The Return to Life in the Displaced Persons Camps, 1945-1956
A Visual Retrospective
Remembrance and Commemoration
Photo Gallery
Survivors from the town of Ozorkow at a memorial ceremony at the Landsberg DP camp, 1947
Reciting the Yizkor prayer for the victims of the Holocaust during a Zionist conference at the Munich DP camp, January 1946. Far right: Salman Grinberg, President of the Central Committee of Liberated Jews in Germany.
Memorial service for those murdered in the Skierniewice camp. Feldafing, Germany, postwar
Cantor reciting the "Yizkor" prayer in the Bad Toelz DP camp, Germany
Memorial ceremony after World War II at the Landsberg DP camp
The eldest inmate of the Jägerkaserne (Hunter's Barracks) DP camp in Kassel unveils a monument at the site, 19 April 1948
After liberation many Holocaust survivors felt the need to preserve their experiences and to keep the memory of their destroyed communities alive. The horrors of the Shoah were documented by survivors and published in the newspapers of the DP camps, and they also wrote the stories of their communities in the form of “Yizkor” (memorial) books. At the same time, there was a need to commemorate the murdered by erecting tombstones near mass graves and memorial stones for the victims who had no grave. Holocaust commemoration ranged from traditional Jewish memorial rites to the development of new and different forms of commemoration.