Displaced Persons 2 of 3
DPs from Eastern Europe, in particular from the Soviet Union, were often not willing to be “repatriated” to their homeland. In order to escape removal to the Soviet Union many Ukrainians stated that they had lived in Poland until 1 September 1939. The Soviet Union took this date as the baseline for deciding where the DPs were to be returned to. Wishes were not considered. Some DPs from Ukraine, Russia or Poland also migrated to the United States. Those who could not escape were again victimized during the “repatriation”. They were seen as traitors and generally suspected of collaborating with the German enemy; or they were interned in filtration camps and interrogated there, sometimes by means of torture. Anyone who could not dispel the doubts of the secret services was often deported to remote areas of the Soviet Union and coerced into forced labor again for several years. DPs from the Soviet Union were confined to barracks by the American military government in May 1945 and prohibited from going out. Since numerous DPs from the Soviet Union successfully escaped “repatriation” they stayed on for several years in Heidelberg. The relationship between the DPs and the Heidelberg citizenry was tense. The reasons were plundering and acts of revenge with former forced laborers getting their own back on former employers for their poor treatment.
DPs mainly from Western European states were mostly returned to their homeland quickly. Particularly those who happened to find themselves near the border often set out for home by themselves – to the displeasure of the US military – along country roads, occasionally plundering residential buildings and farms on the way. In Heidelberg the military government decided that a maximum of 150 passes per day were to be issued to Germans stranded in Heidelberg, in order to keep the country roads free for the movement of troops. At the end of the war, around 8,000 former forced laborers were displaced in Heidelberg. The transportation of the 3,000 to 3,500 French DPs from Heidelberg began in April 1945; around 750 of them were to be returned home every day. Up until 12 April, 2,000 French people had already left. At this point in time, there were still about 6,000 former foreign forced laborers in Heidelberg. The DPs were eyed critically by the citizens. The bone of contention was the serious lack of housing and their (supposed) privileges, as well as a sometimes better provision with food. In June 1945 DPs accommodated in Heidelberg camps received daily rations with a calorific value of 2,000 kcal. DPs living outside the camps had to manage on the same daily rations as the normal Heidelberg consumers (1,550 kcal.).
