The last million. Europes displaced persons from world war to the cold war. Im joel rosenthal, Prime Minister of Carnegie Council for ethics and international affairs. For those of us in the carnegie family of institutions, we have a special affection for david. His biography of Andrew Carnegie published in 2006 was a lifechanging event for us. Through davids work, weve come to know Andrew Carnegie in all of his humanity and complexity, and theres one lesson from the book that really stayed with me and has animated my work at the Carnegie Council, and that is the as david would put it cashtys carnegies cockeyed optimism was not entirely misplaced. For all the madness we see in the world, progress based on reason and a cando spirit is, indeed, possible. That idea keeps me going, and this occasion gives me the opportunity to say thank you, david. In addition to the carnegie biography, davids previous books include prizewinning biographies of joseph p. Kennedy and William Randolph hearst. Today we talk of davids latest book, the over one million displaced persons who emerged brutal used yet alive on ve day, april 1945. The last million is an epic story that takes us right into the heart of europe during and after world war ii. It describes the movement of millions of people among shifting borders and general chaos. The chaos of that war and its aftermath. It describes life at the street level and politics in the highest reaches of government. Finish millions of people were displaced by world war ii. Most known were those sent to concentration camps, yet there were also my grant laborers, forced laborers, Political Prisoners and p. O. W. S. When the war ended, many if not most displaced persons returned home. Yet as the title suggests, a million did not. This book tells the story of their search for a new home. So, david, thanks for joining us. And to kick it off, i just have a simple question which is how did you come to this story . How did you see the last million as a singular story to be told . I think it had a lot with just the extraordinary postwar. I had learned not to take the common sense view of historical events as necessarily truthful, sometimes only partially truthful. When i read tonys book, it became clear to me, much clearer than it had been before, that wars dont end with peace tier treaties, with the cessation of hostilities, even with the soldiers going home. War leads into postwar. And the suffering for civilians who have been displaced by war continues unabated. In the case of the last million, for 35 years that they remained in germany, in camps, many behind barbed wire for 35 years, let me emphasize, after ve day. Lets talk about the million who remain. And you talk about the one million into germany. Can you give us a little bit of information about who these people were and who went willingly and who didnt. Yeah. There were three different streams into germany during the war. The largest was the stream from eastern europe, mostly from poland and the ukraine. These were, in large part, adolescents, young men and women who were grabbed from their homes, forced onto trucks and trains into germany. Hitler and the third reich leadership knew from the very beginning that the only possible way to send millions of soldiers to the Eastern Front was to replace them with millions more forced enslaved laborers from the east. That was the first group. They began a arriving in 1940, 1941, and continued to arrive through the end of the war. The second stream that made up the last million came in 1944 and 1945 from latvia, lithuania, estonia and parts of ukraine. And these were men, women and their children. The men and women who had in one way or another collaborated with the nazi authorities. Finish sometimes that collaboration meant simply working in a post office that was overseen by a nazi official. In other cases it meant serving in the auxiliary e police rounding up jews. In some cases it meant joining the ss division. When it became clear that the red army was on its march and would soon arrive in the Baltic States and in the ukraine, thousands upon thousands of citizens who had collaborated in some way and citizens who could not a abide the thought of living under soviet domination made their way into germany. The third group were the jewish survivors. As the war came to an end, hitler and the german officials realized that they didnt want the fact of the death camps to be discovered by the russians and the world, number one. Number two, they needed more labor at home than they were getting from the forced laborers and slave laborers. And the decision was made to relocate those who had survived the death camps and the labor camps in poland and in the baltics, to relocate them, to death march them into germany where they would be not gassed, but worked to death, most of them in underground mines, mills, armament factory factories. These are the three groups that a make up the last million. Their journeys into germany are different. So, too, would be their experiences in germany. So its ve day, a little bit after. Were in europe, 1945. Can you give us a little bit of a feel for what its like in these camps, and what sort of the life and then what sort of futures or choices are these people looking at . There is no way to comprehend the devastation in germany that the displaced persons found when they left their workplaces or their concentration camps or their p. O. W. Camps. They were rounded up by the allies, put on trucks, gotten out of the way, shipped to centers and then sorted out by nationality and put into camps behind barbed wire often. Camps that were run by United Nations relief and rehabilitation administration, but supplied by the armies. The army supplied them with medical supplies, shelter. They built facilities, and then unra took care of them. What happened was that in germany in the years following ve day in these camps there were little ukraines, little latvias, little jewish i settlements. Jewish