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Homeless "Displaced Persons"

Article Heinz Leitsch

At the beginning of April 1945 the U.S. Army units advanced to troop-camp Wildflecken. Prisoner statements had obviously fed the opinion that the camp would be defended by SS-troops. Actually, however, only a few shots were fired and the use of a bomber squadron considered by the Americans was not necessary, which is noted in the chronicles of U.S. involved divisions. When Americans entered the camp only a few buildings were occupied by wounded German soldiers.

The enormous expanse of the camp drew the attention of the refugee organization UNRRA (United Nation Relief Rehabilitation Administration) which was looking for urgently needed accommodations for forced laborers from the formerly occupied areas, people that had been kidnapped by the Nazis. A goal of the UNRRA was to collect the Displaced Persons and lead them back to their homelands.

So starting in May 1945, about 20,000 Polish DPs were gathered in Wildflecken. The first administration- the U.S. Army, had little success in bringing any order to the camp due to the substantial population overflow of the camp; disease; lack of food, medicines and clothes. Some of the newly-released forced- laborers now sought revenge against the German residents regardless of whether or not they were associated with the Nazi party. Plunderings of adjacent villages was common. A German Wehrmacht train with food at the Arnsberg was turned over. By the end of May 1945, a UNRRA team assumed control of the camp and conditions gradually improved.

The Camp Deputy Director was an American journalist, Kathryn Hulme who later became Chief of all camps in the American sector. Ms. Hulme later wrote of her experiences with the UNRRA in the book The Wild Place, which became a bestseller in the U.S.A. and in 1952 won the Atlantic Non Fiction Prize.

With the installation of a communist regime in Poland the return of the Polish DPs slowed down and finally stopped, particularly to the eastern parts of Poland, which had been occupied since 1939 by the Soviet army. As a replacement for this lost land, Roosevelt and Churchill carved up Germany, adding the former German eastern areas to Poland. Those Poles, who thus originally came from the now Russian area became homeless and refused to go back. Some had already returned to Poland, but soon made their way back to Wildflecken, with reports of severe repressions against the Poles homecoming and described the deplorable conditions in Soviet-dominated Poland. For a while even forced repatriation was accomplished, but ended after some DPs committed suicide rather than be forced to return home. As a consequence of this situation the intended short stay in the camp stretched into years for many refugees.

Up until 1945, Wildflecken was surrounded by a dense forest providing a good camouflage and protection, however this natural resource was soon depleted as the residents cut down the trees using them for heating, the inhabitants even cut parts of wood from the roof framings, and the internal wings of the box windows. Day and night the chimneys smoked over the bakery in the camp, as several tons of bread were baked on a daily basis.

The chief goal of the UNRRA was repatriation and support of refugees. The unforeseen scope of "unrepatriable" DPs however, cost the United Nations billions of dollars, and eventually led to the insolvency of the UNRRA. In late 1947, its tasks were delegated to its successor agency, the International Refugee Organization (IRO), which undertook similar responsibilities but concentrated more on financial security. The IRO set up vocational schools for the refugees to brush up on their skills or learn new ones. The goal was emigration to other countries in Europe, America and Australia. Another obstacle to emigration to the USA were the laws which permitted only 46,800 visas to be issued during 1945. In 1948 The Displaced Person Act was signed into law, and by 1952 almost 400,000 refugees were finally accepted into the U.S.

When Camp Wildflecken was vacated in 1951, in order to make room for the U.S. Military, not all of the refugees had emigrated, many were sent to other resettlement camps where they awaited their turn for a chance at a new life in a new land.

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