Jewish responses to persecution Volume 5. 1944-1946 / Leah Wolfson ; translators: Ania Drimer [und 10 weitere] 9781442243361, 9781442243378, 1442243368, 9781442236264, 1442236264, 1442243376

Table of contents :
Contents......Page 10
Maps......Page 14
Readers’ Guide......Page 18
Abbreviations......Page 22
Introduction and Series Postscript......Page 26
Part I......Page 36
Chapter 1......Page 38
Chapter 2......Page 88
Chapter 3......Page 116
Part II......Page 146
Chapter 4......Page 150
Chapter 5......Page 196
Chapter 6......Page 234
Part III......Page 264
Chapter 7......Page 268
Chapter 8......Page 304
Chapter 9......Page 350
Part IV......Page 388
Chapter 10......Page 392
Chapter 11......Page 430
Chapter 12......Page 468
List of Documents......Page 504
Bibliography......Page 514
Glossary......Page 536
Chronology......Page 566
Index......Page 576
About the Author......Page 590

Citation preview

■ United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies

Documenting Life and Destruction Holocaust Sources in Context

SERIES EDITOR

Jürgen Matthäus CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

Jan Lambertz

DOCUMENTING LIFE AND DESTRUCTION HOLOCAUST SOURCES IN CONTEXT This groundbreaking series provides a new perspective on history using firsthand accounts of the lives of those who suffered through the Holocaust, those who perpetrated it, and those who witnessed it as bystanders. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies presents a wide range of documents from different archival holdings, expanding knowledge about the lives and fates of Holocaust victims and making these resources broadly available to the general public and scholarly communities for the first time.

Books in the Series 1. Jewish Responses to Persecution, Volume I, 1933–1938, Jürgen Matthäus and Mark Roseman (2010) 2. Children during the Holocaust, Patricia Heberer (2011) 3. Jewish Responses to Persecution, Volume II, 1938–1940, Alexandra Garbarini with Emil Kerenji, Jan Lambertz, and Avinoam Patt (2011) 4. The Diary of Samuel Golfard and the Holocaust in Galicia, Wendy Lower (2011) 5. Jewish Responses to Persecution, Volume III, 1941–1942, Jürgen Matthäus with Emil Kerenji, Jan Lambertz, and Leah Wolfson (2013) 6. The Holocaust in Hungary: Evolution of a Genocide, Zoltán Vági, László Csősz, and Gábor Kádár (2013) 7. War, Pacification, and Mass Murder, 1939: The Einsatzgruppen in Poland, Jürgen Matthäus, Jochen Böhler, and Klaus-Michael Mallmann (2014) 8. Jewish Responses to Persecution, Volume IV, 1942–1943, Emil Kerenji (2014) 9. Jewish Responses to Persecution, Volume V, 1944–1946, Leah Wolfson (2015)

A project of the

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Sara J. Bloomfield Director

Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies Paul A. Shapiro Director Jürgen Matthäus Director, Applied Research under the auspices of the

Academic Committee of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council Peter Hayes, Chair Doris L. Bergen Richard Breitman Christopher R. Browning David Engel Zvi Y. Gitelman Paul Hanebrink

Sara Horowitz Steven T. Katz William S. Levine Deborah E. Lipstadt Wendy Lower Michael R. Marrus John T. Pawlikowski

Alvin H. Rosenfeld Menachem Z. Rosensaft George D. Schwab Michael A. Stein Jeffrey Veidlinger James E. Young

This publication has been made possible by support from

The William S. and Ina Levine Foundation and

The Blum Family Foundation

The authors have worked to provide clear information about the provenance of each document and illustration included here. In some instances we have been unable to verify the existence or identity of any present copyright owners. If notified of any items inadvertently credited wrongly, we will include updated credit information in reprints of this work.

Documenting Life and Destruction Holocaust Sources in Context

JEWISH RESPONSES TO PERSECUTION Volume V 1944–1946 Leah Wolfson

Advisory Committee: Christopher R. Browning David Engel Sara Horowitz Steven T. Katz Alvin H. Rosenfeld

Rowman & Littlefield in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum 2015

For USHMM: Project Manager: Mel Hecker Researcher: Holly Robertson Huffnagle Translators: Ania Drimer, Marcel Drimer, Tom Frydel, Yedida Kanfer, Kathleen Luft, Julius Menn, Abigail Miller, Devin Naar, Sarah Roth, Stephen Scala, Lara Szypszak Intern: Hannah Lindahl Index: Lisa Waters Maps: Jeff Blossom, Center for Geographic Analysis, Harvard University

Published by Rowman & Littlefield A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannery Street, London SE11 4AB Copyright © 2015 by Rowman & Littlefield All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available 978-1-4422-4336-1 (cloth : alk. paper) 978-1-4422-4337-8 (electronic) ™

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America

It is impossible to describe the horrors of the KZ [concentration camp] as they really were, because no mere words can accurately describe the reality of the hardships and horrors. Surely nobody can believe the SS methods if he did not feel them on his own skin. Who can feel with us? Who can understand us? —Michal Kraus, age 15, postwar diary, 1945 (see document 10-8)

The following documents are reprinted with permission: Document 1-5 © Central Zionist Archives; Document 1-7 © Central Zionist Archives; Document 2-5 © Central Zionist Archives; Document 3-4 © Central Zionist Archives; Document 3-5 © Central Zionist Archives; Document 3-7 © Yad Vashem; Document 4-1 © Central Zionist Archives; Document 4-2 © Central Zionist Archives; Document 4-9 © Association of Jewish Refugees; Document 4-10 © Association of Jewish Refugees; Document 5-9 © Yad Vashem; Document 6-2 © Yad Vashem; Document 6-3 © American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Archives; Document 6-7 © Central Zionist Archives; Document 6-8 © Central Zionist Archives; Document 7-4 © Central Zionist Archives; Document 7-5 © Central Zionist Archives; Document 7-7 © Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives; Document 8-6 © Central Zionist Archives; Document 8-7 © Central Zionist Archives; Document 9-6 © American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Archives; Document 9-7 © American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Archives; Document 11-3 © YIVO Institute for Jewish Research; Document 11-13 © Central Zionist Archives; Document 12-1 © Yad Vashem; Document 12-2 © Yad Vashem; Document 12-4 © Yad Vashem. For further provenance information see document headers. Front cover: (top row, left to right) USHMMA Acc.1996.15, Lt. Col. Alexander H. Rosenbaum collection; USHMMPA WS# 30857, courtesy of Arlene Chasin Strowman; USHMMA Acc. 2007.162, Carl Atkin collection; (bottom row, left to right) USHMMPA WS# 28264, courtesy of Aveda Ayalon; USHMMA Acc. 1996.80, Henry Hanski papers; USHMMPA WS# 37376, courtesy of Herbert Friedman

Contents

Maps Readers’ Guide Abbreviations Introduction and Series Postscript PART I: THE “FINAL SOLUTION” AND THE END OF THE WAR

xiii xvii xxi xxv 1

1 The End of the War and the Last Throes of Genocide Resistance, Rescue, and Escape The Last Deportations, 1944–1945 The Final Days of the Concentration Camp System Moving Jews: Death Marches and the End of the War

3 6 19 32 45

2 Experiencing “Liberation” American Jewish Soldiers Encounter the Holocaust Responding to the Liberators: Liberation from the Survivor’s Perspective

53 54

3 Adjusting to Peace, Surviving Survival Emerging from the Holocaust: Finding a “Home” in Postwar Europe Surviving as Children, Reclaiming Childhood: Jewish Children after the War

81

64

82 97

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x

Contents

PART II: JEWS ON THE MOVE: FINDING AND DEFINING “HOME” IN THE POSTWAR ERA 4 Returning “Home”: Emigration and the Search for Postwar Normalcy Refugees and the Postwar Landscape: Borders, Citizenship, and Nationality Creating Homeland: Aspirations for Palestine The Other “Promised Land”: Refugees and Survivors in the United States A Home Elsewhere: Emigration Outside Palestine and the United States 5 Jews and Displaced Persons Camps in Postwar Europe Jewish Involvement in DP Camp Administration The Daily Lives of Jewish DPs: Interpreting the Holocaust from the Inside 6 Citizenship, Nationhood, and Homeland: Jewish and Non-Jewish Encounters and the Zionist Ideal Imagining “Home”: Jewish Displaced Persons and Differing Visions of Zionism Between Tolerance and Antisemitism: Making a Home in the Diaspora PART III: TAKING STOCK, SEARCHING FOR JUSTICE 7 The Search for Relatives Creating Lists of the Living and Lists of the Dead “Only Sad News to Report”: Survivor Letters to Family Outside Europe Searching for Jewish Children in the Postwar Period: The Organizational Process Picking Up and Moving On: Grappling with Decimated Families

111 115 117 129 134 144 161 166 178 199 200 211 229 233 234 239 251 261

Contents

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8 Punishing the Perpetrators Official Justice: Allied War Crimes Trials Coverage of Postwar Trials in the Jewish Press In Pursuit of Justice: Statements of the Victims Justice on the Local Level: Claims and Accusations

269 271 280 290 301

9 Reclaiming Possessions Restitution in Theory and Practice: Legal Considerations The Conversation among Jewish Communal Organizations Restitution on the Local Level: Challenges and Roadblocks Personal Restitution Claims

315 317 322 336 343

PART IV: FRAMING, DEFINING, AND REMEMBERING THE HOLOCAUST

353

10 Making Memory: Early Memoirs and Reflections Early Histories of the Holocaust: An Emerging Field Between Nostalgia and Destruction: The Role of Yitzkor Memorial Books Early Postwar Memoirs and Literary Reflections Unpublished Diaries and Memoirs in the Immediate Postwar Period

357 359

11 Commemorating the Victims: Memorializing the Holocaust Marking Graves: Commemorating the Dead In Situ Local Memories, Local Memorials: Memorializing Individual Communities Responding Religiously: The Formation of Post-Holocaust Theologies Emerging Centers of Jewish History and Documentation Memorial as National Identity: The Holocaust and Pre-state Israel

395 396

12 The Survivors Speak: Collecting and Defining Postwar Testimony Interviewing the Victims: Jewish Historical Commissions Local Testimony Efforts: Interviewing Survivors in Their Former Homes “I Did Not Interview the Dead”: David Boder and the First Recorded Testimony

367 375 387

401 410 419 426 433 434 444 457

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Contents

List of Documents Bibliography Glossary Chronology Index About the Author

469 479 501 531 541 555

Map 1

Map 2

Map 3

Readers’ Guide

T

HE VOLUMES in this series belong to a groundbreaking genre that embeds translated and annotated primary sources in a wider, more traditional historical narrative. The larger history of the Holocaust, written around the documents, provides readers with the context in which to situate individual and communal experiences related by the creators of the documents. The following pages hopefully resolved the inherent tension between chronological versus topical organization by highlighting certain developments, reactions, and trends, while following the overall pattern of Jewish responses in the last year of the war and the early postwar period, between 1944 and 1946.1 We have printed the documents in the book in a distinct format to set them apart from historical commentary and contextualization. We have attempted to reproduce, as faithfully as possible, the form and content of the original documents. The provenance of historical documents is sometimes ambiguous; we have strived to provide information as clear as possible about the provenance of each document presented here. We have standardized emphases used by the authors of the documents by underlining them. In cases in which we have judged that it makes sense, we have left, in strike-through style, the words that the authors crossed out in the original, in order to record the process of document creation. We have also corrected obvious orthographic mistakes made by the authors of English-language documents. When we have been unable to 1. Please note that volume 4 of this series covers the deportations of Hungarian Jews, which occurred in the summer of 1944.

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print a document or quote in its entirety, we have marked any omitted text with bracketed ellipses ([. . .]). We have also done our utmost to estimate the date for documents left undated by their authors; in this endeavor, we have relied on the craft of the historian, inferring the date or period from indirect evidence drawn from the document itself or from additional extrinsic information. Documents translated and printed in this volume were originally written in a myriad of different languages, ranging from Ladino and Judeo-Arabic to Dutch and Romanian. The majority, however, were written in the core languages of Holocaust victims: Yiddish, Polish, German, Russian, and Hebrew. In all cases, we have tried to conform to standard transliterations of names and places from those languages. In many cases, however, this is a more complicated task than it seems at first sight, and we have made decisions on a case-by-case basis. Many writers, for example, who write in Yiddish transliterate names and places in standard Yiddish variants; at the same time, however, these names and places have Polish (and often German and/or Russian) variants, which appear in secondary literature. In each case we have made a decision that respects the author’s background and choice of language. In many instances, authors use terms that are difficult to translate for many reasons. Sometimes, the terms have multiple and complicated meanings difficult to capture in English. These situations are aggravated when terms, prevalent at the time the authors wrote, carry racialized or bureaucratic connotations that today sound outlandish or outright offensive. Other times, these words serve as shorthand to convey a cluster of meanings, emotions, and implications. And sometimes they are foreign words in the original languages themselves, usually Nazi German concepts seeping into Yiddish or Polish. The euphemism Aktion, for example, which the Germans used to denote massacres accompanying ghetto “liquidations” or mass deportations, made its way into texts written in Polish or Yiddish. Rather than becoming de-euphemized, the German original is rendered either in transliteration as “aktsiyon” or translated as “action” in Yiddish (aktsiye), which it also nominally means in German. In other cases, Hebrew words are transliterated in German, Croatian, English, and other-language documents, depending on the original languages used by the authors. Since these and similar nuances are important for conveying and locating historically the rhetoric of the period, as well as for preserving the richness of private reflection, we have indicated the difficulty of translating such terms by adding the original word or phrase in brackets after the English version. A related issue is the disunity of geographic terms. Most places in central and eastern Europe have two, three, or even four different names, depending on the language in which they appear. These names are most often not

Readers’ Guide

xix

used innocently: their particular use conveys the relations of power. It is by no means the same if one speaks of Lvov in Russian, Lviv in Ukrainian, Lwów in Polish, and Lemberg in German and Yiddish—referring to the same city, today called Lviv and situated in Ukraine. Rather than impose artificial unity, which would likely belie the intentions and linguistic, cultural, and political affinities of the authors, we have made decisions on a case-by-case basis in order to be as faithful to the documents as possible. Names of geographical locations are cross-referenced in the index for the benefit of readers. Countries and regions have likewise presented another complex dilemma. For countries under German occupation or domination, we have tried to stay faithful to Hitler’s political reordering of Europe, using Nazi terms—such as, for example, Reichskommissariat Ukraine—for areas that before the war might have been in one country, during the war in another, and after the war in a third. For countries beyond Hitler’s direct reach but still in the German orbit, we have used names that do not legitimize the wartime partitions and annexations: for example, Italian-occupied Yugoslavia rather than Italy. When having to make these decisions for the place-names used in the documents, we have tried to indicate both the wartime and the postwar situation. Many Jewish authors wrote of their labor service in Hungary-annexed Czechoslovakia, for example, using Hungarian names for places in which they were located. To preserve the nuances of the authors’ writing, we kept these names in the original while also indicating today’s names and countries. We have also, as in the previous volume, added place-names and country designations to the document headers. Commonly known cities—Berlin, London, Moscow, New York, Paris, Prague, Vienna—are used without country or another qualification. A number of names, events, and organizations appear in boldface throughout the volume when first mentioned in a chapter. This indicates that readers can find further information on the highlighted term in the glossary. Using the rich resources of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s library and archives, we have attempted to reveal the ultimate fate of each author of a document and persons mentioned in it by full name. Some of this information appears in the glossary and some of it in footnotes to the original documents. Regrettably, we were unable to unearth information on every individual who makes an appearance in these pages. Readers will find two other resources at the back of the volume to orient them in the complex events of this period. We have provided a basic chronology of important events that unfolded in the years covered by this volume. Our bibliography also offers the reader an opportunity to explore the topics and events touched on here in greater depth.

Abbreviations

(Bold indicates a Glossary term.) AIU AJC AJJDC, JDC, the Joint CHC CJHC CDJC

Alliance Israélite Universelle American Jewish Congress American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee

DEGOB DP

Deportáltakat Gondozó Országos Bizottság (National Committee for Attending Deportees) Displaced person

GARF Gestapo

State Archive of the Russian Federation Geheime Staatspolizei (Secret State Police)

H&GS HIAS

Holocaust and Genocide Studies Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society

Central Historical Commission, Munich Central Jewish Historical Commission, Poland Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine (Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation)

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Abbreviations

ITS

International Tracing Service, Bad Arolsen, Germany

JAFC JTA

Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee Jewish Telegraphic Agency

KZ

Konzentrationslager (concentration camp)

LBIYB LPC

Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook “Likely to become a public charge”

NARA

National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland

OMGUS ORT OSE

Office of Military Government Organisation-Reconstruction-Travail (Organization for Rehabilitation through Training) Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants (Children’s Relief Agency)

POW

Prisoner of war

RM

Reichsmark or mark (German currency)

SHAEF SS

Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force Schutzstaffel (Nazi Security Squad)

UNDP UNRRA UNWCC USHMM USHMMA USHMMPA USSR

United Nations displaced persons United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration United Nations War Crimes Commission United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC USHMM Archives USHMM Photo Archives Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the Soviet Union

WRB WJC

War Refugee Board World Jewish Congress

Abbreviations

YIVO, IWO

YVS YVA ŻIH ŻOB

xxiii

Yidischer Visnshaftlekher Institut (Jewish Scientific Institute, Institute for Jewish Research), Vilna, later New York Yad Vashem Studies Yad Vashem Archive, Jerusalem Żydowski Instytut Historyczny ( Jewish Historical Institute), Warsaw Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa (Jewish Fighting Organization, also Jewish Combat Organization), Warsaw

Introduction and Series Postscript

I

N A POEM titled “Our Freedom,” published in 1947 by the Association of Friends of Our Tribune in New York, survivor and writer Henia Karmel wrote, When freedom came, it was strange: Chilly, blurred, unrecognizable. I was so surprised I could only stare straight into space. My heart still beat But when I shut my eyes, I felt sick. Unable to face my freedom.1

A survivor of the Kraków ghetto, Płaszów concentration camp, and Buchenwald subcamp HASAG, Karmel writes of a moment that is, at best, full of mixed emotions. “Freedom” did not constitute unadulterated joy—far from it. Instead, it was all too often marked by illness, numbness, and a growing awareness of profound loss. Karmel’s experience is not atypical; liberation rarely brought with it the fanfare of an unmediated escape from near death. What we think of as “survival,” then, was for most a process rather than an event. Other survivors writing many years later would mirror Karmel’s sentiment. Primo Levi recounted a similar notion in both Survival in Auschwitz (1947) and in his 1. A Wall of Two: Poems of Resistance and Suffering from Kraków to Buchenwald and Beyond (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 85.

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Introduction and Series Postscript

final work before his death, The Drowned and the Saved (1989). In the latter, he reflects on the paradox of liberation and the high price of survival amid death and destruction: “The hour of liberation was neither joyful nor lighthearted. For most it occurred against a tragic background of destruction, slaughter, and suffering. Just as they felt they were again becoming men, that is, responsible, the sorrows of men returned: the sorrow of the dispersed or lost family; the universal suffering all around; their own exhaustion, which seemed definitive, past cure; the problems of a life to begin all over again amid the rubble, often alone.”2 “Survival,” then, arrived in many incarnations and with many ambiguities; our popular image of elated prisoners greeting Allied soldiers was hardly a normative—or even commonplace—reality. Instead, as Karmel and Levi show, confusion, silence, and mourning made survival fraught and complex. This volume traces and complicates the final years of the war and the beginnings of the postwar period, from 1944 to 1946. It is therefore the first of the five volumes of the Jewish Responses to Persecution series to deal explicitly with the category of survivors en masse. Whereas previous volumes addressed escapees and refugees on a somewhat limited basis, the documents featured here examine, in depth, the daily personal and communal issues that arose during the process of survival. These include, among others, the conditions of displaced persons (DP) camps throughout Europe, the state of refugees, postwar reparations and restitution, emigration, and the basic concept of home in a landscape where Jewish communities had been decimated and destroyed. This volume thus extends and provides a further variation on the theme of diversity that this series has tried to elucidate through contemporary Jewish documentation starting in 1933. After the end of the war, a survivor living in a DP camp (many of them located in former concentration camps) conceived of his or her options differently than did a refugee living in Berlin or Vienna. The documents throughout this volume reveal both the specifics of these experiences and the various ways in which they overlapped. This volume’s periodization not only dictates its breadth but also shifts the perspective of both the documents and the broader history in ways that decenter certain iconic experiences, such as “liberation,” “survival,” and “immigration,” among others. By encompassing 1944, this volume addresses the end of the fighting and the chaotic manner in which the German war effort unraveled while genocide continued largely unabated. A starting point in 1944 also recognizes that for some, particularly those in the east, liberation arrived earlier 2. Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved (New York: Vintage International, 1989), 70–71.

Introduction and Series Postscript

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than the official recognition of Germany’s capitulation to the Allied powers on May 8, 1945. Thus, the geographic perspective of the volume shifts the normative focus of the Holocaust from a strictly western European context to other locales in the east, as well as to communities located in what one might think of as the margins of the Holocaust, like North Africa and Transnistria. It is important to note, however, that although this volume encompasses the year 1944, volume 4 addresses the deportations of over 450,000 Hungarian Jews from April through June of that year. This volume (and by extension this series) also explicitly departs from what might serve as a more traditional endpoint in 1945 or 1948. By reaching beyond 1945 (but stopping short of 1948, the official year of Israeli independence), this volume addresses the aftereffects of liberation in a world in which a Jewish state was not yet a reality. As the documents included here demonstrate, in 1946 the concepts of liberation, survival, home, and return were evolving rather than fixed. Today, “survival”—an experience that is all too rare in Holocaust history, yet whose concerns consume many of the documents featured here—has become a fixture in a standardized narrative: an idyllic prewar life, a traumatic yet hopeful wartime experience, and then postwar perseverance and success. As the following documents show again and again, the reality was never so simple. Indeed, even as the term “Holocaust survivor” connotes a certain corpus of images, experiences, and associations, in the early postwar years neither the term nor its symbolic importance had solidified. The question of who constituted a survivor and what precisely that person had survived remained an open question. Was the “survivor” label purely the purview of those who had emerged from the concentration and forced labor camps? Could it also encompass one who “survived” after being in hiding? Was a refugee a “survivor” in the way that we think of the term today? These questions held not only existential but also practical implications: reparations, the status of displaced persons, and other important issues hung on their answers. With the emergence of survivors, both as individuals and as a larger category, came the emergence of survivor testimony. Once again, our current characterization of this process is belied by its earliest examples. Today, survivor testimony most often consists of one interviewer and one survivor in conversation in the survivor’s home, video- or audio-taped for posterity, to be deposited in an archive. In the early postwar years, the testimonial landscape was much more barren, undefined, and unchartered. What we today call “testimony” then encompassed a number of different activities, from courtroom testimony, to institutional efforts in gathering evidence, like the work of Jewish historical commissions in DP camps and those sponsored by the American Jewish Joint

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Introduction and Series Postscript

Distribution Committee (AJJDC), to individual accounts authored in the wake of the war by survivors who began to grasp the larger historical importance of their experience. Some testimonial accounts were even given in larger groups, then aggregated by interviewers in their words rather than those of the survivors. Indeed, not until David Boder’s historic—yet comparatively small— oral testimony project were actual survivor voices (and, just as importantly, interviewers’ questions) heard. Even in this scenario, the testimonial effort was far from rarified, clear-cut, and monolithic. Boder came to his project with a certain psychoanalytic understanding of survivor trauma and an incomplete understanding of many of the languages in which he conducted his interviews. In fact, the very idea that a survivor’s voice should be heard on its own terms— in whatever way one might understand that loaded, complicated phraseology—is fairly new and emerged in a world in which a Holocaust survivor (and Holocaust survival more generally) had attained a certain status and respect largely absent in the immediate postwar world. Instead, while Jewish communities, institutions, and historical associations collected information about the murder of European Jewry, the wider world greeted many survivors with hostility and silence. Auschwitz survivor Ruth Klüger recalled her own profoundly disappointing encounter with an American soldier upon liberation in her memoir, Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered (2003): “He put his hands over his ears and turned away. My mother translated. He had had his fill of people who claimed they had been in the camps. They were all over the place. Please, leave him alone! [. . .] My imagination had provided a more colorful picture of the great hour of liberation. Here was my first American, and he deliberately closed his ears.”3 Unable to hear the survivors’ stories, the outsider, the American soldier, literally and figuratively closes his ears, an occurrence so many survivors would report after the war. Klüger’s experience would be repeated again and again in various contexts, in both subtle and overt ways. As Hasia Diner’s landmark work, We Remember with Reverence and Love: American Jews and the Myth of Silence (2009), and David Cesarani and Eric J. Sundquist’s edited collection, After the Holocaust: Challenging the Myth of Silence (2012), attest, survivor accounts—in a variety of forms—were published and available. The question, however, became, Who was listening? While the documents throughout this volume raise this question, they cannot, in the end, truly answer it. We do hear, however, a plethora of

3. Ruth Klüger, Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered (New York: Feminist Press of City University of the New York, 2003), 149.

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voices, each seeking to define its individual corner of a collective event in the process of being named. This period also marks the moment in which Holocaust memory is simultaneously fluid and solid, indicating a decisive phase in the process of shaping Holocaust discourse as we know it today without necessarily reflecting on its antecedents. On the one hand, the immediate postwar years signify a moment in which the bare facts of this history were in the process of being written. Indeed, as the documents demonstrate, the question of whose wartime experience and whose version of that experience should be included in the wider telling of the history was still very much under discussion. At the same time, the imagery and symbols with which we are so familiar today—Auschwitz, train cars, death marches, gas chambers—were also coming to the fore. As David Roskies writes in Against the Apocalypse: Responses to Catastrophe in Modern Jewish Culture, collective memory soon displaces the individual in ways that risk flattening the complicated particularity of experience: “When the unit of destruction is not the individual but the collective, when an entire Jewish population of a town or city is gone, and when the disappearance of each community is known by date and there are dates enough to fill the calendar, then the task of remembrance threatens to eclipse all else. [. . .] When Jews now mourn in public, therefore, they preserve the collective memory of the collective disaster, but in so doing fall back on symbolic constructs and ritual acts that necessarily blur the specificity and the implacable contradictions of the event.”4 The creation of collective memory after the war coincided with the obliteration of individual wartime experiences exemplified by the documents gathered in this series, a small selection from among an ocean of testimony created at the time. What, then, do we mean when we use the term “memory” with reference to the Holocaust? Can individual memory stand apart from its collective implications? What do Jewish ritual events memorialize, and how do they reflect and shape the story being told? What is the role of the secular, political state in impacting the memory (or memories) of mass atrocity? The documents here do not neatly answer such questions; instead, they complicate the meaning of terms and symbols that we have come to take for granted. As this series comes to a close, we reflect on the ways in which the Jewish responses to the Holocaust, its antecedents, and its aftermath have altered our perceptions of a deeply ingrained and yet profoundly complex history. In the space of thirteen years, from 1933 to 1946, Jewish life in Europe—and 4. David G. Roskies, Against the Apocalypse: Responses to Catastrophe in Modern Jewish Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 4.

