Central Committee of the Liberated Jews

Central Committee of the Liberated Jews (CCLJ) was a self-help organisation founded by Holocaust Survivors in the DP camps in Germany.

It played a key role in looking after members of the Boys after the liberation.

The Boys were teenage and child-Holocaust survivors, who were brought to the UK after the war for rest and rehabilitation.

The Central Committee of the Liberated Jews (CCLJ) was established in 1945 in the DP camps of the British and American zones, with its headquarters eventually located in Belsen-Hohne. Formed by survivors, the CCLJ became the largest self-governing body of Jewish survivors in post-war Europe.

Work in the DP Camps

The CCLJ helped organise food distribution, housing allocations, welfare committees, religious life, cultural rebuilding, and dealt with military and other international bodies. It was also central to the development of Jewish schools, youth groups, and communal services across the DP camps.

Chaired in the British sector by Josef Rosensaft, an Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen survivor, the committee helped shape the internal life of the camp—promoting self-governance, democratic elections and restoring a sense of dignity to the survivors at Bergen-Belsen.

The committee in the American sector was established on July 1, 1945, at a meeting in Feldafing by leaders like Dr. Zalman Grinberg and U.S. Army chaplain Rabbi Abraham Klausner (pictured left).

Unlike the Jewish Relief Unit (JRU) and Jewish Committee for Relief Abroad (JCRA)—both British-based volunteer organisations working inside the camps—the CCLJ was a survivor-run governing body, not an external relief agency. The three groups faced tensions over the post-war emigration of children; while the CCLJ advocated for the children to be sent to Palestine, the JRU and CBF supported temporary relocation to Britain for rehabilitation.