Ben Shepard (1948–2017)

In The Long Road Home: The Aftermath of the Second World War, Ben Shephard provides a scholarly and extensively researched history of the many governments and international agencies that dealt with Displaced Persons (DPs). For me, the book was a bit disappointing -- perhaps in part because of its title. I would have liked to have learned more about the larger history of the what countries and people endured after WWII such as the return of POWs on both sides, the coming to grips by different countries with collaborators and the Berlin Airlift. For me, it's a bit dry to learn all the politics of the UNRRA and the American Congress. An excellent scholarly book but perhaps the title could be more in line with the subject of the book.
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This book by Ben Shephard is an impressively researched account of the successes and failures of the UNRRA programs that were put in place by the allies (often hindered by the Soviet Union) to deal humanely with the millions of people displaced during and immediately after WWII. The human stories it covers range from the many nationalities brought into Germany to do war work, through how the Eastern Europeans were received in their new homes after the war in Britain, the US, Canada and Australia to the way members of the the Jewish "surviving remnant" were treated as political pawns in both Israel and the US. The 200.000 European Jews who arrived in Israel during the first two years of the State's existence received very little psychological help or sympathy for what they had been through.

In spite of the good intentions of the mainly American and British workers UNRRA was very badly organised in the first couple of years. Many of the displaced people felt humiliated by the way they were treated and continually moved around in the camps set up in Germany. After the traumas of the Soviet-German division of Europe, the atrocious sufferings during the war, the attempted genocide of the Jewish people and the mass killings of Poles, Russians and other "inferior peoples" the survivors found they were often considered as something less than human: DPs.

The book provides good information about the relationship between the DPs and the birth of the State of Israel and also explains how so many Nazi collaborators got into the US after the war.… (más)

In April 1945 the British Army liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. They were not prepared for what they found there. Of the near 50,000 persons "liberated" almost 14,000 subsequently died from the effects of typhus, starvation, TB and earlier neglect. This outstanding book examines the quantitative and qualitative nature of the British response.

Shephard's comments are fair minded and balanced on the whole in noting both criticism of the British effort in which Doctors Johnson and Hughes valiantly tried to mobilise medical assistance, food and basic resources to cope with a situation they were not expecting to face.

Whilst the British clearly made mistakes, giving the wrong food initially for a start, overall the impression is that they did their best and did so as humanely as possible. Josef Rosensaft leader of the eventual Jewish committee of management at the camp and a critic of the response still felt that:

"The British did, on the whole, show much good will, deep human sympathy and even friendship......did everything in their power, both materially and administratively, to help and ease the physical suffering and mental anguish."

There was, however, an overriding feeling that the allies, particularly the British foriegn office and US State Departments knew more about the situation in the camps than filtered down to the men in the field and it left those involved bewildered, shocked and with feelings of impotence but most of questioning how it had been allowed to happen. This statement was from one of the British officers on the scene:

"The first 'coherent reactions' were not of disgust or anger or even, I think, of pity. Something else filled the mind, a frantic desire to ask: Why? Why? Why? Why had it happened? With all one's soul one felt; This is not war. Nor is it anything to do with here and now, with this one place at this one moment. This is timeless and the whole world and all mankind is involved in it. This touches me and I am responsible. Why has it happened? Why did we let it happen?"

As pertinent a comment today as it was then surely?… (más)