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Introduction and Series Postscript

throughout the world—changed profoundly and irrevocably. To characterize this period as one of fundamental rupture and discontinuity is both accurate and, at the same time, somewhat simplistic. Indeed, such statements assume a smooth and tranquil existence of Jewish life in Europe that belies a far more complex reality. While different situations and scenarios surely manifested in widely varying ways, Jews throughout eastern and western Europe had faced antisemitism, pogroms, forced conscription, and other debilitating actions well before 1933. As historian Raul Hilberg has famously written, the Holocaust was not without precedent: “The Nazi destruction did not come out of a void; it was the culmination of a cyclical trend. We have observed the trend in the three successive goals of anti-Jewish administrators. The missionaries of Christianity had said in effect: You have no right to live among us as Jews. The secular rulers who followed had proclaimed: You have no right to live among us. The Nazis at last decreed: You have no right to live.”5 The reactions and responses highlighted throughout these volumes must be read, in part, with this background in mind. While the genocide perpetrated by Nazis and other collaborating regimes was new in scope and quantity, the persecution that preceded it was not. Indeed, many of the responses throughout these volumes show the utter normality of life amid an unfolding destruction, partly because Jewish daily life—or at least aspects of it—remained normal, partly because Jews made an effort to adapt to (and thus normalize) new circumstances. It is nearly impossible today, in hindsight and with knowledge of this period’s horrific endings, to imagine what life might have looked like for those facing unpredictable situations as they unfolded. The broad spectrum of documents featured in this series—from multiple places with different historical contexts, languages, definitions of Jews, and Jewish identities—reveals realities that may startle the contemporary reader in their quotidian concerns. As Jews and Jewish life were profoundly disrupted in this period, so too was the world around them. Within this discrete period (1933–1946), countries were both consolidated and divided, leaving many populations throughout Europe stranded or relocated according to linguistic, ethnic, and national lines, drawn, in many ways, arbitrarily. These volumes repeatedly remind us that the fate of Jews was inextricably linked to the wartime fate of the countries in which they resided and to the prevalent traditions, sentiments, and conditions there. For Jews in eastern Poland, the option to flee to Soviet territory existed in 1939 and 1940 as a result of the alliance between Germany and the USSR 5. Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 2nd ed. (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1985), 8.

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that divided the country. For those caught up in the Soviet occupation or who decided to “flee east,” the deportations deep into areas like Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan resulted in survival. The perspective of those inside these forced migrations remained one of displacement and harsh conditions. Bulgaria is often upheld as one of the few countries that “protected” its Jewish population. This status did not extend, however, to the Bulgarian-acquired territory of Macedonia; indeed, nearly all Jews in this area were sent to their death in 1943. The fate of French Jews (and those Jews seeking refuge in France) was intimately tied to the division of the country into occupied and unoccupied zones. Additionally, the historically integrated israélite population fared far better than the juif population of eastern European heritage. A Jew in Tunisia, seemingly so far from the epicenter of the Holocaust, could find himself caught up in harrowing (if survivable) forced labor in the North African desert. Finally, the fate of Hungarian Jews—the group swept up in the last major deportations of the war—very much depended on geography and circumstance. While some Jews in greater Hungary (which now encompasses areas in Serbia, Slovakia, and Romania) were among the 450,000 deported and murdered at Auschwitz, a corpus of about one hundred thousand Jews survived the war in Budapest. The documents throughout this series highlight the very different and constantly changing circumstances of Jews against the backdrop of shifting national boundaries and local policies that acted in concert with or against larger Nazi policies, leaving Jews with few insights into what had happened, fewer into why, and none into what might happen next. This series began with the core assumption that highlighting the many voices of the victims in various forms would change our interpretation of and interaction with this highly documented history. It is well known that the Holocaust appears differently through the eyes of its victims and survivors than through those of its perpetrators, but perhaps the most profound revision lies not in the core historical narrative but in the definitions of its actors. The ingrained perpetrator, bystander, and victim categories (as delineated in Raul Hilberg’s landmark The Destruction of the European Jews [1961]) will always remain a useful and critical typology as we think through how to systematize an incredibly varied and complex set of events. At the same time, the diaries, correspondence, and community documents featured over the course of these volumes destabilize these categories somewhat. A Jewish Council member who later became a victim of deportations might appear to his fellow Jews in the postwar world as a “collaborator” and be prosecuted as such in Jewish courts. A seemingly passive victim in a concentration camp, who left a diary or last letter behind in hopes of it being found, might thereby acquire, ex post facto,

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a degree of agency not present during the war years. A witness to Nazi crimes could make all attempts to share his or her story with transnational Jewish institutions, which might (or might not) publicize its details to the world outside Europe. The documents show a multifaceted picture of previously faceless and nameless victims that belies the potential flattening of a single categorization. Similarly, the observations and perceptions of victims at the time can shed new light on the process of persecution, its agents, institutions, and driving forces, reshaping our understanding of the broader picture by showcasing what persecution meant not in abstract but in very concrete terms. We have seen in the first volume of this series how keenly aware Jews—not only leaders but also ordinary men and women—in Germany had become by the mid-1930s of the futility of clinging to the hope for a Jewish future in Germany while opportunities for emigration were dwindling. We have glimpsed predictions of catastrophe, made early in the war, that after 1945 seemed eerily close to later wartime reality but at the time appeared as delusionary—in fact as defeatist fantasy. And after the onset of organized mass murder, even some of those Jews living in the most precarious positions observed and documented behavior by and character traits among their oppressors that broaden our understanding of what might have driven those involved in executing the “Final Solution.” Yet we must acknowledge that our understanding of Holocaust history and historiography informed our choice of the documents included here. We cannot—and did not intend to—rewrite the history of this period; instead, we aimed to see it differently, based on the material available. We sought to shift the conversation away not only from the typical perpetrator perspective but also, geographically, from the typical focus on Germany and Poland. While featuring these key countries, we also include documents from areas far less studied, such as Yugoslavia, North Africa, the Netherlands, Romania, Ukraine, and other countries. This breadth sheds light on different experiences and reminds us that the Holocaust was a pan-European and global phenomenon that impacted Jewish populations in a variety of ways, indicating that integration in terms of Holocaust historiography requires much more than transcending perpetrator/victim/bystander categories. In the end, perhaps the most valuable contributions imparted by these volumes are the voices and remnants that speak from the documents themselves. Ultimately, we are left with a torrent of such voices, from many locations, experiences, and walks of life. The now famous dictum of David Graber, nineteenyear-old member of the Left Polalei Zion group in the Warsaw ghetto, perhaps serves as a fitting postscript for this series:

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What we were unable to cry and shriek out to the world we buried in the ground. [. . .] I would love to see the moment in which the great treasure will be dug up and scream the truth to the world. So the world may know all. So the ones who did not live through it may be glad, and we may feel like veterans with medals on our chest. We would be the fathers, the teachers and educators of the future. [. . .] But no, we shall certainly not live to see it, and therefore I write my last will. May the treasure fall into good hands, may it last into better times, may it alarm and alert the world to what happened [. . .] in the twentieth century. [. . .] We may now die in peace. We fulfilled our mission. May history attest for us.6

The world was not alarmed or alerted until after the murder of European Jewry, and history did not attest for Graber and others like him until even later. Here we have attempted not to mourn the loss of Jewish life in Europe or even simply to memorialize the ways in which people died. Instead, this series has endeavored to document the ways in which people lived with the varying situations placed before them. Ultimately, if that remains the sum of what we have accomplished, it will have been enough. As with the previous volumes in this series, we have benefited from the help of many individuals and institutions too numerous to list here. We are immensely grateful to the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany, the William S. and Ina Levine Foundation, and the Blum Family Foundation for their continued generous support, as well as to the Dorot Foundation for funding our summer research assistants. Dr. Alfred Munzer was again a key supporter of our project, both materially and in helping with Dutch sources. Jürgen Matthäus commented on the manuscript during critical phases and shared his expertise, time, and goodwill. Emil Kerenji’s input fine-tuned some of the author’s claims. Abigail Miller and Golan Moskowitz finished some key secondary research tasks. Kata Bohus, Anita Tarnai, Yedida Kanfer, Kathleen Luft, Tom Frydel, and Stephen Scala translated the bulk of the documents from Yiddish, Hebrew, German, French, Polish, Russian, and Hungarian; Yedida Kanfer also shared her invaluable expertise on Jewish and eastern European history. The volume has also benefited, in different ways, from the expertise of Laura Jockusch, Sara Horowitz, Aomar Boum, and Elana Jakel. Ovidiu 6. Cited in Samuel D. Kassow, Who Will Write Our History? Rediscovering a Hidden Archive from the Warsaw Ghetto (New York: Vintage Books, 2007), 3.

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Creangă, Hadar Sadeh Markin, Adam Peiperl, Jakub Smutný, Margit Meissner, Ania and Marcel Drimer, Sarah Roth, and Devin Naar have expertly provided additional translations. Holly R. Huffnagle tackled the numerous auxiliary tasks that are often invisible, yet crucial, to the publication effort. Hannah Lindahl was instrumental in the completion of this volume’s glossary entries. The book has also benefited from the involvement of many colleagues at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. We thank the staff of the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, as well as the Museum’s Library, Archives, Photo Archives, and Arts and Artifacts units. Mel Hecker and Jan Lambertz provided excellent editorial support and contributed to the manuscript in numerous substantive ways. In particular, Vadim Altskan, Brad Bauer, Lenore Bell, Judith Cohen, Ron Coleman, Rebecca Erbelding, Steven Feldman, Nancy Hartman, Radu Ioanid, Heather Kajic, Steven Kanaley, Megan Lewis, Jacek Nowakowski, Teresa Pollin, Kyra Schuster, Vincent Slatt, Suzy Snyder, Anatol Steck, and Caroline Waddell deserve sincere thanks. Paul Shapiro, director of the Mandel Center, was with the project from the very beginning and has continued to support our efforts. Nicole Frechette, Kristen Walker, Gwen Sherman, and Wrenetta Richards provided key and timely administrative support. At Rowman & Littlefield we would like to thank Susan McEachern and Elaine McGarraugh for guiding this project through the publishing process and Jennifer Kelland for her excellent copyediting skills. We are grateful to the members of the USHMM’s Academic Committee for their ongoing support. Special thanks go to Laura Jockusch (Hebrew University) and Sara Horowitz (York University), who commented on the manuscript and offered constructive suggestions. Leah Wolfson March 31, 2015

PART I

The “Final Solution” and the End of the War

I

N JANUARY 1944, the Allied assault on Germany was approaching its height. US Air Force planes dropped some 1.4 million tons of bombs on Germany and German-controlled areas.1 At the same time, the Nazi killing machine continued unabated. As outlined in the previous volume, the deportation and murder of Hungarian Jewry had just begun.2 Italian Jews continued to experience the full brunt of Nazi brutality that began in September 1943. The final liquidations from the remnants of the ghettos, such as Kovno (by now a concentration camp of its own), Łódź, and Theresienstadt, were also well underway. Forced labor—primarily of non-Jewish eastern Europeans from Poland, Ukraine, Russia, and Belorussia—had reached new heights.3 At the same time, as the concentration camp system began to unravel and the Allies advanced, forced evacuation and death marches brought about tens of thousands of deaths through active acts of genocide as well as attrition and neglect. This confluence of factors presents us with an intensely contradictory image of the final years of the war: increased production by the German war machine, a

1. Doris L. Bergen, War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), 206. 2. Emil Kerenji, Jewish Responses to Persecution, vol. 4: 1942–1943 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield in association with the USHMM, 2014). 3. For a detailed study of eastern European forced laborers, see Ulrich Herbert, Hitler’s Foreign Workers: Enforced Foreign Labor in Germany under the Third Reich (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

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punishing (and ultimately successful) Allied attack, and an increasing genocidal effort against what remained of European Jewry. When liberation finally arrived—an evolving “event” that began in the summer of 1944 on the eastern front with the advance of Soviet troops and was continued by the western Allies into the spring of 1945—the experience was far from uniform. Indeed, few encountered the now stereotypical image of the liberated Jew: emaciated men and women facing shocked servicemen eager to provide food, clothing, and shelter. For some, “liberation” merely constituted German abandonment of a camp or incarceration site; others simply emerged from hiding. Those who did directly face Allied soldiers in some capacity sometimes felt ambivalent, at best, about the experience. Ultimately, however, liberation was only the beginning; it initiated the project of reassembling one’s life—with all its newfound complications, from reconstituting families, to regaining physical health, to defining and living within the very label of “survivor”—which became the true challenge. Part I of this volume explores these issues and complexities in their many different shades and circumstances. Chapter 1, “The End of the War and the Last Throes of Genocide,” interrogates the final actions of the Nazi campaign of genocide and responses to deportations and the concentration camp system, as well as the last efforts of Jewish rescue and resistance in a variety of forms. Chapter 2, “Experiencing ‘Liberation,’” complicates our definition of what liberation looked like for those emerging from the Holocaust and those encountering it from the outside. Chapter 3, “Adjusting to Peace, Surviving Survival,” takes a thematic approach to the process, rather than the product, of “survival” in postliberation Europe and beyond. These documents show the varying wartime circumstances of survivors who defined their experience in the postwar world. “Survival,” therefore, does not constitute one moment or even a discrete period; instead, it is an evolving, dynamic, continuous process that becomes an ongoing, daily effort.

CHAPTER 1

The End of the War and the Last Throes of Genocide

B

Y JANUARY 1944, the gruesome death toll of European Jewry was in the process of being tallied: over 1.5 million Jews killed in mass shootings; more than 800,000 dead in ghettos as a result of German-imposed starvation and rampant disease; some 2 million killed in the “Aktion Reinhard” camps located in Poland.1 As discussed in Volume 4 of this series, in the spring of 1944 the deportation to Auschwitz and murder of over 450,000 Hungarian Jews was yet to come.2 These deportations occurred with such speed that a new ramp was constructed at Auschwitz to shuttle trains directly into the camp to do away with the long walk between the train station and the selection site.3 Other mass deportations also continued. In Slovakia, the German invasion followed the August 1944 uprising against the collaborationist government. That occupation resulted in the deportation of over twelve thousand Slovakian Jews to Auschwitz.4 The concentration

1. Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 3rd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 3:1301. 2. See Emil Kerenji, Jewish Responses to Persecution, vol. 4: 1942–1943 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield in association with the USHMM, 2014), ch. 10; Zoltán Vági, László Csősz, and Gábor Kádár, The Holocaust in Hungary: Evolution of a Genocide (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press in association with the USHMM, 2013). 3. For a complete history of the Holocaust in Hungary, see Randolph L. Braham, The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press in association with the USHMM, 2000); Randolph L. Braham, The Geographical Encyclopedia of the Holocaust in Hungary (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press in association with USHMM, 2013); Vági, Csősz, and Kádár, The Holocaust in Hungary. 4. For more on the Holocaust in Slovakia, see Jan Lánĭček, Czechs, Slovaks and the Jews, 1938–48: Beyond Idealisation and Condemnation (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2013). 3

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camp in Kovno remained in operation until July 1944, when the Jews who had survived years of forced labor and been spared mass execution were now deported to the Dachau and Stutthof concentration camps. In the ghetto’s final days, the Germans razed it to the ground, burning and shooting more than two thousand Jews in the process.5 The Łódź ghetto was spared deportations for an unprecedented period, from September 1942 to May 1944. However, in the summer of 1944, deportations resumed, and many of the seventy-five thousand surviving Jews were sent to the Chełmno death camp, with the remainder transported to Auschwitz.6 In his diary, an anonymous boy from Łódź wrote on June 14, 1944, in Yiddish, “The human language is too poor to describe the suffering of Jews in the ghettos of 1944. Where would the expressions come from, the descriptions, the adjectives, that could only superficially describe our pain? Can one strum tunelessly what one hears when a musician plays a harmonious tune on a violin? With our writing we can only give an inkling of what [. . .].”7 The entry stops there abruptly, leaving the reader to speculate about what its anonymous writer might have meant. In addition to these deportations in central and eastern Europe, transports of Jews from Italy, France, and the Netherlands also continued throughout the year. Amid these rampant deportations, rescue, resistance, and escape efforts continued both within and outside Europe. By this time, the larger portrait (if not necessarily the details) of persecution and genocide had made its way outside Europe. For example, Slovakian Jews Rudolf Vrba8 and Alfréd Wetzler9 com5. For a full history of the Kovno and Vilna ghettos, see Yitzhak Arad, Ghetto in Flames: The Struggle and Destruction of the Jews in Vilna in the Holocaust (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1980). 6. For details about the Łódź ghetto, see Isaiah Trunk, Łódź Ghetto: A History, ed. by Robert Moses Shapiro (Bloomington: Indiana University Press in association with the USHMM, 2006). 7. Alexandra Zapruder, ed., Salvaged Pages: Young Writers’ Diaries of the Holocaust (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), 372. 8. Rudolf Vrba (orig. Walter Rosenberg; 1924–2006) was born in Topolcany, Czechoslovakia and barred from school as a Jew in 1939; he worked as a laborer until 1942. He was deported first to Majdanek and then to Auschwitz, where he worked in the “Canada” unit processing confiscated goods. He and Alfréd Wetzler made their way back to Slovakia in April 1944 and detailed what they had witnessed at the camp. After the war Vrba studied in Prague and became a distinguished medical researcher, eventually settling in Canada as a professor of biochemistry. He published a memoir of his Holocaust ordeal in 1963 and was interviewed for Claude Lanzmann’s 1985 documentary Shoah. See obituaries, New York Times, April 7, 2006, C10, and Guardian (Manchester), April 13, 2006. 9. Alfréd Wetzler (1918–1988) was a working-class Slovak Jew from Trnava. He was sent to Auschwitz II–Birkenau in the spring of 1942, probably after spending time in the Sered’ camp. He worked as an editor for a time immediately after the end of the war and later wrote several accounts of his experiences, in part under the pseudonym Jozef Lánik. See USHMM ITS Collection Data Base Central Name Index.

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posed the now famous Auschwitz protocols (also known as the Vrba-Wetzler Report) in April 1944 upon their escape from Auschwitz. The report was translated into English and released to the American War Refugee Board in November. Vrba and Wetzler outlined the extermination process at Auschwitz in great detail, even providing maps of the camp complex. Prior to the report’s translation into English, however, the European press had already discussed its details widely, leading to coverage by English-language outlets that confirmed the existence of Nazi death camps.10 With these and other reports of genocide, pressure mounted for Allied action on behalf of the remaining Jews of Europe. At the same time, rescue and resistance efforts continued outside official Allied efforts. While efforts to rescue Jews persisted and deportations progressed, the concentration camp system itself was undergoing massive transformation. What was once thought to be a small cadre of concentration and forced labor camps we now know was a vast network of over forty thousand sites that stretched throughout German-occupied territory.11 With the Allied advance into German-controlled areas, the daily operations of these camps descended into disarray and chaos. With the coming of Allied troops, death marches began in the summer of 1944, as the Germans attempted to move prisoners away from the front lines. These marches could cover hundreds of miles and each resulted in thousands of deaths from attrition and open-air shooting. Ultimately, then, these final months of the war remained a time of intense uncertainty. How to navigate and evaluate the various scenarios Jews faced— resistance, escape, deportation, concentration camp, or death march—was far from obvious. Throughout the documents in this chapter, we see a complex set of considerations, observations, and tactics that resulted in a wide range of outcomes. Indeed, the individuals highlighted here speak to how these outcomes operated in everyday life. Survival, even during what we now know were the last throes of the war, was hardly assured. In the end, daily reality was far more complicated and treacherous than we can imagine from the comfortable position of hindsight. 10. For more information about the report, see Alfréd Wetzler, Escape from Hell: The True Story of the Auschwitz Protocol (New York: Berghahn Books, 2007); Rudolf Vrba, I Escaped from Auschwitz (London: Robson, 2006). 11. The continuing series The Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, a project of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum published by Indiana University Press, has been instrumental in illuminating the vast extent of the camp system. Geoffrey P. Megargee, ed., The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, vol. 1: Early Camps, Youth Camps, and Concentration Camps and Subcamps under the SSBusiness Administration Main Office (WVHA) (Bloomington: Indiana University Press in association with the USHMM, 2009).

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RESISTANCE, RESCUE, AND ESCAPE Although the vast majority of ghettos in the east had, by 1944, been completely liquidated, pockets of organized resistance still remained throughout Germandominated Europe. Yitzhak Zuckerman was one of the leaders of the Jewish Fighting Organization (Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa, ŻOB) responsible for the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in April 1943. As a young man in Vilna, Zuckerman was part of the Hashomer Hatzair Young Pioneer movement, a heavily Zionist youth movement that used Hebrew language as its primary means of communication and advocated for settlement in Palestine. During the war, Zuckerman continued his affiliation with Hashomer Hatzair in both Sovietoccupied eastern Poland and Warsaw, where he maintained an underground Jewish press. In July 1942, Zuckerman was instrumental in the formation of ŻOB. In preparation for the uprising, Zuckerman escaped to the “Aryan side” of Warsaw on April 13, 1943, in order to negotiate arms from the Polish Home Army. On April 19, Passover, he was blocked from returning to the ghetto and watched as the uprising took place and the ghetto burned to the ground. Zuckerman spent the remainder of the war in hiding and “passing” on the “Aryan side” of the city.12 The letter in document 1-1, written by Zuckerman (codename “Antek”) and his wife, Zivia Lubetkin, to Hashomer Hatzair colleagues in Slovakia, speaks to their hope for future survival in Palestine.13 The members of the Hashomer Hatzair youth movement from Slovakia and Poland escaped to Hungary in March 1942. The collaborationist government in Slovakia had consented to the large-scale deportations of Jews to Auschwitz, Majdanek, and Sobibór. At this point some six thousand Slovakian Jews fled to Hungary, where Zionist youth groups aided them. The Zionist youth groups were 12. Michael R. Marrus, “Ghetto Fighter: Yitzhak Zuckerman and the Jewish Underground in Warsaw,” American Scholar 64, no. 2 (spring 1995): 277–84. 13. Zivia Lubetkin (1914–1978) was born in Byten near Słonim (now in Belarus) and became a leading figure in the Zionist organization Dror and Hashomer Hatzair in Warsaw. She was part of the city’s armed ghetto underground, ŻOB, during the war and fought in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. She later escaped through the sewers to the “Aryan” side and fought with the ŻOB unit in the Polish uprising in the city the following year. She immigrated to Palestine in 1946, cofounded the Ghetto Fighters’ kibbutz, served on the executive of the Jewish Agency, and wrote her memoirs. See Barbara Engelking and Jacek Leociak, The Warsaw Ghetto: A Guide to the Perished City (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 826; Yitzhak Zuckerman, A Surplus of Memory: Chronicle of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, ed. Barbara Harshav (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), esp. 4n11, 5; Zivia Lubetkin, In the Days of Destruction and Revolt (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad and Am Oved, 1981).

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able to operate fairly freely from 1942 to 1944.14 By 1944, German authorities had quelled an uprising by Slovakian underground resistance and assumed power in the region, deporting over twelve thousand Slovakian Jews to Auschwitz between September and December 1944. 15 Escape routes existed from Hungary through Romania, chiefly through the cities of Koloszvár (present-day Cluj, Romania), Nagyvárad (present-day Oradea, Romania), and Békéscaba, Hungary.16 From there, these groups smuggled Jews to Turkey and then on to Palestine. This option existed through March 1944, after the German invasion of Hungary. The journey carried with it many different dangers as escapees had to cross several checkpoints with false papers. The smugglers who aided in this effort charged exorbitant rates, as the letter notes. Even when Jews could procure passage to Romania, Romanian gendarmes often still arrested them at the border, despite preset and prepaid arrangements and bribes. Overall, however, this network of Zionist organizations helped between two and six thousand Hungarian Jews escape across the border to Romania and to relative safety between April and June 1944.17 DOCUMENT 1-1: Letters from Zivia Lubetkin and Yitzhak Zuckerman on the “Aryan side” of Warsaw to members in the Hashomer Hatzair movement in Slovakia, January 6, 1944, USHMMA RG 68.112M (Selected Records from the Ghetto Fighter’s House), reel 33, file 2001 (translated from Hebrew).

Dear friends. We received your letter. Many thanks. We are touched by your concerns about our survival. To our regret, despite our desire, we will not all be able to come to you. We are engaged here in work of rescue and defense, the lives of thousands of Jews and our honor depend upon our work. 14. Asher Cohen, “He-Halutz Underground in Hungary: March–August 1944,” in Jewish Resistance to the Holocaust (The Nazi Holocaust), ed. Michael R. Marrus (Westport, CT: Meckler, 1989), 7:362–64. 15. For more information on the Holocaust in Slovakia, see Holly Case, “Territorial Revision and the Holocaust: Hungary and Slovakia during World War II,” in Lessons and Legacies VIII: From Generation to Generation, ed. Doris L. Bergen (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2008), 222–44; Yeshayahu A. Jelinek, “Slovaks and the Holocaust: Attempts at Reconciliation,” East European Jewish Affairs 19, no. 1 (1989): 57–68; Abraham Frieder, “To Deliver Their Souls: The Struggle of a Young Rabbi during the Holocaust,” ed. Emanuel Frieder (New York: Holocaust Library, 1991). 16. Cohen, “He-Halutz Underground,” 367. 17. Ibid., 367–82.

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Chapter 1 We are thankful to you from the bottom of our hearts and to the rest of our friends who are there. Perhaps the day will come when we will see each other. Who knows. We will try to have Zivia come to you—may it only come to pass. [illegible] left over a couple of months ago for Hannover, to a concentration camp for foreign citizens, and there is no news of him. As we’ve heard, all the Jews have been transported to Auschwitz and killed. Are you in contact with [illegible] in Switzerland and Yosef Kornianski in Hungary?18 Do you have contact with the group of our members who arrived from Zagłębie [Dąbrowskie19] and Hungary? We ask of you please to remain in contact with us as long as the conditions will allow. You are obliged to help us in the organization of the apparatus, in the search for border smugglers so that we will be able to send over to you children, young people, and a small number of activists who are still living. This man wanted to take only me and Zivia for free. For the others he wants 100 dollars in gold per person. This is an enormous sum. According to our finances we have about 65.00 [dollars] per person. Terrible and frightful. These sums will not allow us a mass exodus. And all of us want to live—if we’ve lived until now. Remember: the fate of the remnants of Israel in Poland hangs in your work. Do everything in order to help us. If there is a possibility, give news to the Land of Israel about us. We live and work on behalf of the Place [the land of Israel]. In the name of the survivors. Yitzhak Zuckerman Zivia Lubetkin January 6, 1944. P.S. Are there Hashomer Hatzair people among you?

