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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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How Hezbollah Terrorists Became ‘Local Residents’ in the Media
Lebanese army members stand on a military vehicle during a Lebanese army media tour, to review the army’s operations in the southern Litani sector, in Alma Al-Shaab, near the border with Israel, southern Lebanon, Nov. 28, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Aziz Taher
During an operation earlier this month, the IDF reportedly clashed with Hezbollah operatives and “civilians” in the Lebanese village of Nabi Chit, leaving 41 people dead and another 40 injured.
At least, that is what CNN, the Associated Press (AP), Sky News, BBC, and The Guardian all reported.
But not a single outlet actually questioned who these “civilians” were that clashed with the IDF, or why there were clashes in the first place.
The operation was carried out in an attempt to return the remains of Ron Arad, an Israeli navigator who has been missing since his fighter-bomber was shot down over Lebanon in 1986. He was believed to have originally been captured by the Amal Movement and handed over to Hezbollah, before being presumed dead.
As is the protocol with any missing person or soldier, the State of Israel works to recover every body for a proper and dignified burial in their homeland.
Based on intelligence, the IDF believed Arad’s body to be buried in a cemetery in Nabi Chit, a village located close to the Lebanese-Syrian border in the Beqaa Valley.
IDF special forces initiated a raid into Lebanon in an attempt to recover the remains of Ron Arad, an Israeli airman shot down in 1986.
But it wasn’t only Hezbollah terrorists who engaged in a firefight with IDF soldiers on the ground:
@guardian: Hezbollah “fighters ambushed… pic.twitter.com/wOuWa9AXVj
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) March 8, 2026
On Friday, March 6, well before the operation began, the IDF issued an evacuation warning, urging innocent civilians to leave.
The village has long been a stronghold of Hezbollah, with several past leaders, including the second secretary-general, Abbas al-Musawi, born there. Being that Hezbollah has systematically embedded its infrastructure and operatives into the town itself, many — presumably including a significant number affiliated with or supportive of Hezbollah — appeared to defy the evacuation orders, staying in their homes.
Late Friday evening, Israeli commandos entered the village, hoping to quickly locate the body of Arad and leave without disturbance. According to some reports, the IDF forces arrived undercover. Had the IDF been seeking a battle, it would have entered openly rather than disguised, indicating that the goal was a targeted retrieval mission, not a confrontation.
However, soon after the IDF’s arrival, a firefight broke out between Israeli forces and Hezbollah operatives. This is precisely where international media coverage begins — and where the crucial context disappears.
Hezbollah operatives are suddenly grouped in with the “civilians” or “local residents” who supposedly rushed out to defend their homes against an Israeli invasion, leaving their houses with guns to engage in battle with the IDF.
But the IDF had entered the village on a limited mission: to retrieve the remains of a fallen soldier. There was no broader offensive and no threat to civilian homes. That raises a fundamental question: why did so many outlets lead with descriptions of “residents” or “local fighters” joining Hezbollah in “defending their homes,” when their homes were clearly not under threat?
Following the ensuing battle between the IDF commandos and Hezbollah, the Israeli Air Force provided air cover through targeted strikes to ensure the safe extraction of all troops. Sadly, they were unsuccessful in locating the body of Arad.
By the time the operation ended, the Lebanese health ministry reported that 41 people had been killed and 40 wounded. Yet, when reporting these casualties, the media failed to acknowledge the obvious likelihood that many of those casualties were Hezbollah operatives — or what Sky News and AP described as “local fighters.”
The narrative that Israel intentionally killed innocent civilians was not limited to the international media, but quickly spread across social media.
Posts circulating online framed the operation as a reckless mission designed to target civilians with no clearly defined operational purpose. This is despite the IDF’s clear intention to limit civilian harm while preserving the dignity of all Israeli soldiers, no matter how long ago they fell in battle.
Israelis can be weird. They sent special forces into Lebanon to retrieve the remains of a dude who died 40 years ago, and this against the wishes of his widow. They randomly killed scores of civilians in the process and failed to find any bone, and yet they are bragging about it. https://t.co/DzEutjWCpP
— Prof Francois Balloux (@BallouxFrancois) March 8, 2026
Hezbollah’s strategy of embedding its infrastructure and operatives within civilian areas has long blurred the line between civilians and combatants, resulting in armed terrorists who attack Israeli forces being framed in media coverage as innocent “local residents.” The IDF’s operation in Nabi Chit and the ensuing battle illustrate this strategy in full, exposing just how effectively Hezbollah has manipulated the media.
The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
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In the work of 21 artists, 49 different ways to be Jewish
As I walked through the exhibit, Envisioning the Sacred: Modern Art from the Collection, at the Derfner Judaica Museum and Art Collection, I wondered aloud which was the more defining element in these 20th and 21st century paintings, drawings, prints and linoleum cuts. Was it the modernist sensibility, which encompassed figurative, abstract, symbolic and metaphorical approaches? Or was it the Jewish-themed content?
In the 49 pieces by 21 artists (including two etchings by Marc Chagall), there were illustrated Biblical characters and stories; depictions of traditions and rituals; and a fair number of the works employed the Hebrew alphabet to evoke emotion and inspire the composition.
“The exhibit shows how artists use a modern visual language to express their Jewish identities,” said Susan Chevlowe, chief curator and museum director who guided me through the light-filled gallery, which is part of the Hebrew Home at Riverdale and set on a shallow hill that slopes down to the Hudson River.
