Worldwide celebrations broke out upon Nazi Germany's surrender to the allies of World War II on May 8, 1945. The most terrible of wars had come to an end -- a war that led to unprecedented destruction: About 60 million fatalities, millions of refugees scattered throughout Europe, and a shattered economy and infrastructure. Still, military parades and public celebrations were held everywhere in the continent that had just been released from the chains of the Nazi regime. Those who did not join the celebrations and the general rush of joy were the Jewish people. For them, the victory was late to arrive. The liberation day the Jews had so longed for in the years of the Holocaust was a day of crisis, emptiness and heavy loneliness as the enormity of the personal and collective loss unfolded. The survivors were dispersed across Europe. Tens of thousands survivors of the concentration camps and death marches had been released by the allies in Germany and elsewhere, suffering from poor physical condition and mental trauma. Others left their hiding places for the first time, got rid of their false identities, or left the partisan groups they had joined, through which they also participated in the battles to liberate Europe. Following the diplomatic agreements that were signed once the war was over, some 200,000 additional Jews who fled to the Soviet Union and managed to survive also began gradually returning westward. The survivors faced tough questions: How will they be able to resume a normal life, build a home and a family? As those who managed to stay alive, what is their duty toward the victims -- to preserve and perpetuate their legacy? To avenge their death, as many requested before they died? The vast majority chose rehabilitation, creation and construction alongside commemoration and remembrance. After the liberation, survivors went out to search for their families, relatives and friends that may have survived. Many decided to return to their prewar homes, but the encounter with their old surroundings and their lost home was unbearable. In some places, they were met with anti-Semitic attacks by the local population, mainly in eastern Europe, and about a thousand of them were murdered in the first years after the war. To many, these acts symbolized the hopelessness of the notion that the Jewish life they once knew in their homeland could be restored. As a result, the Jews left eastern Europe in far greater numbers, trying to somehow make their way westward or southward. Young Jews enlisted to help a mass movement named "Bricha" -- escape -- which focused mainly on organizing transport into areas controlled by the British and the Americans in Germany. Upon arriving in these areas, the survivors were met with tens of thousands like them who were liberated in central Europe, and together they congregated in displaced persons camps in Germany, Austria and Italy. In the first days and weeks after the war, despite their grief and poor physical state, the Jewish survivors had already begun recuperating and preparing themselves for departure. Two third of the survivors chose to leave Europe and immigrate to Israel. The immigration to Israel and other countries was a significant stage in the survivors' healing process and rehabilitation -- a testimony of their choice of life. Survivors took part, each in their own way, in building a better world for themselves, their children and future generations who did not know the horrors of the Holocaust.
