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U.N. exhibit remembers when the world turned its back on stateless Jewish refugees
(New York Jewish Week) — In 2017, Deborah Veach went back to Germany, looking for the site of the displaced persons camp where she and her parents had been housed after World War II. They were in suspension, between the lives her parents led in Belarus before they were shattered by the Nazis, and the unknown fate awaiting them as refugees without a country.
To her dismay, and despite the fact that Foehrenwald was one of the largest Jewish DP centers in the American-controlled zone of Germany, she found barely a trace. A complex that once included a yeshiva, a police force, a fire brigade, a youth home, a theater, a post office and a hospital was remembered by almost no one except a local woman who ran a museum in a former bath house.
“It was sort of an accident of history that we were there in that particular camp in Germany, of all places, with no ties, no extended family, no place to call home,” said Veach, who was born at Foehrenwald in 1949 and lives in New Jersey. Now, “they renamed it. They changed the names of all the streets. There is nothing recognizable about the fact that it had been a DP camp.”
Veach is part of a now-aging cohort of children born or raised in the DP camps, the last with a first-hand connection to the experience of some 250,000 Jewish survivors who passed through them at the end of the war. To make sure memories of the camps survive them, the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and the United Nations Department of Global Communications have staged a short-term exhibit, “After the End of the World: Displaced Persons and Displaced Persons Camps.”
On display at U.N. headquarters in New York City Jan. 10 through Feb. 23, it is intended to illuminate “how the impact of the Holocaust continued to be felt after the Second World War ended and the courage and resilience of those that survived in their efforts to rebuild their lives despite having lost everything,” according to a press release.
Residents of a displaced persons camp in Salzburg, Austria. Undated, post-Second World War. (YIVO Institute for Jewish Research)
Among the artifacts on display are dolls created by Jewish children and copies of some of the 70-odd newspapers published by residents, as well as photographs of weddings, theatrical performances, sporting events and classroom lessons.
The exhibit is “about the displaced persons themselves, about their lives and their hopes and their dreams, their ambitions, their initiatives,” said Debórah Dwork, who directs the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity at the Graduate Center-CUNY, who served as the scholar adviser for the exhibition.
“There’s no point where the residents of these DP camps were just sitting around waiting for other people to do things for them,” she told the New York Jewish Week. “They took initiative and developed a whole range of cultural and educational programs.”
As early as 1943, as the war displaced millions of people, dozens of nations came to Washington and signed onto the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Authority. (Despite its name, it preceded the founding of the U.N.) After the war, the British and U.S. military were in charge of supplying food, protection and medical care in hundreds of camps throughout Germany and Austria, and UNRRA administered the camps on a day-to-day basis.
Early on, Jewish Holocaust survivors — some who suffered in concentration camps, others who had escaped into the Soviet Union — were put in DP camps alongside their former tormentors, until the U.S. agreed to place them in separate compounds. Unable or unwilling to return to the countries where they had lost relatives, property and any semblance of a normal life, they began a waiting game, as few countries, including the United States, were willing to take them in, and Palestine was being blockaded by the British.
Abiding antisemitism was not the only reason they remained stateless. “Jews were [accused of being] subversives, communists, rebels, troublemakers, and the world war quickly gave way to cold war, and with it the notion that Hitler had been defeated and what we have to worry about is the communists,” David Nasaw, author of “The Last Million,” a history of the displaced persons, told the New York Jewish week in 2020.
In 1948 and 1950, Congress grudgingly passed legislation that allowed 50,000 Jewish survivors and their children to come to the United States. The rest were eventually able to go to Israel, after its independence in 1948.
The U.N. exhibit focuses less on this macro history — which includes what became another refugee crisis for the Palestinians displaced by Israel’s War for Independence — than on life in the DP camps.
“The exhibition illustrates how the displaced persons did not shrink from the task of rebuilding both their own lives and Jewish communal life,” said Jonathan Brent, chief executive officer at YIVO, in a statement.
