This article investigates the experiences of Polish Displaced Persons DPs through the lens of sexuality, analyzing their perceptions of liberation and life in DP camps in Allied-occupied Germany and Austria — It draws on a wide array of sources, including archival material, memoirs, and letters. It demonstrates how the eruption of sexuality including sexual violence was connected to the wider problems Poles faced, including feelings of emasculation, war trauma, and the challenges of rebuilding a community in exile.
To this end, they cooperated with international organizations and the Allied military in an attempt to contain venereal disease, prostitution, and abortion. Many of these efforts focused on policing women's bodies and regulating their sexuality, as a part of rebuilding the nation after the hecatomb of war. He struggled to find the right words to describe his emotions and the world in which he found himself after his liberation from the Westerminke POW camp in May Liberation, however, did not bring the peace Displaced Persons DPs had imagined.
At the end of the war there were approximately 1. DP camps lumped together people of different ages, genders, social origins, and wartime records. The Polish DPs in the American, British, and French zones were mostly former forced laborers, inmates of prisons and concentration camps, evacuees from Poland, Wehrmacht soldiers of Polish origin, and prisoners of war. As historian Anna Holian has argued, DPs defined themselves and understood their displacement in relation to the persecution they suffered.
This article examines how Polish DPs experienced the process of liberation, and considers their lives in the immediate postwar period. It concentrates on the sexual experiences of Polish DPs, the forms and meanings of their intimate relationships, and the response of Polish community leaders.
Sexuality, repressed during the war, exploded after liberation. Sex was a common occurrence in the DP camps during the initial stage of their existence. This dynamic reflects the wider emotional trajectory experienced by many DPs after the end of the war, including an initial sense of empowerment, followed by confusion and, finally, embitterment, as Poles realized that they would not be able to control their own postwar destiny.
