H eadlines
Historian: Immigration Policy Excluded Survivors
NATIONAL SOPHIE PANZER | JE STAFF
DAVID NASAW spent most
of his life believing the United
States government welcomed
Jewish refugees from Europe
with open arms once the Allies
won World War II.

However, as the professor
emeritus of history at the
Graduate Center of the City
University of New York began
reading memoirs and inter-
views with survivors and their
children, he realized that most
displaced Jews did not come
to the United States until the
early 1950s, years after the war
in Europe ended in 1945.

“Where were they for those
four years? What did liberation
mean for the Jewish survi-
vors of the Shoah?” Nasaw
asked himself. “I learned to
my dismay, my disgust, my
horror, that the nations of the
world refused to open their
doors, that the survivors spent
three to five years in displaced
persons camps in Germany, for
the most part, some in Austria,
some in Italy, because nowhere
on Earth were they welcome.”
Nasaw spoke about the
experiences of displaced
persons in Europe after World
War II at a webinar for the
Center for Jewish History
in New York on March 24.

Atina Grossmann, professor
of history in the Faculty of
Humanities and
Social Sciences at the Cooper Union,
interviewed him about what
he learned in his research for
his book, “The Last Million:
Europe’s Displaced Persons
from World War to Cold War.”
Nasaw said Allied forces set
up displaced persons camps for
European refugees, but only a
small percentage of residents
were Jewish, since most Jewish
concentration camp prisoners
had been murdered. In 1944,
when Germans began to
realize they would lose the war,
soldiers sped up killings as they
raced to hide the evidence of
their atrocities from the world.

Initially, Nasaw learned,
Jews were held alongside
non-Jewish Eastern Europeans
who would not return to
their homes because they had
collaborated with the Nazis
and feared retribution. When
President Harry Truman
realized that Jews were being
forced to live among their
former tormentors, Americans
See Policy, Page 11
David Nasaw discusses the immigration of Jewish refugees with Atina
Grossman. Screenshot by Sophie Panzer
EN J OY
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