I've always been taught that many German citizens were unaware of what was going on while the concentration camps were in use, but I am curious as to what their reactions were AFTER the camps were liberated. Surely they were faced to deal with the reality when the emaciated survivors left the camps. I guess my question is what was this like, and did the survivors actually make their way back to their original homes or did they go elsewhere?
I'll take on the second part of your question.
It varied wildly.
First of all, tens of thousands of inmates continued dying because of the truly appalling state they had been in at liberation, due to the fact that the Germans had assembled prisoners from all over into a few large camps in central Germany as the allies advanced from both the east and the west. The horrific overcrowding led to severe food shortages and disease, and most of the inmates had been in a bad state of health even before they arrived in the collection camps.
Then there was the difference between British and American administered camps and the ones liberated by the Soviets. The Soviet approach was a little more haphazard, let's put it that way. An excellent primary resource on what happened to Auschwitz inmates after liberation is Primo Levi's The Truce. He ended up being shuttled over half of Russia before finally being sent back to Italy. He writes about the Russian way of doing things as rather chaotic and unorganised. On the other hand, this provided greater opportunities for people to just strike out on their own and make their private arrangements.
The camps taken over by the western allies were better organised but this also meant that the inmates were more restricted in their movements, especially in the early days when they were not allowed to leave the camps because of the risk of diseases spreading.
After the initial quarantine was over, everything depended on whether you had a home to go back to or not. Many Eastern European Jews were reluctant to return home because of a) antisemitism (see the Kielce pogrom in Poland in 1946) and b) there was nothing to go back to as their whole community had been killed. These people could spend several years in Displaced Persons Camps in Germany waiting for visas to Western countries, mainly North America, Palestine (later Israel) and Australia. The last DP camp was closed in 1959.
Western European Jews generally returned to their home countries with little problem. However, most of them then faced the enormous task of rebuilding their lives basically from scratch, as they had generally lost many family members and friends, as well as their jobs, their homes and their possessions. It often was quite a bureaucratic struggle to regain possession.
Non-Jewish inmates generally had an easier time as the situation back home had not changed fundamentally and they could ease back into their former lives.
An important exception should be mentioned: Soviet POWs and civilian prisoners were subjected to a severe screening on their return and many were imprisoned, sent to Siberia or even executed on suspicion of "treason" and "collaboration". It is estimated that only one fifth of returning Soviet inmates were allowed to return to their homes immediately after the initial screening.
Further reading:
Gay, Ruth. Safe Among the Germans: Liberated Jews After World War II. Yale University Press, 2002.
Levi, Primo. The truce. DC Books, 2008.
Overy, Richard. Russia's War: A History of the Soviet Effort: 1941-1945. Penguin, 1998.