International and national trials conducted in the Soviet Union, Germany, Austria, Italy, France, and other European countries indicted hundreds of war criminals. Defendants ranged from Hitler's deputy minister, to the editor-in-chief of a malicious antisemitic newspaper, Der Stürmer, to concentration camp guards and members of Einsatzgruppen.

Seven to nine million people were displaced by the end of the war. At the end of 1945, 1.5 to 2 million displaced persons (DPs) did not want to return to their homes, fearing economic and social repercussions, or even annihilation. About ten percent of these people were Jewish. The Allies set up DP camps in Germany, which American, British, and French military controlled, and the United Nations took care of. One question that faced the Western world was, "who will offer a home to these displaced people?"

Ten scenes recording the treatment of collaborators after the War and two photos of Nazi plunder of gold and artwork.

Beginning in the summer of 1945, a series of high-level visitors examined the DP camps. Visitors included Earl G. Harrison, President Truman's envoy; David Ben-Gurion, future Prime Minister of Israel; and the Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry. Harrison wrote, "We appear to be treating the Jews as the Nazis treated them, except that we don't exterminate them."

Reports by these influential visitors resulted in improved living conditions in the DP camps. Jewish DPs were recognized as a special ethnic group, with their own needs, and were moved to separate camps enjoying a wide degree of autonomy. Agencies of the United Nations and of Jews from Palestine, the United States, and Britain became involved with the camps. They provided vocational and agricultural education, and financial, legal, and psychological assistance. Several newspapers were published in the camps, keeping communication open between the DPs and the rest of the world.

Organizations, many with a Zionist focus, formed within the camps. Some Jews envisioned a Jewish homeland, considered by many to be Palestine. The British White Paper of 1939, however, still restricted immigration to Palestine by Jews.

While some of the international community were focusing on the survivors of the Holocaust, others were dealing with punishing to the perpetrators. The Allied troops were so outraged at what they found at concentration camps that they demanded German civilians directly confront the atrocities. U.S. troops led compulsory tours of concentration camps to the neighboring population. Some German citizens were forced to partake in the burial of countless corpses found in the camps.

Other more formal punishment was being discussed in the courtroom. Of the many post-war trials, those held at Nuremberg are the most well known. During the last years of the war, responding to reports of death and labor camps, the Allied countries created a War Crimes Commission and began the process of listing war criminals with the intent to prosecute. After the war, the International Military Tribunal was chartered. It composed of the four Allied nations: the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and was charged with the task of prosecuting major Nazi war criminals.

Ten photographs of Germans forced to view Nazi atrocities and help with the burial of victims.

International conventions that formed the basis for the Nuremberg Trials.

In Nuremberg, a war-ravaged town in southern Germany, 22 high ranking Nazi officials were named and brought to trial before the world. Robert Jackson, Chief Prosecutor for the United States at the Nuremberg Trials, addressed the International Military Tribunal on November 20, 1945, the first day in court:

The privilege of opening the first trial in history for crimes against the peace of the world imposes a grave responsibility. The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated. That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury, stay the hands of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law, is one of the most significant tributes that Power ever has paid to Reason.

Among the International Military Tribunal's conclusions were the following:

• A war of aggression, in any form, is prohibited under international law.
• The individual is responsible for crimes carried out under superior orders.
• The Gestapo , Nazi Party , SS , and SA were criminal organizations.
• The leaders and organizers of these criminal organizations were guilty of crimes carried out by others in executing the criminal plan.

This Web site gives a synopsis of defendants and sentences.

The Werner Von Rosenstiel Collection, at the library of the University of South Florida in Tampa, contains a transcript of Von Rosenstiel discussing his experiences as an interpreter at the Nuremberg War Trials.

In addition to the well-known Nuremberg Trials of 1945-46, there were Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings held between December 1946, and April 1949, which tried 177 persons. Individual countries also prosecuted war criminals in national courts of law. The British held trials of the commandant and staff of the Bergen-Belsen camp, those responsible for forced labor, and the owners and executives of the manufacturer of Zyklon B , among others. The Netherlands, Hungary, Norway, Poland, West Germany, and Romania were some of the other countries that brought war criminals to trial.

As the perpetrators were being tried, many survivors were still in limbo, waiting for an opportunity to emigrate from Europe. Joining these survivors, in large numbers in 1946, were Jews who had remained throughout eastern Europe. They felt they could no longer continue living in their former villages which, during the war, had become Jewish graveyards.

Many of these Jewish refugees turned to the American DP camps for temporary asylum. This organized and illegal mass movement of Jews throughout Europe, known as "B'richa," added to the displaced persons' dilemma.

