Sh'erit ha-Pletah

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Jews on selection ramp at Auschwitz, May 1944
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Sh'erit ha-Pletah is a Hebrew term for Holocaust survivors living in Displaced Persons (DP) camps, and the organisations they created to act on their behalf with the Allied authorities. These were active between 27 May 1945 and 1950–51, when the last DP camps closed.^[1][2]

Hebrew: שארית הפליטה, romanized: Sh'erit ha-Pletah means surviving remnant, and is a term from the Book of Ezra and 1 Chronicles (see Ezra 9:14; 1 Chr 4:43).

A total of more than 250,000 Jewish survivors spent several years following their liberation in DP camps or communities in Germany, Austria, and Italy, since they could not, or would not, be repatriated to their countries of origin. The refugees became socially and politically organized, advocating at first for their political and human rights in the camps, and then for the right to emigrate to the countries of their choice, preferably British-ruled Mandatory Palestine, the USA and Canada.