Refugee crises quiz: 8 questions

The figures answer different questions. There were about 7–8 million DPs on German soil, about 11 million displaced civilians in liberated Europe, and more than 40 million uprooted Europeans in all. The category used mattered for more than counting: it also determined who received help.

The agreement called for “orderly and humane” transfers and requested a pause while the Control Council examined the issue. Expulsions had already begun. In November 1945 the Council planned quotas for 6.65 million people.

The families were dispersed among Polish settlers in small groups across the former German north and west, so their communities could not re-form. No border had moved during the operation. The dispersal shows how far the pursuit of homogeneity had gone by 1947.

Harrison found survivors still behind barbed wire. He wrote that the Allies seemed to be treating Jews “as the Nazis treated them except that we do not exterminate them”. He urged separate accommodation where appropriate, recognition of Jewish survivors as a group, and support for the Jewish Agency’s request for 100,000 admissions to Palestine. Truman ordered Eisenhower to act.

The 1951 definition concerned events before 1 January 1951, and states could choose to limit it geographically to Europe. The 1967 Protocol removed the date limit and generally broadened geographic scope, subject to its provisions on existing declarations. Southeast Asia’s first-asylum states never joined the Protocol.

Two pressures came together. The abolition of private trade hit the Hoa particularly hard, while the break between Vietnam and China made them suspect. About 70 percent of arrivals in 1978 were of Chinese origin, and officials allowed many to leave if they paid in gold.

Arrivals fell from more than 50,000 a month to about 9,000 by August, partly as controls on departure tightened. Critics pointed to the cost: a state was preventing its own citizens from fleeing, while the Orderly Departure Program grew slowly.

The plan replaced the presumption that every Vietnamese arrival was a refugee with individual screening. About 28 percent were recognized overall; recognized refugees were to be resettled, while others were expected to return. More than 109,000 Vietnamese went home, most through a monitored voluntary program.