Origin of Term
The term was first widely used during World War II and the resulting refugee outflows from Eastern Europe, when it was used to specifically refer to one removed from his or her native country as a refugee, prisoner or a slave laborer. The meaning has significantly broadened in the past half-century. A displaced person may also be referred to as a forced migrant. The term "refugee" is also commonly used as a synonym for displaced person, causing confusion between the general descriptive class of anyone who has left their home and the subgroup of legally defined refugees who enjoy specified international legal protection. Most of the victims of war, political refugees and DPs of the immediate post-Second World War period were Ukrainians, Poles, other Slavs and Estonians who refused to return to Soviet-dominated eastern Europe.
A.J. Jaffe claimed that the term was originally coined by Eugene M. Kulischer.
Read more about this topic: Displaced Person
Famous quotes containing the words origin of, origin and/or term:
“Someone had literally run to earth
In an old cellar hole in a byroad
The origin of all the family there.
Thence they were sprung, so numerous a tribe
That now not all the houses left in town
Made shift to shelter them without the help
Of here and there a tent in grove and orchard.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“For, though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“No—is a term very frequently employed by the fair, when they mean everything else but a negative. Their yes is always yes; but their no is not always no.”
—Anonymous, U.S. women’s magazine contributor. M, Weekly Visitor or Ladies Miscellany, p. 203 (April 1803)