Holocaust Survivors Returning to their Hometowns in the Polish-Belarusian-Ukrainian Borderlands, 1944–1948

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article looks at the initial return of Holocaust survivors to six shtetls: Izbica and Biłgoraj in eastern Poland; Iŭje and Mir in western Belarus; and Berezne and Brody in western Ukraine. Focusing on the period between the liberation in 1944 and the end of this phase of the first returns in 1948, we investigate the strategies that the returning survivors adopted to keep safe, reclaim their property, and confront their implicated neighbors. Based on oral testimonies of the survivors, as well as archival materials, yizkor bikher (memorial books), and our own oral history interviews, the article offers a comparative perspective on the predicament of Holocaust survivors in the immediate aftermath of World War II, identifying life choices and strategies that were common on both sides of the Polish–Soviet border, and national specifics that uniquely shaped the experience of the Jewish returnees in postwar Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine.