656: 1/2 The Long Road Home: The Aftermath of the Second World War, by Ben Shephard

Published: Nov. 3, 2020, 1 a.m.

Image:  US soldiers view the corpses of prisoners which lie strewn along the road in the newly liberated Ohrdruf concentration camp (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohrdruf_concentration_camp) The Long Road Home: The Aftermath of the Second World War, by Ben Shephard  https://www.amazon.com/Long-Road-Home-Aftermath-Second/dp/1400033500/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=ben+Shephard+long+road&qid=1604331676&s=books&sr=1-1 While the war was still going on, the Western Allies began to plan for the humanitarian crisis they knew would come when the shooting stopped. Haunted by memories of the chaos and loss of life at war’s end a generation earlier, they were determined to get it right this time. But what faced aid workers in 1945 was not what they had planned for—Jewish survivors of the concentration camps and a mass of “displaced persons” from Eastern Europe—Poles, Ukrainians, Latvians, Yugoslavs—who did not want to go home. It would take five years to find them new countries—in Israel, the United States, Canada and Australia. Ben Shephard has drawn on a mass of materials, including newly discovered diaries and journals, to bring out the human reality of this story. ..