“It’s hard to separate the two elements or say which is more defining,” Chevlowe said. “The majority of these artists were artists early on in their lives, drawing and sketching as children. Some grew up steeped in a Jewish tradition and others came to their Jewish identity later in life, especially in the post-Holocaust years. Percival Goodman is an example. An agnostic, he was best known as a modernist architect. But in the post-Holocaust years he became interested in Biblical figures.”
Chevlowe pointed to Goodman’s painting “Rebekah and Jacob,” presenting two large, sharply drawn flat heads. The bold colors outlined in stark black stripes summon forth figures that border on the cartoonish, yet are also strikingly beautiful. Here, the matriarch Rebekah beams at her younger son Jacob with whom she is scheming to steal her older son Esau’s birthright.
A number of the works reflect, in subtle and layered ways, Jewish traumas coupled with homage and pride and in some instances a touch of the elegiac.
Adam Muszka’s “Sabbath Meal,” painted in the 1960’s is a nostalgic look back at the lively Polish shtetl that he grew up in and that no longer exists. With its sentimental tone, the painting evinces distortion. Two figures in the foreground are over-sized, while the homes in the background are shrunken and lopsided — an indication, perhaps, that this is a falsely rosy memory.
In the seemingly more realistic 2003 painting, “Choral Synagogue, St. Petersburg, Russia,” one of the more recent works on display, Joyce Ellen Weinstein brings to life the massive temple entrance and the decorative gate in front of it, “which is slightly off kilter,” Chevlowe pointed out. “Notice the barbed wire on top of the gate. The painting suggests the dignity of the synagogue and its people and also the difficult position of Russian Jews throughout history.”
Chevlowe was hard pressed to pick a favorite, though she admitted a special fondness for Jane Logemann’s 1996 “Alphabet,” a series of pale blue and purple ink wash panels adorned with repeated pairs of Hebrew letters, in pen and ink, which create a vertical pattern from the top of the page to the bottom. The series is poetic, lyrical.
“Logemann is interested in patterns and structures of nature,” said Chevlowe. “Some letters are large, others small. There’s a randomness here. Her choices are intuitive. For many artists the abstract is spiritual. For some mysticism and spiritual quest are essential in their work.”
One of the better known artists in the group is Mark Podwal. In his 2002 “Dreidel Hanukkia,” an acrylic painting, we see a menorah balanced on a dreidel and on the opposite side of the page there’s a less readily definable bench lamp.
“It’s modern and old and very playful,” said Chevlowe. “And each Hanukkah light, the menorah and the bench lamp, is cut off by the frame, cut off by the rest of the world. It’s a fragment. We often see that in Degas too.”
Some of the painters are more deeply embedded in or influenced by particular schools of art than others. In Jacques Yankel’s joyful and expressionistic “Torah,” one can see the Marc Chagall and Chaim Soutine lineage. Yankel’s emigre artist father lived in Paris and was very much part of the Paris school of art, which included Chagall and Soutine.
In New York, Ben-Zion, a Russian-born painter who arrived in the United States in 1920, was a recognized member of “The Ten,” abstract painters that consisted of, among others, Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb, though curiously enough Ben-Zion was never really an abstract painter.
Moses was a frequent subject of his. In his 1962 “Moses Looking Down to the Promised Land,” our title character is viewed from the back, an imposing, heavily draped figure perched on a rocky terrain. He is staring out at Jericho, at once so close to and yet so far away from The Promised Land.
Abraham Rattner also employed Moses as the central figure and theme in his vibrant Picassoesque “Moses,” which features the Prophet clutching two blank tablets, devoid of the commandments or, indeed, any writings. His head twisted to the side and an integral element in a wild abstract design is as unsettling as it is thrilling. It is perhaps my favorite in the collection.
“I would like viewers to appreciate the richness in stylistic range and to be aware that these are highly trained, skilled and knowledgeable artists who come from a rich cultural tradition that includes all of art history,” Chevlowe told me. “At the same time they create something that’s original, authentic and beautiful.”
The post In the work of 21 artists, 49 different ways to be Jewish appeared first on The Forward.
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Forverts podcast, episode 8: Israeli voices
דער פֿאָרווערטס האָט שוין אַרויסגעלאָזט דעם נײַנטן קאַפּיטל פֿונעם ייִדישן פּאָדקאַסט, Yiddish With Rukhl. דאָס מאָל איז די טעמע „ישׂראלדיקע שטימעס“.
אין דעם קאַפּיטל וועט איר הערן צוויי אַרטיקלען: מיכאל קרוטיקאָווס רעצענזיע פֿון שירי שאַפּיראַס בוך דערציילונגען, וואָס אַנטפּלעקן דאגות פֿונעם „מילעניאַל“ דור, וואָס איר קענט אַליין לייענען דאָ, און בני מערס פּערזענלעכן עסיי, „דאָס אײַנפּאַקן אַ טאָרבע פֿאַרן לויפֿן אין שוצקעלער האָט עפּעס דערוועקט אין מיר“, וואָס איר קענט לייענען דאָ.
צו הערן דעם פּאָדקאַסט, גיט אַ קוועטש דאָ.
שירי שאַפּיראַס דערצײלונגען
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