The “Contaminating Agent” UNRRA, Displaced Persons, and Venereal Disease in Germany, 1945–1947

摘要

World War II created a large group of persecuted, homeless or stateless people who came to be united under the term “displaced persons” (DPs). The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) was charged with the care of these individuals in various camps in Germany, although the military governments of the respective zones of occupation had ultimate authority over them. Among the various public health efforts directed toward DPs was a campaign against venereal disease during which compulsory examinations were particularly stressed by the military governments. The controversy resulting from this campaign opens a new window on the complex context of an international organization working under the roof of a national authority to achieve common—or differing—public health goals. When, during my last trip, the camp police presented a few women to the DP doctor who replaced me, to be examined for venereal diseases, no one could suspect that a great battle was about to begin. This battle heated the minds of all those who were a part of it. 1 The individual responsible for this statement, J. Tehupejori, was a doctor at a camp for displaced persons (DPs) run by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) in the French zone of occupied Germany in 1946. The subject of the battle he refers to was the control of venereal disease (VD) 2 among DPs, and it befell not only Kaiserslautern camp but large sections of UNRRA. The “heated” character of the controversy that Tehupejori refers to deserves attention and analysis, as it reveals an interesting contradiction of public health goals and humanitarian ideals within UNRRA as well as between UNRRA and the military government. Among the groups united under the term displaced persons 3 were Jewish and non-Jewish victims of the Nazi regime found in the numerous concentration camps upon liberation, forced laborers who had been brought into Germany as industrial workers, and a large number of citizens from Eastern European nations who had fled their countries before and after the cessation of hostilities. 4 Although estimates of the number of DPs in Germany after the war range widely, 7 million is a common figure in many accounts. 5 A large number of those originally found in Germany were repatriated to their country of origin by 1946, and thus at the peak period of its work UNRRA was responsible for approximately 715 000 DPs in Germany. 6 Kaiserslautern camp was one of many camps for DPs, who were regarded as “a major problem of the United Nations.” 7 Not only was there the immense logistical challenge of trying to repatriate DPs to their country of origin, but soon it became clear that many of them did not wish to, or could not, return. This group of so-called “hard-core” DPs, mainly of Polish, Latvian, Estonian, or Lithuanian origin, 8 could not return to their homes as a result of the changed geographical anatomy created by the war and took up much-needed space and resources in the infrastructural and economic German reconstruction process. Moreover, the camps installed to house the DPs were regarded by many as potential sources of social unrest and, not least, as breeding grounds for infectious diseases. Since Wolfgang Jacobsen's diligent study on West Germany's DPs in 1985, many attempts have been undertaken to further understand the DP experience. 9 Here I hope to add to this research by suggesting that the DPs were perceived ambivalently: on one hand as a threat to public health but on the other hand as members of an international community who had a rightful claim to dignity and just treatment. Open in a separate window A 4-year-old survivor of Buchenwald sits on the running board of a UNRRA truck soon after liberation of the camp. Source. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives. Using a variety of archival material 10 as well as contemporary journal articles and publications concerned with VD, I suggest that the 2 groups (the military and UNRRA) dealing with the VD problem among DPs had different conceptions of the incidence of the disease in this population and of the urgency of conducting compulsory VD examinations among DPs. Also, by focusing on compulsory VD examinations, I dissect in detail UNRRA's reaction to the VD control measures proposed by military government officials, paying particular attention to the degree of compliance with or resistance of military government instructions by UNRRA personnel.