Post–World War II Refugee Repatriation
In the 20th century, following all European wars, several repatriation commissions were created to supervise the return of war refugees, displaced persons, and prisoners of war to their country of origin. Repatriation hospitals were established in some countries to care for the ongoing medical and health requirements of returned military personnel. In the Soviet Union, the refugees seen as traitors for surrendering were often killed or sent to Siberian concentration camps.
Issues surrounding repatriation have been some of the most heatedly-debated political topics of the 20th and 21st centuries. Many forced back to the Soviet Union by Allied forces in World War II still hold this forced migration against the United States of America and the United Kingdom.
The term repatriation was often used by Communist governments to describe the large scale state sponsored ethnic cleansing actions and expulsion of national groups. Poles born in territories that were annexed by the Soviet Union, (referred to by Poles as the Kresy) although deported to the State of Poland, were settled in the annexed former German territories (referred to in Polish as the Regained Territories). In the process they were told that they had returned to their Motherland.
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Famous quotes containing the words war and/or refugee:
“We are constantly thinking of the great war ... which saved the Union ... but it was a war that did a great deal more than that. It created in this country what had never existed before—a national consciousness. It was not the salvation of the Union, it was the rebirth of the Union.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“The refugee uncertain at the door
You make at home; deftly you steady
The drunk clambering on his undulant floor.”
—John Frederick Nims (b. 1913)