by George Salamon
“Israel-Hamas war said to have… displaced 70% of [Gaza’s] population in a month.” —CBS News, November 7, 2023
The DPs fleeing Gaza remind me of those I saw in the hall of a Swiss railroad station after the end of World War Two—Jewish survivors of Nazi concentration and extermination camps, slave laborers from German war industries, resistance fighters from occupied countries… all had been waiting in DP camps in Germany, rounded up for "their own good," still not free men and women, still "inmates," still not possessing any rights, legal or human until the Red Cross and other aid organizations could open doors for "repatriation" to their old homelands or transportation to their new ones—their bodies pressed against each other, the faces of the men pale and gaunt, their eyes staring into a middle distance, the women clutching babies, their hair flapping around their heads, the hall reeking of hunger, sickness and yearning. When their eyes met they shuddered, stood there, unable to embrace each other. It is more than bodies that are displaced.
George Salamon did not know he was a refugee or "displaced person" when he, three years old, and his parents escaped one night in the fall of 1938 from Austria to Switzerland. He now lives in St.Louis, MO.