American Aid Society

[3] Organizers were careful to select an "assimilated" name that would not draw the ire of anti-German sentiment[4] and, by 1945, the American Aid Society was assembling and sending shipments to refugee camps in Germany and Austria.

The situation worsened considerably with the advent of the Potsdam Agreement, one of whose points dealt with the "orderly and humane" relocation of certain populations.

This allowed for mass deportations for forced labor by the Soviet Union under the guise of war reparations and to Marshal Tito's concentration camps, as well as the expulsion of these peoples from their home countries, primarily Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Romania.

Aid work continued for more than 15 years,[7] though the refugee census was declining, as communist countries completed repatriations of those remaining laborers still living.

[4][6] The latter erected a monument in 1966 dedicated to Nick Pesch in memory of the refugees and their plight at Lake Villa, Illinois.