4 - The ‘Broken’ DP

Summary

This chapter addresses how DPs’ physical and mental needs were assessed in the French zone and how relief workers responded to them. It considers what ‘rehabilitation’ meant to occupation officials and relief workers and what ‘therapies’ and ‘rehabilitative’ treatments they experimented. It focuses, in particular, on the hopes that they invested the remedial effects of the nuclear family and explores how DPs respond to these various experiments and gendered expectations. In the French zone, the emphasis was mainly placed on vocational rehabilitation, the re-education of mothers and rest in the countryside as a means to improve mental and physical health. The range of treatment offered revealed the influence of the inter-war ‘social hygiene’ crusade, occupational therapy and the professional reorientation movement. Crucially, this chapter uncovers the tensions between the utilitarian (turning DPs into productive future citizens) and recreational (providing soothing and restful activities) roles of rehabilitation, between the disciplinary (controlling DPs’ bodies) and empowering nature (encouraging DPs’ expression and initiatives) of relief activities.