After liberation most of the Jewish survivors were referred to as displaced persons (D.P.s) and housed in temporary D.P. camps across central Europe. There were also millions of non-Jewish D.P.s housed in these camps, which were administered by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency (U.N.R.R.A.). As Earl Harrison, an American academic, is reported to have said at the time: "We seem to be treating the Jews as the Nazis treated them, except that we do not exterminate them. They are in concentration camps in large numbers under our military guard instead of SS troops."

U.N.R.R.A., together with the American (Jewish) Joint Distribution Committee ("the Joint"), the Hebrew Immigration Aid Society and other Jewish charitable organisations, worked hard to improve the very primitive conditions in the D.P. camps. In the autumn of 1945 they set up schools, training farms and other educational institutions to encourage people to "return to life". Some people quickly married and had children in the D.P. camps, probably in an attempt to reassert their claim to personal survival and continued Jewish existence.

Poster from the Jewish center at Bad Reichenhall, Germany, showing Jewish population explosion 1946-7

From the moment of their liberation, however, the survivors had one question: who else was alive? Finding answers to this question became paramount, and they traversed Europe to do so. Many went home to wait and see who came; all exchanged information about whom and what they had seen. Various refugee associations cooperated to establish an international tracing service.They drew up lists of survivors which they made available in Europe and overseas. For survivors and their anxious relatives abroad, the elation of discovering loved ones alive was matched only by the agony of finding out who had perished. Some people found that they were the sole survivors in their family, their neighbourhood, their village or their town. Some only discovered the fate of their loved ones many years later, and some have no confirmation to this day.

It was a long and painful journey that survivors undertook to put together the fragments of their shattered lives and start anew. The first step was to regain health: physical, psychological and emotional. Years of malnutrition and harsh treatment in camps had left most survivors in extremely poor physical health, with many suffering from typhus, tuberculosis and other serious health problems.

Psychologically, the survivors had to return from the 'sub-human' state imposed on them, to that of free individuals. Some survivors remember how they worried about who would give them food, once the Germans left; others remember returning to their camp barracks to sleep the night after liberation. All suffered extreme disorientation. The young survivors, many only teenagers, said they did not know what to do, where to turn or how to start life again.

Emotionally, survivors had to come to terms with the enormity of their personal suffering and losses. Nightmares would plague them, not only in the immediate post-war period, but for months and years afterwards and even to this day. Initially many survivors thought that they alone in their families had suffered, that their loved ones would have been spared. Many talk of the extreme guilt they later experienced because they had survived while their loved ones had perished.

Ship of survivors hoping to immigrate to Palestine, captured by the British on April 14 1947. The sign reads: "The Germans destroyed our families and homes. Don't you destroy our hope."

For most survivors, it was impossible to return to live in their pre-war homes. In the old familiar settings, their memories of life and family before the war hung heavily upon them and furthermore, there was often no "home" left to return to. Many survivors returned to their villages and towns to find that their former homes had been occupied (stolen) by their old neighbours, who refused to give them back. Personal possessions left with neighbours for safekeeping were not returned to them.

In addition, the returning Jews could not face living with neighbours who had welcomed their deportation by the Nazis. The Holocaust did not end antisemitism in Europe, either. One of the great heroes of the uprising in the Sobibor death camp was killed in an antisemitic riot in liberated Poland in April 1945. On July 4 1946 there were antisemitic riots in Kielce (also in Poland) in which 47 Jews were murdered and over 50 wounded. Antisemitic murders on a smaller scale also took place in Lithuania, the Ukraine and other places after the war.

Most survivors sought, therefore, to leave Europe, especially for the traditional immigrant destinations of the United States, South America and Australia. But while many western nations sympathised with their plight, few were willing to actually accept them as immigrants. In Palestine, a warm welcome from the local Jewish community awaited them. However, the pro-Arab policy of the ruling British Mandate meant that the Jewish immigration quota was impossibly small. Between 1944 and 1948 a vast illegal network operated to smuggle survivors into Palestine and during that time, 66 vessels brought some 70 000 Jews. Some died in the attempt and many were caught by the British authorities and interned in holding camps on Cyprus. The infamous refugee boat "Exodus" was actually sent back to Europe with all its passengers on board.

Only after the establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948 were those Jews interned in Cyprus released. Since the Arab nations immediately declared war on the new state, these Holocaust survivors (male and female) found themselves fighting in Israel's War of Independence. Ironically and tragically, it was in this war that some lost their lives.