After the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the remaining members of ŻOB went underground on the “Aryan side” of the city. Other Jewish resistance movements in urban centers operated in a similar fashion by blending in or merging with resistance efforts. French Jewish communists represent one such example. 18. Yosef Kornianski was born in Białystok and was active in organizing the Hashomer Hatzair underground movement in Poland when the occupation began. He later aided the Jewish resistance elsewhere, first in Slovakia in 1941 and then in Hungary. He continued on to Palestine in early 1944. Some of his 1944 memoirs appeared in a Hebrew-language publication, On a Halutz Mission. See Zuckerman, A Surplus of Memory, 41n7, 95–96; Lubetkin, In the Days of Destruction and Revolt, 314. 19. Geographical region in southern Poland.

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French Jewish resistance movements arose in the summer of 1940 immediately on the heels of German occupation. The underground resistance movements that arose involved, by and large, the Yiddish-speaking “immigrant” (or juif) populations rather than the “native” Jewish (or israélite) population. Most of these resistance efforts occurred within the Jewish communist movement. Although the Jewish communist movement was part of the larger international communist movement, it still remained largely isolated.20 The Solidarity (Solidarité) group consisted of local French communist groups, including Jews, that remained active throughout the war. After the roundups of July 1942, Solidarity’s numbers, largely dependent on immigrant Jews, fell dramatically. Nevertheless, its resistance activities and commitment to the dissemination of information continued, if at somewhat diminished strength.21 The final arrests of Jews in Paris took place in February 1944. In January 1944, Jewish communists and Zionists formed the Comité d’Union et des Défense des Juifs (United Jewish Defense Committee) in Paris for the purpose of assisting legal and illegal Jews in Germany.22 In addition to these armed resistance measures, and in the years following the mass deportations of 1942, Jewish communist movements aimed to disseminate as much information as possible about the evolving atrocities. Underground newspapers appeared in French and Yiddish. Approximately seven underground presses circulated three to fifteen thousand copies each. These publications were thus meant to appeal to the French communist public. The newspapers called for immediate action in the form of armed struggle and declared those who died for the cause to be martyrs. To that end, they framed the present struggles in terms of a larger trajectory of Jewish suffering. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising thus resonated particularly, as did the anniversary of the July 1942 Paris roundups. On the anniversaries of both occasions, these periodicals called on young Jewish communists to violently respond. In addition to advocating armed resistance, the papers also served as repositories for information about the deportations between 1942 and 1944. Although published after the August 1944 liberation of Paris, the issue excerpted in document 1-2 speaks to broader concerns about solidarity among both a specifically Jewish and a global communist audience. Indeed, this and other communist Jewish periodicals did not necessarily view Nazism as a war against Jews exclusively. At the same time, they viewed the 20. Jacques Adler, The Jews of Paris and the Final Solution: Communal Response and Internal Conflicts, 1940–1944 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 165–70. 21. Ibid., 200–6. 22. Ibid., 219–20.

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Jewish struggle as part of a larger whole to rescue a certain worldview and system of values that had come under daily threat.23 DOCUMENT 1-2: Notre Voix, underground newspaper, Paris, September 1944, 3–6 (translated from Yiddish).

Warsaw needs help. Poland was the first country attacked by German fascism and therefore became the symbol of the struggle against Hitlerism. Over the course of these long five years, the Polish masses have not stopped fighting the German occupier for one minute—in Poland itself and anywhere they’ve had the opportunity. It is not an exaggeration to say that proportionally, the Poles have incurred the largest number of casualties for their national liberation. It is therefore not surprising that they elicit great admiration in all anti-Fascist lands and have aroused the warmest sympathies. The closer the victorious Soviet armies approached the Polish borders, the more mighty did the Polish resistance movement become. And when the Soviet cannons could finally be heard in Praga,24 the entire patriotic population of Warsaw sensed that the hour of reckoning with the despised German occupation had come, and the bloody uprising broke out in Warsaw—the uprising that had been long prepared by the Polish patriots. In the first days of the uprising, the Polish freedom fighters took control of almost all of Warsaw and caused immense losses for the Hitlerites. But the Hitlerites do not stop at any means in order to be the masters of Warsaw once again. They bombard the population from the air, set whole streets of houses on fire, murder women and children, but the insurgents have now held large parts of Warsaw for forty-some days. The Warsaw population, which has such a heroic tradition in struggle against foreign occupiers, manifests an inhuman strength. Incidentally, 23. Renée Poznanski, Jews in France during World War II (Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press in association with the USHMM, 2001), 347–51. 24. A district of Warsaw, located on the east bank of the Vistula.

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Jewish fighting groups also take part in these battles. Yet we must not leave Warsaw without help in the uneven fight with the Hitler beast. Every day Warsaw calls for help! England expressed its readiness to give help, and from time to time it sends airplanes to Warsaw with ammunition, foodstuff, and medicine. But the area between Italy and Warsaw is quite large, and if the Moscow government would allow English airplanes to use Soviet airfields, the help could become regular and more effective. Unfortunately this is not the case, and Warsaw struggles on its own and calls desperately for help. Many commit the regretful mistake of identifying Polish anti-Semites with the Polish nation, and they transfer their justified hatred of the clerical and landowning circles to the whole Polish nation with its democratic wing—which always fought against anti-Semitism, Piłsudski’s regime,25 and fascism. Bloody pogroms have been carried out against Jews in Poland since 1939, and reaction and persecution have reigned there. Yet one cannot make the whole Polish people responsible for this—a people who have suffered enough—and of course not the present Warsaw fighters, who go off in blood, in battle with our common enemy, fascism,26 and are left without help. It is also advisable to remember the great assistance that the Polish population in Warsaw gave the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto, during their heroic struggles with the Fascists. The current Polish government in London, which consists of representatives from all the parties that fought in 1939 with weapons in hand against the German occupiers, and which is incidentally only a provisional one, nevertheless has the moral and factual right to represent Poland, because during the entire time that it has been in exile, it has organized and led the struggle with the [illegible] both in Poland itself and outside its borders. It is recognized, by the way, by England, America, and a series of 25. Refers to Józef Piłsudski (1867–1935), leader of the Second Polish Republic (1926– 1935). A nationalist leader who fought for Poland’s independence, he advocated for a multicultural, multiethnic nation. At the same time, from 1926 to 1935, he served a primarily dictatorial role in Poland. For more information about Piłsudski and his legacy, see Joshua D. Zimmerman, “Józef Piłsudski and the ‘Jewish Question’, 1892–1905,” East European Jewish Affairs 28, no. 1 (1998): 87–107. 26. Emphasis in the original.

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Chapter 1 other democratic lands. The fact that there are anti-Semitic elements in the Polish government does not mean that we should be indifferent to the struggle that Warsaw conducts against the beast, against the very murderers of the Jewish ghettos in Poland. The representatives of 14 million American workers turned to Roosevelt with the request that the Allies should send help to Warsaw, English workers demand the same. Let us unite our voice with this just demand.

While armed resistance continued through 1944, so did rescue efforts, even at this late stage. The efforts of Jewish businessman and diplomat George Mantello (George Mandel), unknown until fairly recently, stand out as notable. Mantello was a Hungarian Jewish businessman who later became first secretary to the consul general of El Salvador (Colonel José Arturo Castellanos), stationed in Switzerland.27 Mantello held this position during the war and proceeded to use it to create false Salvadoran citizenship documents for Jews throughout occupied Europe. These notarized certificates even made their way to French internment camps, Theresienstadt, and Auschwitz via diplomatic courier. Those with certificates did not necessarily escape internment. While some gained entry to Switzerland, others were sent to a special camp within BergenBelsen designated for foreign nationals. At this late stage of the war, German authorities showed a limited, but nonetheless present, tendency to negotiate a more lenient stance toward deportations in some instances. We should not, however, misunderstand this change in the interest of political expediency as a sweeping modification of policy. In the midst of a losing war effort, the Nazi regime deported 450,000 Hungarian Jews to their deaths.28 Indeed, not all Mantello certificates were honored, and some did not arrive in time to save their intended recipients. In total, Mantello issued an estimated five thousand or so citizenship certificates.29 27. George Mantello (orig. Mandl or Mandel; 1901–1992) came from a prosperous Jewish family in the Transylvania region. He joined the Revisionist Zionist movement as a young man and embarked on a series of successful business ventures that took him throughout central Europe before the war. After escaping to Geneva in the early 1940s, he devoted himself to rescue work, using his position as honorary consul to El Salvador to issue Salvadoran citizenship papers to thousands of Jews. Mantello and his brother Josef also played an instrumental role in publicizing the so-called Auschwitz protocols. See David Kranzler, The Man Who Stopped the Trains to Auschwitz: George Mantello, El Salvador, and Switzerland’s Finest Hour (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000), esp. 9–14, 28, 228ff.; obituary, New York Times, May 6, 1992, B16. 28. See Kerenji, Jewish Responses to Persecution, 4: ch. 10. 29. For more information, see Kranzler, The Man Who Stopped the Trains to Auschwitz.

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The certificate shown in document 1-3 was issued to Isaak and Berta Herzberg, interned in Theresienstadt. It claims that both Berta (born in Vienna) and Isaak (born in Poland) hold Salvadoran citizenship and are therefore entitled to emigrate.30 DOCUMENT 1-3: Visa for Isaak and Berta Herzberg to enter the Republic of El Salvador, January 11, 1944, USHMMPA WS# 05794 (translated from French).

Consulate General of the Republic of El Salvador Geneva, Switzerland Dosier H. 66/944 Certificate of Nationality The Consulate General of the Republic of El Salvador (Central America) confirms by those present that: Mr. HERZBERG, ISAAK, born 22/6 1887 in Poland and his daughter Miss. HERZBERG, BERTA, born 25/9 1931 in Vienna, are recognized as citizens of the Republic of El Salvador with all of the rights and privileges inherent in this nationality. If the interested parties wish to consider emigration, they may notify the Consulate General of their intention on this subject, and send a recent passport photo of each family member. These photos should bear legal certification by a competent authority or an official [government] minister. Geneva, the 11th of January 1944

30. The certificates were probably not enough to save the Herzbergs from further deportation. A Herzberg family from Vienna, consisting of Isaak (b. 1881 in Lubaczów, Poland), Berta (b. 1931 in Vienna), and Chana (b. 1889 in Błażowa, Poland), was transferred to Theresienstadt on October 1, 1942, and then sent on to Auschwitz on October 19, 1944. It is unclear why Chana’s name did not appear on the Mandel-Mantello certificate as well. The birthdates for Isaak and Berta may have been listed inaccurately on the certificates. No traces of Chana and Isaak emerged after the war, but Berta appeared in one postwar survivors’ list for Theresienstadt; her postwar home is unclear. See USHMM ITS Collection Data Base Central Name Index.

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Chapter 1 [Signature: G. Mantello] First Secretary to the Consulate General Mr. Isaak Herzberg, Miss. Berta Herzberg, Theresienstadt L 418 PROTECTORATE

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At the same time as these singular, individual rescue efforts, large-scale Jewish organizations abroad also urged action on the part of foreign governments. By 1944, the situation of Hungarian Jewry was their foremost concern. Hungarian Jewish men had, up to this point, been subjected to forced labor imposed by the collaborationist government of Admiral Miklós Horthy; in addition, Hungarian Jewry suffered under harsh antisemitic laws that seized their assets and limited their movement. With the German occupation of Hungary on March 19, 1944, and the government’s subsequent cooperation, the situation worsened. Thus, Jewish organizations in the United States, Britain, Switzerland, and Palestine scrambled to assemble a response. For the Jewish community in the United States, this action took many forms, including active outreach to American government organizations. Document 1-4, a report from the Interim Committee and the Commission on Rescue of the American Jewish Conference, represents one such lobbying effort. Ultimately, much lobbying and campaigning from 1942 through 1944 resulted in the formation of a rescue agency by executive order on January 22, 1944: the War Refugee Board (WRB). The War Refugee Board, with its explicit mandate to rescue European Jewry, emerged only after the efforts of Henry Morgenthau Jr. revealed years of systemic antisemitism on the part of the US State Department. Specifically, Morgenthau uncovered actions by the assistant secretary of state in charge of visa applications, Samuel Miller Breckinridge Long, that had led to admissions well below quota for refugees from central and eastern Europe (specifically Jewish refugees) since 1933. The WRB, then, under the direction of John Pehle,31 was established “to take all measures in its authority to rescue the victims of oppressions in immediate threat of death and to provide those victims with all aid consistent with the successful prosecution of the war.”32 The following report submitted to the War Refugee Board argues for imminent rescue of Europe’s remaining Jewish population, a direct affront to the stated policy of “rescue through victory” at the time.33 While specifically noting the particular 31. John W. Pehle (1909–1999) was a Yale-educated lawyer serving as an assistant to the secretary of the Treasury. He returned to his Treasury position in early 1945 and went into private practice soon after the war ended; Brigadier-General William O’Dwyer succeeded him on the board. See Richard Breitman and Alan M. Kraut, American Refugee Policy and European Jewry, 1933–1945 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 191–202; obituary, Washington Post, March 27, 1999, B5. 32. For more information on the War Refugee Board, its formation, and the factors influencing its founding, see Ariel Hurwitz, “The Struggle over the Creation of the War Refugee Board,” H&GS 6, no. 1 (1991): 17–31. 33. For a survey of the American Jewish community response during the Holocaust, see Deborah E. Lipstadt, “America and the Holocaust,” Review of Developments in Modern Jewish Studies, pt. 1, Modern Judaism 10, no. 3 (October 1990): 283–96.

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urgency of the Hungarian Jewish dilemma, the report calls upon the WRB to lift current refugee restrictions and provide safe haven for surviving Jews in Europe more generally. Ultimately, although the WRB acted late and its reach was limited, we can attribute some success to its formation. Together with other Jewish organizations, the WRB helped to fund Raoul Wallenberg’s famous rescue effort, which saved roughly fifty thousand Budapest Jews.34 In the summer of 1944, approximately 983 refugees (918 of them Jewish) from an internment camp in southern Italy were brought to Fort Ontario in Oswego, New York.35 The types of broad-reaching efforts advocated in this report, however, were never implemented. DOCUMENT 1-4: Report of the Interim Committee and the Commission on Rescue, Commission on Palestine, Commission on Post-War, to the delegates of the American Jewish Conference, November 1, 1944 (New York: American Jewish Conference, 1944), 53–57.

Memorandum Submitted to the War Refugee Board by the Executive Committee of the Commission on Rescue, April 13, 1944 We understand that the War Refugee Board is giving serious consideration to a proposal that a refugee rescue camp be established in the United States to provide an immediate sanctuary for refugees who may be in a position to escape or who have already escaped from Hitler-dominated Europe. On behalf of the American Jewish Conference, we urge approval of this plan. When the Conference convened in New York last fall, its delegates representing every major national Jewish organization and every Jewish community in the United States, unanimously adopted a resolution which declared: “The democracies should recognize and proclaim the right of temporary asylum for every surviving Jewish man, woman, and child who can escape from the Hitlerite fury into the territories of the United Nations.” Establishment of a refugee rescue camp in this country would be a welcome response to this plea and would constitute an instrument of salvation not only for those who might be brought here but for thousands who 34. Breitman and Kraut, American Refugee Policy and European Jewry, 1933–1945, 214. 35. Ibid., 198–99.

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might be helped to escape by other countries which would be encouraged to follow our country’s example. It is our conviction that many Jews who have perished at the hands of Hitler during the past few years might have been saved had they been permitted a destination. So long as doors remained closed, everywhere, Jews were trapped and were unable to escape the Nazi hangmen. In the last four weeks, two more doors have been shut. Hitler has occupied Hungary and almost a million Jews there are now in the Nazi trap and may be doomed to die. Escape from Hungary may now be impossible. Simultaneously, the provisions of the White Paper of 1939 have become operative, and Palestine is now closed to all but some 25,000. The crisis calls for the opening of a new door. During recent months, our government has assumed the initiative in rescue work. The establishment of the War Refugee Board was recognition of the magnitude of the problem and the need for action. Within the last fortnight, President Roosevelt’s warnings to the Nazis and his appeal to all nations to assist refugees constituted a declaration to the world36 that our country had enlisted completely in this humanitarian work and was prepared to adopt the heroic measures which must be carried out if the War Refugee Board is to be effective. It is our belief that the lifting of administrative restrictions which now bar admissions to refugees to this country should occupy a high place on the Board’s agenda. The admission of refugees on a temporary basis is entirely feasible. The refugees can be screened upon arrival. They can be given useful work in rescue camps and thus be enabled to make a contribution to the war effort of the United Nations. Their temporary settlement here will relieve existing burdens on neutral countries where they are now sheltered and thus make it possible for these countries to admit new refugees. 36. On March 24, 1944, President Franklin Roosevelt issued a statement that not only specifically condemned “the slaughters of Warsaw, Lidice, Krakόw, and Nanking” but also explicitly mentioned “the wholesale systematic murder of the Jews of Europe [that] goes on unabated every hour.” For more information about Roosevelt and his attitudes toward Jews and the Holocaust, see Richard Breitman and Allan J. Lichtman, FDR and the Jews (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013).

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Chapter 1 Above all, the establishment of a refugee camp here would constitute a great psychological defeat for Hitlerism, a moral victory for humanity. If there are millions of people in Hitler-occupied Europe who have been opposed to Hitler’s barbarous war of extermination against the Jews, they will be encouraged in their resistance by the knowledge that America is actively supporting them, by the knowledge that those whom they may help escape will be assisted to a place of shelter. [. . .] Rescue Program Adopted at a mass meeting July 31, 1944, sponsored by the American Jewish Conference in New York Meeting in the shadow of a tragedy unparalleled in human history, this great gathering of American Jews reaffirms its deep faith in the cause for which the Armed Forces of our nation and those of our gallant allies are shedding their blood on all battlefields. As a result of their magnificent achievements, the day of liberation for all the enslaved peoples of the world has been hastened and is almost at hand. Heartened as we are by these signs of an approaching victory, we are nevertheless moved to despair when we contemplate that by the time the war will be won, the largest part of the Jewish populations in Europe may have been exterminated. For millions have already been put to death and those who survive live in danger of a similar fate. The openly avowed threat of the Nazi regime to destroy every last Jew in the territories under its control today assumes gruesome reality. Meeting under the open sky in this free City of New York, we call Heaven and Earth to witness that civilization will have suffered an overwhelming defeat if Hitler is allowed to achieve his purpose. For the Jew in every land under Nazi Control was the first target of Hitler’s attack on that land and subsequently on civilization itself. We declare that it is not yet too late to deny victory to Nazism also on this front and thus save thousands upon thousands for the day of liberation. [. . .] We solemnly declare that every hour of delay in implementing these measures increases the agony and suffering of those Jews who are still under Axis domination and adds new thousands to the death toll.

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We cannot remain silent. We demand and confidently expect that the United States and the other United Nations37 will move swiftly to rescue those who can still be saved, and punish the guilty for their inhuman crimes. The civilized world must act before it is too late.

THE LAST DEPORTATIONS, 1944–1945 At the same time as rescue and resistance efforts continued, so too did deportations from the remaining ghettos of eastern Europe. In July 1944, approximately fifty thousand Lithuanian Jews remained alive. About thirty-three thousand lived under occupation, and approximately ten thousand Jews remained in Kovno in the Kauen concentration camp that replaced the ghetto in the fall of 1943. At the same time, Jews from the region were deported to forced labor camps in Estonia. Those deemed unfit for work—namely, children and the elderly—were deported to Auschwitz, where most were murdered. During the war, Kovno was also home to one of the most active armed ghetto organizations. As the Soviet army liberated Vilna, the Jews of Kovno debated two primary courses of action: escaping en masse or going into hiding. However, instead of heading west toward Kovno, the Soviet army turned south in the direction of Grodno. On July 12, 1944, the Germans began the evacuation of Kovno, together with Jews from nearby labor camps, to concentration camps in the Reich. In the ghetto, the evacuation proceeded house by house, as the Germans burned and exploded buildings. By July 14 and 15, 1944, they had destroyed all remaining structures, oftentimes with the inhabitants inside. When the Russians entered the ghetto on August 1, 1944, Kovno was still burning.38 Document 1-5 presents a short selection of the memoirs of Meilach Lubocki, a survivor of the Kovno ghetto and surrounding forced labor camps. The memoir, dated September 20, 1945, describes the ghetto (including its last days); Lubocki’s deportation to Port Kunda, Estonia, for forced labor in 1943; and his final deportations to Stutthof and then Magdeburg, where he was ultimately liberated.39 In this selection from August 1944, Lubocki describes 37. Allies of World War II, so named from January 1, 1942, including twenty-four countries, governments-in-exile, and colonies. 38. Dov Levin, “July 1944—the Crucial Month for the Remnants of Lithuanian Jewry,” in The End of the Holocaust (The Nazi Holocaust), ed. Michael R. Marrus (Westport, CT: Meckler, 1989), 9:447–56. 39. Lubocki (1901–1971) was born in Vilna [Vilnius], Lithuania. He and his wife, Malka (1906–1994), immigrated to the United States after the war, arriving in early 1949. See USHMM ITS Collection Data Base Central Name Index.

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in detail the final liquidation of the ghetto and his subsequent transport. His memoir contains over one hundred pages, handwritten, in Yiddish, on the back of multiple copies of the same concert program for the Munich Philharmonic dated August 31, 1945. Lubocki’s memoir therefore speaks not only to his own experience but also to the conditions of the document’s creation in the postwar displaced persons (DP) camps. Chapter 5 discusses daily life and the conditions in these camps, as well as the issues surrounding them. DOCUMENT 1-5: Memoir of Meilach Lubocki of Kovno, Lithuania, written in Landsberg DP camp, September 20, 1945, 40–51 (translated from Yiddish).

August 1944. When the Russians occupied Kovno, people in the camp began to say that all camps in Estonia would be liquidated, and we would be sent to work in Germany.40 We had no great trust in these rumors. People said we would be taken by boat, and we would be drowned at sea. 40. For more information on Port Kunda, see Anton Weiss-Wendt, Murder without Hatred: Estonians and the Holocaust (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2009), 257, 297–98. The Jews in this camp most likely worked in the town’s cement plant and in a rock quarry.

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We were supposed to have departed the 5th or 6th of August, so several individuals in the camp hid, 5 men and 2 women. If we had indeed departed, they would have remained in their “hideouts.” But it turned out that there were no means of transport available, so we remained to work further. And all those who had hid came out of their hideouts a few days later. On August 10th, the senior squad leader [Oberscharführer] and “famous” Dr. Betman came to the camp.41 Ordered a roll call, lined us up, and said in a kindhearted fashion that our camp was being liquidated, and we would have to walk by foot for several days. They want to be good [to us], so the younger and older would go with them to the new camp by truck. And all the rest would go by foot to the new camp in several days. They had a list of those who were older than 50 years old. They didn’t even look at these individuals and ordered them to stand off to the side. 8 men. Then they inspected our rows and stood 31 men and 3 women off to the side together. Among them were some younger persons but mostly middle-aged, strong, healthy men. So they thought they were being taken to a second camp. Because there was one case [person], there stood a father off to the side, about 45 years old. So his son of 18 years asked to go with him because he had a bad foot, it would be hard for him to walk. They granted him the favor, and he drove with them. A second case was where they stood a son of 17 years off to the side, so his father asked to go together with his son, gave the excuse that he felt weak; they took him with them as well. A third case was when a father went with them, and his son also wanted to go with them, so they took him for no reason at all. These 34 men were taken by truck (as we later found out) into a forest, and all were killed. They performed similar tricks like that in all the camps in Estonia prior to the evacuation. And they exterminated 10–15% of the Jews. About 12,000 persons were transported into Estonia from the Vilna ghetto and about 3,000 persons from the Kovno ghetto. Only 6–7,000 41. Probably Dr. Franz von Bodmann (1908–1945), concentration camp doctor and SS-Obersturmführer. Born in Württemberg, he joined the Nazi Party and the SS in the early 1930s, then served as a doctor in the Majdanek camp (July 1941); the Auschwitz camp (1942), where he developed use of phenol injections to kill prisoners; the Neuengamme camp (1942), where he killed Soviet POWs with Zyklon-B gas; the Natzweiler-Struthof camp; and the Vaivara camp in Estonia and its subcamps from the autumn of 1943, where he served as chief physician. He committed suicide just after the end of the war. See Ernst Klee, Das Personenlexikon zum Dritten Reich. Wer war was vor und nach 1945 (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2005), 57–58; Weiss-Wendt, Murder without Hatred, 298.

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Chapter 1 persons were transported out to Germany. All camps in Estonia were evacuated except for one camp, “Kloga”;42 they had no time to transport people out, and exterminated everyone on the spot, about 1,800 persons (some survived). So that more than half of those who came from the ghettos died or were exterminated in the camps of Estonia. August 17th, 1944. We were already at our workplaces when suddenly, around 11 a.m., all have to go [back] to the camp. We came, and at 2 o’clock in the afternoon we left on a train in the direction of Reval. On the evening of the 18th we arrived at the “Kloga” camp. They didn’t let us in. Because there was no room. We stayed lying in the train cars. The next day, August 19th, they took us further in the same train cars, and we arrived at the port of Reval. A great freighter was already docked there. They let us out of the train cars, up onto the ship, and in the meantime, more Jews from other camps in Estonia arrived, so that it was tightly packed like herring, about 5,000 persons. And the ship departed. Imagine my luck and joy when I met my wife on the ship, whom I had not seen for 10 months, since leaving the Kovno ghetto. She had been in Estonia in another camp, “Ereda.”43 The people from their camp had arrived at the Revel port two weeks earlier. They had already been on a ship, but had to leave because the Wehrmacht requisitioned the ship for itself. These past two weeks they had been in tents several kilometers from Revel. And they were brought here again just now, on the 19th, and we had the opportunity to meet on the ship. Until we came to Danzig, on August 22nd. In Danzig, we were transferred to other, smaller ships with 500 persons in each, and we went another 30 kilometers [18.6 miles]. I don’t remember the place. It was already dark when we disembarked. All were once again lined up, in rows of four, and we marched wearily further. We

42. Refers to the Klooga concentration camp near Tallinn, Estonia. Jewish prisoners arrived at Klooga in September 1943. Prior to this date, Soviet POWs and Finnish refugees occupied the camp in the summer of 1942. This Waffen-SS labor camp held 1,735 prisoners by May 1944, including 1,077 women. For more information about this camp, see WeissWendt, Murder without Hatred, 301–22. 43. Ereda was part of the Vaivara camp system operated by Baltic Oil in modern-day Estonia. Established in October 1943, the camp initially held 245 inmates. By March 1944, the number of prisoners had ballooned to 1,907, then to 1,497 by May. As of July 19, 1,132 Jews worked in the facility. By the end of July 1944, however, the camp had been liquidated. For more information, see Ruth Bettina Birn, “Ereda,” in The USHMM Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1:1497–98.

