SURVIVAL

From 1945 to 1957, more than 300,000 Jewish displaced persons (DPs) lived in camps in the Allied-occupied zones of Austria, Germany, and Italy.

In Austria there were a total of 73 DP camps, housing around 45,000 Jewish survivors, mainly from Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Romania. Simon Wiesenthal, who was liberated in Austria in 1945, was one of the first to reside in a DP camp immediately after the war.

The Displaced Persons Camps (DP Camps) for Jewish Holocaust survivors were established by UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency), and were administered by the U.S. Army, UNRRA, and later by the International Refugee Organization (IRO).

With the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, and the enactment of the Displaced Persons Act in 1948 in the U.S., the camps gradually began to close. Most camps were closed by 1952, but some continued to operate up until 1957. But the camps were to have another purpose: From November 1956, the camps that were still open received Jewish and non-Jewish refugees who had fled Hungary following the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.