 White Paper. After the war the Labour Party had promised on the hustings to repeal the White Paper but after their landslide victory in 1945 refused to do so.

It was only after much negotiation with the Committee of the Liberated Jews of Bavaria, that it was finally agreed that those children who had been told they were leaving for Britain would be allowed do so but as survivor Ivor Perl remembers the lorries that took them out of the Förenwald DP camp left in the middle of the night just in case Zionist activists tried to stop them.

The situation in the American zone was mirrored in the British zone where the Central Committee of the Liberated Jews prevented 220 child survivors from being taken to the UK.

UNRAA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration)
The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) was established in 1943 by Allied governments to address the immense humanitarian crisis created by World War II.

Background and Mission UNRAA’s mandate was to provide emergency relief, food, medical care, and repatriation support to millions of displaced persons across Europe and Asia. It was the first large-scale, multinational humanitarian agency of its kind, preceding organisations such as the IRO and eventually UNHCR.

Post-war work In post-war Germany, UNRRA became responsible for more than 10 million displaced persons. In the British and American zones, UNRRA collaborated closely with their respective armies, although the organisation often operated with far fewer staff than needed. UNRRA workers played a crucial role in the DP camps by providing food, shelter, medical care, education, and child tracing services.

UNRRA and Child Survivors UNRRA played a key role in the lives of child survivors. At specialised children’s centres such as Kloster Indersdorf and Belsen-Hohne, UNRRA welfare officers, teachers, nurses and doctors pioneered new approaches to trauma care, education, and rehabilitation for child survivors of the Holocaust They provided structured schooling, tracing lost relatives, arranging medical treatment and preparing children for emigration. Many of the Boys were cared for in UNRRA-run centres before their route to Britain.

Legacy UNRRA ceased operations in Europe by 1947. Its responsibilities were absorbed by successor organisations such as the International Refugee Organization (IRO). Despite the many obstacles it faced, UNRRA remains a landmark example of international humanitarian action and played a vital role in the survival and recovery of hundreds of thousands of survivors.

American Joint Jewish Distribution Committee
Founded in 1914, the American Joint Jewish Distribution Committee (JDC) sought to coordinate relief efforts for Jewish communities in crisis.

Origins and Purpose During and after the Holocaust, the JDC provided food, clothing, medical care, and rescue assistance to Jewish survivors wherever Allied authorities permitted access.

Work in DP Camps After liberation, JDC became deeply involved in supporting Jewish Displaced Persons across Germany, Austria, and Italy. Its staff worked alongside UNRRA and the military authorities, providing social workers, teachers, medical staff, kosher food supplies, religious materials, and financial support.

In Belsen-Hohne, and other DP camps, JDC workers helped run children’s programmes, provided schooling and vocational training, and supported health and welfare services. The organisation also played a central role in the reconstruction of Jewish communal life in Europe and supported emigration efforts to Palestine and the United States.

Legacy The JDC still exists today, often referred to as “The Joint”, and is the world’s leading Jewish humanitarian organisation. It operates in more than 70 countries, with a mission of rescue, relief, and Jewish community renewal. In Israel, JDC works closely with the government to support vulnerable populations — including the elderly, people with disabilities, and children at risk.

The Jewish Committee for Relief Abroad
The Jewish Committee for Relief Abroad (JCRA) was a British Jewish relief body established during the World War II provide aid to Jewish refugees and survivors in Europe.

Formation and Mission The JCRA’s work was closely connected to the Central British Fund (CBF) and to the British component of the Jewish Relief Unit (JRU).

Its mission was to send trained welfare workers, teachers, nurses, rabbis and administrators into Europe to support survivors immediately after the war, particularly those in Displaced Persons camps.

Work in Germany & Bergen-Belsen After months of bureaucratic obstacles, the JCRA succeeded in sending its first team—led by Shalom Markovitz—to Germany in June 1945. Its arrival in Bergen-Belsen was critical as conditions in the camp were catastrophic and thousands of survivors remained without medical care or shelter. The JCRA teams assisted British military personnel and UNRRA staff by establishing children’s homes, organising food supplies, offering pastoral support, and helping to restore basic services. Among its volunteers were Helen Bamber, Sadie Rurka (Hofstein), Eva Kahn-Minden, and others who later played important roles in caring for the Boys in Britain. You can read more about them here.