Among those rebuilding their lives were Max Gitter and his parents, Polish Jews who had the perverse good luck of being exiled to Siberia during the war. The family made its way to Samarkand, in Uzbekistan, where Gitter was born in 1943. After the war ended, his parents returned to Poland, but repelled by antisemitism sought refuge in the American zone in Germany. They spent time in the Ainring DP camp, a former Luftwaffe base on the Austrian border, and at a small camp called Lechfeld, about 25 miles west of Munich.
Dolls made by stateless Jewish children residing in a DP camp near Florence, Italy, known as “Kibbutz HaOved.” The dolls are attired in local costumes based on the districts of the Tuscan city of Sienna. (YIVO Institute for Jewish Research)
“I was there until we came to the United States when I was six and a half, so I have some very distinct memories and some hazy memories,” said Gitter, emeritus director and vice chair of the YIVO board. One story he hasn’t forgotten is how his father and a friend were walking through the camp when they came upon a long line of people. “They were from the Soviet Union, so they knew that when there’s a line that it might be of interest.” It turned out to be a line for the lottery that would allow them to get into the United States under the Displaced Persons Act of 1948.
The family came to the United States in 1950, to “pretty shabby lodgings” in the Bronx, before his father bought a candy store and moved to Queens. Max went on to attend Harvard College and Yale Law School, and became a corporate litigator.
Gitter’s brother was born in one of the camps, and the exhibit includes a poster depicting the population increase between 1946 and 1947 at the Jewish DP center Bad Reichenhall. The birthrate in the camps has often been described as evidence of the optimism and defiance of the survivors, but Dwork said the truth is somewhat more complicated.
“There was a very high birth rate among the Jews in DP camps. This is the age group of reproductive age, at 20 to 40,” she said. “However, this image of fecundity hides what was rumored to be a significant abortion rate, too. And women had experienced years of starvation. Menstruation had only recently recommenced. So many women, in fact, miscarried or had trouble conceiving to begin with.”
A chart by artist O. Lec depicts the natural population increase of the Jewish Center Bad Reichenhall, Germany, 1946-1947. There was a very high birth rate among the Jews in DP camps. (YIVO Institute for Jewish Research)
“There is no silver lining here,” she added. “People live life on many levels. On the one hand, DPs look to the future and look with hope; at the same time, they carry tremendous burdens of pain and suffering and trauma and trepidations about the future.”
Veach, a member of the YIVO board, hopes visitors to the exhibit understand that such trauma is hardly a thing of the past.
“I think the real lesson is that history keeps repeating itself,” said Veach, growing emotional. “Basically we have DPs on our border with Mexico, you have DPs from Ukraine. I don’t think people realize the repercussions for these people who are trying to find a place to live. These are good people who are just placed where they are by history.”
Gitter, who like Veach will speak at an event Jan. 24 at the U.N. marking the exhibit, also hopes “After the End of the World” prods the consciences of visitors.
“A lot of the countries, a lot of places, including the United States, would not accept Jews after the war,” he said. “The issue of memory, the issue of statelessness, the issue of finally there was some hope for the Jews in their immigration to Israel and the United States — that part of the story also needs to be told.”
“After the End of the World: Displaced Persons and Displaced Persons Camps” is on view from Jan. 10-Feb. 23, 2023, at the United Nations Headquarters, 405 E 42nd St, New York, Monday-Friday, 9:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m. Entrance to the United Nations Visitor Centre in New York is free, but there are requirements for all visitors. See the United Nations Visitor Centre entry guidelines.
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Tidbits: Taiwan opens its first Jewish cemetery
Tidbits is a Forverts feature of easy news briefs in Yiddish that you can listen to or read, or both! If you read the article and don’t know a word, just click on it and the translation appears. Listen to the report here:
אויפֿן אינדזל טײַוואַן האָט מען לעצטנס פֿאַרלייגט דעם ערשטן בית־עולם אין לאַנד, דרײַ יאָר נאָך דעם ווי אַן אָרטיקער ייִד האָט, בײַם גוססן, אויסגעדריקט צער, וואָס מע וועט אים נישט קענען באַגראָבן אין טײַוואַן.
