Liberation and Survival

World War II ended in May 1945, after six years of bitter fighting. There were victory
celebrations throughout the streets of Europe. The first of the Nazi camps to be liberated was
Majdanek, in July of 1944, and the rest of the camps were liberated by the spring of 1945. At
first glance one might assume that after all the suffering, liberation would be a moment of great
joy. However, the immense difficulties and pain of the Jewish survivors presented a different
reality.
The story of how those who survived the Holocaust managed to return to life after liberation is
not a happy ending to a tragic story; it is actually the final chapter of the tragedy. After years of
terror, physical and mental abuse, and constant fear, the survivors finally came face to face with
the fact that the world they had once lived in, along with their families, friends and communities,
had been irretrievably lost. Somehow, they had to manage to pick up the pieces and begin new
lives.
What Was Liberation?
During World War II, Jews who lived in Germany or in countries that had been occupied by
Germany were imprisoned in labor camps, concentration camps, and death camps. They were
liberated from these camps by Soviet, British and American soldiers in 1944 and 1945.
The first concentration camp to be liberated was Majdanek. The prisoners in Majdanek were
liberated by Soviet troops in July 1944. Soon thereafter Soviet troops found other Nazi camps,
and freed their inmates. British and American troops reached Nazi camps in the spring of 1945,
liberating

tens

of

thousands

of

prisoners.

These prisoners had been living under extremely harsh conditions. Many were starving and
others were very sick. Many of the people who had been liberated had survived "death marches,"
forced to march over long distances. The death marches occurred towards the end of the war as
the Allies advanced on the German army and the Nazis tried to move prisoners further west into
Germany. The German leadership believed that the Third Reich would survive the war. They
therefore attempted to move concentration camp prisoners within Germany's borders, so that
they could still be exploited for slave labor. Upon enteringAuschwitz-Birkenau, Soviet soldiers
found only 7,650 prisoners. Most of the 58,000 remaining camp prisoners had been sent on death

marches at the end of 1944. Prisoners were abused and sometimes killed by the guards
accompanying them on these marches. Approximately 250,000 concentration camp prisoners
died

on

death

marches.

Other than survivors of the camps, some of those liberated had been hidden during the war or
had masqueraded as Christians with false identity papers. Still others were surviving ghetto
fighters, partisans and those who had fled to the forests.

Colonel Lewis Weinstein, a member of the US Army, liberated Jews who were in Nazi camps.
He

recalls:

" We had heard all kinds of rumors and stories, but they were so horrible that they were
indescribable; we just couldn't believe them. I had a great guilt feeling when I actually found out
about what happened in these camps. I had talked in terms of possibly a few thousand having
been murdered, but thinking in terms of six million... murdered - I was obviously very much
taken aback."[1]
Father Edward P. Doyle, a chaplain in the US Army during WWII, participated in the liberation
of

Nordhausen.

He

recalls:

"I was there. I was present. I saw the sights. I will never forget. You have heard the story many
times before. On the night of April 11, 1945, my division, of which I was the Catholic chaplain,
took the town of Nordhausen. The following morning, with the dawn, we discovered a
concentration camp. Immediately the call went out for all medical personnel that could be
spared, to be present. [] On that morning in Nordhausen, I knew why I was there. I found the
reason for it - man's inhumanity to man. What has happened to that beautiful commandment of
the Decalogue, the commandment of God to love one another?"[2]
Eva Goldberg was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau and Horneburg camps, and was liberated at
Salzwedel,

Germany,

by

American

soldiers.

She

recalls:

"And what I remember most is the convoys of Americans who were standing on both sides of the
road and looking at us. They did not believe what they were looking at!"[3]

What Did Liberation Mean for Jewish Survivors?

Liberation should have been a happy day for the survivors. Finally they were free of the constant
fear of death they had lived with for so many years. For the Jewish survivors, however, liberation
had come too late. Entire communities in Eastern Europe, especially, had been wiped out and all
their Jews exterminated. Over 90% of the Jewish community in Poland, the largest in Europe,
perished.[4]

had

In Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and the Balkan States, the outcome was nearly the same. The
Jews of Western and Southern Europe also suffered terribly, though the proportion of those
exterminated was lower. In many cases, whole families had been slaughtered, and only single
members were left. A survey taken by the Organization for Jewish Refugees in Italy, for
example, found that 76% of the Jewish refugees had lost all of their immediate families and all of
their relatives, and were the sole survivors from their families.[5]
More than anything else, however, with liberation the survivors were struck suddenly by the
immensity of their losses. Up until liberation, survivors had expended all their efforts on the
struggle to survive: they scavenged for food, they tried to protect themselves, they lived from
minute to minute. This struggle to survive didnt leave room to focus on the world they had lost:
their family and friends, their occupations and habits, their neighborhoods and their possessions.
Suddenly they were confronted with a new reality. Their families were gone, and their lives
would never be the same. An almost superhuman effort was needed to pick up the pieces of their
broken lives and to start over again. While the rest of the world was counting the dead, the Jews
were counting the living.
Yitzhak (Antek) Zuckerman, a member of the underground who fought, among other battles, in
the