Bringing the Boys to the UK The JCRA and JRU were crucial in identifying, caring for, and preparing the young survivors in Bergen-Belsen and other DP camps for emigration to Britain. They compiled lists of unaccompanied children, assessed their needs, and coordinated with the CBF to arrange transport. The JCRA’s presence on the ground helped make possible the eventual transfer of the Belsen children— part of the second group of the Boys—to the UK in late 1945.

The Jewish Relief Unit (JRU)

The Jewish Relief Unit was the British Jewish humanitarian body deployed to Europe under the Jewish Committee for Relief Abroad. It worked closely with the Central British Fund, the American Joint Distribution Committee, UNRRA, and the British army.

Led by Bachad activist Shalom Markovitz, the JRU urgently sought entry into Germany, particularly Belsen-Holne DP camp, as conditions were catastrophic. Despite repeated pleas, they were not permitted entry until 21 June 1945, six weeks after liberation. They were the first Jewish civilian aid workers to arrive at the camp.

The JRU cared for child survivors, organised education and welfare, supported DP camp administration, and worked closely with UNRRA and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. They established children’s homes, organised food distribution, set up makeshift clinics, ran religious services, and began the process of psychological and educational rehabilitation. The JRU also liaised with British hostels and briefed staff in the UK in preparation for children expected to arrive.

Staff Many volunteers were young British Jews who had grown up in Zionist or youth-movement settings (including Bachad, Habonim, and Hechalutz). Shalom Markovitz, leader of the first JRU team in Belsen and a leader in the religious Zionist youth movement Bachad. He was instrumental in both the Boys’ care and their transfer to the UK.

Helen Balmuth (later Bamber) joined Markovitz’s JRU team in 1945 as a young welfare worker. She went on to become a renowned psychotherapist and human rights activist. Also on the team were: Eva Kahn-Minden, a nurse who later became matron of the Quare Mead hostel in the UK, and Sadie Rurka (later Hofstein), a nursery assistant who became matron of the children’s home (Kinderheim) in Belsen-Hohne, responsible for 83 unaccompanied children—including all 47 Belsen Boys who later travelled to Britain.

The JRU and the Belsen Boys From the moment they arrived, JRU workers found themselves drawn into complex political struggles among survivors, British authorities, and Zionist leadership. The Central Committee of Liberated Jews, led by Josef Rosensaft, initially opposed sending the Belsen children to the UK, fearing they would be delayed or diverted from reaching Palestine. Meanwhile, the British government — still enforcing the 1939 White Paper limiting Jewish immigration to Palestine — resisted any solution that might strengthen Zionist claims. JRU workers on the ground, who believed the children needed urgent medical evacuation to Britain, were caught in the middle.

This tension reached its peak in autumn 1945, when the first group of Belsen children was finally approved for transfer to the UK. Rurka recalled fierce opposition from Rosensaft and the camp rabbis, until the intervention of David Ben-Gurion, the leader of the Jewish community in the Palestine Mandate, who assured survivors that a temporary stay in Britain would not jeopardise the children’s path to a Jewish homeland. It was partly due to the advocacy of JRU staff — and the determination of the children themselves — that the group was allowed to fly to Britain from Celle in August 1945.

After 1946, the JRU continued its work in the DP camps, though its influence diminished as the camps were reorganised and as survivors increasingly left for Palestine, the United States, and other destinations. In Britain, the JRU continued to play a central role in the care of the Boys in hostels across the UK.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)
The Red Cross is an international humanitarian organisation founded in the 19th century to provide medical assistance, protection, and relief in times of war and crisis.

Background and Mission During World War II, the ICRC’s ability to intervene was restricted by its mandate to remain neutral and by diplomatic pressure from Axis and Allied governments. The Red Cross often struggled to gain access to concentration camps, and has been criticised for inaction.

Liberation One important exception was the Polish Red Cross, whose members were among the first relief workers to enter the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex after it was liberated on 27 January 1945. Their medical teams carried out health assessments, helped evacuate the sick, and transported bodies. They also documented camp conditions and searched for missing children and relatives.

Red Cross teams worked with displaced persons (DP) in the months that followed, operating mobile clinics, supplying medicines, and assisting with repatriation. In the British and American zones, the Red Cross cooperated with UNRRA, the JDC, and local Jewish welfare organisations to deliver food, clothing, and medical aid.

