Buchenwald survivors arrive in Haifa . The Nazi German persecution started with the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses in 1933 , reached a first climax during '' Kristallnacht '' in 1938 and culminated in the Holocaust of European Jewry . The British Mandate of Palestine prohibited Jewish emigration to Mandatory Palestine . The 1938 Evian Conference , the 1943 Bermuda Conference and other attempts failed to resolve the problem of Jewish refugees , a fact widely used in Nazi propaganda ( see also MS '' St. Louis '' ) . A small number of German and Austrian Jewish refugees from Nazism emigrated to Britain , where attitudes were not necessarily positive . Many of the refugees fought for Britain in the Second World War . After WW-II , eastern European Holocaust survivors migrated to the allied-controlled part of Europe , as the Jewish society to which most of them belonged did not exist anymore . Often they were lone survivors consumed by the often futile search for other family and friends , and often unwelcome in the towns from which they came . They were known as displaced persons ( also known as Sh ' erit ha-Pletah ) and placed in displaced persons camps , most of which were by 1951 closed . The last camp Föhrenwald was closed in 1957
Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht
Expulsions and exoduses of Jews