settlements. In the beginning the unra and the allies decided that they were going to separate them out by nationality. They did not recognize that there was such a thing as a jew. Lithuanian jews were sequesteredded with lithuanians, polish je ebb ws with nonjewish poles. In many instances the jewish survivors found themselves in the same camps as those who had been their guards in the concentration and labor camps. That ended in july and august when the jews were put into their own camps. The sense was this was transitional, that they would soon be allowed to go home. The last i have e januaries, thes stone januaries believed that world war iii was coming rapidly, and the americans and the british were going to liberate ukraine, latvia, estonia, lithuania from the soviets. Displaced persons could go home again. The same with the poles. The j e ws knew that they could never go home again, that they had no place in europe. Some of the birthists tried in the beginning to convince themselves and others that they could return to poland and build a new jewish community. For the j e ws, the only mace on earth place on earth they soon recognized where they would be welcome was palestine. Though the british did everything they possibly could under the mandate to keep the j e ws out. I want to pause here for a second and talk about, there were those who couldnt go home, understood that, but at one point a decision is made to not force repatriation, that individuals would have a choice whether they would be forced home or not. Can you talk just a little bit about that . Yeah. One of the things i realized as i did my research was that the cold war begins almost immediately, that theres the ramp from the world war to the cold war is a steep one. In the very gunning the soviets beginning the soviets and their allies in eastern europe, they demanded every displaced person, except for the jews and those who had been displaced by franco years before, every displaced person should go home. Whether they wanted to or not, they had to go home. The alls said, no allies said, no. The americans and the british said no. People have the right to choose their own citizenship and whether they wanted to go home or not. The soviets were convinced, there was a paranoia that has some basis in reality after the great war, world war i, is the allies tried to overthrow the bolshevik regime. And stalin and some of his compatriots believed that was a real possibility after world war ii, and what the allies were doing, what the british and the americans were doing was creating an army, an antisoviet, anticommunist dissidence that would be available to spread antisoviet propaganda and or begin world war iii. So i want the talk a little bit about, you mentioned in passing the establishment of these International Institutions to deal with this problem. So, first, we have unra, the United Nations relief and rehabilitation authority, then later we have the iro, the International Refugee organization. And there is an amazing passage in your book for those who will look at it, its on page 258. Im not going to read it, beginning of chapter 17, where you talk a little bit about how these organizations in their names, they sort of hint at a mission of being sort of humane institutions meant, you know, to provide literally relief for these immediate human suffering. And yet they turn into something else, right . They turn into these utilitarian employment agencies, if you will. Can you talk a little bit about those institutions and how theyre set up and where they eventually go . Yeah. Franklin roosevelt is, in this book and in others, something of a hero. He understands in 1943 that there will be an enormous refugee problem not only in europe, but in asia as well when the war is over. And the only way to stop a refugee problem is through International Cooperation. And he is instrumental again, this is in 1943 in setting up the United Nations rehabilitation administration. And he gets the nation and the world, including the soviet union, to join. The understanding is that it will be an agency that repatriates, that takes care of the immediate needs of the the refugees and then provides passage. Hole for them passage home for them. For the last million, that doesnt happen. And although the soviets demand that they be sent home or, you know, made to survive on their own in germany, the americans and the british continue to support these people in camps for a year, a year and a half until it becomes clear that theyre not going home. The americans and the british spearhead the establishment of a new organization, a new organization without the soviet es. The soviets wont join it. And its task is not to repatriate, but to resettle the last million. And hate 1946, 1947 late 1946, 1947 there is this extraordinary, bizarre meat market set up, as one of the unra mows calls it employees calls it, at meat market set up in the displaced persons camps. And all the members of the International Refugee organization, the iro, dozens of latin american nations, canada, australia, south africa, they fed delegations, recruiters into the camps the find workers to take jobs that they cant find anybody else to take. It begins with the british. The british have a severe labor shortage. And they cant get anybody to work in the tuberculosis sanitary. So what do they do . They go into the camps, and they recruit thousands of latvian women in the beginning. Then they decide this this has d so well, we need help in the mines, were going to bring in last i have e january latvian men. And the belgians need miners, the fresh need miners, the canadians need Railroad Workers and people to work in forestry. And so the International Refugee organization becomes a law e borrow cutement labor recruitment organization. The shots are being called by the governments that are doing the recruiting, not the International Organization. So there is sort of a hierarchy in terms of desirability in the resettlement process. And