Displaced Persons 3 of 3
Public opinion about returning concentration camp inmates is like that about the Jews. But here and there you hear voices complaining about former criminals who have now also been released although they belong in the camps of the notorious Capos.
US-amerikanischer Stimmungsbericht (31 July) (our translation from a German collection of American reports on the mood)
The picture shows a Jewish wedding in a Heidelberg camp for displaced persons in 1948. After the years of deprivation of rights and annihilation, Jewish life gradually returned to Germany after the war ended. The Jewish congregation in Heidelberg was refounded directly afterwards. At first it mainly consisted of DPs and US citizens but there were also a few members from the earlier Heidelberg congregation who had survived the Nazi regime in the city itself or its environs, or had returned here from their places of refuge. On 1 September 1946 the new community center, complete with a synagogue, was inaugurated in Klingenteich Street 4, in the former fraternity house of Corps Suevia – in good time for the New Year festival Rosh Hashanah, which began on 25 September 1946. The Heidelberg Jewish community had approximately 250 members at the end of September 1946.
