My parents were survivors from Aushwitz and were sequestered in a DP camp in Celle, Germany. They were finally allowed to come here in 1950. Would they have been required to get Visas to come here? And where can I research this year? Thank you so much. Linda Heller.

Where is here? 

"My parents were survivors from Aushwitz and were sequestered in a DP camp in Celle, Germany. They were finally allowed to come here in 1950. Would they have been required to get Visas to come here? And where can I research this year? Thank you so much. Linda Heller."

Sally Bruckheimer
Princeton, NJ

Linda asked ". . . in 1950. Would they have been required to get Visas to come here?"

Yes, visas for permanent immigrants have been required by the US since 1924.  They were originally filed separately, but beginning April 1, 1944, the visa and supporting documents were placed in the new immigrant's A-File (how to obtain A-files depends on the file number, immigrant's date of birth, and other factors, see https://www.uscis.gov/history-and-genealogy/genealogy/files-numbered-below-8-million).

DP's whose immigration was aided by relief organizations after WW II often had the application process organized or "bundled" together, but when the immigrant arrived their individual visa was placed in their individual A-file just like any other immigrant.

Marian Smith

Regarding the immigration to the US of Holocaust survivors sequestered in DP camps, there is a jaw-dropping statement by President Truman from June 1948 that provides important context: https://tinyurl.com/y34yg5rt (full URL: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/statement-the-president-upon-signing-the-displaced-persons-act)

The bill discriminates in callous fashion against displaced persons of the Jewish faith. This brutal fact cannot be obscured by the maze of technicalities in the bill or by the protestations of some of its sponsors.

It wasn't until the "Displaced Persons {Immigration} Act of 1950" that this was mitigated. 

And while we're here, in December 1946, then Senator Revercomb (R-WV), chairman of the Senate’s immigration subcommittee, explained why Congress refused to allow Jewish Holocaust survivors into the US: “Many of those who seek entrance into this country have little concept of our form of government. Many of them come from lands where Communism had its first growth and dominates the political thought and philosophy of the people.”   

In October 2015, then Senator Sessions (R-AL) stated: "In seven years we'll have the highest percentage of Americans, non-native born, since the founding of the Republic. Some people think we've always had these numbers, and it's not so, it's very unusual, it's a radical change. When the numbers reached about this high in 1924, the president and congress changed the policy, and it slowed down immigration significantly, we then assimilated through 1965 and created really the solid middle class of America, with assimilated immigrants, and it was good for America. We passed a law that went far beyond what anybody realized in 1965, and we're on a path to surge far past what the situation was in 1924."  

As Santayana taught us: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.  

-Ittai Hershman