SURVIVAL

Care for Jewish Holocaust survivors in the DP-camps

Cyla Wiesenthal in 1947 (VWI-SWA, V.I.A.1)

Holocaust survivors saw the DP camps as their last stop before emigrating overseas. They were, in Wiesenthal's words, ‘waiting rooms’. Since DP camps were considered transitory, survivors only established the most necessary types of organizations. After the war, one of the most important tasks of these Jewish self-help organizations was to locate surviving family members and reunite those who had been separated during the war.
It was in the summer of 1945 that Wiesenthal himself learned that his wife, Cyla, whom he had feared dead, was alive in Warsaw. His first letter to her, dated 27 August 1945, is preserved in the Simon Wiesenthal Archives (VWI-SWA, III.1.1.9).

Cyla Wiesenthal in 1947 (VWI-SWA, V.I.A.1)