After 1945 more than a 100,000 Jewish Displaced persons lived in the US zone of occupation waiting for emigration to Palestine or to other emigration countries. In the Frankfurt district specifically, however, there were around 16,000 Jews crammed into only 30 camps. The American military government permitted these Holocaust survivors a large political and cultural autonomy, coordinated by the Jews and seperate from the central committee in Munich as well as individual regional committees in Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Regensburg and Bamberg. For the majority of the Jews enduring in the DP-Camps a future was however inconceivable in their country of origin. Their hope hung on a liberation without fear of pursuit in Palestine.

With the establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948 the "waiting-rooms" were used no more and the camps began to be closed. In the north-east of Bavaria, Vilseck, another Jewish DP-Camp, was slated to be closed in the spring of 1948 but approaching that deadline, in January 1948, there were still approximately 1,700 humans living there and among them approximately 600 children. Since not all DPs could be immediately emigrated, April 1948 saw the resettlement of the inhabitants to Giebelstadt (near Würzburg) where a new DP camp was opened. Because at this time the Jewish autonomy already asserted from Bamberg was in the process of the dissolution, the Giebelstadt Camp was subordinated to the Jewish regional administration of Frankfurt. The "Jewish committee Giebelstadt" maintained for example a kindergarten, theatre, a library and an ORT vocational school, which ran five courses and was attended by over a 100 students. The pharmacist took over the medical department under the direction of one Dr Hirsch and security was ensured the camp's own police force. From the spring 1948 up to the summer 1949 1,700 men, women and children in the camp lived and waited only for their removal to Israel, Canada, Australia or the USA.