The End of the War and the Last Throes of Genocide saw that we were going in the direction of “Stutthof ” (it lies 35 km [21.7 miles] from Danzig). Coming closer to the camp, we saw from afar a modern camp, heavily lit. Surrounded with many rows of electric wires. It was not a pleasant welcome. SS guards already stood at the entrance and gate, and as we entered, they began to drive us in the dark into unfinished buildings without doors and without windows. They beat us and shouted familiar curse words. They pressed us together, and there wasn’t even a place to sit, this is the way we suffered until early the next morning. After that, they sent us to the washroom for delousing. They let in about 30 men at a time. They let us in through one door, took everything that we possibly had. Examined even our mouths, ears, and elsewhere, to see if we had anything hidden. Sprayed us with cold water and let us out through a second door, gave us other things,44 and sent us in groups of 400–500 men to the barracks. In each barrack there were three levels of 50 beds each, so it came out that 3–4 men slept in a narrow little bed. You can imagine the sort of sleep we got. Then the next day we got up early at 4:30, were given a little coffee with a portion of bread; they called this a “paika,”45 about 150–175 gr. [6.2 ounces]. Drove us out to the roll call. The roll call used to be at 6:00 a.m.; they didn’t drive us to work in the first couple of days. We stayed outside until the afternoon, until 12 p.m., then we were given about 3/4 liters [3 cups] of soup, without spoons. We remained outside until the evening roll call at 6 p.m. Only after 6 would they let us into the barrack. Gave us again the paika of bread, as in the morning, with a little coffee for 3 men in one small bowl. Stutthof was a camp of about 30,000 persons, of various nationalities. Mainly Polish, criminals. From these “fine” men were chosen block and room elders, as well as “kapos”46 at the work stations. The women were in separate barracks, and we were not allowed to meet with them. We used to make contact by going not far from the fence and throwing over a little note tied to a small stone. In this way, I was able to communicate with my wife until she left with a transport of 600 women for work, around September 10th. When we came to Stutthof on August 22nd, we found some women and children, 14 to 17 years old, who had come from the Kovno ghetto, and they told us various things. After we had been deported on October 44. The author evidently means clothes. 45. Russian for “ration” or “portion.” 46. Prisoners who served as overseers of forced labor battalions.

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Chapter 1 26th, 1943, no one knew where we had been sent and did not believe we were alive. They called it the Action of 3,500. News even came to the ghetto that we were working in Estonia, but no one believed this. In November 1943, a part of the Kovno ghetto was sent to Shantz, Kazlove-Rude, and Ponevez.47 In the ghetto remained mainly those who worked in the ghetto workshops and other such brigades, about 8,000– 9,000 persons. On March 27, 1944, there was a children’s Action. They went from house to house and took all nonworking children and some men and women, about 700–800 persons, and drove them away in trucks, and alas, they were never heard from again. Among them were Dora Lamas, 8 years old, and Mia Blumberg, 12 years old. And other good friends and acquaintances of ours. At the same time, they gathered together the Jewish police, mostly the higher officers, and took them away to the Ninth Fort;48 there the Gestapo asked them to reveal where the children and elderly were hiding in the ghetto, in the bunkers or elsewhere. Those who surrendered this information would remain alive. A few of the Jewish policemen revealed where such persons were hiding and remained alive for the time being; they were later killed in the camps or elsewhere. 33 Jewish policemen and their chiefs nobly restrained themselves and were killed at the Ninth Fort at the end of March 1944. In July 1944, when the Russian front was approaching Kovno, the Kovno ghetto was liquidated, and all were deported to Germany. Some were sent by train to Dachau, some by barges to Stutthof. Women with children under 14 years old were sent to Auschwitz a couple days after arriving in Stutthof. The same was done with transports that did not go to Stutthof, sent to Auschwitz. It is well known what happened to them; they were killed in the gas chambers (upon which hung a wretched sign, “Bath House”). Able-bodied men and women were for the most part immediately sent away to various work camps. So that when we came from Estonia to Stutthof, we found a small number of women in Stutthof.

47. Small Lithuanian towns near Kovno. 48. Kovno was surrounded by forts constructed during the Russian imperial period. Much of the murder of Jews in Kovno took place at several of these forts.

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In Stutthof we found boys from the Kovno and Shavel ghettos,49 14–17 years of age. Afterward, around September 15th, they were transported together with the younger ones who had arrived from Estonia, about 400 children in total. Said they were sending them to work. Alas, nobody met any of them after the liberation. So, as it turns out, they were all killed somewhere in Germany. When the Kovno ghetto was liquidated, many Jews hid in hideouts. Firstly, no one believed they were being sent to work in Germany. Secondly, they calculated that in several days the Russians would come into Kovno. Over 2,500 persons hid. Since it took over 3 weeks before the Russians occupied Kovno, the Germans had time to destroy everything. They blew up every house in the ghetto, so that all those who hid were killed. Around 40–50 persons were saved.

While the 1944 deportations from ghettos in eastern and central Europe were the latest in a long line of transports to forced labor and death camps, the Jews of Italy experienced these actions for the first time in 1943 and 1944.50 Italy had been under fascist rule since 1922; however, the relatively small Italian Jewish community did not experience the same kind of genocidal antisemitism present in Germany and other countries throughout Europe. Instead, enactment of harsh racial laws similar to the Nuremberg Laws laid the groundwork for what would come later but did not lapse into the deportations to concentration and death camps that characterized Nazi fascism. Indeed, Italian authorities proved recalcitrant with regard to requested deportation directives from Berlin. With the German invasion of Italy in September 1943, Italian fascism gave way to German Nazism. At this point, 32,307 Italian Jews resided in central and northern Italy.51 Although antisemitic laws had marked Benito Mussolini’s tenure, German occupation brought with it

49. See Arūnas Bubnys and Avinoam Patt, “Šiauliai,” in The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, vol. 2: Ghettos in GermanOccupied Eastern Europe, ed. Martin Dean (Bloomington: Indiana University Press in association with the USHMM, 2012), 1118–22. 50. See Kerenji, Jewish Responses to Persecution, 4: ch. 8. 51. Liliana Picciotto, “The Shoah in Italy: Its History and Characteristics,” in Jews in Italy under Fascist and Nazi Rule, 1922–1945, ed. Joshua D. Zimmerman (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 209.

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far more serious implications for Italy’s Jews.52 For example, “Aryanization” laws passed in late November 1943 and early January 1944 forbade Jews from owning property and businesses. By December 1944, the Nazis had confiscated over 1.9 billion lire in property, buildings, stocks, credit, and cash.53 Thus, in the initial months of German occupation, persecution impacted Jews more on an economic level. Late 1943 and early 1944, however, saw significant changes in policy and effect. With the creation of the “race office” on March 15, 1944, “race laws” excluding Jews from everyday life and employment increased in severity and observance. Deportations caught up to Italian Jews: between 1943 and 1945, 7,495 Jews were deported; only 610 survived.54 Raids and arrests continued into 1944 in Rome, Venice, Trieste, and other locales. While the bulk of deportations took place in 1943, the initial months of 1944 still saw more ad hoc roundups of Jews in various places. The appeal presented in document 1-6 was written in July 1944, after the bulk of deportations of Italian Jews had already taken place. The letter, from the president of the Free Italian Colony in Lausanne, Switzerland, pleads for Red Cross action concerning the fate of the remainder of Italian Jewry under threat of deportation and murder.

52. Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) was the long-reigning head of Italy’s fascist government, beginning in the 1920s. Italy entered World War II after some delay on the side of Germany in June 1940. When the Grand Fascist Council ousted Mussolini in the summer of 1943 and the king ordered his arrest, a new phase began. After the new Italian government sought a peace agreement with the Allies, the Germans rescued Mussolini in September 1943 and installed him as leader of a new puppet regime in northern Italy, the Italian Social Republic (or Republic of Salò); German forces and the SS also moved in to occupy the remainder of the country not yet held by Allied troops, ordering mass roundups of Jews in Rome and other major cities. Thousands were deported to eastern Europe, and many were murdered in Auschwitz. See Renzo De Felice, The Jews in Fascist Italy: A History (New York: Enigma Books, 2001) (orig. published in Italian in 1961); Zimmerman, Jews in Italy under Fascist and Nazi Rule. 53. De Felice, The Jews in Fascist Italy, 434. 54. Ibid., 450.

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DOCUMENT 1-6: Letter from Luigi Zappelli,55 president of the Colonia Libera Italiana, to Max Huber,56 president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Lausanne, Switzerland, July 28, 1944, USHMMA RG 68.045M, reel 16, file 126 (translated from French).

Colonia Libera Italiana, Lausanne Section, Comitato di Soccorso per Deportati Italiani politici e razziali, Rue du Midi 4, Lausanne, July 28, 1944 Dr. Max Huber President of the International Committee of the Red Cross Geneva Mr. President, Thanks to the intervention of the International Red Cross, the voice of the civilized world has been heard. It was several days ago that a communiqué was issued announcing that the persecution of the Hungarian Jews would be lessened and that the Hungarian government would authorize the International Committee of the Red Cross to provide aid to interned Jews, to contribute to the evacuation of children, and to promote the emigration of Jews to Palestine. 55. A socialist, Luigi Zappelli (1886–1948) was born in the Piedmont region of Italy. He worked in a variety of trades before his exile in Switzerland during the war. He returned to Italy after the war ended, becoming a mayor and member of the Italian parliament. The CLI, formed in late 1943, brought together antifascist Italian activists and aided refugees in Switzerland during the war. See Claude Cantini, Pour une histoire sociale et antifasciste: Contributions d’un autodidacte (Lausanne: Éditions d’en Bas & Association pour l’Étude de l’Histoire du Movement Ouvrier, 1999), 243ff; for further wartime records of the CLI, see USHMMA RG 19.045, reel 7, G59/4-122. 56. Max Huber (1874–1960), born in Zurich, was a legal scholar, businessman, and legal adviser to the Swiss government, as well as a man of deep Christian religious convictions. He played a major role on the International Court of Justice in The Hague from the 1920s. During this time he also joined the International Committee of the Red Cross, which he led from 1928 to late 1944, moving cautiously and committed to safeguarding neutrality. See Jean-Claude Favez, The Red Cross and the Holocaust, ed. John and Beryl Fletcher (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), esp. 283–84; Gerald Steinacher, Hakenkreuz und Rotes Kreuz: Eine humanitäre Organisation zwischen Holocaust und Flüchtlingsproblematik (Innsbruck: StudienVerlag, 2013), esp. 25–27.

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Chapter 1 This news, which was received with a feeling of profound relief by a worldwide public opinion that had been deeply touched by the news coming from Hungary these last weeks, finally brings to the fore the issue of Italian Jews, who, after the cease-fire of September 8, 1943, have suffered a fate identical to that of their coreligionists in countries already occupied by the German armies. Little was known about them, little or almost nothing. People [did not] talk about their situation perhaps because their numbers are relatively small. But this is no reason for them to be abandoned to such a cruel destiny. We would like to sum up, in the briefest manner possible, what their tragic situation has been and continues to be, and we place all our hope in the belief that the highest international body—which conducts with tenacity and such great generosity its humanitarian mission—will decide to intervene on behalf of Italian Jews as well and will, at least, obtain from the government of the Reich what the Hungarian government has granted, taking into account in particular the fate of the elderly, women, and children. Following September 8, 1943, the German occupation, as is known, gradually extended to all of northern and central Italy. In the first days, it appeared that no special measures would be taken against Italian Jews because these had maintained a very restrained disposition and thus had good reasons to believe that the neofascist government, although it might not provide them any assistance, would at least not expose them to persecution at the hands of the occupier. This illusion, however, was of short duration. A peremptory demand for the Jewish community of Rome to deliver within 48 hours a ransom of 50 kg [110 pounds] of gold—which was fulfilled by the designated deadline—and the massacre of numerous Jews sojourning in Meina (Lake Maggiore) were the first clear symptoms of what before long had to come to Italy. Sporadic arrests were carried out soon after in several cities in northern Italy, and finally there was, on the days of October 16 and 17, the great

The End of the War and the Last Throes of Genocide ROUNDUP,57 executed in the classic style, in the houses and streets of Rome. In the middle of the night, patrols of the SS and the police appeared at people’s homes: a few minutes were granted to the unfortunate ones to gather a few pieces of clothing and food for three days plus the order to leave the apartments open. Entire families had thus to abandon their homes regardless of age, sex, or state of health. All—the elderly, women and children, the ill—were transported on trucks to the train station. Loaded immediately into cattle cars, they were sent off on the evening of October 18 and dispatched along the line Florence-Bologna-Padua to Tarvisio. On the morning of the 19th, this tragic train already carried several cadavers. A poor woman held a seven-year-old child on her knees—dead—she didn’t want to abandon the corpse. The same day, another woman gave birth in absolutely unimaginable conditions. The train was escorted by German soldiers who prevented anyone from approaching. All the same, the Italian population, if they were alerted in time, broke through all the barriers and, braving the defenses and gunshots, rushed up and provided what help they could. The train thus reached the border, and the flow of information stopped there entirely. Nothing more was known about the (approximately) 2,000 Jews deported from Rome. Organizations and private persons made several generous attempts to learn their fate and to provide some type of aid to these unfortunate ones. But it was all in vain. After so many months, the unknown remains unknown. 57. All capital letters in original document.

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Chapter 1 After this daunting roundup, the hunt for Jews spread little by little to the other cities of Italy. The prison of San Vittore, already dolefully renowned, was the first center where Jews arrested in Milan were concentrated. What occurred at this dismal site exceeds all bounds of the imagination. The most refined methods of abuse, physical assaults leaving the victims bathing in blood, humiliations of all sorts: here, too, regardless of age, state of health, sex. Several of these unfortunate ones preferred death to deportation, and there were countless suicides. But it was starting December 1 that the arrests, the persecution, and the deportations took on a general and systematic character. Especially noteworthy was a great roundup carried out in Florence, and the victims were nearly all poor women. One subsequently learned that several concentration camps had been created where Jews were to be sent with the expectation of then being deported: the largest was and is at Fossoli, near Carpi (in Modena province). Whenever the number of detainees was sufficient for a good shipment, the usual train, sealed and escorted, departed, and complete mystery reigns over the fate of these unfortunate ones. Thus several thousand Jewish Italians, who could not be reproached for anything except their own background, whose families had given upstanding citizens to Italy—philanthropists, scholars, soldiers, martyrs, men who had honored their country with their work in times of war as in peace—were deported into the unknown, and we remain ignorant of their tragic fate. People have said that the deportees were put to work on behalf of the public good. But if this may appear plausible for men of sound health, the same hypothesis may not be applied in the case of the elderly (including some over the age of ninety), women, and children. We may thus infer that the truth is much more terrible than one thinks and that extermination is the only end that awaits them. Mr. President, one cry, perhaps the first, must arise from your noble and free country, a cry supremely humane, before it becomes too late.

The End of the War and the Last Throes of Genocide So that all those, at the least, may be saved who cannot be of any use whatsoever to the country that believes the exigencies of war can justify such immense infamy, so that all may be granted the reassurance of some sort of material aid and the relief of a good word! The International Red Cross, by intervening, will thus give to all these unfortunate ones the assurance that civilization is not yet dead and that a lofty spirit of humanity survives among the nations of the world, despite the terrible torment that has been unleashed upon the world which yet cannot and must not swallow it in its wake. The Colonia Libera Italiana of Lausanne, which is made up of men who belong to all parties and adhere to different religious faiths, would neglect its duty if it did not act as advocate for the opinions of all Italians on both sides of the border who, in a clear, lofty, and courageous manner, have shown solidarity for all the persecuted. We launch and proclaim this crusade. The colony firmly hopes and believes that the International Red Cross will hear its cry of alarm and will be able to ensure that the mission entrusted to it on behalf of suffering humanity will also be fulfilled on behalf of Italian Jews, victims of a cruel and undeserved lot. There is also another side of the problem which must, as of now, be fully illuminated so that the wounds of war may be healed as swiftly as possible and a shared life be established in the world as swiftly as possible, one that is normal and better attuned to civilization. In this way, a contribution could be made toward opening and smoothing the path to peace. The war, perhaps, is currently moving toward its end, and it is the general wish of all people that that end arrive more quickly. What will be the lot of the people whom the war has exiled into the most distant lands? We know that the International Committee, in anticipation of the enormous tasks to come in the postwar period, already organizes services on an ad hoc basis. We wish to give you every assurance that you can count on the unreserved cooperation of the Colonia Libera Italiana of Lausanne

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Chapter 1 to mobilize in support of all useful ends. Italians are volunteering their services to international and supranational aid organizations. They offer themselves up and volunteer their resources so that the tasks of repatriation and rescue may be ready when the blessed hour sounds the end of this scourge. May everything be prepared for this hour: let not a single day go to waste so that these victims, these survivors of such lengthy and such harsh persecution, when the radiant dawn that will proclaim peace for men of goodwill arrives, all these unfortunate ones be granted the rapid and loving care and the liberatory embrace of their brothers. On behalf of Colonia Libera Italiana, Lausanne Section, President L. Zappelli

THE FINAL DAYS OF THE CONCENTRATION CAMP SYSTEM Between May and October 1944, approximately six hundred thousand Jews were transported to Auschwitz, including Hungarian Jews and the remaining Jews of Łódź, Theresienstadt, Kovno, and other ghettos.58 At the same time, forced labor continued in what would be the final months of the war effort. Even for those condemned to forced labor rather than immediate death, however, the policy proved to be little more than “extermination through work.” In the summer of 1944, a Jewish inmate was unlikely to survive in the Mauthausen concentration camp for more than three days.59 Jews were increasingly transferred inside the Reich to forced labor. Thus, the German policy of death through forced labor continued. Jewish prisoner “exchanges” of various populations for money also occurred during this period, as the Germans traded Jewish lives for money to serve larger political ends. Document 1-7 describes the waning days of the Sömmerda concentration camp, a subcamp of Buchenwald established in the fall of 1944. Located about a twenty-minute walk from the Erfurt-Nordhausen railway line, it employed approximately eleven hundred female laborers. On September 58. Livia Rothkirchen, “The Final Solution in Its Last Stages,” in Marrus, The End of the Holocaust, 9:332. 59. Ibid., 9:336–37.

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19, 1944, 1,216 Hungarian Jewish women arrived at the camp and began work the following day. These women had survived a bombing raid at the Gelsenkirchen-Horst camp. Deportations to Sömmerda continued through April 1945, at which point the camp had reached capacity. Some measure of cultural life was also possible in the camp, although on a limited basis. The factory was closed in mid-March 1945, and on April 4, the women were marched east, away from the camp. The women were then divided into two groups; one was liberated by the Americans at Glauchau, the other by Soviet troops at Cheb (Eger).60 Lilly Klein, originally from Berehovo-Beregszasz in Hungarian-held Czechoslovakia, was deported to Auschwitz II–Birkenau, then to Gelsenkirchen and Sömmerda.61 In these selections from her diary, she describes the air raid at Gelsenkirchen and her subsequent transport to Sömmerda in the spring of 1945. It should be noted that, overall, concentration camp writing was comparatively rare and exceedingly difficult to accomplish. Finding paper and pencil was no simple matter, to say nothing of the physical and mental energy required to record one’s experiences from within an environment and a system designed to strip the individual of humanity. Additionally, saving these pages entailed a life-threatening risk. Klein’s diary thus conveys the chaos of these fi nal stages of the concentration camp system and the many unknowns at this point in the war. She wrote in several small autograph books like the one shown in document 1-7; thus, she transforms an artifact that would usually serve to chronicle the daily life of a schoolgirl into a record of uncertainty.

60. Evelyn Zegenhagen, “Sömmerda,” in The USHMM Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1:419–20. 61. Lilly Klein (née Livia; b. 1920), from a prosperous family in Beregszasz, was first sent to a ghetto and deported in May 1944. At Sömmerda she made machine-gun bullets at a munitions factory alongside French POWs. Liberated in May 1945, she then lived for nearly two years in Linz, Austria, before immigrating to the United States. Her future husband, George Isaacs (Győrgy Iczkovits), also survived a series of camps, as did some of her siblings and a son and daughter. See Tracing and Documentation (T/D) file 519612 for Lilly Isaacs, 6.3.3.2/93731024_0_1/ITS Digital Archive, USHMM, and the testimony of Lilly Isaacs, USC Shoah Foundation, VHA #2237.

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DOCUMENT 1-7: Diary of Lilly Klein in the Sömmerda slave labor camp, February– March 1945, USHMMA Acc. 2009.109.2 Lilly Isaacs collection (translated from Hungarian).

Feb. 1 I am writing in the factory, dear dad, there is little work now, God shall supply, that this war should end. Tomorrow will be Gabi’s birthday, the gracious God shall supply, that in good health, at least under the same circumstances like ours—can [dad] celebrate [Gabi’s] 17th birthday and that we all meet . . . in happiness sooner than later.

The End of the War and the Last Throes of Genocide In the factory. Feb. 2 I am thinking of you, Gabi and Dad, and I am asking the gracious God to be with us. 4th Sunday Supposedly they are near Berlin. My God, please help me so that this ends soon and we all can go home in good health. My God, please help me! Tuesday the 6th, 1/2 [to] 2 a.m. I am writing while on break at the factory. There is an air raid outside, dark, I could barely find my way to [illegible] so I can get some hot coffee for Mother. Dad, dear dad, my little Gabi, I wonder where you are right now, if you are sleeping in good health somewhere, perhaps you, too, work at night and are thinking about us. There was a nasty raid today, the planes roared above our heads, we were very afraid. My gracious God, please help us, please help us a lot and be with all of us. Feb. 10, Sat 7 p.m. In the factory. 10th, Saturday, 7 p.m. Dear dad. I am writing to you with a shivering heart full of fear. Yesterday noon we had a horrible raid. For more than 2 hours the planes were rumbling over our heads, we even saw them all and, unfortunately, they were bombing and machine-gunning the small towns 20–30 km [12.5–18.6 miles] in the vicinity. Dear dad, I am so afraid, I am praying to God, if He wants a sacrifice from our family, let it be me. At the same time, I am terribly afraid of dying, I would like to live. [. . .] Feb. 12 10:30 a.m. [. . .] There are nonstop raids. Otherwise, I am in a terrible mood because of this past big raid. I am terribly afraid. Unfortunately, the good pieces of news have also quieted down, even though we were so full of hope that this will soon end. It would be terrible if this continued much longer. Our nerves have been completely shot, I also often have pain in my heart. If only the gracious God would help us so that we all could get home in good health.

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Chapter 1 15th at noon at 3/4 [to] 2 I am writing while on break at the factory. We came up from the bunkers not long ago, there were two half-hour-long raids. Unfortunately, apart from the morning and evening hours, there are raids nonstop. The planes are roaring above our heads for hours on end, and we are trembling from the fear of dying.—In the meantime, I have heard that there is yet another raid in town. God, I beg you, please be with us and help all of us. 16 at noon at 3/4 [to] 2 Thank God, there was no raid this past night, and it was only a false alarm in town today at noon. Dear God, please help so that nothing bad happens. 4 p.m. Dad, my dear and only Daddy. If only I could tell you all that is in me, my sweet little Gabi! I wonder where you are. Where are you trembling for your life? Where are you grieving? Oh, God, if only I could kiss you, if only I could tell you: stay strong my little brother, God will help you. Dad, my sweet, my dear and only dad, I could write down your [Gabi’s and dad’s] names a million times. 18th. Sunday a.m. It has been 9 months today since they tore us apart, Dad, Gabi. God gave us strength so that after the millions of trials and sufferings we can [still] endure being forced apart, that is for sure. [I pray God] that he continues to be with us all and helps us get home as soon as possible. 19th, Monday a.m. My God, I am so sad! No good news, life is so hopeless, aimless. Or, if it has an aim, it is to endure, live through and wait for something good to happen. We are asking for the help of the gracious God. God, please help. 21st, 8 p.m. At the factory. Unfortunately, there has been a raid for 2 days nonstop, the minute they signal “All Clear,” a new signal sets off. [I pray] that the gracious God will be with us and help us.

The End of the War and the Last Throes of Genocide 26th, Monday 9 a.m. In the factory. It was a terrible air raid. You could hear the bombs exploding very near to us. If there would be just one bomb here the whole factory would explode—with all the gunpowder we are working with even the bunkers wouldn’t help at all. Unfortunately Mother is sick since a few days. Last week all the air raids and all the night work made her exhausted. She got very sick; her heart was bothering her. She got a little [illegible] to drink. If there wouldn’t be any air raids and she could rest 1–2 weeks at home—she would be herself again. We don’t know what to do—we are afraid to leave her in the barracks. God only knows what will happen to us. Deep inside I feel somehow that we will survive this somehow. It is just impossible, that after all this suffering all this pain—we should not see each other again. All 5 of us together in joy. 26th, Monday 9 a.m. We are on break. We are fasting because tomorrow is Purim. Unfortunately, now they just canceled [the break], I will continue in my next [letter] with God’s help. At noon at 1 p.m. The air-raid signal went on, but it was only a warning, thank God. We have lived through a terrible raid, they were bombing nearby and we could hear all of the detonations, it sounded as if God were . . . nearby here. Mom would have been here, unfortunately, she has been sick for a few days, the lot of raids, [and] work at night last week wore her out, so her already weak heart grew weaker. She was very sick, but now she can already walk and receives milk, if there weren’t these raids and she could rest 1–2 weeks at home, she would recover, but we are terribly at a loss because we are afraid to leave her alone at home, today again my heart jumped when the air-raid signal went off. I am too afraid to think about what will happen to us, deep within I feel we will survive. It cannot possibly be that after all of this bitter suffering we would not be able to see each other again in happiness. But I am very afraid and again I am turning to the gracious God and am begging for help so that this terrible trembling from fear won’t last much longer and we all will be happy again. [. . .]

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Chapter 1 March 7, 8 p.m. Nothing unusual. Unfortunately, the raids still continue. There are good pieces of news, but nothing indicates that peace is immanent. But we would need [this peace] so badly. God, please help us and continue to stay with us. March 8, 12 midnight Last night there was a terrible 2-1/2-hour-long raid. Thousands of planes circled above our heads, they lit up the sky, there were so many. It was terrible. Tonight there was only a warning siren, thank God. God, please help. So that neither here, nor where those that belong to us are, shall misfortune strike and that this war shall end soon. March 14, 11 a.m. It is Wednesday; according to the newest order, there is no work today at the factory. I am sitting on the top bunk, mom is lying in bed underneath. Oli went to the sewing room to read the newspaper aloud, the II. [. . .] which is perhaps even better than the first one. The weather is beautiful, radiant sunshine, spring. My heart aches terribly. My one and only, dear Dad and Gabi, where are you, are you healthy? Gracious God, please help me so that we all and in good health reunite soon. Oli’s birthday is coming up soon. I am trying to make her a lot of things, with God’s help.— March 20, 6 a.m. Big change happened to us, dad. The factory terminated us because there is no more work and we haven’t been working since Saturday, [we are] waiting to see where they will take us from here. The [women] are getting ready here as if we were to head home, sewing, making memorabilia, etc. God, we only ask that you lead us to a good place, where there is peace, where there isn’t [such] hard work and that we all can go home in good health soon. March 26 We are still here, we have no work, we are resting and there is such [fervent] sewing in the camp as if they were getting ready to go home. God, please allow us to wear our toiletries at home. Today 35 people went out to do agricultural labor. Unfortunately, the raids are nonstop, [I pray]

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God, be with us. The planes come already during the warning siren and a noise similar to gunfire can be heard even now. It seems that the front is nearby. It will be Easter in 3 days, gracious God, please allow us to spend Passover with dad and Gabi in happy togetherness. March 28, 1945 Today is the first day of Seder. I don’t know what to write, dad. The people from Kanizsa observe Seder, [but] I am not going out to listen [to them], to me there is only one Seder, when you, dad, say it, and Gabi asks. [. . .] [I pray to you] gracious God, please grant that next year . . . [. . .]