The United States and Britain were the two countries in a position to help resolve this crisis. However, the U.S. was reluctant to increase its immigration quota. Britain, which held Palestine as a mandated territory, was hesitant to take a stand that would alienate the Arabs, who did not want to see Palestine become a Jewish homeland.

Nineteen photographs of displaced persons and the camps established for them after the War.

Henry Cohen, director of the Foehrenwald DP Camp, tells of life at the camp in 1946.

Map of DP camps in Germany and Austria, 1945-46.

It became increasing clear that the problem of approximately one million displaced people, about 80% Christian and 20% Jewish, would not be resolved easily. In 1947, a series of bills was introduced in the U.S. Congress to relax immigration quotas, but none passed.

In the meantime, the British turned to the United Nations, hoping that an international organization could resolve this thorny issue. On November 29, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a plan that divided Palestine into an Arab state and a Jewish state, with Jerusalem under international control.

Eight photographs related to Jewish immigration to Palestine.

On May 14, 1948, the Jews proclaimed the independent State of Israel as theirs, and the British withdrew from Palestine. The next day, neighboring Arab nations attacked Israel.

In this same month, the U.S. legislature passed the Displaced Persons' Act of 1948. However, the law had strong antisemitic elements, limiting the number of Jewish displaced persons who could emigrate to the United States. Truman reluctantly signed it. Two years later, in June 1950, the antisemitic provisions were finally eliminated.

An on-going aspect of the aftermath of the Holocaust has been the quest to track down and bring to justice Nazi war criminals who escaped. Simon Wiesenthal is a prominent figure who has devoted much of his life to hunting down Nazis in hiding and prosecuting them.

The capture of war criminal Adolf Eichmann was an historic event. In May 1960, Eichmann was kidnapped by Israeli agents in Argentina. They brought him to Israel, where Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion announced in the Israeli Parliament, "Adolf Eichmann...is under arrest in Israel and will shortly be put on trial." He was charged with crimes against Jews, Poles, Slavs, Gypsies, and others, including their arrest and imprisonment, deportation to extermination camps, theft of property, mass expulsions, and murder. Eichmann was sentenced to death, and executed at midnight May 31, 1962. The trial brought to light, especially for a new generation of Israelis and Germans, as well as for the entire world, the brutality and inhumanity of the Nazis.

Visit the Rember.org site on the Eichmann trial for more information, transcripts, photographs, and a teacher's guide.

More than fifty years after the end of World War II, a new chapter of Holocaust history is unfolding. Evidence is emerging of the complicated financial transactions between the Nazis and the European countries and businesses that profited by the genocide. Released on May 7, 1997, a United States study, directed by Commerce Undersecretary Stuart Eizenstat, describes "one of the greatest thefts by a government in history."

The Eizenstat report on U.S. and Allied efforts to recover and restore gold and other assets stolen or hidden by Germany during World War II.

• The Eizenstat report shows that between January 1939, and June 1945, Nazi Germany transferred $400 million (equivalent to $3.9 billion in today's dollars) worth of looted gold to the Swiss National Bank, in exchange for foreign currency and materials vital to Germany's war machine.
• The Eizenstat report also documents that gold, jewelry, coins and melted down dental fillings of concentration camp victims were taken, mixed with plundered bank gold, and resmelted into gold bars that were traded to other countries.
• There are still many unresolved issues related to the unlawful taking of property, including real estate and works of art, from the victims of the Holocaust. For example, the city of Paris possesses a number of apartments seized from deported Jews. The Louvre Museum owns pieces of art which were confiscated from Jews by the Nazis. Many of these Jews were sent to the camps and never returned to claim their property.
• Belgium and the Netherlands have recently demanded to know what happened to the gold that was taken from their treasuries by the invading German army.
• A March 1997 lawsuit accused seven existing insurance companies that conduct business in the United States today of failing to honor insurance policies bought before the war. These German, French, Italian, and Austrian companies are charged with acting in bad faith and enriching themselves at the expense of Holocaust victims.

Proceedings of the Washington Conference on Holocaust-Era Assets held at the Department of State November 30 through December 3, 1998.

There are many more stories, of both great and small magnitude, which recount the widespread injustices of the Holocaust. Due in part to the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II, observed in 1995, there is now a new awareness of the tragedy and a heightened interest in discovering the truth about this horrific event. And, just as new revelations about the period are coming to light, the generation of Holocaust survivors is aging and passing away. With a growing sense of urgency, the world continues its search for answers.

Visit the Aftermath Literature page of the Arts section for an annotated bibliography of recommended works.

Interactive quiz on Aftermath.

Lesson plans, discussion questions, term paper topics, reproducible handouts, and other resources for teaching about the aftermath are available here.