Displaced: ‘The Last Million’ refugees to leave Europe after World War II

The scattered remnants of European Jewry began to emerge in the summer of 1944 from Nazi concentration camps and forest hiding places.

But their liberation by Allied troops was just the beginning of a new struggle that lasted long after the war in Europe officially ended in May 1945. Many more non-Jews from places like Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltic states – fearing communist repression back home or retribution for collaborating with the Nazis – soon joined them in limbo.

Historian David