Legacy Today, both the ICRC and national Red Cross societies continue humanitarian work worldwide, preserving archives that help families trace survivors.

Central Committee of the Liberated Jews (CCLJ)
The Central Committee of the Liberated Jews (CCLJ) was established in 1945 in the DP camps of the British zone, with its headquarters eventually located in Belsen-Hohne.

Origins and Purpose Formed by survivors, the CCLJ became the largest self-governing body of Jewish survivors in post-war Europe.

Work in the DP Camps The CCLJ helped organise food distribution, housing allocations, welfare committees, religious life, cultural rebuilding, and dealt with military and other international bodies. It was also central to the development of Jewish schools, youth groups, and communal services across the DP camps. Chaired by Josef Rosensaft, an Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen survivor, the committee helped shape the internal life of the camp—promoting self-governance, democratic elections and restoring a sense of dignity to the survivors at Bergen-Belsen.

Unlike the Jewish Relief Unit (JRU) and Jewish Committee for Relief Abroad (JCRA)—both British-based volunteer organisations working inside the camps—the CCLJ was a survivor-run governing body, not an external relief agency. The three groups faced tensions over the post-war emigration of children; while the CCLJ advocated for the children to be sent to Palestine, the JRU and CBF supported temporary relocation to Britain for rehabilitation.

Most Jewish survivors in the DP camps wanted to leave Europe. Many wanted to go to the British controlled Palestine Mandate. Their options for emigration, however, were severely restricted by immigration quotas. The British government had also put strict limits on Jewish immigration into Mandate Palestine in the 1939 White Paper.

Some survivors tried to make the journey to Mandate Palestine illegally with the help of the Jewish underground Aliyah Bet movement, but many had little choice but to stay in the DP camps where some lived for years. The last two DP camps, Föhrenwald  closed in 1957 and Wels in 1959.

Jewish soldiers from the British Army’s Jewish Brigade also helped out caring for the younger survivors. The Jewish Brigade played an important part in illegal immigration to the British controlled Palestine Mandate. Many of the young survivors were inspired by seeing Jewish soldiers for the first time.

The ’45 Aid Society is active in Holocaust Education.

To find out more about the resources we offer click here.

Our Education Team can advise on how to deliver the story of the Boys by booking a suitable speaker and can help teachers devise lesson plans.

Critical Thinking Questions

Mendel Pretter immediately after the liberation in 1945.

• Why was liberation not simply a “happy ending to a sad story” for the Boys?
• What obstacles did the Boys still have to overcome after liberation?
• How did the girl’s experiences differ from those of the male members of the Boys?
• What do the Boys’ testaments tell us about survivors desire for revenge?
• Why did deaths in the camps continue for weeks or months after liberation, and how did this affect the immediate experience of the Boys?
• Why were some of the Biys unable or unwilling to return to their former homes?
• How did the Boys’ experiences differ after the liberation?
• What sort of assistance did the Jewish community offer?
• Who helped the Boys in the DP camps?

For a full list of Critical Thinking Questions click here.

Glossary

Allies A group of 26 nations led by Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union that opposed the Axis powers during World War II.

Central British Fund (CBF) The UK-based charitable organisation that was instrumental in bringing the Boys to the UK. Formerly known as the Central British Fund for German Jewry, it is known today as World Jewish Relief.

Concentration Camp A prison camp used to detain those deemed enemies of the Nazi state, including Jews, Gypsies, political and religious opponents, members of national resistance movements, homosexuals, and others. Imprisonment was of unlimited duration, not linked to a specific act, and not subject to any judicial review. Inmates were often forced to undertake hard labour.

Death March A forced march of prisoners, especially Jews, from the concentration and slave labour camps in eastern Europe to camps further west that began in the autumn of 1944 in face of the advance of the Red Army.

Displaced Persons Camp (“DP Camp”) A series of camps established by the Allies after World War II to house survivors of Nazi persecution and refugees from eastern Europe, known as displaced persons, or DPs, while they awaited repatriation to their home countries or resettlement in a new destination.

Red Army The Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army, usually referred to as the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Soviet Union from 1922-1946, when it was renamed the Soviet Army.

Yiddish A Germanic language with elements of Hebrew and Aramaic historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews.

 For a full Glossary click here.