In addition to such personal documents relating to an individual’s experience of forced labor at the end of the war, larger, more expansive reports were also being written and disseminated to Jewish organizations outside occupied Europe. One example is the report of an unnamed eyewitness of the Kratzau concentration camp, presented in document 1-8. Established in 1943 as a forced labor camp for the Tannwald Texile Works and the Deutsche Industriewerke AG ammunition factory, Kratzau I became a subcamp of GrossRosen in October 1944. Its all-female population came from prior selections at Auschwitz I in October 1944. Various nationalities were represented, including Polish, Czech, French, Belgian, Dutch, and Danish. Kratzau also had a small population of children (approximately forty), up to fourteen years of age; these children engaged in the cleanup of the camp. Unlike Kratzau I, the Kratzau II camp primarily housed sick prisoners from France, Hungary, and Greece. Around 150 prisoners worked in Kratzau II. The Danish Red Cross sent food in the days prior to liberation, after the camp leadership had fled in advance of the arrival of the Soviets.62 The following detailed report, preserved in the World Jewish Congress archives, exhaustively outlines various aspects of camp life, from working and hygienic conditions, to supervision, to a typical workday.

62. Katarzyna Pawlak-Weiss, “Kratzau I” and “Kratzau II,” in The USHMM Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1:754–57.

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DOCUMENT 1-8: Eyewitness description of life in the Kratzau concentration camp, November 1945, USHMMA RG 68.045M, reel 7, file 58 (translated from French).

Kratzau Labor Camp (Sudetenland) The camp described herein is a labor camp established exclusively for Jewish women. According to information at our disposal, a large number of analogous camps have been established in the course of 1944 in Germany, and these camps fall under the authority of the Gross-Rosen concentration camp near Breslau. These are the names of the camps that have been conveyed to us: Liebau in Saxony, Langenbielau in Silesia, Torschau or Trockau (on the Elbe) [Torgau], and a large labor camp for men near Vienna. Our camp, which held 500 women, was established not long ago. At the start of October, 200 Hungarian women were brought there, and our convoy comprising 300 French and Dutch women (i.e., women deported from France and the Netherlands) arrived November 3. Another 500 women were expected, but their arrival was delayed, probably because there was not enough work for everyone. The camp is located directly in Weisskirchen, 3 or 4 km [about 2 to 2.5 miles] from Kratzau, in a former textile factory that is in disuse. It is a stone building that can be sufficiently heated. During our stay in December, it was heated more or less regularly, but given that there were 250 of us, we did not suffer from cold in the dormitory. The dormitories were sufficiently large, and each person had her own bed with a straw mattress. Everyone theoretically had a right to two blankets, but since the blankets had not yet arrived, each of us had only one. Owing to this, the women were compelled to sleep in their dresses, and the first appearance of lice in the camp was noted shortly before our departure. There was a shower installation in the camp, but in the morning we were prohibited from leaving the dormitories before mealtime. While returning from the factory in the evening, we first had to wait for soup, and after dinner it was only very rarely that there was warm water, in any case never sufficient for all the women. We were led in groups of 20 or 40 to the showers, which occurred approximately every eight days. There was

The End of the War and the Last Throes of Genocide no other possibility to bathe. The only two taps in the building where we slept were reserved for the personnel, and we were strictly forbidden to take water from them. The workday: 3:30 Reveille. Beds had to be made. 4:15 Roll call in the dormitory. 4:20 Go down to the courtyard for breakfast. Each waited her turn in the same courtyard. Breakfast was a soup of potato or vegetable broth made heartier with grated raw potatoes. We were given approximately three-quarters of a liter [3 cups]. At the same time we received our daily rations, approximately 250 grams [8.8 ounces] of bread with 5–10 grams [0.2–0.4 ounces] of margarine or a slice of sausage or a spoonful of marmalade. 5:05 Roll call in the courtyard for those who were leaving for the factory. 5:20 Depart for the factory. 6:00 Arrive at the factory and start work. 9:00 to 9:15 Break at the factory and eat a piece of bread. Start working again at 9:15 until 11:30 to 12:00 Lunch break. We were given half a cup of a warm beverage, a substitute coffee or mint [tea], which we drank while eating the rest of our bread. 12:00 to 18:00 Work in the workshop. 19:00 (approximate) Return to camp and roll call in the courtyard. Then waiting in the courtyard for soup. The evening soup, approximately one liter [1 quart], was a thicker potato soup or one with boiled skin-on potatoes with some beets, once a week potatoes with a meat or onion sauce. Sundays also potatoes with a meat sauce. (Small detail: the last 15 days at the camp, all our meals were prepared completely without salt.). 21:00 Curfew Working Conditions In theory, all the women of the camp must work at Werk Kratzau, a munitions factory requisitioned by the SS. Yet it soon became clear that there was not sufficient work for all the women given the lack of raw materials, particularly oil. There were thus 300 of us women who worked in the

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Chapter 1 same factory, 200 who worked during the day and 100 who worked at night (this work was much more exhausting, but the only additional compensation was a slight supplement in the soup ration). The rest worked elsewhere: the “Hofkolonne,” shoveling coal, roadwork, unloading crates, etc. Work, which was very tiresome, began at 8:00 in the courtyard of the factory and halted around 4:30 depending on available daylight. The women were compelled to go out at all times with insufficient clothing, and every day there were two or three who disappeared while working. On several occasions, the female German guards complained and requested that they not be made to go out since they themselves suffered from the harsh weather, but to no avail. The others were divided up among different workshops. Some women worked at semiautomatic machines (war industry), others oversaw automatic processes, still others were responsible for production inspection or packing (tiresome work because it involved lifting very heavy crates). Generally speaking, the work was not overly difficult, but it was exhausting because we were undernourished and lacked sleep. In contrast, there was a group of young women that worked with lead paints that they suspected to be toxic. All the German and foreign laborers working in these workshops received one and a half liters of milk per day. The Jews were given only a quarter liter every two days. Two young women, after working for two weeks in this workshop, began to spit up blood. Working in the workshops was not disagreeable; there was relatively little supervision. Treatment by the German foremen and foreign workers was appropriate, aside from a few exceptions. These cases were attributable to convinced and zealous Nazis. There was a formal prohibition on speaking to us, but women in several workshops were given bread, fruit, and magazines by the workers. Russian prisoners worked for some days at the camp to build a new warehouse, and they were even able to toss us clothing—their sweaters, their scarves, their gloves. The output of the machines was supervised, but I know of only one case where a woman was reprimanded for not working enough. In contrast, productivity bonuses were distributed every three weeks to women who surpassed the average. Either 200 grams [7 ounces] of margarine or some jam and a package of soap powder.

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Supervision The camp is administered by the SS and is directly subordinate to Werk Kratzau. The factory and work performed at the factory completely dominate the life of the camp. The “Kommandoführerin,” that is, the camp commandant, was a young woman in uniform—a hairdresser in civilian life—who was 23 years old. She was assisted by an SS Unterscharführer who was thrifty in regard to the camp and responsible for the food. There were about 15 guards, mobilized women in uniform and some SS members who stood guard outside the camp and one or two of whom accompanied the groups leaving for the factory every day.63 Essentially, we were never alone, except in the dormitories. On the way from the camp to the factory we were accompanied by the guards, who prevented us from speaking to each other and falling out of our ranks, which was a very difficult task since it was completely dark, the roads were filled with mud, and the women with bad shoes often lagged behind. We were yelled at so frequently that people in the area began to complain of the racket, and from time to time a woman was beaten because she lagged behind or because she had spoken. At the factory itself there was a guard in each hall, but she did not busy herself with us much at all. In addition, there was a German [female] mechanic in each workshop who was there primarily to prevent the workers from speaking to us. Generally speaking, the guards were not at all nasty; some even displayed a certain sympathy and declared that the way we were treated in the camp was shameful. The Kommandoführerin and the Unterscharführer, in contrast, did everything possible to make our lives in the camp as disagreeable as possible. Policing the camp was even left to the inmates, who were replaced whenever they exhibited a certain leniency or a certain solidarity. 63. The author has not been able to identify these individuals. The names of some Kratzau camp personnel appear in Pawlak-Weiss, “Kratzau I,” 756. Cf. name lists of female camp personnel in Fotini Tzani, Zwischen Karrierismus und Widerspenstigkeit—SS-Aufseherinnen im KZ-Alltag (Bielefeld: Lorbeer, 2011); Daniel Patrick Brown, The Camp Women: The Female Auxiliaries Who Assisted the SS in Running the Nazi Concentration Camp System (Atglen, PA: Schiffer Military History, 2002).

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Chapter 1 At the end, the Lagerälteste was a Hungarian woman who did not know a word of German or French and who, when we did not understand her orders in Hungarian, slapped us and kicked us. Hygienic Conditions While speaking of the dormitories, I explained that it was near impossible at the camp to procure water to bathe or to wash one’s clothes. We were generally content to wash ourselves very summarily at the factory, where there was water. During the four weeks we spent at the camp, neither soap nor soap powder was ever distributed to us. One or two of the Nazi guards would then say to their colleagues and the workers in the factory, “You see how dirty they are, the Jews.” One or two guards who were more understanding asked at the factory whether soap powder could be distributed to us. The response was: soap powder would be distributed as a bonus for productivity. Some of the women worked constantly with oil, so it was impossible for them to rid themselves of it completely. For this reason, oil-borne eczema, so common in this occupation, was terribly exacerbated and was the cause of very serious boils. Generally speaking, the appearance of boils caused by undernourishment was very common, and in some cases phlegmon already began to set in. Enteritis was another camp sickness, caused by the quality of the bread and the cold. There was a [female] Jewish doctor at the camp and two nurses, but medicine was only rarely available to them.64 Thus for more than 15 days we had to go without a remedy for diarrhea, which truly ravaged some among us. The infirmary contained 12 beds, but the Kommandoführerin refused to allow more than eight patients in. Clothing It was particularly the issue of clothing that very much aggravated hygienic conditions in the camp. When we left Auschwitz on October 31, we were given: one shirt, one pair of pants, one summer dress, one summer coat, 64. The author has been unable to identify them or determine their fates.

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a pair of socks, and a pair of shoes (low-heeled shoes with a small heel). Thus we had neither handkerchiefs nor towels nor any spare clothes. When we wanted to wash our clothes (always without soap), we each had to make do with our dress as our only piece of clothing. After 15 days of working at the factory and elsewhere we were all in a state of indescribable dirtiness. When we were given rags at the factory to clean the machines, most of the women spirited them away to turn them into headscarves or to wear them in place of stockings. Kratzau is situated at an altitude of 300 or 400 meters [about 1,000 to 1,300 feet], and we had our first snowfall of the year in November. One can imagine how much we suffered from the cold in our summer clothing. The most serious issue, however, was our shoes. The road from the camp to the factory was a country road, full of mud, and after a dozen days all our shoes were in a pathetic state since our shoes would be completely drenched when we reached the factory. At the end of November, there were already several women who went barefoot. They promised to procure clogs for us because the guards constantly complained that it was impossible to have us march in ranks in this state. At the end of November, what they called clogs were distributed, but these were wooden slippers open in the back, so it was impossible to walk with them in the snow. We might conclude this report by saying that in order to help these women in some way, first of all shoes (clogs) and certain indispensable pieces of clothing must be procured for them. With regard to sustenance, they must be sent the most concentrated foodstuffs possible, sugar, powdered milk, etc., and items enriched with vitamins. Certain indispensable medicines must likewise be sent.

MOVING JEWS: DEATH MARCHES AND THE END OF THE WAR As the concentration camp system unraveled and the Allies advanced, the Germans began evacuating prisoners away from the front lines and further into Germany. What became known as death marches consisted of the transportation of prisoners, mostly on foot, under armed guard across long distances in subhuman conditions, plagued by starvation, violence, and murder.65 One of 65. Shmuel Krakowski, “The Death Marches in the Period of the Evacuation of the Camps,” in Marrus, The End of the Holocaust, 9:476.

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the first death marches took place on July 28, 1944, with the evacuation of Majdanek. Others left from camps in the former Yugoslavia, Austria, Germany, and Hungary. One of the longest and most gruesome was a month-long death march from Budapest to Austria in November 1944. For a full month, over thirtyfive thousand Hungarian Jews walked more than 420 kilometers [260 miles] accompanied by Hungarian guards.66 The final evacuation from Auschwitz began on January 17, 1945, when approximately sixty thousand prisoners (the majority of them Jews) trudged over 96 kilometers [60 miles] to Wodzislaw (Loslau), where they were loaded onto trains heading to various concentration camps. Other Auschwitz prisoners were marched directly to Gross-Rosen, over 274 kilometers [170 miles] away. About fifteen thousand prisoners died on these “evacuation” marches.67 As the Allied armies advanced, between March and April 1945, at least 250,000 prisoners (one-third of them Jewish) were sent on death marches.68 Along the way, they passed through towns, cities, and villages throughout Poland and Germany, making it impossible for the local populations not to see the throngs of prisoners and the inhumane treatment they endured. Document 1-9 presents a rare testimonial of a death march as it occurred. Lajos Ornstein recorded the spare details of his experience marching in a Hungarian forced labor battalion from June 1944 to May 1945, when he reached Mauthausen.69 In his small date book, he logged two pieces of information: how far he marched that day and what he ate. This “diary” thus serves as one of the very few artifacts demonstrating both the historical and the psychological reality of a death march. Indeed, Ornstein’s “diary” makes it possible to map a specific route about which very little was previously known. At the same time, his spare record keeping registers the two most important aspects for the person bearing the conditions imposed by such a march: distance and nourishment. 66. Ibid., 9:479. 67. Ibid., 9:480. 68. Ibid., 9:483. See also Daniel Blatman, The Death Marches: The Final Phase of Nazi Genocide (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011), 12. 69. A World War I veteran, Lajos (b. 1896) had founded a bank, which collapsed in the 1929 crash. He worked as a business advisor in Hajdunanas until anti-Jewish legislation forced him to switch professions again, and he served as a secretary to a Jewish community. He and his wife, Frida (née Cziment; b. 1903?), had five children together. Ornstein was conscripted into a forced labor battalion in 1940 or 1941 and again in 1944. He survived the wintertime death march and was liberated at the end of the war in Gunskirchen, a subcamp of the Mauthausen concentration camp. His wife and at least three of their children were deported to Auschwitz in June 1944 and killed. In 1949 Lajos Ornstein emigrated to Israel, where he worked as a bookkeeper. See USHMMPA WS# 48992; Jean M. Peck, At the Fire’s Center: A Story of Love and Holocaust Survival (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998).

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DOCUMENT 1-9: “Diary” of Lajos Ornstein en route to Mauthausen, June 1944–May 1945, USHMMA Acc. 2006.102 Paul and Anna Ornstein collection (translated from Hungarian).

Sept. 27, Wednesday [illegible] Sept. 28, Thursday a.m. departure to Debrecen [or from Debrecen?] It was a horrible sight! [illegible] Sept. 29, Friday We sleep at the railway station 3 p.m. departure [illegible] on foot [illegible] night at Pallagpuszta [illegible] Sept. 30, Saturday 11 a.m.—departure p.m. [illegible] we arrive and Jewish burghers arrive to join us Oct. 30, Monday 8 o’clock—departure

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Chapter 1 from Lelesz— Zétény 10 km [6.2 miles] Oct. 31, Tuesday At 9 departure from Zétény— through [illegible] to Pálfölde [illegible] 8 km [5 miles] Nov. 1, Wednesday Pálfölde Dec. 28, Thursday Dep at 9—[illegible] through mountain roads [. . . illegible] to Paróca 15 km [9.3 miles] Dec. 29, Friday Paróca (. . . Racka) Janice [illegible] Dec. 30, Saturday Through Brusník Dep at 9—from Paróca —through Imredomb (!) to Alsóesztergás (we sleep in a stable) 15 km [9.3 miles] Dec. 31, Sunday Dep at 8—from Alsóesztergás through Potor—Felsőstregova—Brusník—Senné to Alsótisztás 25 km [15.5 miles]

While Ornstein’s “diary” documents a death march as it occurred, documents 1-10 and 1-11, written by Michal Kraus and Philip Vock, respectively, show how such a march was remembered a few years after its conclusion. Kraus and Vock shared remarkably similar wartime experiences yet present strikingly

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different perspectives. Michal Kraus, from Nachod, Czechoslovakia, was nine years old when the war began in 1939. In December 1942, he was deported to Theresienstadt, and the following year, to Auschwitz II–Birkenau. Both of his parents were killed; Kraus survived Auschwitz, as well as a number of forced labor camps and death marches.70 While Kraus had kept a diary during the war, it was confiscated and destroyed. Thus, after the war, in 1947, he composed a three-volume, illustrated memoir meant to capture his wartime experiences as completely as possible. Vock, born in 1929 in Paris, left the occupied zone in 1941 for the Spanish border. He and his family later took refuge in Aix-lesBains, France, where they were denounced. Vock was sent to the French Drancy internment camp in 1943 before being deported to Auschwitz the following year.71 His postwar memoir, also written in 1947, documents various aspects of his experience, including a description of what he calls an “evacuation march” in January 1945. While Kraus utilizes emotional force and pointed language, Vock employs a spare style that describes the day-by-day, sometimes hour-byhour, monotonous nature of his experience. Both Kraus and Vock survived the war; however, both memoirs show the nature of this slow, excruciating form of murder, even as the Allies were closing in on the German front lines.

70. For more information on Michal “Misha” Kraus’s story and his diary, see chapters 2 and 10. He was liberated in Gunskirchen in Austria at the end of the war and made his way to Prague, then back to Nachod. He was sent to Canada in 1948 with a group of Jewish war orphans and ultimately moved to the United States in 1951, where he became an architect. His parents were Dr. Karel Kraus (1891–1944), a physician serving a broad community of clientele around Nachod, and Lotte (Lola) Kraus (née Goldschmid; 1898–1945). After being sent to Theresienstadt in December 1942, Michal was sent on to Auschwitz in December 1943, where he remained until the camp was evacuated in January 1945. His mother was also sent to Theresienstadt and Auschwitz. In July 1944, however, she was deported to the Stutthof concentration camp and, later that year, to Praust (Pruszcz Gdański), one of its subcamps; she died in January 1945. His father was sent to Theresienstadt and Auschwitz at the same time but died in the latter camp in July 1944. See USHMM ITS Collection Data Base Central Name Index. 71. When Auschwitz was evacuated in January 1945, Vock (orig. Vovk) was sent on a death march westward and ended up in the Buchenwald concentration camp until the end of the war. He was drafted into the French air force against his will after the war while he was attempting to emigrate. He moved to the United States in 1951, served in the Korean War, and died in Paris in 2006. His mother survived deportation, but many of his uncles, aunts, and cousins perished in the camps. Donor’s file, Philip D. Vock collection, USHMMA Acc. 1997.11; obituary, New York Times, January 19, 2006, A21.

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DOCUMENT 1-10: Memoir of Michal Kraus, 1947, 63–65, USHMMA Acc. 2006.51 Michael J. Kraus collection (translated from Czech).

CHAPTER 10 DIFFICULT TRAVEL In January—during the last year of the Second World War—I participated in the so-called death march. Yes, indeed, it was a death march because it claimed many victims, and only a few of us survived. We walked for three days. Ahead of us lay the victims of previous marches who had been shot, and behind us were guards who spent their time shooting prisoners who were not able to continue. They had a lot of work. It was a horrible sight because the SS shot the prisoners in the head at close range. At night they herded us into some kind of farm; some of us slept on hay, some in the stable, and the majority out in the cold. With the inadequate clothing many froze to death or were shot because their legs had given out. I remember a specific wretch whom the [Unterscharführer] ordered to run ahead only so that he could shoot him from the back; but only the third shot in the head actually killed him. Our “supervisors” amused themselves with these and similar occupations! And again they herded us further, to Leslau,72 where they loaded us into a huge number of railroad cars. There wasn’t even room to sit down. And so we rode four days without food in open railroad cars to a new concentration camp. At first we thought we were going to Gross-Rosen, because that is where the transports that had left before us were going. But when we arrived in Bohumín, they cut off the track, and we had to go back. The Poles treated us shamefully. They didn’t give us anything. They didn’t even react to the piles of corpses that were lying on the road and in the villages. And my opinion of the Poles has not changed to this day. In contrast our Czechs behaved well. In every station, in spite of great danger, they threw us rolls, bread, gingerbread, and other things. [. . .] Many succumbed on the way. For a long time we did not know where they were taking us until we traversed the damaged Vienna, [when] we realized that they were taking us to the horrible concentration camp Mauthausen where so many of our people—from Nachod—perished.

72. Present day Włocławek, Poland.

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DOCUMENT 1-11: Journal of Philip D. Vock, August 1945, USHMMA Acc. 1997.11 Philip D. Vock papers (translated from French).

The evacuation of the KL of Monovitz-Buna [Auschwitz III] For a week we were hearing at the factory that the Red Army was getting closer and starting a move to circle. Wednesday, January 15th, ready in our kdos [kommandos] to leave for work, we were waiting in the snow, in vain, for the gate to open and the orchestra to start. Suddenly, around 10 a.m., the lager Ältester 73 shouted, “Everybody in the blocks.”74 Chilled to the bones, we didn’t need to hear it twice. We quickly entered the barracks and took places around the stove and started to talk. Some were considering a walking evacuation, others a train one, and others believed we’d be abandoned in the middle of the retreat. However, some among us expecting the worst from the Kraut believed we could still be exterminated. As condemned people, our spirit was pessimistic, and we didn’t believe all this information but believed our captivity and slavery would be forever. At 1:00 p.m. we lost hope. The bell rang, so we postponed our liberation and went toward the factory for our last working day at Buna. We didn’t have lunch, so Maurice, very organized as usual, sent us right away. When we arrived at the workshop,75 Harry and Paul, our British comrades, were working since the morning. They confirmed that Russian forces were moving quickly forward. The Maester,76 worried not to see us, had called the camp. When we came back in the evening, we saw the kitchen and the Kammer being plundered. “That’s it,” said Henri, we are leaving. “I think so,” I said.

73. Meaning “eldest,” as in the block eldest. 74. Vock did not record this individual’s name or the full names of his fellow prisoners mentioned in the account. 75. “Werkstatt” in the original document. 76. Meaning “overseer.”

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Chapter 1 All over the camp preparations were going on. No more organization. Every one took what he wanted, and all the VIPs (Kapos, block eldest) were getting rid of what they couldn’t take and were throwing to the crowd of the destitute mess tins, cups, shirts, trousers, etc., etc. We were expecting a walking evacuation. The night of the 15th to 16th was devoted to more preparation, and in the early hours on the 16th rumors started to circulate. Some were pretending we were circled, others saying we’d be abandoned because a transport from Auschwitz had to do a U-turn etc. . . . Believing we’d soon be free, our hope flew away when we heard the melody for the gathering before taking leave. As well-equipped as we could be, we went toward the roll call square, then to the gate by groups of a hundred people. We left 900 sick people with 5 doctors and 10 nurses in the KB.77 Full of courage and determination to resist, we started a long and difficult trip. It should have brought us our freedom back, but the cost to the most of us: their lives, their hopes, their prospects.

77. Meaning Krackenbau, or “camp hospital.”

CHAPTER 2

Experiencing “Liberation”

I

N HIS ICONIC memoir, Survival in Auschwitz (written in 1947 and published in Italian under the title If This Is a Man), Primo Levi, Italian Jew and noted postwar writer, remembers his liberation from the Auschwitz concentration camp with ambivalence: “For us even the hour of liberty rang out grave and muffled, and filled our souls with joy and yet with a painful sense of prudency [. . .] and also with anguish, because we felt that this should never happen, that nothing new could ever happen good and pure enough to rub out our past, and that the scars of the outrage would remain with us forever, and in the memories of those who saw it, and in the places where it occurred and in the stories that we should tell of it.”1 Levi complicates the commonly held impression of “liberation”—even liberation in a place like Auschwitz, where it occurred on a specific date (January 27, 1945)—as a singular, triumphant moment for both soldier and survivor. For those within the concentration camp system, liberation might constitute a distinct event, such as the Red Army’s entrance into Auschwitz as described above, or the American liberation of Buchenwald on April 10, 1945, or the British arrival at Bergen-Belsen on April 15, 1945. Yet even these seemingly straightforward moments contained a certain degree of ambiguity. By the time the Red Army liberated Auschwitz, sixty thousand prisoners had been evacuated on death marches. When the Americans reached Buchenwald, the SS had abandoned the camp. At Bergen-Belsen, many of the 1. Primo Levi, If This Is a Man and The Truce (New York: Viking Penguin, 1987), 188.

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sixty thousand inmates encountered by British forces were slowly dying of starvation and dysentery; in fact, thirty thousand died after liberation.2 In other areas of eastern Europe, “liberation” consisted simply of abandonment as local collaborationist guards fled the advancing Soviet troops. What did “liberation” mean for both soldier and survivor? How did liberation continue to unfold in concentration camps, in hospitals, and in displaced persons (DP) camps in the days and weeks following the dissolution of Nazi rule in various locales throughout Europe? What was the relationship between Jewish liberator and the liberated, and what understanding existed between these two groups? Ultimately, how was the narrative and memory of the liberation formed, even in the immediate weeks and months after the end of the war? No matter how it occurred, liberation left many practical and psychological questions for survivors. This chapter addresses the different aspects of liberation from a variety of perspectives. For Jewish soldiers encountering the Holocaust, the shock of the concentration camps is palpable. While official reports hail Germany’s surrender on May 8, 1945, many American Jewish soldiers faced the reality of the concentration camp universe for the first time. Their letters home to relatives reveal the horror of their encounters. While Soviet Jewish soldiers were somewhat more informed of Nazi atrocities, they shared an impulse to relay the impact of the concentration camps to the greater public. For European Jews, liberation represented a complex and conflicted moment: while they were now “free,” the search for relatives, for home, and even for basic subsistence had only begun. Regardless of their perspectives, the authors of these documents speak to the difficult reality of Europe as the war came to an end. Liberation, then, signified freedom, but not freedom alone. Indeed, as Levi relates, “the scars of outrage would remain with us forever,” and the dead bodies were yet to be counted. Ultimately, as these sources attest, liberation and survival became intimately linked and formed part of an evolving process.

