©Ceges/Soma, Brüssel
After the liberation, the American occupation troops and the UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration) cooperated to make the camp buildings suitable for the accommodation of "displaced persons" (DPs). This was the designation given liberated concentration camp inmates and former forced labourers from all over Europe. The UNRRA organised the return to their home countries.
Until mid May 1945 alone, some 14,000 persons were waiting at the DP-Camp "Dora" for their return home. In addition to several hundred liberated concentration camp inmates, they included above all former foreign civilian forced labourers. Most of the DPs from Western Europe, who were fit for transport, could return to their home countries very soon after their liberation. Surviors from Eastern European states usually had to wait for months for their repatriation and often were under general suspicion of having collaborated with the Germans.
In July 1945 Thuringia was placed under Soviet occupation administration. The DP-Camp became a Soviet "repatriation camp", which was already dissolved in October. In November 1945 the last transport with 166 DPs left Nordhausen.
After the handover of the former camp site to the town of Nordhausen, the barracks camp served as a reception camp for German expellees, mainly from regions in Czechoslovakia. From January to August 1946, 12 transports with a total of about 12,000 people reached the camp. Most of them only spent around 14 days in quarantine in the "Resettlers’ Camp", before being distributed as "new citizens" among the surrounding communities in Northern Thuringia. The camp was dissolved in summer 1946.
