Nazi Death Camps Liberation

The policy of the Western Allies vis-a-vis displaced persons, an omnibus term used by SHAEF [Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force] which included the so-called 'slave laborers' as well as the inmates of concentration camps, was perfectly straightforward. The Allies intended to handle the massive problem in two not very distinct stages. First, immediately after liberation all possible aid would be given to the victims with the object of saving as many lives as possible and restoring the sick to health. This preliminary stage, it was hoped, would last no more than a few days or at most a few weeks and would blend naturally into the second stage: repatriation. As soon as the DPs were physically able to return to their homes they were encouraged to do so. All repatriation, however, was to be voluntary -- no one was to be forced to return. The only exception to this rule was in the case of Soviet citizens who, in accordance with Stalin's demands, were to be returned to the Soviet Union whether they desired to be or not.
The first stage was reasonably successful, and within a few weeks infectious diseases had been brought under control and the sick were being nursed back to health. As expected, most DPs were anxious to return to their homes as soon as possible, and even before VE-Day the concentration camp inmates [were] making their way back to their homelands. In all something over 11 million people were classed as DPs requiring repatriation. By the end of August 1945, 500,000 French citizens had returned home; 298,000 Belgians, 325,000 Dutch 800,000 Italians, 2 million Soviet nationals; 1,593,000 Poles, 367,000 Czechs; 200,000 Yugoslavs -- in all 9.8 million. 
Who was left? First, the overwhelming majority of those still in the camps in the autumn of 1945 (about 1.5 million) were Poles, Hungarians, Bulgarians, Rumanians, Balts, and Soviet nationals who had refused repatriation. There were also a small number whose health did not permit travel. Most of the central and east European Jews also remained in the camps. Their position was anomalous. Since they were not considered a separate national group, they were scheduled to return to their countries of origin. However, in many cases that country no longer existed (the Baltic states, those portions of Poland which had been incorporated into the Soviet Union, for example.) Furthermore some who had returned to their homelands -- Poles for example -- were met by violence and sometimes death. Given this situation, the American authorities were not inclined to encourage repatriation, but neither could they offer any alternative. As a result the former inmates were left in temporary camps awaiting a decision on their fate.
In this discouraging situation, two leaders emerged who organized the Jewish DPs in southern Germany and gave the community -- such as it was -- a sense of direction. The first to emerge was an American rabbi, Dr. Abraham Y. Klausener, who had arrived in Dachau in the third week of May. First, he acquired an automobile to travel from camp to camp in Bavaria in order to compile lists of survivors. He simultaneously wrote letters to various organizations in the United States describing the conditions in the camps and soliciting help. And lastly, he induced the American occupation authorities to remove the Jewish survivors from Dachau to more acceptable quarters.
But Klausener recognized that in the long run the only way to provide for the needs of the Jewish DPs was to organize them and then convince the American authorities that the Jews had a right to be recognized as a separate national group. In July UNRAA gave Klausener office space in the Deutsches Museum in Munich and there he established a kind of informal office to offer advice and counsel to individuals and groups while at the same time negotiating with the American occupation authorities. 
The idea of organizing the surviving Jews into a national community received powerful stimulation when on June 20, 1945, units of the Palestinian Jewish Brigade arrived in Bavaria. They brought relief supplies which were sorely needed and hope which was in greater demand. 'As crowds surged around the soldiers and clung to them, a current of mutual discovery and sympathy was generated. For these emissaries, unlike the Allied liberators, had come to seek out their families and their people, to instill courage and hope, to organize and lead an exodus to the land of Israel'.

Nothing has been more effective in establishing the authenticity of the Holocaust story in the minds of Americans than the terrible scenes that US troops discovered when they entered German concentration camps at the close of World War II.

The End of the Holocaust, The Liberation of the Camps : Jon Bridgman, Areopagitica Press