הרבֿ שלמה טאַביב, אַ מיטגרינדער פֿונעם חב״ד־הויז אין דער טײַוואַנער קרוינשטאָט טײַפּיי, האָט געזאָגט אַז דער ייִד האָט אים געבעטן בויען אַ בית־הקבֿרות אין טײַוואַן, כאָטש ער האָט געוווּסט אַז ער אַליין וועט נישט דערלעבן דאָרט באַגראָבן צו ווערן.
„זײַנע ווערטער זענען פֿאַר מיר געווען אַ קול־קורא,“ האָט טאַביב געזאָגט. „איך האָב פֿאַרשטאַנען, אַז אויב איך וועל זיך דאָס נישט אונטערנעמען, וועט קיינער עס נישט טאָן.“
מיט אַ חודש צוריק האָט מען פֿאַרלייגט דעם בית־עולם און באַלד נאָך דעם האָט טאַביב אָנגעפֿירט מיט דער ערשטער לוויה על־פּי־הלכה אין דער געשיכטע פֿון טײַוואַן. 95% פֿון די מתים אין טײַוואַן ווערן קרעמירט.
דער בית־עולם געפֿינט זיך אין אַ וואַלד, בערך 40 מינוט פֿונעם חב״ד־הויז. פֿאַר טאַביב איז דער בית־עולם געווען דאָס לעצטע רינגל אין אַ קייט פּראָיעקטן לטובֿת דער אָרטיקער ייִדישער קהילה. אין 2021 האָט מען געעפֿנט אַ ייִדישן קהילה־צענטער, אַ דאַנק אַ מתּנה פֿון 16 מיליאָן דאָלאַר פֿון אַן אָרטיקן ייִדישן געשעפֿטסמאַן, דזשעפֿרי שוואַרץ. אינעם צענטער געפֿינט זיך אַ שיל, אַ כּשרע קיך, אַ יודאַיִקאַ־מוזיי, אַ מיקווה און אַ זאַל פֿאַר 300 מענטשן.
הגם דער נײַער בית־עולם איז דער ערשטער אין טײַוואַן איז ער נישט דער ערשטער אין כינע. אין האָנג־קאָנג האָט מען געגרינדעט אַ בית־הקבֿרות נאָך אין 1855, און אין שאַנכײַ — אין 1862.
צו זען דעם אַרטיקל אויף ענגליש גיט אַ קוועטש דאָ.
To see this article in English, click here.
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EU seeks to advance trade ban on Israeli settlements
(JTA) — The European Union could be leaning toward banning trade with Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
Foreign ministers debated various tactics to respond to the settlements on Monday at their monthly council meeting in Brussels, against the backdrop of rising violence by settlers and efforts by the Israeli government to expand settlements in Palestinian territories.
In a press conference following the meeting, the EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said one possibility had stood out.
“The option that got the most support was banning the trade with illegal settlements,” she said. All 27 member states consider Israeli settlements in the West Bank to violate international law.
Kallas added, “We tasked the ambassadors to take this work forward, and probably will also have an extraordinary meeting on this.”
No decisions have yet been made, and the path forward is uncertain. Some EU member nations favor aggressive action against the settlements, while others are unlikely to back any measures that take aim at Israel. A number are in the middle and have not decided whether they support trade bans.
The level of agreement between European governments needed to enact a partial or full trade ban on Israeli settlements remains an open question. Kallas said it was the European Council’s legal opinion that voting on trade issues called for a qualified majority, meaning that 15 out of 27 states would have to vote in favor, representing at least 65% of the EU population.
But she also acknowledged that legal experts disagreed about how much backing was needed for a trade ban. “You can always find different lawyers who come up with different ideas,” she said.
Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar accused Kallas of an “obsessive campaign against Israel” in a post on X. “There was no consensus. There was no qualified majority. In fact, there was no majority at all,” he wrote, adding, “Tricks like this do nothing to advance our shared interests.”
The EU has hotly debated measures against Israel as settlements in the West Bank have expanded and settler violence has sharply intensified over recent years. The Israeli NGOs Peace Now and Kerem Navot said in a report last week that “the current Israeli government has advanced de facto annexation of the West Bank at an unprecedented pace.”
The ministers considered measures including a stricter export licensing system, higher tariffs and a partial or outright ban on goods produced over the pre-1967 lines. The options were first presented in a paper last week by the European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, as pressure mounted from European governments.
Kallas said these potential moves were not “options against Israel,” but “options against the illegal settlements that undermined the two-state solution.” She told reporters before the meeting that member states had been pressing for a trade ban on Israeli settlements, saying, “Everyone agrees that the situation in the West Bank is really intolerable.”
In May, the EU sanctioned Israeli settlers over violence against Palestinians after Hungary’s new government, led by Peter Magyar, gave its approval and allowed the states to reach a consensus.
To protest the Gaza war, the commission last year proposed suspending the EU’s free trade agreement with Israel as set out under the EU-Israel Association Agreement, the cornerstone of economic and political cooperation between Europe and Israel. The proposal was not advanced because it lacked the majority support of 15 member states.
The EU is Israel’s largest trading partner, accounting for 33.1% of its imports and 29.4% of its exports in 2025, according to a summary on the European Commission website, which did not provide data on settler goods. The free trade agreement does not apply to goods originating from Israeli businesses located over the pre-1967 lines.
Revoking the association agreement requires unanimous approval from the EU’s 27 member states, while a partial suspension, such as freezing the free trade agreement, calls for a qualified majority. Germany, Italy, Hungary and Czechia have consistently opposed such suspensions.
Israel’s most vocal critics in Europe, including Ireland and Spain, have pushed for suspending the association agreement along with proposing their own import bans at the national level. Ireland now holds the rotating presidency of the European Council, a six-month term that ends in December 2026.
The legal basis of trade restrictions on Israel lies at the heart of debates in the EU. Support from a qualified majority is sufficient to enact a commercial policy, while changes in the common foreign and security policy — such as sanctions — require unanimity.
Some legal scholars have argued that an EU ban on imports from Israeli settlements should be imposed as a trade measure rather than a sanction, making it easier to pass.
A group of 40 scholars said in an open letter last month to Kallas, trade chief Maroš Šefčovič and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen that a blanket ban on settlement imports had a legal basis under the EU’s common commercial policy. Claims that unanimity was needed for the prohibition were “grounded in political rather than legal considerations,” they said.
The scholars also referenced an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice in 2024, which said that Israel’s military control of Palestinian territories in the West Bank constituted an illegal occupation.
“In that regard, it should be noted that the EU Court of Justice has ruled that, in its acts, the EU is ‘bound to observe international law in its entirety,’” they said.
Daniel Mariaschin, Honorary CEO of the pro-Israel Jewish advocacy organization B’nai Brith International, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that reducing trade “would only weaken one of Europe’s most important partnerships in the region.”
“There are those within the EU who are looking for any way to undercut Israel’s international standing, and this is yet another example,” Mariaschin said.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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PEN America president, defending Israel’s critics, resigns after report warns of threats to Jewish authors
(JTA) — The president of PEN America resigned over the weekend in protest of a report on boycotts targeting Jewish and Israeli authors, part of yet another round of internal division over Israel at the literary free-speech institution.
Dinaw Mengestu, an Ethiopian-American novelist and Bard College professor, told The Atlantic he was stepping down because he believed the PEN report, “A Silent Moratorium,” failed to defend the free-speech rights of participants in the movement to boycott Israel.