is some of that based on race and on perception . Or maybe its just more pure utilitarian function or some combination. Its a combination. Its a combination. The latvians are always the first choice. The australian Prime Minister makes it clear to the recruiting people, get the hat i have januaries. Latvians. Why . Because the latvians are white, the latvians are protestant, the latvians are reliably anticommunist, and the latvians had only arrived, unlike the poles or the jews, theyd only arrived in germany at then end of the war, and they were relatively healthy. They hadnt suffered the ravages of the war that the jewish survivors and the polish forced laborers had suffered. And it was felt that they were hard workers and they were assumable. No country on earth wanted the jews, and they didnt want them, again, for a variety of reasons. They werent reasons, a variety of myths, miss cop senses. Misconceptions. They aread the jews as clannish, as unwilling to do hard manual labor, as scoundrels, as rogues, as thieves, and worse yet, as bolshevik sympathizers or operatives. So from 19471948 as the latvians and the ukrainians9 and the estonians were resettled outside of the camps, the jews were left. The only way for the j e ws to get out of those camps was through illegal immigration to palestine. The british tried to stop the ships that left from marseilles and from italian ports, bulgarian points bound for israel, but they couldnt do it. 20, 30,000 displaced jews made their way to israel. Once they arrived, the british grand them, put them on a second series of ships and fed them to cyprus and put them behind barbs wire in displaced persons camps. But for the j e ws, getting out of germany even to go into another set of displaced person camps was far preferable than remaining in the land of their murderers. So many questions about the story of the jewish displaced persons. I want to ask you a little bit about truman as it relates to this story. So the way im reading it in the narrative is, you know, hes willing to confront the british to say, you know, you need to open up palestine. I mean, its a painful process, but he eventually confronts the british and sort of gets there or in that direction. Hes not willing to confront the u. S. Congress. [laughter] opening up the is that fair . Thats absolutely fair. Truman believes in the very beginning agrees in the very beginning with this naive optimism. The state Department Says dont go there. Truman says im going there. And he confronts, you know, in potts dam he confronts churchill immediately and says youve got to open up palestine to the jewish displaced persons. And he hints that if you want the loans that you need to rebuild your nation, youve got to help me out here. Ive got lots of jewish and i need their support, and its the humanitarian thing toot, its the right thing to do. And then he lets go this further argument which is just tragic. He says to the british, he says you dont have to worry the way you did before the war. He said six million jews were killed. You know, theyre dead. So the European Jews arent going to overwhelm pal student. Were not palestine. Were not talking about millions here, were talking about a couple hundred thousand. The british would not budge. The british say to truman, look, if you care this much about the cure peen jews, take European Jews, take them into the United States. Truman knows, hes much smarter about domestic politics than british politics or international politics. Truman knows he cant do that. Thats not possible. That the hostility of the European Jews, the misunderstanding of what has happened to them is such that congress is never going to allow them into the country. On truman too, there was a question i had, there was a sort of a theme in the book or a few themes thrown together, and this goes back to the camps themselves. And word gets back to truman that the situation is really dire, and these camps are really, you know, people are suffering. And he talks to eisenhower and basically tells him to clean it up. And, you know, eisenhower goes back and goes through a tour of the camp. In mar, the jewish camps dub in particular the jewish camps, right . And makes it a point that these are under United States authority, and were going to clean it up. Did i read that right . Was that an a act of humanity, or was i kind of row romanticizg truman and eisenhower a little bit in light of more recent events where we see the treatment of displaced people under United States authority . You know, truman and eisenhower come out as the heroes in this, in this book. I mean, flawed heroes, but heroes nonetheless. Truman recognizes from the very beginning the plight of displaced persons and the jewish displaced persons. And, you know, there are those who said clark gifford, his adviser, says its because he had read the bible early oranges and he knows the j early on, and he knows the jews belong in israel. I dont know if that thats but the pain in the beginning, he kind of realized what a mess europe was. Nobody knew how many jews had survived. We knew that millions had been killed, but no one knew what the condition was or how many made it out of the camps. And there was this sense, the state department had this sense and the british had this sense the jews have suffered, but so has everybody else in this war, and we cant single out the jews. The jewish organizations in the United States and in britain said the jews have suffered more than any other group, ask they need special treatment and they need special treatment. The American State Department and the United Nations in the beginning said, no. The british said absolutely not. The j e ws will be treat thed like everyone else. Well, the jews were treated like everyone else, and the suffering was intense. And finally in july, two months after the war was over, in july truman sends a Factfinding Mission led by dean harrison, Earl Harrison at the university of pennsylvania, and he sends harris