AMERICAN JEWISH SOLDIERS ENCOUNTER THE HOLOCAUST The experience of liberation held vastly different connotations for the liberator and the liberated. For soldiers facing the as-yet-unnamed crime of genocide, the horror of encountering emaciated survivors and piles of bodies was 2. For a history of Bergen-Belsen and its survivors, see Hagit Lavsky, New Beginnings: Holocaust Survivors in Bergen-Belsen and the British Zone in Germany, 1945–1950 (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2002).

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unimaginable. The documents in this section explore Jewish American soldiers’ reactions to the concentration camps as distinct and somewhat different from those of their non-Jewish counterparts. Indeed, some American Jewish soldiers and chaplains had missing relatives in Europe. To these men, liberation represented more than a military victory; it also signified the first opportunity to search for family members lost to the war.3 Because of a close identification with the victims, these writers speak of “we” and “us” rather than “they” and “them.” Among them was journalist Sergeant Fred Friendly,4 who traveled from the Pacific theater back to Europe on US Army orders to report what he saw there to soldiers engaged with Japanese forces. Upon visiting Mauthausen, he wrote home to his mother, “If there had been no America, we, all of us, might well have carried granite at Mauthausen.”5 Document 2-1 presents a letter from Jewish soldier Irving P. Eisner.6 Dated May 15, 1945, about one month after the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp on April 11, it serves as a typical example of the many letters written home by American servicemen in response to what they saw. Buchenwald was one of the first camps liberated by the western Allies, and the photos and films taken by American servicemen are among the most common images of concentration camps known today.7 By 1945, the camp population had swelled to fifty thousand inmates, including Sinti-Roma, Jews, and political prisoners. In January 1945, over ten thousand prisoners (most of them Jewish) arrived at Buchenwald from Auschwitz and Gross-Rosen. By early April, the Germans had “evacuated” twenty-eight thousand inmates in order to keep ahead of the Allied advance; over nine thousand people died of exhaustion or 3. For one example, see George Vida, From Doom to Dawn: A Jewish Chaplain’s Story of Displaced Persons (New York: J. David Publishers, 1967). 4. Born in New York, Fred W. Friendly (orig. Ferdinand Wachenheimer; 1915–1998) worked in radio broadcasting in the 1930s before enlisting in 1941. He served in the Pacific and worked as a reporter for an army newspaper, returning to radio work after the war. He subsequently became a pioneering figure in the development of television news at CBS, where he worked closely with Edward R. Murrow. See obituary, New York Times, March 5, 1998. 5. Deborah Dash Moore, GI Jews: How World War II Changed a Generation (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004), 232. 6. Eisner (1923–2001), born in Ohio, had enlisted in March 1943 and was released in April 1946. 7. For a study of the images taken by American servicemen during liberation, see Jeffrey Shandler, “The Testimony of Images: American Newsreels,” in Why Didn’t the Press Shout? American and International Journalism during the Holocaust, ed. Robert Moses Shapiro (New York: Yeshiva University Press in association with KTAV Publishing House, 2003), 109–25.

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were shot en route.8 By the time the Sixth Armored Division entered Buchenwald in April, the twenty-one thousand remaining prisoners, consisting of both Jews and political prisoners, had seized control of the camp. As the letter indicates, Eisner visited but did not himself liberate the camp; he writes to his father while still on military detail. DOCUMENT 2-1: Letter by Irving P. Eisner, Buchenwald, May 15, 1945, USHMMA Acc. 2012.16.1 Irving P. Eisner collection.

Wednesday, May 15th Dear Dad, I don’t know how to begin this letter, but I’ll try this. Today I visited “Buchenwald” (I hope that got by the censor). I learned a lot today about life and death at a concentration camp, for the past three, four, five, and six years for political prisoners. You know who those are—anti-Nazis by religion and nationality. Six years ago while I was in high school, millions of people were suffering and dying beyond approach of human thought. Today I saw where 51,000 people were tortured to death.9 First I saw how they lived. They lived in barracks where we put 75 or a hundred men; by the thousands. Not in beds, but in shelves up to the ceiling. Three slept in a shelf room for one man cramped. They slept on top of each other. I saw their hospital. There was a room separate where S.S. doctors gave shots. A few minutes later the patient was dead. He was thrown out the back door into a pen full of bloody walls to be disposed of. I saw the kitchen where the turnip soup was made. A turnip was dragged through hot dish water. I also saw where they died. I saw the whipping posts where they were horse flogged to death. I saw the hanging posts. They accommodated several poor devils at a time. And finally, I saw the crematory. I couldn’t describe my impression of that building in 500 pages. As they entered they read in German, “You come in through the door and go out through 8. For a discussion of the terminology of “death marches” as opposed to “evacuation marches,” see Daniel Blatman, The Death Marches: The Final Phase of Nazi Genocide (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011). 9. Eisner’s figure was a widely reported statistic, appearing in the Philadelphia Inquirer and New York Times in April 1945. For more information on this figure and its symbolic importance, see Barbie Zelizer, “The Liberation of Buchenwald: Images and the Shape of Memory,” in Cultural Memory and the Construction of Identity, eds. Dan Ben-Amos and Liliane Weissberg (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1999), 136–75.

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the chimney.”10 I saw the remains of human beings after they were taken out of the furnaces. They were sent home in round boxes which would hold about a quart of water. The ashes I saw belonged to a 23 year old Jew who was cremated five days before the Americans arrived. You may think I exaggerate, because I’m in the habit of doing that a little, but an American couldn’t exaggerate anything like this because the mind can’t construct things as bad, let alone worse. Everything we’ve read and I write is understatement, but it’s the best we can describe this human brutality. Believe me Dad, I saw it with my own eyes, today. I talked with two men today of my own race. They were from Hungary six years ago. One is only 20 years old now. The other was a married man with a four year old child and a two year old child (six years ago). He told me unbelievable stories. In me he found his first friend as a free man in all those years and he practically broke down. The hour I spent with those two men will remain with me for the rest of my life. He saw me take a member of Hitler Youth by the back of the neck and kick him in the back side out. He didn’t believe that could be done by a man of his race. He was 30 but he looked like twice that age and acted like that too. This man told me how his mother, father, wife and two children had died. His wife and baby were gassed. His four year old boy was tortured to death. He told me how but we won’t go into that. He told me what happened to young girls of that age too. I found myself grinding my teeth at how I’d treated these goddamn Nazi whores. He told me he—himself was forced to cremate his father. Do you realize what I just wrote Dad. I don’t think I do—it sounds impossible—and Dad you might think I’ve been given a good line of bullshit, but I don’t, believe me, I don’t!! It’s the truth and worse has happened. The S.S. and Gestapo are described by words not yet invented within the dictionary or the vocabulary of any G.I. Now Dad—I ask you to do me a favor for this man. He has an uncle in Cleveland. I can’t give you his address, but you may find his phone number in the phone book. The name is Samuel Hellman. The man I talked

10. This is an incorrect translation and citation of the actual sign at the Buchenwald crematorium, which read, “No loathsome worms should feast on my body. [Instead] the pure flames should consume it. I always loved the warmth and light, and for that reason you should not bury but cremate me.” See USHMMPA WS #06494.

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Chapter 2 to has the same name, and lives in Hust, Czechoslovakia.11 Tell him your son in Germany met his nephew on the way home to Hust, from a concentration camp.12 If he asks about the rest of the family—tell him you don’t know if you can’t. Now, Dad I’ll never see this man again, and he’ll never know if we did him the favor or not. But if you’d seen his face when I told him I’d have you do that, and if you’d seen what I’ve seen today and heard his story, I think it would soften your heart like it did mine. It may be that his uncle won’t even be interested or he may have died. Six years is a long time, but I’m sure this man has not forgotten. I sent him away with a few cans of C-rations I was saving for a rainy day, and a few extra packs of cigarettes. I felt I’d done my good turn for today and I can look anybody in the eye and say so. (Especially an S.S. superman). Now Dad you may think I’m crazy for writing a letter like this, and maybe if I would have slept on it I wouldn’t write like this, but it’s all still fresh in my mind. I guess your [sic] the guy I tell all my troubles to release the load. I’ll close now—I’m your Loving son Irv P.S. Still have no dope on whether I’m occupational or if we’ll go to the Pacific. Will let you know as soon as I can.

For some American Jewish soldiers, the connection to the Jewish survivors reached beyond simple identification. Some soldiers were themselves refugees from Europe and hence carried with them their own mission of locating family members. Dr. Joseph W. Eaton was one such man. Born Joseph Wechsler, Eaton had emigrated from Germany to the United States in November 1934 at the age of fourteen together with his brother, Herbert, as part of the German Jewish Children’s Aid Association’s efforts. Eaton’s two older brothers had already 11. Most likely Huszt, later Khust; the city changed hands several times. It was in Hungarian hands when Hellmann was born, Czechoslovakian in the interwar period, and Ukrainian after the war. 12. The nephew was probably Samuel Hellmann, a Hungarian Jew born in 1914 in Úrmező or Rus’ke Pole (now on the western edge of Ukraine), who had been working as an optician and lens grinder. He was sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp from the Flossenbürg camp in late 1944 or early 1945. (Ohrdruf was a subcamp of Buchenwald.) His postwar history is unknown. See USHMM ITS Collection Data Base Central Name Index.

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emigrated to Palestine. In 1943, Eaton was drafted into the American military, even though he was still classified as an “enemy alien.” Assigned to the Fourth Mobile Broadcasting Company, he served as an army journalist. In 1944, Joseph changed his name from Wechsler to Eaton to avoid retribution against his parents should he be captured by German troops. His post gave him unprecedented freedom to move around the European theater and report on what he saw.13 The letter presented in document 2-2 reflects Eaton’s freedom of movement and his constant attempt to locate his parents. Jacob and Flora Wechsler had fled Berlin for the Netherlands. Eaton’s letter therefore serves a dual purpose: on the one hand, he reports about the conditions of Dutch and German Jewry in the areas he visited, as his occupation trained him to do; at the same time, he actively seeks news of his parents’ fate and whereabouts, although his hope for their survival is quickly waning. Eaton’s fears were ultimately well founded; both Jacob and Flora were arrested, deported, and killed at Sobibór in 1943.14 DOCUMENT 2-2: Letter from Joseph W. Eaton to “My dear brothers,”15 January 16, 1945, USHMMA Acc. 2009.401 Joseph W. Eaton collection.

January 16, 1945 My dear brothers: Recently I have had the opportunity of visiting both Holland and Germany several times. Here and there I found people who by means of 13. Eaton (b. 1919) would remain in Europe for several months after the end of the war, in part serving as editor of one of the newspapers in Germany permitted by US occupation authorities. He reported on conditions in the newly liberated Buchenwald concentration camp and Theresienstadt and provided aid to a number of survivors. Eaton eventually returned to the United States, where he became a professor of sociology at the University of Pittsburgh. 14. Jacob Wechsler (b. 1885 in Fürth) had owned a shaving brush factory in Nuremberg until the 1929 crash, then moved to Berlin, where he worked as a salesman. He was deported from Westerbork to Sobibór in March 1943, where he perished. Flora Wechsler (née Goldschmidt; b. 1890 in Frankfurt am Main) was probably deported to Sobibór slightly later, in July 1943, where she perished as well. See “Gedenkbuch,” Das Bundesarchiv, http://www.bundesarchiv.de/gedenkbuch; USHMMPA WS# 51081; donor’s file, USHMMA Acc. 2009.401. 15. His brothers, Siegfried and Martin, had immigrated to Palestine in 1935 and enlisted in the Jewish Brigade of the British army, also using a Hebraicized version of Joseph’s new name (one of them became Shlomo Eitan). Eaton’s younger brother, Herbert (b. 1922), also later immigrated to Palestine. See USHMMPA WS# 99183; donor’s file, USHMMA Acc. 2009.401.

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Chapter 2 cunning, luck and much help from “arian” [sic] civilians managed to survive the concerted effort of the Germans to exterminate our people. In Aachen,16 where there was a Jewish community of 1,200 souls, one remains, and he is from Cologne. His wife was unable to save herself and hide with him for over two years. There also are a few, about half a dozen, Jews who were married to Christians and therefore not deported until the Americans approached. Then, by hiding for a few days, they too survived. In Maastricht, Holland, by a coincidence, I met a Mr. Solomon Roet, formerly a director of the Rotterdamsche Bank in Amsterdam. I believe Siegfried met him when he worked in Holland. From him I heard a long and horrible tale of the extermination of Dutch Jewry. Step by step, with the most devilish cunning, the Nazis knew to dehumanize the living conditions of the Jews before they deported them. About 50 Jews have survived, by hiding. Each case is a story of luck and guts, guts especially on the part of the Dutch Underground. I estimate that from 50 to 100 different Dutchmen risked their lives by helping, in one way or the other, to hide the Roet family. The two daughters, the grandfather, and an adopted German refugee child were deported. But Mr. and Mrs. Roet were hidden in the country, by simple folk, so well that not even the neighbours knew of their presence. They were unable to leave the house at all and when their village was liberated by US troops, had to be led by the local teacher to go on the streets again. Their four boys were hidden separately on different farms. One of them has been reunited with them. The others are still in occupied Holland. Mr. Roet established an agency to bring members of “underground” families together. He [illegible] gave me several blanks and asked that the existence of this agency be given maximum publicity, so that people from all over the world can communicate with it and inquire after members of their families that might have survived in Holland. Naturally I inquired after our parents. Mrs. Roet seemed to remember mother vaguely. When they were forced to move into the Ghetto, the Roets lived near the Knoller Family and remember how they were deported, during one of the last mass roundups.17 The Nazis planned the whole campaign so well, that it can well be understood why our parents were unable to escape. Little has been heard from the Deportees, although some were sent to Theresienstadt, a camp of which people seem to have

16. Aachen represents the first of the West German cities occupied by the Allies. As a result, this potentially contributes to the raw nature of the writer’s impressions. 17. The author has been unable to identify this family.

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the illusion that a few will be able to survive. Perhaps it does not hurt to hope, even against hope. Our personal tragedy, in the background of such mass horror, simply makes it impossible to react emotionally. The whole thing is incomprehensible to a civilized person. No revenge or punishment can undo the German crime, a crime in which nearly the whole population collaborated passively. Few, if any German women, ever tried to evade the prohibition to give food to these people, as our soldiers do in Germany, despite all the rules. Obeying like animals to whomever bosses them, they closed their eyes to the mass deportation of small children, youth and aged that took place under their noses. What shocked me even more was a finding that in many areas, the few lucky German refugees are being treated as GERMANS, as enemies. I shall summarize the findings in a report and send them to persons who might be able to effect a change of policy. As the cover is lifted from the darkness that was Europe it becomes even clearer how much, by our failure to act in time, we increased, unsparingly, the suffering of the Jewish population. Both British and US statements were always rusty with declarations of sympathy and help, when it was too late. Now again, they are slow in doing the proper thing—to help whomever survived. In some Dutch towns, the only German Jewish family which survived, had printed over the “J” in their passport, the same as happened to other German civilians. I wish I had more time to write down the many things I experienced in the last few days. You will have to be patient. But we can rest assured in the fact that wherever our parents went and whatever happened to them, they went together with their neighbors and friends. Whether or not the realities of this war will make their suffering and sacrifices seem worthwhile, remains to be seen. We can only keep our hopes and to each, our small part. With love,

For months afterward, American Jews still felt and wrote about liberation’s impact, as shown in document 2-3, Chaplain Rabbi Abraham Klausner’s report in Yiddish, published in the first issue of the periodical Fun letstn churbn in August 1946. This publication, issued by the Central Historical Commission in Munich, targeted the Jewish displaced persons of Europe. It aimed, in particular, to preserve the testimony of survivors and to highlight and historicize displaced persons’ experiences both during the war and after liberation. The fact

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that this particular account of liberation (most likely written several months prior to publication) was included in the first issue of this magazine indicates an awareness of the symbolic importance of this moment to the survivor community. It also serves as an attempt to remember liberation on Jewish terms and in a Jewish language. The author of the piece became a tireless advocate for displaced persons after he toured the Dachau concentration camp in May 1945.18 Among his projects, Klausner began to collect lists of survivors, which were published on June 20, 1945. More generally, Klausner sought to raise awareness in America and abroad regarding the conditions of these survivors in postwar Europe. Klausner’s piece here thus spoke directly to survivors (in Yiddish) and emphasized the centrality of their voices and their stories to the liberation narrative. DOCUMENT 2-3: Chaplain Abraham Klausner, “Soon after the Liberation,” Fun letstn churbn (Munich) 1, no. 1 (August 1946): 3 (translated from Yiddish).19

Chaplain Abraham I. Klayzner20 After Liberation Introductory chapter for a larger work Holy ecstasy and baited breath, deeply humanistic belief and illustrious courage accompanied the Allied soldiers at every step as they crossed the border of the Greater German Reich during the victorious march through the still haughty cities and villages—the massive, abominable snakes’ nest 18. Rabbi Abraham J. Klausner (1915–2007) was raised in Colorado and ordained in 1943. The following year he volunteered as chaplain for the US Army and was deployed to Europe from late 1944 to 1946. Although his duties centered on serving American Jewish troops, he undertook considerable outreach to Jewish survivors and was instrumental in persuading law dean Earl G. Harrison to report on DP camp conditions in Germany. Klausner became a rabbi in Boston and finally at Temple Emanu-El in Yonkers, New York, after the war. See his autobiography, Abraham J. Klausner, A Letter to My Children: From the Edge of the Holocaust (San Francisco: Holocaust Center of Northern California, 2002); Alex Grobman, “Klausner, Abraham J.,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica, ed. Fred Skolnik and Michael Berenbaum, 2nd ed. (Detroit, MI: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007), 12: 214–15; obituary, New York Times, June 30, 2007, C10. 19. While this document appeared in the first edition of Fun letstn churbn, it is most likely a reprint of an earlier piece. 20. This spelling reflects the Yiddish transliteration of Abraham Klausner’s name. The author has retained such transliterations for linguistic accuracy.

Experiencing “Liberation” of all humanity. The mood of the Jewish soldiers who marched along with them, whose hearts had long been afflicted and eaten up by the waves of poisonous agitation and deadly gases, whose millions of brothers the merciless enemy had callously murdered throughout Europe—the fiery mood among us Jews in the army can hardly be described with the few typical pithy lines. To the few survivors of our murdered nation, Jews who were dragged into concentration camps and then liberated and who are out there somewhere—it is toward them that our gaze and our hearts are turned. We came upon them, huddled, small, and thin. But in what sort of a condition were they? How did such individuals appear to the eyes of the civilized American soldier, who remained mentally sound? We, their Jewish comrades, among whom I had the privilege to be, invited them in and brought them into the camps. We led them among all the holes and the earthen stalls, through all the dismal landmarks of the concentration camps. We did not let them take a single step back and flee the dreadful epic and the “eerie” atmosphere. We showed them everything and allowed them to see all the atrocities and absorb everything through their infernally opened eyes. We pointed out for them the living ghosts in the polluted barracks, the hardly conscious who had been created in God’s image but who barely looked human. Their cameras worked diligently. Long reports by war correspondents were “cabled” to the newspapers of the world. Some aid was provided on the local level. And now. For military reasons, UNRRA and the Joint for a time were not able to make it here. Indeed, tank divisions were the ones that liberated the camps along with their “residents,” the inmates, so their mission in that area is complete. They now turn away to pursue the enemy, and the army goes along with them. And in the concentration camps themselves, the liberated masses are confronted again with nearly the same travails. Inter arma silent musae. During war, there is no room for art, let alone patience and sentiments to occupy oneself with such heavenly “art” like resurrecting the

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Chapter 2 dead. With more or less power into the black birds—the “mills of death” continued to turn. In the camp Bergen-Belsen, the number of dead after the liberation even exceeded the number of the survivors. When the scourge was so great and, with each liberating step on German soil creating more and more new masses of prisoners and kidnapees from all possible nations, suffering individuals in the millions—who was able to look upon the clustered, haggard remnants of the Jews, ferociously tormented and so bitterly afflicted and persecuted? Who, in the fervor of the war and in its immediate wake, wanted to lend an ear and listen to stories of specific sufferings and appeals for specific attention and aid? And the majority of the people, our survivors in mortal agony, were at that time at the very precipice of destruction and had no desire to struggle with death, which was lurking and devouring the masses. People who were torn away with such cruelty from their homes and their families, orphaned youths who for years had no contact with the world, who finally had the fortune of tearing themselves away from the claws of death. Then they have to start their lives as if anew. Many, very many will have to search across countries and great distances to find, perhaps, a place where they will feel at home. Pain and suffering and truly bitter experiences await them. Charity and aid, rapid and significant aid, are called for. At issue is the story of the liberated survivors, a very particular chapter in the course of our experiences of recent years. Another step on our difficult path in which are reflected the struggle and the fight of the remnant of survivors, clinging to life, for their day-to-day subsistence, to reenter the ranks of the living, and their striving for continued national existence. It is a truly remarkable path of struggle, sown with various bumps, that metes out hurt and additional suffering, but also not without significant success!

RESPONDING TO THE LIBERATORS: LIBERATION FROM THE SURVIVOR’S PERSPECTIVE If Jewish soldiers often met liberation with shock and ambivalence, the experience was even more confusing for those who had survived and soon became

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“stateless persons” in the eyes of the world. From the survivor’s perspective, concentration camp liberation entailed a combination of physical exhaustion, geographical displacement, and what Primo Levi calls the “pain of exile.” Indeed, survivors often found themselves hundreds of miles from home without the means to travel. For those who did return home, a stark landscape greeted them. In addition to this physical destruction, the psychological devastation of separated families also figured heavily in the survivor’s experience of liberation. Chapter 7 more fully explores the search for families and attempts to return home, but even in the period immediately after liberation, familial displacement loomed large.21 Document 2-4, a letter from survivor Julius Lewy22 to his liberators, is indicative of this postwar anxiety and desire to mediate the loss of home and family. Even though addressed to the chief doctor of the American Red Cross, his letter was received by J. George Mitnick,23 a liberator of the Ohrdruf concentration camp. Lewy writes from a DP camp in Linz, Austria, and asks for the opportunity to work for the Allied forces. In fairly fluent English he expresses admiration for what he calls “Anglicist” culture. At the same time, Lewy also writes of the extreme malnutrition still present in the postwar German hospital where he resides. For Lewy, the German administration is itself insulting: “An enemy of yesterday should be your benefactor of today?” Above all, Lewy’s letter demonstrates his desire to find a home and a purpose after the war that reaches beyond the status imposed upon him as “an orphan of the world.” There is no further information on his whereabouts postwar; thus, it is unclear if he ever succeeded.

21. For a sustained study of the effect of displacement on the family and human rights, see Tara Zahra, “The Psychological Marshall Plan: Displacement, Gender, and Human Rights after World War II,” Central European History 44, no. 1 (2011): 37–62. 22. Lewy (b. 1917) was born in Krakόw and had been working as a forced laborer since at least September 1941. He was in the Płaszów camp near Krakόw until early 1945, then spent two months in the Mauthausen concentration camp, and was subsequently forced to work in the “Goeringwerke” factory in Linz. Both he and his father, Friedrich (b. 1884), also a Polish Jew, survived the war. See USHMM ITS Collection Data Base Central Name Index. 23. Mitnick may not have known Lewy personally. J. George Mitnick (1917–2005) enlisted in the army after finishing college in Connecticut. He rose to the rank of captain in the 65th Infantry Division in Europe and took part in the liberation of the Ohrdruf camp in mid-April 1945. After returning to the United States, he became a formidable businessman, community leader, and philanthropist, also working on behalf of Jewish organizations and Israel.

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DOCUMENT 2-4: Letter from Julius Lewy to his liberators, Linz, Austria, May 30, 1945, USHMMA Acc. 2005.120 J. George Mitnick collection.24

Linz, 30 May 1945 Dear Liberators! I know well I have no right to trespass on your dutiful time—but before entering into the subject I think some introductory explanations would be of importance. In any case I shall try to be as concise as possible, although the very nature of my topic is likely to let my pen ramble far beyond any preconceived limits. Who am I? A Polish Jew 28 years old, with University education; man deprived of everybody and everything, but instead rich of experiences; so that much more essential would be the question: who have I been? From the very beginning of this most tremendous of all wars I have been living in Poland, under German occupation facing the hell on earth as martyr and witness in one person. There is not any suffering imaginable either moral, or physical or material I would not have gone through during these six fateful years. Physically rather weak, I have had to my advantage another form of resistance: my spirit. To all this time I’ve never ceased to believe in the final victory of Humanity and Justice and never ceased to hope in my personal survival. The conscience of possessing some quantity of Anglo-Saxon culture—I studied English literature in Cracow under of greatest Polish Anglicist [sic], Professor Roman Dyboski, has imparted to me the reassuring feeling that I am in a certain degree representative of Anglo-American potentialities. And it is, without a doubt, this psychological attitude of mine which is to be seriously taken into account when I try genuinely to explain the phenomenon of my personal survival.

24. This document, handwritten in English, contains many spelling and grammar mistakes retained here to preserve the accuracy of the letter.

Experiencing “Liberation” It was not earlier than in the last period of my war biography, about two month before the end of the European cataclism [sic], that my physical organism collapsed: diarrhea, this mortal camp disease become my share too and in the course of following weeks I grew more and more exhausted and emaciated—till the miserable condition in which I was found by the Liberation. From then on a few days I was together with others transferred into the local hospital. Since have passed several weeks . . . I was better already and I tried to descend steps. And then came a collapse with a heart disease. For the time being I am far from being healthy, indeed I don’t feel any bettering of my general state at all. What are the reasons? Here, in the hospital, all is lacking, all is failing. Medicaments as well as eating (quality and quantity!) treating as well as nursing. Example: a daily ration: 1/3 of brown bread; never any butter or jam. You are treated by a young German physician. An enemy of yesterday should be your benefactor of today? It would take much time to enlarge on the subject; and I won’t weigh you so long with my complaints. My strongest wish now is to recover; to rejuvenate my breath not in the mere egotistical aim of enjoying my life, but to be able to serve and further my ideas and realize my life’s aim: which consists in becoming a writer (I’ve got a nerve for it) in English language, nowadays a most universal means of literary expression (I already wrote several things in my Polish before the war). That’s why I’ve decided to address myself to you. I beg you, may I implore you, to help me out of my predicament by transferring to the hospital of yours. For years I have dreamed about your victorious arrival and now when the longed for time is come—I am away from you, cut off from any contact

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Chapter 2 with the civilization and culture that you represent and for which we have been so long and so desperately fighting. The staying with you would prove, I presume—as most promoting my ultimate aims. I am ready to accompany you where you go and—as I know besides English and my mother-tongue Polish: German, French, Russian, Italian, Spanish, Jewish and Esperanto—I may be in Europe of some use to you (I’ve got a lot of practice as an interpret). Who am I not? An orphan of the world. And you are in a position to restore the sens [sic] to my life: to create a new (first spiritual) home for me and the possibilities of fulfilling my life’s aims. I hope you won’t refuse to make this salutary gesture . . . Yours truly Julius Lewy P.S. I beg you very much for an immediate written answer; ill men are so impatient . . .

