So sociologist Eugene Kulischer was the first to use the term “displaced person.”
Hmmm.
For some reason, this reminds me of the first time I realized there are two different words: “immigrate” and “emigrate.”
Immigrate: To come to a foreign country.
VS.
Emigrate: To leave your home country.
Examples: Kelly immigrated to the USA. Melissa emigrated from Brazil.
My advice is to live abroad if you can, if only for a short time.
A year overseas will make you realize that two different worlds can exist on the same planet.
The phrase “displaced person” had a very particular meaning at the end of World War II: it was apparently coined by the Russian-American sociologist Eugene Kulischer to describe those who, as a result of war or other catastrophic social disruption, were forced to leave their native land and had no clear path to return. (It is noteworthy that Kulischer, between 1920 and 1941, was forced to flee newly Soviet Russia for Germany, Germany for Denmark, Denmark for France, and France for the United States—the last move occurring at approximately the same time that the Weil family and Claude Levi-Strauss came to America.) For Auden, the civilizational disruptions of the war had displaced everyone in some respect.
-Alan Jacobs, The Year Of Our Lord 1943 (Amazon)
