We Must Defend the Refugee Convention

That journey never left him. When the war ended, Europe was filled with people who had also lost their homes, their families and, in many cases, nearly their lives. Around 11 million people were displaced in Germany: Holocaust survivors, former prisoners of war, forced laborers, and others left in camps, waiting for the world to decide what came next.

My grandfather returned to Europe and put his medical training to work for people whose own lives had been broken by the same war he had fled. He joined the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, one of the first humanitarian agencies and a precursor to UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. In a camp in Göttingen, Germany, he treated tuberculosis, typhoid, and people whose bodies had survived the war but still bore its scars.

The world had learned, at unbearable human cost, what happens when people fleeing war have nowhere safe to go. Through WWII, Families were turned away from protection, people returned to countries where they feared for their lives, and millions were left in camps because home was no longer safe or even existed at all.