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UK funding (£95,968): Refugees in post-1945 Europe: experiences in and beyond the DP camp Ukri1 Nov 2011 UK Research and Innovation, United Kingdom
Overview
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Refugees in post-1945 Europe: experiences in and beyond the DP camp
| Abstract | The end of the Second World War in Europe revealed an enormous population 'out of place'. The war wrenched civilians as well as soldiers from their homes. The displacement of population was most marked in Eastern and Central Europe where the echoes of war reverberated long after 1945. Several million people who were drafted as forced labourers by the Nazis during the war were stranded in Germany, Austria and Poland. Many of them wished to return to their homes, but many did not. By 1947 some three quarters of a million men and women - Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Ukrainians, Russians and others - were still resisting repatriation to newly Sovietised states. The result was the creation of a category of Displaced Persons living in camps across Germany and Austria. For many months they were assisted by Allied civilian and military personnel. A number of non-governmental organisations, such as the Society of Friends (Quakers) played a particularly important role. Eventually, most DPs were resettled in third countries or managed to integrate themselves into local society, but a sizeable minority remained in camps until the end of the 1950s. At this point the United Nations launched a campaign to highlight the situation of refugees in Europe and further afield. This campaign, World Refugee Year, attracted enormous interest in the UK and in other countries, and was described by the British government as 'the most universal short-term humanitarian enterprise the world has yet seen'. Although it is now largely forgotten, it sheds important light on contemporary views of the plight of refugees and DPs in Germany, Austria, Italy and Greece, fifteen years after the end of the Second World War. World Refugee Year was an intensely visual campaign: the UN created or encouraged the creation of a powerful visual record of refugees and relief efforts around the world, and particularly in Europe. The project will bring alive the experiences of post-Second World War DPs, and their stories of camp life and of repatriation and resettlement in their homelands or of emigration and integration into new communities, by reassembling and re-presenting some of the official documentation (governmental memoranda and reports on the camps, secret police files on repatriates, identity documents, etc.) that shaped their destinies, alongside film footage, photographs and graphic art that kept them in the public eye and supported fundraising drives by NGOs, as well as audiovisual and written testimonies by the DPs themselves and their relief workers. Public interest in these upheavals has been renewed by more recent refugee crises in Europe and elsewhere. This underscores the need for a permanent record of population displacement and the humanitarian effort that it helped to bring about at a crucial point in modern European history. We need to understand which organisations were involved in refugee relief and how they explained their intervention to the wider public as well as to refugees themselves. This period in Europe witnessed the emergence of contemporary global institutions, discourses and practices pertaining to refugees and their status and treatment. It is crucial to understand the origins of these in order to achieve a balanced critical appreciation of current legal, political, social, ethical and cultural debates and discussions around refugees, asylum, immigration, humanitiarianism and related issues. Issues concerning the experiences of refugees and displaced persons, and about the stance adopted by relief organisations, already form part of the school curriculum at primary and secondary level. Here we believe there is a timely opportunity to create a permanent resource for successive generations of young people whilst at the same time making the history of displaced people and humanitarian action come alive via a public exhibition to a wider audience. |
| Category | Research Grant |
| Reference | AH/J004596/1 |
| Status | Closed |
| Funded period start | 01/11/2011 |
| Funded period end | 31/03/2013 |
| Funded value | £95,968.00 |
| Source | https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FJ004596%2F1 |
Participating Organisations
| The University of Manchester | |
| Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Education Trust |
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