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Conclusion Most displaced persons viewed their time in Germany as a waiting period. They viewed Germany itself as a temporary abode, a way station between past and future. Those who could leave were only too happy to do so. The majority had in any case lived in relative isolation from the rest of the population , in the extraterritorial setting of the DP camps. However, even those who had lived among Germans were usually not attached to their surroundings . At most, perhaps, they had fond memories of Bavaria’s alpine landscape. Ironically, however, Germany was an important site for the development of durable identi‹cations. It was in the context of the DP camps and communities that displaced eastern Europeans ‹rst sought to make sense of the war years and to re›ect upon how the war had transformed their place in the world. It was there that they developed political communities that re›ected their distinct understandings of the “DP problem.” In deciding whether or not to return home, displaced persons weighed many factors—what had happened to their family and friends, what the economic situation at home looked like, whether they were healthy enough to live on their own. However, the “political explanation” emerged as the dominant explanation for opposition to repatriation. This explanation took on different forms among different groups. Or rather, the forms this explanation took on determined the parameters of group belonging. Most groups were de‹ned in the ‹rst instance by national identi‹cations, but they also had distinct political-ideological markers. Among Jewish DPs, the dominant political orientation was de‹ned by a rejection of diaspora life and an embrace of Zionism. The Holocaust was identi‹ed as the culmination of a longer history of antisemitic persecution and murder in Europe . Although many Jewish DPs had experienced Soviet rule during the war—indeed, the majority were repatriates from the Soviet Union—the history and future of Soviet communism in eastern Europe played little role in their self-understanding. Polish, Ukrainian, and Russian DP com267 munities, on the other hand, took shape around past experiences of “Bolshevik ” rule and fears of returning to Soviet- or communist-dominated countries. Anticommunism emerged as the dominant political orientation. The history of National Socialism did not of course disappear. A small group of Poles, Ukrainians, and Russians identi‹ed strongly as political victims of Nazi persecution. In general, however, the threat of Soviet communism loomed larger than the legacy of National Socialism. Anticommunism and antifascism not only de‹ned the boundaries of national communities, they also served as the basis for cross-national identi‹cations. Polish, Ukrainian, and Russian DPs created tense but nonetheless important “international” alliances around both the legacy of Nazism and the threat of communism. Signi‹cantly, however, Jewish DPs were not a party to these alliances. The common experience of displacement in postwar Germany, with its uniform regimen of “care and control,” did not bring Jewish and non-Jewish eastern Europeans closer together. For Jewish DPs, who had experienced the indifference and brutality of their eastern European neighbors ‹rsthand, Polish, Ukrainian, and Russian DPs were not fellow victims of persecution but rather persecutors. For Polish, Ukrainian, and Russian DPs, on the other hand, Jews were fellow victims of persecution but also competitors for scarce resources. Of course, not all interactions were framed by these constructions. In particular, Polish Jews and Polish politicals sometimes worked together. Overall, however , persecution per se was not a source of solidarity.1 Despite these con›icts, similar forces shaped how displaced persons came to see themselves. In the ‹rst place, their identi‹cations were powerfully shaped by the conditions of displacement, which were in turn shaped by Germany’s status as a defeated and occupied nation. In Bavaria, the policies and practices of the American occupation forces, the intergovernmental relief agencies, and the nascent German authorities interacted to shape the lives of displaced persons, with the German factor becoming increasingly more important as time went on. Although U.S. of‹cials prohibited displaced persons from engaging in politics, they also provided them with greater moral and material support than their British or French counterparts. Together with UNRRA and later the IRO, they also promoted a model of active welfare. This made it possible for displaced persons to develop a lively associational life. During the ‹rst few years of the postwar period, American of‹cials granted displaced persons and persecutees special privileges vis-à-vis the general German population; they also pressured...

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