Warsaw

Ghetto

Uprising,

testified:

That day, 17 January, was the saddest day of my life. I wanted to cry, not from joy but from
grief. [..] How could we be happy? I was completely broken! You'd kept yourself going all the

terrible and bitter years, and now... we were overcome by weakness. Now we could suddenly
allow ourselves to be weak [..] Ultimately there is an end to war. We had lived all that time with
a certain sense of mission, but now? It was over! What for? What for? [..] I had never cried; they
had never seen me depressed, not once; I had to live strongly, but on 17 January its not easy
to be the last of the Mohicans." [6]
Yosef Govrin was born in 1930 in Romania. He was deported to various ghettos and camps in
Transnistria. Yosef was liberated by Soviet soldiers in December 1944. He recalls:
"The devastation caused by the war and the fact that I was an orphan came to me very forcefully
on Victory Day. I saw the destruction that the war had wrought much more realistically, I
suppose, than I had before. The destruction had been all around me day and night, but only on
Victory Day did I notice it on the street where I was walkingIt was then, as a boy, that I
grasped the full scale of the destructionand really, Victory Day is engraved in my memory to
this day as a day ofnot as a day of celebration!"[7]
Eva Braun was born in 1927 in Slovakia. During WWII she was imprisoned in AuschwitzBirkenau,

and

liberated

by

US

soldiers.

Eva

recalls:

"You were praying all those months to be liberated and then it hits you all of a sudden - here you
are free. But after it sank in, the freedom - I am speaking for myself - I realized that I was hoping
the whole time that I would see my father and maybe, hope beyond hope, my mother, although I
knew that this was not a realistic hope. But my father, I was sure I would meet him. I was
positive. But still there were doubts, and I realized that I had to start thinking about the fact of
what would happen if I would not... Freedom is relative. Very much so. The thought of the future
weighed very heavily on me. Obviously we knew that it was no longer our problem but still we
have to make a future for ourselves and how would we make that future?"[8]
Miriam Steiner testified: "[..] The great crisis had not yet hit us. It began when my cousin came
home a few days later. I barely recognized him, because that kid, that big slob, had two big ears,

a big nose and two cavities for eyes. He began to recover from his "Musselman" condition. For
the first time I cried, I fell on him and I cried at how he looked, because then I suddenly woke
up. He was the start of my crisis, of the crisis of ours as a whole... He embraced me and said only
this: "You should know one thing, don't wait for your father and your brother." He repeated that
many times [..] "Now we began to realize the enormity of the loss, we began to understand that
Grandfather and Grandmother and hardly any of our relatives had returned, only that one cousin,
and his father also returned later on. People said we shouldn't wait for them, but the truth is that
we waited all the time for my father. And I only want to say that I often look around, as though I
am still searching... not for Father, it is my brother for whom I am still looking all the time. I
know it is completely unrealistic, because formally I am not searching, I.. I cast about with my
eyes..."[9]
The Allied soldiers cared for the survivors they had liberated. They fed the survivors and gave
them the medical attention that they so desperately needed.
Ephraim Poremba was born in Poland. Ephraim was deported to several Nazi camps, and he was
liberated

by

the

US

Army

at

the

age

of

twenty.

He

recalls:

"The Americans organized a hospital, they started doing tests, they set up tents with water and
showers. We washed, they gave us soap. When did I last wash? I couldn't rememberFirst of all
hot water; whoever saw hot water? It was a dream. As much hot water as you want, to wash with
soap, with soap! You could even wash your head, your body, it was heaven, it was heaven on
earth!"[10]
What Did the Survivors Do Following Liberation?
By the end of 1945, those Jews who had managed to survive forced labor camps, concentration
camps, extermination camps, anddeath marches, or who had survived in hiding, in forests, or
with the help of local individuals (later to become Righteous Among the Nations), wanted only
to go home. Some found that they had no homes or families left. Others found that going home

involved a dangerous journey through chaotic, post-war Europe. Those who succeeded in
reaching their old homes had to confront a new reality: the local populations in their homes,
particularly in Eastern Europe, were antisemitic and hostile toward Jews, and saw their return as
unwelcome.