[Waiting for packages at a Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) distribution counter and relief station, Schlachtensee Displaced Persons camp, Zehlendorf, Berlin]

The Schlachtensee Displaced Persons camp housed thousands of Holocaust survivors at any given time between its establishment in January 1946 and 1948, when it was closed as a result of the Berlin Blockade. Although Schlachtensee was officially run by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), the camp was funded and managed by the JDC and inhabited primarily by survivors from eastern Europe. Schlachtensee became a vibrant center of both secular and religious Jewish life, and was home to a Yiddish newspaper, cinema, revue theater, schools for children, a library, sports clubs, synagogue, and a “people’s university.”