Sh'erit ha-Pletah

Sh'erit ha-Pletah (<a href="/facts/Hebrew_language/hqKCSy9d">Hebrew</a>: שארית הפליטה, <a href="/facts/Romanization_of_Hebrew/lqWNLwgA">romanized</a>: Sh'erit ha-Pletah, meaning surviving remnant, and is a term from the <a href="/facts/Book_of_Ezra/0dKFqy8J">Book of Ezra</a> and <a href="/facts/1_Chronicles/8A9f9fUq">1 Chronicles</a> (see <a href="https://mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt35a09.htm#14">Ezra 9:14</a>; <a href="https://mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt25a04.htm#43">1 Chr 4:43</a>) is a <a href="/facts/Hebrew_language/hqKCSy9d">Hebrew</a> term for the more than 250,000 <a href="/facts/Jews/T9Y4wE6A">Jewish</a> <a href="/facts/Holocaust_survivors/lc9AMJaN">Holocaust survivors</a> living in <a href="/facts/Displaced_Persons_camp/aquynSGg">Displaced Persons (DP) camps</a> after the end of <a href="/facts/The_Holocaust/vGQsAb2y">the Holocaust</a> and <a href="/facts/World_War_II/2efV5L1U">Second World War</a>, and the organisations they created to act on their behalf with the <a href="/facts/Allies_of_World_War_II/YzCdtjDY">Allied authorities</a>. These were active between 27 May 1945 and 1950–51, when the last DP camps closed.
A total of more than 250,000 Jewish survivors spent several years following their liberation in DP camps or communities in <a href="/facts/Germany/paluuWBX">Germany</a>, <a href="/facts/Austria/4qWIMIyc">Austria</a>, and <a href="/facts/Italy/tUf0PDYF">Italy</a>, since they could not, or would not, be repatriated to their countries of origin. For many of the survivors, Europe had become "a vast cemetery of the Jewish people" and "they wanted to start life over and build a new national Jewish homeland in <a href="/facts/Eretz_Yisrael/gK0v6GEo">Eretz Yisrael</a>". Some of those who returned to their countries of origin, especially <a href="/facts/Poland/eXJ7fd0D">Poland</a>, were murdered in pogroms upon arrival, such as the 1946 <a href="/facts/Kielce_pogrom/uWGfWePs">Kielce pogrom</a> in which 42 Jewish Holocaust survivors were murdered upon return to their home towns, an event which accelerated Jewish migration to Palestine. The United States imposed <a href="/facts/Displaced_Persons_Act/jxg5qylR">stricter immigration quotas</a> in order to prevent them immigrating, while Britain continued to try to prevent them migrating to Palestine, sending more than 50,000 Jewish refugees to DP camps on <a href="/facts/Cyprus/t9wL6lVK">Cyprus</a>, such as the <a href="/facts/SS_Exodus/wfEHJ5Lv">SS Exodus</a> in 1947.
In time, the refugees became socially and politically organized, advocating at first for their political and <a href="/facts/Human_rights/WMW5XCdM">human rights</a> in the camps, and then for the right to emigrate to the countries of their choice, preferably British-ruled <a href="/facts/Mandatory_Palestine/mv0NGUBy">Mandatory Palestine</a>, the US and Canada. Organised groups such as <a href="/facts/Bricha/j93xMGKw">Bricha</a> were formed by Jews in Palestine in order to facilitate the emigration of European Jews from Displaced Persons camps to Palestine.
With the exception of 10,000–15,000 who chose to make their homes in Germany after the war (see <a href="/facts/Central_Council_of_Jews_in_Germany/bwlx5DcK">Central Council of Jews in Germany</a>), by 1952 the vast majority of the Jewish DPs ultimately left the camps and settled elsewhere. About 136,000 settled in <a href="/facts/Israel/dEe3IcaY">Israel</a> with the assistance of organised underground efforts by Jewish groups such as the <a href="/facts/Bricha/j93xMGKw">Bricha</a>, 80,000 in the <a href="/facts/United_States/P0sCdLe5">United States</a>, and another 20,000 in other nations, including <a href="/facts/Canada/cWWFM8oc">Canada</a> and <a href="/facts/South_Africa/vvXQpLgq">South Africa</a>.

Sh'erit ha-Pletah open-in-new

Sh'erit ha-Pletah