The Refugee Experience

Description

This volume, a collective study of the post-World War II Ukrainian emigrants in Germany and Austria edited by Wsevolod W. Isajiw, Yury Boshyk, and Roman Senkus, departs from the standard approach to immigration studies. Instead of focusing on the immigrants’ adjustment to their host societies (the United States, Canada, Australia, the countries of Latin America, and others), the approach in this volume assumes the primary importance of the pre-immigration experience. The twenty-five contributions to this book present a detailed analysis of the social conditions that shaped the Ukrainian displaced persons, with particular attention to the five-year period that many of them spent in internationally organized resettlement camps.

The essays in this volume are grouped in nine sections covering the most important facets of the displaced persons’ lives. These include an assessment of the DP phenomenon in the context of Ukrainian history; its demographic dimensions; an examination of the economic and organizational structure of the DP camps; the role of political parties and nationalist ideology; the activities of the Catholic and Orthodox churches; the establishment of schools and women’s organizations; the proliferation of literary, cultural, and scholarly activity; Soviet efforts at repatriation and the Allied response; the resettlement of Ukrainians in the USA and Canada; and a sociological and psychological interpretation of the DP experience. Four contributions by eyewitnesses round out the volume.