Survivors at the DP camp on their way to Israel – Bergen Belsen, Germany

After the war’s end, Bergen Belsen became the largest DP camp in Europe, with 10,000 inhabitants in 1946. Zionism, a totally theoretical concept for most of the She’erit Hapleita (lit. the remnant that survived) before the Holocaust, now became an active fact of life. Out of almost 300,000 Jews in the DP camps in central Europe, about two thirds of them eventually came to Eretz Israel, while the last third emigrated to the USA, Latin America and other countries.