Forgotten Helpers: Engagement of the Displaced Persons

Walter Cieślik, Vilma Andersons and Philipp Auerbach are three of the around 11 million Displaced Persons (DPs who found themselves in Germany when the Second World War drew to a close). Most of them were former forced laborers, prisoners of war, refugees or liberated concentration camp inmates. Their fates show how victims of Nazi persecution contributed to a critical appraisal of Nazi crimes after liberation by the Allies.

They secured records from the former concentration camps to document the atrocities committed by the National Socialists and facilitate the search for missing persons. They helped with the recovery and identification of deceased fellow prisoners or fought for compensation for the survivors. Some took on political roles, while others worked for aid organizations or tracing services or even established their own information centers. DPs also provided valuable services at the International Tracing Service, today’s Arolsen Archives. While broad swathes of the German population remained inactive, people like Walter, Vilma and Philipp made a vital contribution to the process of coming to terms with the Nazi past.

Walter Cieślik – He was in charge of one of the first information centers

The International Information Office (IIO) was one of the information centers founded by survivors. Former prisoners from the Dachau concentration camp established the office immediately after their liberation. One of them was Walter Cieślik, who ran the IIO.

A Polish-born bank employee, he was arrested by the Gestapo on May 25, 1940, in Zabrze, Silesia, and interned as a political prisoner in the Dachau concentration camp. Walter was assigned to work in the registry office, which gave him an insight into the camp’s prisoner records. Some of the inmates managed to secure some of these prisoner documents shortly before the Allies liberated the camp on April 29, 1945. IIO staff later used these documents to prepare Certificates of Incarceration, which former prisoners and their relatives could use to apply for welfare services. Plans were made to use the surviving documents to compile a list of all Dachau concentration camp prisoners in the summer of 1946. Walter Cieślik put these plans into practice. The resulting lists of people imprisoned and deceased in Dachau are not only a register of names, but also evidence of the atrocities committed by the National Socialists.

Walter returned to Poland in 1947 and worked to support former inmates of concentration camps and ghettos until his death in 1998.

Vilma Andersons – She stayed in the land of the perpetrators in order to help

Vilma Andersons, a qualified teacher, was another displaced person who took on a leadership role. In mid-October 1944, she was forced to flee her home country of Latvia, which had been occupied alternately by the Soviets and the National Socialists since 1940. Vilma’s journey ended in Stuttgart, where she was forced to work as a packer for the Hagesüd company in Stuttgart-Feuerbach. When she was liberated by the Allies in May 1945, she lived in camps for Latvian DPs and became involved in various aid organizations. From 1946 to 1949, she initially worked for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) and then for the International Refugee Organization (IRO). Both organizations were responsible for providing care and support to the millions of DPs.

In her application for support from the IRO, Vilma stated that she wished to emigrate to the USA or Canada. But she ultimately decided to stay in Germany. She moved to Arolsen in northern Hesse in 1949 and started working for the International Tracing Service (ITS). As head of the Child Tracing Department, she played a vital role in the search for survivors and was also among the first women to hold a senior position at the ITS.

Philipp Auerbach – He fought tirelessly for the rights of survivors

Philipp Auerbach was regarded as Germany’s most prominent Jew in the post-war period. After his liberation from the Buchenwald concentration camp on April 11, 1945, he campaigned persistently for the support and care of Jewish DPs in particular. From September 1945, he worked as a senior government official in charge of the welfare of victims of political, religious or racial persecution in Düsseldorf. A year later, he was appointed Director of the Office for Restitution in Munich as Bavarian State Commissioner for Racially, Religiously and Politically Persecuted Persons. He ensured that the DPs were provided with basic necessities and developed ideas about how to fund the supplies. He was neither quiet nor humble in his approach, demanding help for survivors as their rightful due. This fundamentally challenged prevailing expectations of how victims should behave, and his unconventional approach soon drew the ire of Bavarian politicians and the judiciary. The Bavarian Minister of Justice, Josef Müller, launched a sweeping campaign to discredit him in the summer of 1952. He was convicted in a controversial trial, despite a lack of evidence. Philipp Auerbach took his own life on the night the verdict was announced. Two years later, the verdict against him was overturned and he was fully rehabilitated. You will find a detailed account of the momentous trial against Philipp Auerbach in our True Crime Podcast “Verbrechen Vergessen.”

Perspectives on liberation

Our dossier marking 80 years of liberation presents a range of perspectives on the end of Nazi rule and its aftermath.

Facing the guilt: The days of concentration camp liberation through the eyes of German neighbors

How did Germans perceive the suffering endured by concentration camp prisoners? Civilians – children and adults alike – were confronted with the horrors of the Nazi regime not only during its rule, but also in the days following liberation.

“It was a hunger march”

Coercion, violence and exhaustion: the death marches mark the last gruesome chapter of Nazi crimes. Petro Mischtuk survived 13 camps in total and was sent on grueling marches. He survived those as well. We summarize his story and provide a link to an interview with him as a contemporary witness.

Beyond imagination

What did the Allied soldiers find when they reached the camps and liberated the victims of Nazi terror? The soldiers were not prepared for the horrific scenes that awaited them, and the images haunted them for the rest of their lives.

Defeat, Liberation or Victory?

How was May 8, 1945 commemorated in the GDR, how is it remembered today in the FRG and in the countries that fought against the German Reich? How has the view of the end of the War changed and what does it look like today? These are a few of the questions we address in our digital learning module “Suspicious: A Landscape of Crime”.

After liberation: Nazi perpetrators on the run

With the collapse of the Nazi regime, many perpetrators fled – and many evaded accountability. Guilt was systematically concealed, prosecution avoided and trials prevented.