Lewy’s letter expresses no hope—and no wish—to return home to Poland and search for his family. Document 2-5, an anonymous man’s letter to his wife from the records of the World Jewish Congress, speaks to the efforts of one family to rebuild their lives in postwar Vienna. In the early postwar period, Austria became home to approximately 1.4 million refugees, including displaced persons as well as ethnic Germans, of which 24,791 were Jews; 37,000 of these people remained in DP camps through 1949.25 The author of this short letter describes a somewhat desperate postwar situation: an apartment destroyed, lack of electricity, and dwindling food and medical supplies. In addition to presenting these practical concerns, Austria made its Jewish displaced persons extraordinarily unwelcome; indeed, just twenty-three Jewish DPs attained Austrian citizenship between 1945 and 1952, in comparison with 150,000 ethnic Germans and 35,000 other displaced persons.26 The writer’s tone reflects the 25. Tara Zahra, “Prisoners of the Postwar: Expellees, Displaced Persons, and Jews in Austria after World War II,” Austrian History Yearbook 41 (2010): 197. 26. Ibid., 205.

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pessimism of his environment. In the end, we do not know what happened to him or if his infirm sister secured a visa to Switzerland. DOCUMENT 2-5: Letter from an unidentified Jewish author to his wife upon his return to Vienna, August 9, 1945, USHMMA RG 68.045M, reel 27, file 182 (translated from German).

Vienna VIII, 9 August 1945 My dear, After a difficult four-day journey in a freight car, my sister and I returned on July 7, and we now live in my previous apartment, of which I occupy only one part. We found a pile of rubble here. You cannot imagine the destruction and the lack of everything. We have no house, no streetcar, and intermittently no light. Our nourishment is absolutely insufficient. Before our departure, I got some food from an American officer without which we would have starved. Our supplies are already running out, unfortunately. My sister is not doing well. She is having heart troubles, and the more medicine she takes, the worse she feels. She needs to have better nourishment and rest. We would be very grateful if you would have a message and possibly food sent to us through the Red Cross. We’re happy that we at least have a decent apartment. But only the gods know how it will be in winter. Would it be possible for us [to get] at least for my sister a visa for Switzerland for six months. With best regards, Your beloved

While the previous two documents contain pleas and entreaties for help, the diary entries presented in documents 2-6 and 2-7 reflect personal perspectives on the momentous yet perplexing event that was liberation. In these reflections from Michal Kraus and Philip Vock, the meaning of liberation remains ambiguous at best. They ask, What can be explained to a liberating soldier?

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What does that encounter accomplish in the first place? Ultimately, what does “liberation” mean within the context of dead relatives and a lost homeland? This selection from Michal Kraus’s memoir demonstrates one example of this type of reflection. As the preface to his memoir notes, he wrote this account while recuperating from his ordeal between 1945 and 1947. Even so soon afterward, he notes the details forgotten: “Last year, when I started to write the first part (of this diary) I still had many details etched into my memory, but today, two years later, what I want to write about, I recall less, even though every day would provide a good author with an abundance of rewarding material.”27 The particulars Kraus does include indicate his condition and the still dire nature of the situation at hand. His primary concerns—the fate of his parents, his first full meal, and other aspects of his personal health—intertwine with broader issues like communication with American soldiers and the very meaning of his own survival. DOCUMENT 2-6: Diary 11b of Michal Kraus covering events from 1942 to 1945, written between 1945 and 1947, 65–67, 71–77, USHMMA Acc. 2006.51 Michael J. Kraus collection (translated from Czech).

IV. A Great Day—May 7, 1945, Liberation from Evil [. . .] Free. Thank God! We survived. In our heads swirled the memories of these horrible years, our friends. One of us brought a loaf of bread. We ate a little bit. Then came the comrades from the next block; they had a piece of horse meat. We deliberated about what we should do. It was getting dark. Many people left the camp. We decided to stay the night. I could not fall asleep for a long time. I reflected on my fate, and I remembered my parents. But then I slept well. After all, we were free! Early in the morning we walked around the blocks, where we cut off a piece of meat, and we went on our way. We walked around the deserted buildings. Everywhere things were thrown around, signs of a hasty flight. We found a bicycle there on which Fink rode. It had no tires. We trudged with difficulty through the forest. 27. Diary of Michal Kraus, 1942–1945, USHMMA Acc. 2006.51 (Michal J. Kraus collection), 2a.

Experiencing “Liberation” Everywhere lots of prisoners. And look, over there, a road—and behind it—the first American soldier. [. . .] 1. Meeting the Americans—the first food We rushed out onto the road. So that is what American soldiers look like. It was the first person—and a liberator to boot—whom we encountered on our way out of captivity. He was just stopping a motorcycle with a German officer. He wanted to take his weapon, but the officer showed him some paper and continued on his way. We were most surprised. We continued to follow the others. There were a few huts standing by the road. We headed there. There was a pump. We drank some water. A peasant bought the bicycle from us in return for a loaf of bread and some lard. It was our first food. Each one of us had a slice, and we continued. We passed soldiers who observed us and threw us candy. Among them there were Czechs. Some of them photographed us. They were nice boys. They rested near the road in full uniform. The best sight was the endless convoy of cars and trucks that moved along on the better roads. What a lovely view of tanks with blacks sitting on them. A beautiful, well-organized army. They told us to continue straight ahead, that in the next village there were provisions and that we could fill up there. We stumbled ahead, everywhere nice-looking soldiers, pressed pants, offering chocolates—and we continued. And still continuous convoys of tanks and trucks with supplies. [. . .] 2. Food Warehouse and the Road to the Hospital We said to ourselves that there was no point in joining the crowd, so we went ahead. Look, here is an unfinished something like a garage, without

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Chapter 2 a roof. We go there; yes, that’s where we will stay today. We collect bricks, wood, and we’ll make a fire. Some of us go to get some food. Wow, what it looks like here! Bags of wheat, corn, peas, flour, whole bags full of food and crates. The soldiers give people anything they want. It was some sort of army warehouse, the last iron reserve. There are even new cans, also sugar. The peasants take away carts full of bags and crates of cans. They must still have enough left over to consume now (1947). We bring our food; we heat the cans. The best was oatmeal with sugar. And already some get sick, everybody has diarrhea—a nice mess (some windfall!). In the afternoon we wander around the surrounding villages to get bread. Sometimes they even give us soup. In the evening it begins to look like rain. We cover the remaining food, and we go to the warehouse to sleep, upstairs on a stack of bags. There are not that many of us left. The most valuable foods like sugar, cans, and oatmeal are already gone. We are all sick and continuously have to go to the toilet. During the night it starts to rain. In the morning we trudge toward the road. Some of us are already on the road when a truck stops. They call to us to hurry, that they will take us to the meeting point. Laboriously we run. I can’t do it. Everything turns around inside me, I am the last. The car has already started when they pull me up. They are Frenchmen. They take us through Wels. Here we gas up and we continue. Everywhere there is destruction and full of soldiers and American cars. Above us the planes circle. I am sick. After a while we drive by large buildings, a former Wehrmacht barracks. Now they bring concentration camp prisoners here. There are mainly Jews here. The car stops. We get out and lay in the grass. Somebody goes to fetch water and even brings [illegible]. Then they assign us to a room on the second floor. Of course one has to lug straw mats up. I can’t. I lay on the floor; I am deathly ill. The guys first think I am pretending, but later they understand.

While Michal Kraus’s memoir attempts to reconstruct a day-by-day account of his experiences, Philip Vock’s journal reveals a more ideological perspective.28 Born in Paris in 1929, Vock escaped to the Spanish border in 1941. 28. For a discussion of the French memory of World War II and the Holocaust, see Henri Rousso, The Haunting Past: History, Memory, and Justice in Contemporary France (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002); Michael R. Marrus, “Coming to Terms with Vichy,” H&GS 9, no. 1 (spring 1995): 23–41; Annette Wieviorka, Déportation et génocide: Entre la mémoire et l’oubli (Paris: Plon, 1992).

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In November 1942, he fled to Nice, then occupied by Italian forces. Arrested in 1943, Vock was sent to Drancy and then, in 1944, to Auschwitz. In January 1945, he was marched to Buchenwald, where American troops liberated him in April. Vock’s journal begins with this episode and describes the conditions of various camps that he later traveled to after liberation. There is nothing explicitly “Jewish” about his narrative; rather, Vock reflects upon a general sense of victimhood. He notes the national and political allegiances of the prisoners by mentioning the various anthems sung upon liberation, including the communist hymn “The Internationale.” In addition to this moment of camaraderie, Vock also includes a somewhat surprising admission: a vague allusion to acts of revenge on the local German population. This topic is notable for its absence in much of the literature of the Holocaust, be it in survivor memoirs, oral accounts, or secondary literature.29 For Vock, liberation instead signifies a broader national and ideological triumph over and above any individual survival, however fraught that may be. DOCUMENT 2-7: Journal of Philip D. Vock, August 1945, USHMMA Acc. 1997.11 Philip D. Vock papers (translated from French).

Buchenwald concentration camp liberation No more evacuation for one day. Liberation was close and certain, and we were trying to survive. It was Wednesday, April 11, 1945. Despite canon fire and permanent attacks from US air force, we were still walking around in the camp. Suddenly, at 11:00 a.m., we hear a different kind of alert. We stop whatever we are doing, and without a move we all look in each other’s eyes: something strange is going on: the news spread like wild fire: “Tanks alert.” No one in the alleys. At 12:00 a.m., our hearts are beating faster. 2:00 p.m., we start hearing the first gun shots and machine guns.

29. For a sustained discussion of the omission of revenge and its implications for Holocaust historiography and thought, see Berel Lang, “Holocaust Memory and Revenge: The Presence of the Past,” Jewish Social Studies 2, no. 2 (winter 1996): 1–20.

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Chapter 2 In blocks 1,2,3, camp “resistance” was already established. We had hidden 80 guns and were getting ready, waiting for the right time to attack. 4:00 p.m. the first watchtowers are abandoned by the enemy. Now is the time to show the SS what we are really worth. We start our attack on some occupied watchtowers. Some are destroyed; others are circled and passed by. At 4:15 p.m. “the Tower” capitulates and the defensive SS are running up to surrender. The camp’s main entry is free. Breaking the barbed wires like a herd of wild horses, freed from a ranch, we spread out in the woods, chasing the runaways. The few resisting ones are neutralized or captured. Twelve Allied tanks join us and support us. We have more weapons from what we found in the watchtowers and from our captured prisoners. At four thirty in the afternoon with the help of some platoons of the regular allied army [l’armée réguliere alliés], our troops completely cleared up the Buchenwald hill, where you can see now the flying flags of liberty. In sum we captured 220 SS including a kdo [kommando] fuhrer.30 Victory is won. “First roll call of freedom” Thursday, the next day at 7:30 a.m., first roll call of freedom in the camp. The square for roll call was located in front of the camp main gate, called “the Tower.” The just-formed committee decided that we should line up by national groups. The orchestra, that used to play the march for going out to work of the kdos, was now accompanying us during the roll call. Gathered since 7:00 a.m. in front of our blocks, we were waiting for the march signal given by speakers heard in all the barracks. The French started marching, singing “The Marseillaise.”31 Then came the Belgians, the Russians, the Dutch, the Italians, and so on, always accompanied by their national anthems followed by the moving “Internationale.”32 Gathered by the speaker’s voice we heard the decisions that were taken by the camp committee, to improve food, our sicknesses, and so on. 30. Meaning Kommandoführer, or the commander of an SS detachment. 31. French national anthem. 32. Communist anthem.

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Then a USA officer addressed us and declared we were free men again. We applauded his speech enthusiastically and went back to our blocks listening to “The Internationale,” thinking about the wonderful days awaiting us. [. . .] The Return The first step on our way back was full of joy. Repatriation trucks came to pick us up. What a joy to be free, finally free, able to sing “The Marseillaise,” or the “Chant du départ,”33 or “The Internationale,” in the Krauts’ cities we were going through, not cities but ghost cities, ruins, with wall sections in the middle destroyed by the fire. We were so eager for revenge, we could see the Krauts now standing in line for rutabaga, clearing the streets to let the occupation troops go by. We were plundering the villas and the farms, full of rage, where people were living like kings on all the goods they had stolen after torturing and starving all the countries they devastated. In their station houses, we found piles of military equipment; they had prepared everything to subject the world to their doctrine. In Mainz [Germany] Buchenwald deportees had priority to be repatriated, and we took a train for France, first to Longuyon then to Paris. France welcomed us warmly; it was the dream of something incredible.

The meaning of “survival” after liberation varied widely. Outside the stereotypical experience of the concentration camp victim, other Jews emerged from a number of circumstances to varying receptions and challenges. “Liberation” had different implications for Jews in hiding than for concentration camp survivors. Hidden children faced particular challenges during and after the war. As Debórah Dwork points out, “To go into hiding meant that all, or nearly all, ties with society were severed. Whether in an attic in the city or a warren in the forest, the child literally was hidden from the mortal danger the rest of the world represented. [. . .] Completely cut off from any community, without mobility or access to either goods or services (food, clothes, shoes, medicines, books,

33. “The Song of Departure,” a companion to “The Marseillaise,” which served as an anthem of the French Revolution.

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medical care, dentistry), their lives became straitened and circumscribed.”34 Whether posing as non-Jews or physically hidden away from the world, children faced a reality of insecurity and displacement. After the war, this uncertainty often turned to grief. As Maurits Cohen told Dwork, “My war began in 1945, and not in 1940. When I learned that my father and mother would not come back, and my brothers, then the war started. It took me years to get used to the idea, to find my own place, an only child, of course. We had had a very big family, so as a child I had to carry the whole weight of survival.”35 Liberation was often far from celebratory and instead left the individual with a broken family and an interrupted childhood. Such was the fate of Ruth Szmarag, born on May 14, 1935, to secular parents (Sigmund and Flora) in Vienna. Counting themselves citizen of Austria and members of the socialist movement, the Szmarags did not belong to the official Jewish community. After the events of “Kristallnacht,” Ruth, her immediate family, and her uncle, Phillippe Schindler, fled to Brussels. Immediately prior to the German conquest of Belgium in May 1940, Sigmund was deported to southern France and then to Drancy. On August 19, 1942, Sigmund and 1,000 other Jews were transported to Auschwitz, where 817 were killed upon arrival. Ruth and her mother found refuge through the generosity and ingenuity of Phillippe, who rented two houses in the Brussels suburb of Woluwe St. Lambert. A Belgian non-Jewish couple occupied the first floor of one of the houses, and Ruth and her mother lived upstairs with another family, the Sinaibergers (Hans and wife, Steffi, with son, George). Ruth and her mother remained there in hiding through the end of the war. While in hiding, Ruth kept a diary with drawings, plays, and games. Penned by a very small child at the time (ages six to ten), the diary consists primarily of random observations written in schoolgirl French. She writes to her mother and occasionally reflects on her situation. Collected within Ruth’s papers, the poem in document 2-8 chronicles, as the title suggests, the end of the war. The lyric is simple and short and expresses Ruth’s desire to see her father again on her birthday, nine months after Belgium’s September 1944 liberation by the Allied forces. It contains only optimism about reunification without any knowledge of her father’s fate. This short poem thus demonstrates how the war separated families and reflects the vastly different fates possible within 34. Debórah Dwork, Children with a Star: Jewish Youth in Nazi Europe (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991), 68. Cohen was eight years old in 1942, living in an Amsterdam Jewish children’s home, when the underground removed his yellow star and sent him into hiding. 35. Ibid., 263.

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one family. Szmarag became a child psychiatrist and lived in Israel for three years before emigrating to the United States. Her father did not survive.36 DOCUMENT 2-8: Poem “The War Is Finished” by Ruth Szmarag, Brussels, May 8, 1945, USHMMA Acc. 2002.404 Ruth Szmarag collection (translated from French).

Today is Wednesday: The war is finished. Tonight the bells were ringing, And the air-raid siren was running. The Germans surrendered, They can no longer resist. Then, we will celebrate my birthday in poetry By the grace also of the Russians, also the Americans, and also the English But I always wait, For a greater happiness, It will be great My dear father Will return

One year after the liberation of Auschwitz, in January 1946, of the 47,698 Jews in the American Zone of occupied Germany, 30,424 resided in DP camps, many on the site of former concentration camps.37 Caught between the end of the war and the beginning of a new life, many of these Jews coined themselves a new name: she’erit hapletah (surviving remnant).38 The term appears in several incarnations throughout the Bible, most explicitly in Second Kings 19:30–31: “And the survivors of the House of Judah that have escaped shall regenerate its stock below and produce boughs above. For a remnant shall come forth from Jerusalem, survivors from Mount Zion.”39 Attributed to a number of different 36. Sigmund (Nussim Zelig) Szmarag (1896–1942) was born in Lublin and had worked for an insurance company in Vienna. He did not survive Auschwitz. See donor’s file, USHMMA Acc. 2002.404. 37. Zeev W. Mankowitz, Life between Memory and Hope: The Survivors of the Holocaust in Occupied Germany (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 21. 38. It should be noted that Jewish DPs were not the only population to use the term she’erit hapletah. Polish Jews intending to rebuild Jewish life on Polish soil also deployed it. In this case, Zionist overtones were absent. 39. JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh: The Traditional Hebrew Text and the New JPS Translation, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2003).

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sources, the term takes hold in the postwar era as a moniker with a particularly Zionist inflection in Europe’s DP camps, from which document 2-9 originates. The following editorial from a DP newspaper, Unzer sztyme (Our Voice), begins to articulate one perspective on what it meant to be “stateless,” “displaced,” or a “refugee” in a postwar landscape that was still constantly being redefined. DOCUMENT 2-9: Editorial, Unzer sztyme: Organ of the Sharith Hapletah in the British Zone, January 1, 1946, USHMM Library Microfilms, LMO251.

And so 1945 is fast a-dying, with its withered leaves and sharp winds. The year that had been born on so wonderful a promise, and we know full well that before the year is completely dead decisions will have been made, orders given, that will profoundly affect us. It is right therefore for us to attempt a summing up of this 1945, and perhaps we might even lift the curtain of darkness that still envelopes us and attempt to reach into the dim light of tomorrow. Eight months have passed since the Day of Liberation. We have long ago lost the feeling of ecstasy of that wonderful day. We are no longer drunk on sheer Joy, and the thrill of existence has lost its momentum. We are attempting this analysis when every day troubles, and normal life tears at us with its usual cruel fangs. We want to dispel “to-day” in order to be ready for “to-morrow.” We know that that accuracy of our vision is normal, and we are not leaning on the goodness of people of the outside world, and the simple faith of our brethren abroad. We realize that our situation will not improve, nay, everything points to the fact that we are being dragged into a deeper and darker abyss. And so the last act of the war is brought to its conclusion. Millions who were enslaved by Hitlerism have returned to their homes. Soldiers who were torn away from kith and kin are beginning to rebuild their lives amidst their loved ones. Presidents and Prime Ministers, Foreign Secretaries are in solemn conclave, the great Captains depart. Life is approaching normality. Our problem still exists. We the ashes, the clinkers, the residuum of the furnace of War. Who is interested in ashes? And who will take unto him a heap of refuse? So we remain beggars, withered and grey, clothed in rags and we dutifully gnaw at the bone called liberation, and the World, the snug comfortable World warming itself at the grateful blessing of peace is expecting us to be ever so thankful for that bone.

Experiencing “Liberation” Liberation! A word which we had lingered on for long, long years, a word, that had shrieked at us to pray for an Allied victory, this word has become the most inhuman of disappointments to us, the living flesh of the word has shrunk away but the bone remains. We fought so well when we could fight. We had no tanks, no rifles, no flame throwers, no machine guns, but we fought with everything we had. With fists and boots, with sticks and clubs, with scalding water, and with our souls. We fought like Bar-Cochba, and we suffered like Job. We ask not for flowers to be strewn in our paths, we want no paeans of praise, but we do want to live, just to live a normal private life, to come and go, to eat and sleep and to be able to look men in the eye. The Nazi fences are destroyed, but another is being built around us, a bigger and better Belsen. The “free” Jews of Germany are being invited to return to this new Ghetto, in the heart of black Germany. We did not believe that it would ever be possible that in this first winter of liberation we should have to face such searing and bitter prospects after the liberation. The World is reading with mild interest the long tale of Nazi atrocities, they are but putting the past on trial, we ask that the future, our future be put on the throne of Justice. Where are the voices of the World, perhaps they are dead. Has Hitler laid his evil touch on them? Can not their mouths speak? Has the brains of the thinking World been fossilized? We are dumb, and must we be but a silent stricken folk, lost in the corridors of an echoing world? Where are the democrats, the liberals of the World? Has their faith been changed into a dumb contemplation of their navels, and we know not, this may be Nirvana? We are small in numbers, a remnant of a great people, and we live here in silent, futile contemplation, and we see no Nirvana this side of Belsen!

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Adjusting to Peace, Surviving Survival

I

N THE immediate postwar period, the definition of “survivor” (much like the term “liberation”) became a focus of attention. The question of who constituted a “survivor”—and what precisely one had survived—not only contained larger implications for the evolving narrative of the Holocaust but also held potential legal ramifications for refugees and displaced persons (DPs) in the immediate postwar period. Was the ghetto and concentration camp experience at the crux of the Holocaust, or did it instead represent the ultimate defeat of Jewish life and autonomy? If one elevated resistance fighters above all others— as examples of agency and heroism, for which the opportunities were rare and often fraught—how did that impact the narrative of wartime Jewry? What was the place of refugees, women, hidden Jews, and children within the landscape of survival and victimhood? Some organizations, such as the Central Historical Commission in Lublin (founded in 1944) and the similar (yet independent) organization in Munich (founded in 1945) deemed these distinctions academic as they strove to record and preserve as many disparate experiences as possible. At the same time, in the German-occupied zone of liberation administered by the Allied forces, both the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) (founded in 1943) and the US Army separated different “types” of survivors for the purpose of aid and relief work. Indeed, so-called infiltrees of eastern European refugees into DP camps where former concentration camp survivors resided caused much frustration and confusion. The very separation of Jewish

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from non-Jewish displaced persons was not easily accomplished. Thus, existential definitions of “survivor” and “victim” grew to have concrete consequences in a postwar Europe struggling to redefine its boundaries, political orientation, and ideals of nationhood. Ultimately, how does one move from the now iconic image of the malnourished concentration camp inmate to survivor?1 This chapter explores the many facets of “surviving survival” during this chaotic period. To that end, it examines the multifaceted nature of survival in the immediate postwar period and the diverse experiences that individual survivors encountered. Initially, the daily challenge of regaining personal health and well-being became a constant (and, for some, insurmountable) struggle. For those who did survive the initial days, weeks, and months of liberation, the possibility or impossibility of finding a “home” in postwar Europe remained a persistent question. Even if a home could be reclaimed, found, or reconstituted, the nature of life in a particular locale, as well as the survivor’s place within a particular community (inside or outside Europe), was far from secure. Finally, while all survivors faced difficult and unique circumstances surrounding their wartime experiences, child survivors encountered particular obstacles specific to their statuses and situations. For orphaned children, the question of home and homeland became particularly acute: To whose care and in what country could these children and young people return? For those with surviving family, to what extent was reunification also a readjustment to relatives and a life unknown for many years? No matter what the context or the specific situation, one constant thread weaves through these otherwise disparate sources: the multiplicity of intricate dilemmas faced by survivors who encountered an ever-changing postwar world.

EMERGING FROM THE HOLOCAUST: FINDING A “HOME” IN POSTWAR EUROPE Definitions of “home” and “survival” during this period remained fluid and, to a certain extent, fragile. The diary entry in document 3-1 describes one woman’s emotional rendering of her postwar ordeal. Dora Apsan was born in Sighet, in what is now Romania, on September 2, 1921. Like the rest of her community, including writer and Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel, Apsan and her family were first confined to the ghetto in Sighet and later deported to the Auschwitz 1. For a discussion and analysis of the formation of the image of the concentration camp survivor, see Samuel Moyn, “In the Aftermath of the Camps,” in Histories of the Aftermath: The Legacies of the Second World War in Europe, ed. Frank Biess and Robert G. Moeller (New York: Berghahn Books, 2010), 49–64.

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concentration camp.2 Apsan spent about eight months at Auschwitz before being transferred to Weisswasser, a subcamp of the Gross-Rosen concentration camp complex in Lower Silesia (today Rogoźnica, Poland), together with about two hundred other Hungarian Jewish women who had arrived in September.3 The Germans abandoned Weisswasser on May 6, 1945. Apsan left the camp shortly thereafter for the nearby town of Schildberg, Germany, where the French POW forced laborers at Weisswasser had lived. Apsan wrote the diary between May 6 and May 17, in Schildberg. In the following entry, dated May 12, 1945, she reflects on her uncertain future: Who from her family is left alive? Will she attempt to return to Sighet? What has become of her fiancé, Tzali? At this point, Apsan is not aware that much of her family perished at Auschwitz. Ultimately, Apsan returned to Sighet on June 2, 1945, where Tzali was waiting for her. DOCUMENT 3-1: Diary of Dora Apsan, May 12, 1945, Schildberg, Germany, USHMMA Acc. 2005.166.1 Dora Apsan collection (translated from Hungarian).4

Saturday, May 12 I am home. Marcel5 is in the other room, but luckily he does not bother me. The whole afternoon I was lying exhausted, not from work, but from my thoughts, my expectations, my fears. My little room is cool, I hear birds chirping outside, somewhere an accordion is being played, the sunshine is bright, the trees are blossoming . . . “It is May and the lilacs are blooming, 2. In the May 14, 1945, entry of her postwar diary, Apsan describes the roundup and subsequent wait for transport in the local synagogue in the spring of 1944. USHMMA Acc. 2005.166.1 (Dora Apsan collection). 3. Weisswasser had its own harsh conditions and required fourteen- to sixteen-hour workdays on one thousand calories per day. Much of the camp was evacuated on February 26, 1945; the women were marched to Senftenberg, then transported to Horneburg. Three weeks later, they were moved to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where British troops liberated them on April 15, 1945. For more information on the Weisswasser camp, see Gudrun Albrecht, “Weisswasser,” in The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, vol. 1: Early Camps, Youth Camps, and Concentration Camps and Subcamps under the SS-Business Administration Main Office (WVHA), ed. Geoffrey P. Megargee (Bloomington: Indiana University Press in association with the USHMM, 2009), 808–9. 4. Apsan also published a memoir titled Tell the Children: Letters to Miriam (San Rafael, CA: Sighet Publishing, 1998). 5. A member of a convoy of French prisoners also at Weisswasser.