“It’s the First Amendment that allows all of us to engage in boycotts, not PEN America,” Mengestu told the publication. “PEN America as a free expression organization is supposed to defend that right.”
The author did not respond to multiple Jewish Telegraphic Agency requests for comment, but in an Instagram post Monday alluded to an interest in creating a new organization to rival the prominent nonprofit, which defends the free expression rights other writers.
In response to an interview request, PEN sent a statement to JTA saying it was “grateful” for Mengestu’s leadership and would “respect” his decision. The statement also alluded to PEN’s own past turmoil: “We tell hard stories, in politically challenging moments, about writers from a range of perspectives, even when it’s uncomfortable for us given our own recent history.”
In its report, published on its blog, PEN described “Jewish and Israeli writers who feel that the mainstream literary world is increasingly shutting them out because of their identity, nationality, or views.” Interview subjects include several Israel critics, as well as literary agents who assert that they face more difficulties signing Jewish authors after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and amid the subsequent war in Gaza. The report also repeatedly cited a JTA report about a 2024 viral list of “Zionist” authors to boycott.
Among other details, PEN’s report revealed that Israeli novelist Etgar Keret and public radio host Ira Glass had cancelled a planned live event in Australia over fears of threats and protest.
“This silencing and exclusion of writers is a threat to what PEN America is fundamentally committed to defending: a culture of free expression for all,” according to the report.
In addition to the report, PEN also altered its institutional policy toward cultural boycotts, which the organization has long opposed. Although its report on Jewish authors asserted that boycotts “threaten the free expression rights” of their targets, the revised guidelines say that the group will also defend the right of writers to participate in boycotts.
Mengestu’s resignation comes at a perilous moment for Jews facing cultural boycotts, both within the standard-bearers of PEN and elsewhere. PEN’s Jewish former longtime CEO stepped down in 2024 following months of blowback from rank-and-file authors who felt the organization was insufficiently critical of Israel and caused PEN to cancel a festival for global authors.
Since the leadership change, PEN leadership has published and retracted a condemnation of a boycott effort trained at an Israeli comedian and also published a report cataloguing Israel’s “cultural destruction in Gaza.”
Mengestu had assumed the role of board president in 2025. But PEN’s report about Jewish and Israeli writers on Thursday, he wrote, “makes clear that [change] will not happen.”
The Anti-Defamation League said it was “deeply troubled” by Mengestu’s resignation Monday. “Freedom of expression means opposing efforts to boycott, silence, or exclude writers because of their identity or nationality,” the organization tweeted, saying that the author’s decision to leave PEN over his objections to the report on Jewish authors “sends a chilling message.” Jewish authors also objected.
“Imagine running a free expression org and resigning because it refuses to blacklist authors based on their nationality,” the author David Zweig wrote on X, musing whether Mengestu would object to boycotting authors from his birth country: “Ethiopia doesn’t exactly have a good human rights record.”
In response to The Atlantic’s story that quoted sources from inside PEN who were critical of his resignation, Mengestu wrote a lengthy Instagram post Monday in which he stated, “This piece is about trying to suppress constitutionally protected speech,” criticized past PEN reports critical of the BDS movement, and added, “What PEN America fails to understand is that boycott is a form of dialogue.”
He announced his intention to “help make something better,” receiving affirmative comments from notable authors including Viet Thanh Nguyen, Angela Flournoy, Jewish pro-Palestinian novelist Jess Row and Pulitzer Prize-winner Benjamin Moser, author of a forthcoming history of Jewish anti-Zionism.
Other Jewish authors on the left were among those defending Mengestu’s decision to step down.
“Dinaw is one hundred percent correct that this kind of fake victim propaganda can be used to support anti-Boycott legislation which violates the First Amendment and is everywhere as popular support for Palestinians grows,” author Sarah Schulman wrote on Facebook. Calling PEN’s blog about Jews “one of those fake anti-semitism pieces,” Schulman added, “If PEN wants to survive, they have to get out of the Israel/Zionism business.”
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