By Carter Garrison

         Not everyone in the Holocaust was killed or murdered. Hundred of thousands of people were left homeless. These people were often referred to as "displaced persons." They consisted of several hundred thousand Jews that had either escaped the Nazis observed the terrible experiments of the concentration camps. This job of resettling these people was given to the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration or known as the UNRRA. But unfortunately they had problems with the UNRRA and so a brand new organization took the job called the  International Refugee Organization

in 1947 and was in charge of finding homes for the displaced people.

     This was not an easy job by any means. In 1947 there were about 1,200,000 people looking for homes that consisted of Jewish and non-Jewish people. In a time period of four years about 1,000,000 people were re settled.

     The Jewish people brought a problem for the IRO. The Jews said they did not want to go back to the homes that had before the war. When some of the Jews returned to Poland they were murdered by mobs. And then there were the others that did not want to return to countries run as a soviet puppet states. Also many countries did not allow any of the survivors to enter. Many Jewish survivors wanted to go to Palestine but the British government was against the immigrants and only allowed littler that 100,000 Jews to enter into Palestine before Israel declared its independence in the May of 1948.

     Another obstacles was the attitude of a number of officials in the United States who "deliberately impeded" the Jews from immigrating here not caring about the policy of our government to allow the immigrants to find homes in the U.S. In 1945, the current president was Harry Truman he appointed Earl G. Harrison to propose a report consisting of the condition and needs of refugees. Harrison's great report resulted in reorganization of the UNRRA and then later the establishment of the International Refugee Organization. President Truman asked the U.S. congress several times to "relax the immigration restrictions for the displaced persons" resulting on December 22, 1945 it was announced the policy of the United States to give treatment to displaced persons. Unfortunately President Truman was unable to effectively put his policies into action.

     Approximately 137,000 Jewish people came to the United States. The U.S. was not the only countries that Jews were admitted to they were admitted to Canada, Israel, Great Britain, and France.

     I would say that many of the difficulties are over looked today that the "displaced persons" faces. They had to get associated with the organizations and wait patiently to be found the new home. I have a new respect for the Holocaust and I think I always will.

"What Happened to the Jews After the Holocaust?." The Holocaust History Project. 27 Apr. 2008. Holocaust History Project. 18 Nov. 2008 <http://www.holocaust-history.org/short-essays/what-happened.shtml>.