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Sh'erit ha-Pletah ((ヘブライ語:שארית הפליטה), literally: the surviving remnant) is a biblical (Ezra 9:14 and I Chronicles 4:43) term used by Jewish refugees who survived the Holocaust to refer to themselves and the communities they formed following their liberation in the spring of 1945. Hundreds of thousands of survivors spent several years following their repatriation in Displaced Persons (DP) camps in Germany, Austria, and Italy. The refugees became socially and politically organized advocating at first for their political and human rights in the camps, and then for the right to emigrate to British Mandate of Palestine, most of which became the Jewish State of Israel where the majority ended up living by 1950. ==Formation of the DP camps== In an effort to destroy the evidence of war crimes, Nazi authorities and military staff accelerated the pace of killings, forced victims on death marches, and attempted to deport many of them away from the rapidly shrinking German lines. As the German war effort collapsed, survivors were typically left on their own, on trains, by the sides of roads, and in camps. Concentration camps and death camps were liberated by Allied forces in the final stages of the war, beginning with Majdanek, in July 1944, and Auschwitz, in January 1945; Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, Mauthausen, and other camps were liberated in April and May 1945.〔United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. "(Liberation )." ''Holocaust Encyclopedia''. Retrieved 8 June 2014.〕 At the time of Germany's unconditional surrender on 7 May 1945 there were some 6.5 to 7 million displaced persons in the Allied occupation zones,〔Königseder, Angelika, and Juliane Wetzel. ''Waiting for Hope: Jewish Displaced Persons in Post-World War II Germany''. Trans. John A. Broadwin. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2001. 15.〕 among them an estimated 55,000 〔Berger, Joseph. "Displaced Persons." ''Encyclopaedia Judaica''. 2nd Ed. Vol. 5. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007. 684-686; here: 684. Berger cites historian Jehuda Bauer as estimating that 200,000 Jews in total emerged alive from the concentration camps.〕 to 60,000〔Pinson, Koppel S. "Jewish Life in Liberated Germany: A Study of the Jewish DP's." ''Jewish Social Studies'' 9.2 (April 1947): 101-126; here: 103.〕 Jews. The vast majority of non-Jewish DPs were repatriated in a matter of months.〔According to Königseder and Wetzel (p. 15), in September 1945 there were a total of approximately one million DPs remaining, who, for various reasons, such as political differences with the new regime in their homeland, or fear of persecution, were considered to be "non-repatriable."〕 The number of Jewish DPs, however, subsequently grew many fold as Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe migrated westward. It is estimated that a total of more than 250,000 Jewish DPs resided in camps or communities in Germany, Austria, and Italy during the period from 1945 to 1952. In the first weeks after liberation, Allied military forces improvised relief in the form of shelter, food, and medical care. A large number of refugees were in critical condition as a result of malnutrition, abuse, and disease. Many died, but medical material was requisitioned from military stores and German civilian facilities. Military doctors as well as physicians among the survivors themselves used available resources to help a large number recover their physical health. The first proper funerals of Holocaust victims took place during this period with the assistance of Allied forces and military clergy. Shelter was also improvised in the beginning, with refugees of various origins being housed in abandoned barracks, hotels, former concentration camps, and private homes. As Germany and Austria came under Allied military administration, the commanders assumed responsibility for the safety and disposition of all displaced persons. The Allies provided for the DPs according to nationality, and initially did not recognize Jews as constituting a separate group. One significant consequence of this early perspective was that Jewish DPs sometimes found themselves housed in the same quarters with former Nazi collaborators.〔Königseder and Wetzel, 16.〕〔Mankowitz, Zeev W. ''Life between Memory and Hope: The Survivors of the Holocaust in Occupied Germany. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 13.〕 Also, the general policy of the Allied occupation forces was to repatriate DPs to their country of origin as soon as possible, and there was not necessarily sufficient consideration for exceptions; repatriation policy varied from place to place, but Jewish DPs, for whom repatriation was problematic, were apt to find themselves under pressure to return home.〔Mankowitz, 12-16.〕 General George Patton, the commander of the United States Third Army and military governor of Bavaria, where most of the Jewish DPs resided, was known for pursuing a harsh, indiscriminate repatriation policy.〔Mankowitz, 16.〕〔Brenner, Michael. After the Holocaust: Rebuilding Jewish Lives in Postwar Germany. Trans. Barbara Harshav. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997. 15.〕 However, his approach raised objections from the refugees themselves, as well as from American military and civilian parties sympathetic to their plight. In early July 1945, Patton issued a directive that the entire Munich area was to be cleared of displaced persons with an eye toward repatriating them. Joseph Dunner, an American officer who in civilian life was a professor of political science, sent a memorandum to military authorities protesting the order. When 90 trucks of the Third Army arrived at Buchberg to transport the refugees there, they refused to move, citing Dunner's memo. Based on these efforts and blatant antisemitic remarks, Patton was relieved of this command. By June 1945 reports had circulated back in the United States concerning overcrowded conditions and insufficient supplies in the DP camps, as well as the ill treatment of Jewish survivors at the hand of the U.S. Army. American Jewish leaders, in particular, felt compelled to act.〔Königseder and Wetzel, 31.〕〔Mankowitz, 52-53.〕 American Earl G. Harrison was sent by president Truman to investigate conditions among the "non-repatriables" in the DP camps. Arriving in Germany in July, he spent several weeks visiting the camps and submitted his final report on 24 August. Harrison's report stated among other things that:
Harrison's report was met with consternation in Washington, and its contrast with Patton's position ultimately contributed to Patton being relieved of his command in Germany in September 1945. The number of refugees in the Sh'erit ha-Pletah continued to grow as displaced Jews who were in Western Europe at war's end were joined by hundreds of thousands of refugees from Eastern Europe. Many of these were Polish Jews who had initially been repatriated. Nearly 90% of the approximately 200,000 Polish Jews who had survived the war in the Soviet Union chose to return to Poland under a Soviet-Polish repatriation agreement.〔Königseder, Angelika, and Juliane Wetzel. ''Waiting for Hope: Jewish Displaced Persons in Post-World War II Germany''. Trans. John A. Broadwin. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2001. 45.〕 But Jews returning to their erstwhile homes in Poland met with a generally hostile reception from their non-Jewish neighbors. Between fall 1944 and summer 1946 as many as 600 Jews were killed in anti-Jewish riots in various towns and cities,〔Engel, David. "(Poland since 1939 )." ''The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe''. Retrieved 9 June 2014.〕 including incidents in Cracow, around August 20, 1945;〔"(Serious Anti-Jewish Disturbances in Cracow; Local Council Blames Reactionary Poles )." ''Jewish Telegraphic Agency'', 21 August 1945.〕 Sosnowiec, on October 25; and Lublin, on November 19. Most notable was the pogrom in Kielce on July 4, 1946, in which 42 Jews were killed.〔Königseder and Wetzel, 46.〕 In the course of 1946 the flight of Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe toward the West amounted to a mass exodus that swelled the ranks of DPs in Germany and Austria, especially in the U.S. Zone.〔Königseder and Wetzel, 43.〕 Although hundreds of DP camps were in operation between 1945 and 1948, the refugees were mostly segregated, with several camps being dedicated to Jews. These camps varied in terms of the conditions afforded the refugees, how they were managed, and the composition of their population. In the American sector, the Jewish community across many camps organized itself rapidly for purposes of representation and advocacy. In the British sector, most refugees were concentrated in the Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp and were under tighter control. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Sh'erit ha-Pletah」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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