New Beginnings: Holocaust Survivors in Bergen-Belsen and the British Zone in Germany, 1945-1950 (review)

In New Beginnings, Hagit Lavsky deftly explores how the Allies' postwar policies and those of Jewish organizations affected the lives of Jews in DP camps and throughout Germany. Within the context of economic, social, cultural, and political developments in Germany, Lavsky describes the impact of the Jewish world, Palestine/Israel, and the international community on their situation. She draws on numerous archives and libraries to present an encyclopedic report that adds greatly to our understanding of Jewish life in the British Zone. Lavsky focuses on the British Zone for several reasons: It contained Bergen-Belsen, the largest DP camp in Germany; the British struggle with the Zionists over Palestine was fought in part there; and the Jewish community organization in the British Zone provided the foundation for the overall organization of the Jews in Germany.

Lavsky does an excellent job sifting through migration statistics, especially since figures were difficult to calculate given the chaos after the war. She notes that when the occupation authorities began registering survivors, many Jews were reluctant to reveal their Jewishness. An important issue that the author fails to mention, however, was the question of who was considered Jewish: someone who practiced the Jewish religion before the war or someone who became "Jewish" as a result of the Nuremberg Laws?

When the war ended, most Jewish DPs found themselves in the British Zone, in northern Germany. This changed quickly as the British refused to admit Jewish refugees from the East, steering them toward the American Zone. Immediately after Bergen-Belsen was liberated the British began rehabilitation operations: burying the dead, cleaning and disinfecting the camp, administering medical treatment, and supplying food and water. Survivors were relocated to a military camp a mile away, where they quickly organized a multinational committee to liaise with the British authorities.

Following U.S. special envoy Earl G. Harrison's August 1945 report on the DP camps in the American Zone, Jews there were given preferential treatment. They had recourse to U.S. law, as well as assistance from the Jewish Restitution Successor Organization that helped reclaim expropriated community property. But the British authorities turned a blind eye to the Jews' specific needs. Jews were pressured to repatriate, and, even worse, forced to live alongside former torturers and persecutors under constant threat of attack. This made it difficult for Jewish relief operations to respond to the special needs of Jewish survivors. The official British explanation was that preferential treatment toward Jews would incite more anti-Semitism and that the British, unlike the Nazis, were nondiscriminatory. Some historians argue that the responsibilities of the British government in Palestine made it reluctant to involve Jewish organizations in Germany for fear that they would exert pressure to allow Jewish immigration to Palestine. Lavsky suggests that British unresponsiveness to uniquely Jewish needs was motivated in part by latent anti-Semitism.

In several fascinating chapters, Lavsky describes camp life, its constraints, and how it became normalized between spring 1946 and the beginning of mass emigration to Israel in late 1948. Jewish DPs had few or negative relations with the surrounding German population. Numerous attacks on local Jewish cemeteries or synagogues raised Jewish fears, although Jews did trade with Germans on the black market. Antisemitic attacks within the camp by Poles, Lithuanians, and others presented a major problem that eased when Poles were repatriated in 1946.

Since the camp was separated from the German economy and depended onBritish and Jewish funds, there was little incentive to find employment. Other disincentives played a role: the lack of raw materials, many Jews' refusal to work with or for Germans, and so on. Since the DPs received food but no money, barter exchange and the black market were an inescapable part of everyday life; for some Jews black marketeering became a business.

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