Displaced Persons (DP's)

Designation for various categories of the approximately six million persons who, during and after the Second World War, found themselves away from their homeland in Germany, Austria, and Italy. Most of them were labor conscripts, war prisoners, concentration camp prisoners, refugees, and other victims of war. The term ‘displaced person’ was applied initially to citizens of German-occupied countries; after 1945–6, when most of them had returned to their homelands, it was applied only to those refugees who refused to return to their countries, particularly those that were Communist-dominated.

In the narrower sense the term ‘displaced person’ was used to refer to the forcibly deported, while anyone who fled the advancing Soviet troops for political or other reasons was called a refugee. In practice, however, the two terms were used interchangeably. The legal designation ‘stateless person’ was also sometimes applied to those who refused to return to their homelands. In 1946, after the repatriation of most displaced persons, about 1.2 million remained in Germany and Austria, including over 200,000 Ukrainians. They lived mostly in displaced persons camps in the three occupation zones of West Germany and Austria. About 80 camps were predominantly Ukrainian; other Ukrainian refugees lived in mixed camps, and 25–30 percent lived outside the camps.

My mother's cousin is writing a book called "My Grandfather's Mill". He will tell the story of our family's struggle from Ukrain to North America as displaced people.