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Chapter 3 it is May and my heart is freezing” . . . to what should I compare these surroundings? To Săpânța?6 To the nursery in Cluj? Never mind, it is so pleasant, so sweet, so painful, I would rather stay here and not go home. Where would I go? To whom would I go? My God, is there anybody for me in Sighet? I would arrive on such a splendid May day, I would run home full of hopes and who will be there? Mother? Father? No, I can no longer feed myself with such illusions.7 My dearest parents! How much did I love you— only now do I know it. Why didn’t I behave toward you as you deserved? Father, forgive me; mother, too: that I was not always good enough, that I caused you so many worries and aggravation. I am afraid that I am ready to forget this past year now that I am to embark on such a long journey. It seems as if I am returning home from an excursion and I am expecting you to be there waiting for me with open arms. God, why is our fate so cruel? Dear little Yancu,8 maybe you will be home. Look, I even brought you a pair of shoes. You will like them, won’t you, and you will be happy with the return of your sister who thought of you so often. Whom can I count on? Moishi,9 you are still my only hope, the only one whom I trust has survived. I implore you, don’t cause me disappointment, I don’t want to remain alive alone. Abie,10 my dear, where are you? Look at the tears that I was shedding writing these lines. I will look you up in Budapest even though I know that if you have survived these times you are probably home . . . but I don’t dare to hope that I will find even a small family there. Part of the family . . . or just one person waiting for me. Lord, look how my demands shrink, how crushed I have become. Dear Edzu,11 did you have enough strength to endure? Yossie,12 are you alive, for five years we have not found out if you reached Russia? Alter,13 you will be there, maybe you are already working for

6. Săpânța, Romania. 7. Both of Dora’s parents—Herzl (Herman) Apsan (b. 1886), an insurance agent and Yiddish writer, and Zali (Zissel) Apsan (née Basch; b. 1898), a housewife—were killed in Auschwitz. See Central Database of Shoah Victims Names (http://db.yadvashem.org/names/ search.html?language=en). 8. Yancu Apsan survived the war and was reunited with his sister in Hungary. 9. Dora’s older brother, who was killed at Auschwitz. 10. Dora’s brother, who survived on one of the trains organized by Rudolf Kasztner. He was sent to Palestine. 11. Nickname for brother Esau Apsan, who survived and was reunited with his sister in Hungary. 12. Dora’s brother who fled to Soviet-occupied territory and survived the war in Siberia. 13. No information is available for Alter.

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a Jewish newspaper or at a theater? Do you think of me? And Miki14 . . . no, no. I am not allowed to deceive myself with such wonderful dreams of finding you home, because the disappointment will be so terrible. And it will be . . . oh . . . dear brothers, parents . . . my home, I am yearning so much, and it hurts so much that I cannot bear it. Tzali,15 I don’t know what to say, but if I lose you then I had rather be taken to the gas chamber or run to the electric fence. Today memories are haunting me, our time in Cluj, the brick factory where we skied, all this was so very beautiful. You will be waiting for me, won’t you? And you still love me. Wouldn’t it be better to say here, to listen to the birds chirping and to deceive myself that I once had a Tzali, whom I loved so much, whom I see when I look at any man and who is waiting for me with outstretched arms, to hug me, to hold me. Maybe he even has a little room like this one, quiet, cozy, and he will love me as before . . . dreams of love . . . God, the disillusions are hurting me already. “Come, my love, I am waiting for your coming only.” Why is this May so beautiful and so painful?

Dora’s diary reflects the psychological toll of survival; document 3-2, concerning the fate of seventeen-year-old Michal Kraus (whose diary was featured in the previous two chapters), address the daily concerns of physical health. The first letter is from one of Kraus’ liberators, Dr. David L. Filtzer of Baltimore, Maryland.16 As the letter indicates, Filtzer took a great interest in Kraus’ health and well-being; indeed, they would continue to write for nearly a year. Filtzer 14. Dora’s half brother, who escaped to Italy. 15. Dora’s then fiancé and future husband, Zoltan Sorell (1921–2008), survived the war in Romania. After the war, they married; Zoltan became a mechanical engineer and Dora a physician. They immigrated to Brazil in 1961 and eventually to the United States. See obituary for Zoltan Sorell, October 17, 2008, J., www.jweekly.com/article/full/35999/holocaustsurvivor-zoltan-sorell-dies-at-87 (accessed May 14, 2014). 16. Dr. David L. Filtzer (1916–1988) was born in Baltimore and obtained his medical degree in 1939 from the University of Maryland Medical School. He completed his residency in 1943 at the Johns Hopkins University and joined the medical faculty. He also served as head of the Division of Orthopedic Surgery at Mount Sinai Hospital in Baltimore. Filtzer enlisted in the army in mid-1943 and was released from service in January 1946. See US Department of Veterans Affairs BIRLS Death File.

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sent several care packages to Kraus that included food, clothing, and other provisions scarce in Europe. In this letter, Filtzer encourages Kraus to look toward the future rather than remember the past—an opinion shared by many in the American Jewish community and elsewhere.17 Kraus’s response to Filtzer indicates very little psychological reflection. Instead, his letter—in broken English with numerous misspellings and grammatical mistakes—reports his desire to study engineering and continue his convalescence. Kraus’s signature here is also notable: he uses both his nickname, Misa, and his Auschwitz prisoner number. Two years later, Kraus would restart his diary, explicitly stating his intent to record his experience for, in his words, “those who were not there.” This type of reflection, however, was a luxury that Kraus could only indulge after addressing more pressing concerns: food, clothing, education, and profession. DOCUMENT 3-2: Correspondence between Dr. David L. Filtzer, Baltimore, and Michal Kraus, Ćeské Skalice, Czechoslovakia, October 12 and December 4, 1945, USHMMA Acc. 2004.499 Michael Kraus letters.

Emersonian Apartments Baltimore-17, Maryland USA 12 October, 1945 My dear friend Micshal [sic], You will perhaps be surprised to hear from me, and it may even be that you do not remember me. Just to refresh your memory, I was the doctor on your “abtellung”18 when the American Army sent its doctors to manage the hospital where you and your friends were. 17. For two conflicting assessments of the postwar Jewish community response and attitudes toward survivors, see Annette Wieviorka, The Era of the Witness, trans. Jared Stark (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006); Hasia R. Diner, We Remember with Reverence and Love: American Jews and the Myth of Silence after the Holocaust, 1945–1962 (New York: New York University Press, 2009). While Wieviorka claims that few survivor voices were truly heard, Diner argues that the American Jewish community was aware of and actively commemorated the Holocaust. For an assessment of the Israeli response in the immediate postwar years, see Hanna Yablonka, Survivors of the Holocaust: Israel after the War (New York: New York University Press, 1999). 18. Meaning Abteilung, or “battalion,” which the writer misspells.

Adjusting to Peace, Surviving Survival I can still remember the first time I saw you. I started to talk to you in very poor German, only to hear you say that you didn’t understand German and could talk to me very well in English. How surprised and pleased I was at that! You will perhaps wonder how I happen to have your address. Well, it really is very simple. My man, Sergeant Orme, showed me a letter you had written him, and I copied the address down so that I, in turn, could write to you, and inquire how you are. You know, I got quite fond of you, and am considerably interested in your welfare. There are so many questions I want to ask you, and I shall be looking forward to receiving your answers. How soon after I left Austria did you leave for Czechoslovakia? How did you get there, and how long did it take you? Did you find any of your family there? Where are your parents? With whom are you now living, and what are your plans for the future? Do you plan to work, or are you going to attempt to continue your education, and become a physician like your father? Do you have enough food to eat? Do you have plenty of warm clothing? In short, I want you to tell me all about yourself, for I am most interested. At the present time, one cannot send parcels from the United States to Czechoslovakia, but I am in hope that in the near future, conditions will permit us to be able to do so. At that time, I shall be pleased to send you some food, though that cannot be much as shipping space is so limited. I shall also send you some clothing, which I am certain you can make good use of, so I want you to tell me how old you are and how tall you are, so that the clothing will be the proper size. Also you must send me a letter requesting both food and clothing, so that the postal authorities will permit me to send them. I want you to take care of yourself, and to grow up to be the fine man that your parents hoped you would become. You have suffered a great deal, but try to forget, and to plan for the future, so that you will be a credit to your parents, friends, and your people. If you are able, write me about how conditions are in your country, and what you and your people are thinking, and how you are faring.

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Chapter 3 Grow strong, remain well, and try to get that happiness out of life that industry and devotion to your loved ones will bring. Sincerely, David L. Filtzer, M.D. České Skalice19 čp 78 ČSR 4th December, 1945 My dearest doctor! I was awfully glad to hear from you, and that you remember me. Thanks so much! Be not angry when my English is so bad, but I will try to make me understand. Now I will tell you something about me. I had a very bad trip as I returned home from the hospital in Austria. It longhed [lasted] one month before I came to Prague, where I get informations, that my parentes are dead. I live by some very good friends of my parentes. I am visiting a college, and I am studying to [be] a ingenearearchitect [architectural engineer]. I would like to following my father, but I could not be a good physician, I haven’t good nervs for it. From my family is alive my uncle in Palestina and he will returne very soon. He has a manufactory here,20 and he hoped to get it back. As you know, the rationes here are till now not sufficient but for me it’s enough, because I got a good education in the camp—only my clothingquestion is not loosed. The conditions here are now quite good and we are persuadet that the good live grows to real peace-time.

19. Small town located southwest of Nachod in the present-day Czech Republic, where the writer lived prior to the war. 20. In Nachod, Czechoslovakia, where Kraus was living.

Adjusting to Peace, Surviving Survival I hope that I have written all what you are interesting off. I thank you once more for your kindness, goodness and for the nice letter. I hope also that you, Mr. Kokoruda, and Mr. Ormes are well and that you write me all soon. Sincerly your Misa Liberated prisoner 168497 P.S. [handwritten] I beg you pardon, my writing machine21 is very bad.

21. Meaning “typewriter.”

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Apsan and Kraus address the physical and emotional uncertainty of emerging from the closed world of the concentration camp. The diary of Selma Wijnberg (Engel) depicts the challenge of rejoining the outside world after the experience of hiding. Wijnberg kept this diary for a year while in hiding with her husband, Chaim, and for several months after the war.22 Selma was born in Groningen, Netherlands, in 1922. With the German invasion in May 1940 and subsequent anti-Jewish laws, her family lost the hotel it owned, and she and her mother moved in with another Jewish family. In 1942, a Catholic priest helped Selma to hide in a non-Jewish family’s home. She never saw her mother and brothers again.23 She hid in a nurse’s home in Utrecht, Netherlands, for a few months, then went to another family’s house and soon was discovered by the police. Selma spent three months in an Amsterdam prison, then was deported in 1943 with other Dutch Jewish girls to the transit camp in Vught, Netherlands. Then, after being sent to the Dutch transit camp Westerbork, she was transported to the Sobibór death camp. Placed in Camp I, where she sorted the clothes of the dead, Selma met Chaim, her future husband. Selma and Chaim fled Sobibór during the uprising on October 14, 1943,24 escaped into the woods, and walked for several weeks. For nine months, they stayed with a farmer in exchange for money. In July 1944, the farmer brought them to Chełm, Poland, after a neighbor discovered them. Soviet forces liberated Chełm later that month. 22. After the Red Army liberated the area near Chełm where they were hiding, Selma and Chaim moved to Chełm but fled when the Soviets attempted to conscript Chaim. They went first to Parczew, then to Lublin, and continued on through Romania, Hungary, and France before returning to Amsterdam just after the war. They later immigrated to the United States. See USHMMPA WS# 89459. 23. Her father, Samuel Wijnberg (b. 1882), died a natural death in 1941; her mother, Alida (née Nathans; 1887–1942), and her brothers Marthijn (1919–1943) and Maurits (or Mozes) (1919–1943) also died in Auschwitz. Her brother Abraham and his family survived the war hiding in Utrecht. Chaim Engel (b. 1916 in Poland) lost his father, Samuel, and brother, Meir, in Sobibór in 1943. See donor’s file, USHMMA Acc. 2007.69 (Wijnberg Engel collection); Digital Monument to the Jewish Community in the Netherlands (www. joodsmonument.nl). 24. During this uprising, inmates killed eleven SS guards, as well as Ukrainian guards, and set the camp on fire. About 150 of the 300 prisoners there escaped, although the German SS later hunted down and killed many of them. By the end of 1943, the camp was plowed over and used as cropland. About 250,000 Jews were murdered at Sobibór during its operation between March 1942 and October 1943. For further reading about both the death camp itself and the uprising, see Yitzhak Arad, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987); Jules Schelvis, Sobibor: A History of a Nazi Death Camp (New York: Bloomsbury Academic Publishing in association with the USHMM, 2014).

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Wijnberg’s diary thus raises quotidian and emotional questions. How does one transition from a dependence on others to the independence necessary to rebuild a postwar life? Where and how can shelter be found? For Wijnberg, what kind of future will her unborn child face? Ultimately, as Wijnberg, Apsan, and Kraus demonstrate, the transition from victim to survivor involved far more than emerging from camps or hiding places alive. Rather, survival entailed a host of decisions that were far from simple. DOCUMENT 3-3: Diary of Selma Wijnberg, July and August 1944, Chełm, Poland, USHMMA Acc. 2007.69 Saartje (Selma) Wijnberg Engel collection (translated from Dutch).

Wednesday 26 July Did not write more yesterday. Chaim did not want me to write outside. Today I can, we are really free, unbelievable, and I am writing outside. Is it really true? Yes, we keep saying to each other. We are human beings again and can speak to people. Chaim spoke to two Russians this morning, and thanked them for liberating us. We walked to the village, to see a doctor. I am pregnant, we are almost sure, my tummy is getting bigger; what else could it be? The doctor did not say it for sure; he could not do anything for me since he was only a student. We went to Adam’s brotherin-law.25 It hurts me to be treated like we are nothing. As soon as the front is through, we will go to the city to get paperwork for me. When we came back from our visit to the village, I could not walk anymore, it felt like my legs were filled with lead. God give me the strength and health to return to Holland and that Bram and his family are still alive and that we still have some good friends there that are willing to help us. I am so afraid that there is no more goodness in the world. Since we have been down from the loft, people were not very friendly. It probably feels that way because I cannot understand the people. Chaim is helping Adam in the field, and I knit. Shabbat 29 July We are walking and working the last few days. I did laundry yesterday, and for the first time everything is clean. Also big news, I am pregnant, 25. Adam Nowak is a Polish farmer who hid Selma and Chaim for nine months after escaping from Sobibor. No further information is available for Nowak or Bram referenced below.

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Chapter 3 probably in my sixth month. My tummy is getting bigger every day. If the baby could only be born in Holland and in good health, then we should receive this peace with joy. It should have been better to have a baby a little later. Chaim is helping in the field, he makes bundles from the wheat. We will go to Golm tomorrow, if everything is alright. Always something, they will not give us anything for the ring. If only God does not leave us and luck stays with us, we have 2 healthy hands to earn a living with. I cannot walk well yet, my feet are swollen, that hurts. For as long as we have been down from the loft, we have not received one friendly word from Stefka. [. . .] Sunday 6 August We are already one week in Golm. We have tried to find some money, and I also went to the doctor. I am very weak and cannot walk. My feet hurt so bad and are swollen and also my tummy is swollen and my pants are too small. I cannot turn very well. We have the help from a captain from the hospital. Maybe Chaim will work at the hospital and it would not be necessary to go away. We are staying in a house with Jews. We sleep on top of the bedding covered by our clothes. We are strong. I do not know where this is going. My feet hurt so badly. If I had money and a good doctor. We do not sleep well, we wake each other up. Is this living in peace? Is this what we longed for? God help us, we cannot continue like this. [. . .] Sunday 13 August We are already in Chełm for 14 days. Chaim is working for the Red Cross. I am in the house with the Jews in a room full of straw and fleas. Life is very difficult, and it is almost not possible to continue. At night late everybody still speaks loud and when it starts getting light in the morning again, and I am so tired. I burned my leg and have a large wound. It hurts. Is this the peace we longed for, I cannot continue like this? I am so tired, do not feel like this is living anymore, I am crying all the time. I guess I will not give birth to a happy child. Chaim has to work tonight and I am always alone. Why do I have to suffer so much?

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Friday 24 August [. . .] We have no roof above our heads, we walk from corner to corner to find a place. We have no money, what to do. In two months, the baby will be born. I cannot do this anymore, we are going back to Adam. I would like to have some rest, is that too much. God, let me die. I have enough of this life.

Wijnberg’s account raises the question of how one both defines and survives hiding. Document 3-4 explores related yet distinctive issues involved in “surviving” rescue. This report describes the particularly unstable position of the so-called Kasztner Jews on the return of some to their homes in Cluj, Romania. On June 30, 1944, at the height of the Hungarian deportations to Auschwitz, Rudolf (Rezső) Kasztner, a leader of the Va’ad ha-Hatzalah (Aid and Rescue Organization) in Budapest successfully negotiated passage for 1,684 Jews to leave Hungary for Switzerland by train. After being diverted to Bergen-Belsen, these Jews reached Switzerland in August and December 1944.26 The Kasztner Jews faced unique challenges that resulted from the perceived “price” of their survival and the controversial figure who orchestrated it. Kasztner and fellow committee member Joel Brand had been in talks with Adolf Eichmann for the release of 1 million Jews in exchange for ten thousand military trucks.27 The deal, referred to as “blood for goods” (Blut gegen Waren), was a case of mutual bluffing; Eichmann never intended to release 1 million Jews,

26. For a full history of the Holocaust in Hungary, see Zoltán Vági, László Csősz, and Gábor Kádár, The Holocaust in Hungary: Evolution of a Genocide (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press in association with the USHMM, 2013); Randolph L. Braham and Scott Miller, eds., The Nazi’s Last Victims: The Holocaust in Hungary (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1998); Randolph L. Braham and Brewster S. Chamberlain, eds., The Holocaust in Hungary: Sixty Years Later (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 2006). 27. Joel Jenő Brand (1906–1964) was involved with Zionist circles in Budapest in the 1930s and later with wartime Jewish relief and rescue work in Hungary. Eichmann attempted to use him to broker an exchange of “Jews for goods” (“blood for trucks”) with the Jewish Agency, but his efforts were thwarted. He testified at the postwar Eichmann Trial. See Yehuda Bauer, Jews for Sale? Nazi-Jewish Negotiations, 1933–1945 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994); Michael Berenbaum, “Brand, Joel Jenő,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica, ed. Fred Skolnik and Michael Berenbaum, 2nd ed. (Detroit, MI: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007), 4:120–21.

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and Kasztner and Brand had no authority to guarantee military goods.28 Nevertheless, Brand traveled to Turkey in May 1944 to meet Allied representatives in what turned out to be failed negotiations. The Hungarian deportations, orchestrated by Eichmann, continued.29 Kasztner proceeded to “buy” Jews for seats on the train that ultimately left in June at the price of $1,000 per head. The train included Zionist youth, members of the anti-Zionist Szatmar Hassidic religious movement, Polish and Slovakian refugees, and others. Some wealthy Jews paid for others. Kasztner and his family were on the train as well.30 In the postwar period, Kasztner was both vilified and elevated. In the view of those on the train, Kasztner saved them from a near certain death in Auschwitz. For the vast majority of Hungarian Jewry left off Kasztner’s transport list, feelings of betrayal prevailed. The Kasztner Jews, they felt, had “bought” their place, and the Nazi authorities had “bought” Kasztner’s (and other Hungarian Jewish leaders’) silence on the reality of deportation “to the east.”31 The question of what Jewish council leaders (in Hungary and elsewhere) knew or did not know, and of what that information might have made possible, remains open for historians and scholars today.32 Kasztner himself paid the ultimate price for the negative view of his role during the war: he was assassinated outside his home in Israel in 1957, three years after Judge Benjamin Halevi, the presiding judge at Kasztner’s libel trial, declared, “Kasztner sold his soul to Satan.”33 28. A 2008 documentary revisiting Kasztner’s role during the war, the trial, and his assassination, titled Killing Kasztner, examines the authority behind this negotiation. A historian in the film, Shoshana Barri, examines a document from the Jewish Agency that she interprets as granting Kasztner and Brand the authority to negotiate with Eichmann. For a full account of the Kasztner case, see Bauer, Jews for Sale?. 29. See Szabolcs Szita, Trading in Lives? Operations of the Jewish Relief and Rescue Committee in Budapest, 1944–1945 (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2005), 57–76. 30. For a description and analysis of the Kasztner train, see Bauer, Jews for Sale?, 196–221. See also Yechiam Weitz, The Man Who Was Murdered Twice (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem Press, 2011). 31. For a survivor perspective on this claim, see Elie Wiesel, “Keynote Address,” in Braham and Chamberlain, The Holocaust in Hungary, xv–xx. 32. Hannah Arendt most famously discussed this issue broadly in her landmark series of articles for the New Yorker, published in 1963 as the book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. For a discussion of Arendt and the impact of the Eichmann Trial more generally, see Deborah E. Lipstadt, The Eichmann Trial (New York: Random House, 2011). Additionally, Raul Hilberg shared a similar view in his watershed study The Destruction of the European Jews (New York: Holmes and Meir, 1961). 33. Bauer, Jews for Sale?, 145. For a description and analysis of the trial itself, see Leora Bilsky, “Judging Evil in the Trial of Kasztner,” Law and History Review 19, no. 1 (spring 2001): 117–60. Halevi (1910–1996) was a German émigré to Palestine. In this trial Kasztner sued a man who had denounced him as a Nazi collaborator. Halevi also later served as a judge at the Eichmann trial and eventually left the bench to enter politics.

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This report from the World Jewish Congress details the accusations against some of the Kasztner Jews from Cluj, Kasztner’s hometown. While this particular transport has unique qualities, the document raises larger questions relating to the suspicion directed toward rescued Jews. Were they, like those hidden during the war, truly “survivors,” and what “price” (literal or figurative) might they have paid for their lives? How much control did Jews have over their own fates? Who was the arbiter of wartime morality and the means of wartime survival? This document certainly does not attempt to resolve these questions; instead, it concerns itself with the immediate charges unfairly leveled against the Kasztner Jews in Cluj. In the process, it reveals the discussion surrounding the changing meaning of “survival” and the consequences of that definition. DOCUMENT 3-4: World Jewish Congress, report on the fate of “Kasztner train” Jews after returning to Cluj, Romania, February 13, 1946, USHMMA RG 68.045M, reel 20, file 148 (translated from German).

Pro Memoria We have been informed that actions have been taken against those members of the group of Jews, which was deported in June 1944 from Hungary to the German concentration camp Bergen-Belsen and which reached Switzerland from there, who returned to Cluj. The actions have the pretense of legal prosecution. As we have learned, these residents of the city of Cluj have found themselves in a highly abnormal situation for several months. They have been deprived of various rights, e.g., claims to their previous homes, the right of continuing their previous economic enterprises, and engaging in their previous profession. They are tormented with various investigative measures, and some of them have supposedly even been taken into custody. We have not been provided exact information as to the concrete accusations that have been raised against them, but there are certain pieces of news that lend credence to the assumption that they have been reproached for special treatment they received from the Hungarian and German authorities, which facilitated their transport from the concentration camp in the Cluj brickworks to Budapest and then to Bergen-Belsen and which after a certain amount of time facilitated their release from the concentration camp and their passage to Switzerland. Should this assumption be correct, we will want to highlight, above all, the deeply regrettable character of such accusations since the fact that a miniscule number of the

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Chapter 3 Jews who were condemned to deportation from Hungary could be saved in Switzerland after months-long delay and detainment in concentration camps represents the meager result of the manifold and desperate efforts undertaken by various institutions to arrest the inexorable process of the complete extermination of the Jewish population. How this felicitous salvation was bestowed upon the Cluj Jews in question can be gained from the appended declaration from the Swiss representative of the American War Refugee Board, Mr. Roswell McClelland.34 He also holds to the view that none of those who were saved could have influenced either the fate of their unfortunate compatriots, who were taken from the Cluj brickworks and deported to unknown locations, or their own fate. In respect to the deportation of the other camp inmates, they certainly could not have known where these transports were being directed, and they similarly could not have known what would happen to themselves. The authentic reports accessible in our office indicate that the leaders of the Jewish population from Cluj were in no position to arrange for special treatment of part of the same nor to influence in any way the composition of any such special group since this rescue action was organized in Budapest, the membership of the special group was determined on the basis of negotiations with the responsible central authorities in Budapest themselves, and the decisive factor was whether Palestine certificates, i.e., documents confirming the right to immigrate to Palestine, had been issued to them in accord with the proof available there. However, one cannot rule out the possibility that the original list of the special group in question, which was transferred from Budapest to Cluj, could have undergone change as a result of illicit intervention by local German or Hungarian authorities. It would be fantastical to assume that there could have existed any connection between the composition of this group and the tempo

34. Roswell Dunlop McClelland (1914–1995) was born in California and studied abroad in Germany and Italy in the mid-1930s. He and his Quaker wife, Marjorie, performed relief work with the American Friends Service Committee, a relief agency, between 1940 and 1944. He would remain in Bern until 1948, working for the US State Department after his 1944–1945 stint with the War Refugee Board. He received subsequent postings in Madrid, Dakar, Guinea, and Athens and in his last diplomatic appointment served as ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary to Niger from 1970 to 1973. Biographic Register of the Department of State, April 1, 1948 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1948), 318; Biographic Register, July 1973 (revised as of June 30, 1973) (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1973), 248; Cf. USHMMPA WS #74822.

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and dimensions of the deportation of the rest, which ultimately led to the complete deportation of the entire Jewish population of the former Hungarian province in its entirety. We express the hope that, in consideration of the facts presented above and the appended official document, the highly honorable government of Romania will be in a position to take the necessary steps so that the Jewish citizens of Cluj who are exposed to these fully unjust and wholly inexplicable persecutory measures may carry on their life there under normal legal conditions.

SURVIVING AS CHILDREN, RECLAIMING CHILDHOOD: JEWISH CHILDREN AFTER THE WAR In the topology of Holocaust survivors, children warrant their own unique category. 35 Whereas adult survivors determined their own paths after the war, children remained completely dependent on Jewish and non-Jewish aid organizations and the governments of the countries in which they now found themselves. At least 1.1 million children were murdered during the Holocaust. Thus, the fates of those who emerged assumed symbolic, even mythic status. Upon these young people’s shoulders rested the future of a people who were still counting their dead in the days after the war. As the newspaper Farn Yiddishn Kind, of the Zionist Coordination (Koordynacja) for the Affairs of Children and Youth in Poland, explained in 1946, “We must take stronger actions to redeem the children. We will not desist until we redeem the last Jewish child and restore him to the people. We must carry out the testament of the fathers and mothers who were annihilated. [. . .] We are tying together the Jewish child, the fate of the Jewish people, and a happier future.”36 These young survivors, with varying wartime experiences and at times fragmentary prewar memories and connections, represented nothing less than the continuity of the Jewish people as a whole. The documents in this section explore the postwar fates and vastly differing circumstances of surviving Jewish children.37 35. See Patricia Heberer, Children during the Holocaust (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press in association with the USHMM, 2011). 36. Cited in Emunah Nachmany-Gafny, Dividing Hearts: The Removal of Jewish Children from Gentile Families in Poland in the Immediate Post-Holocaust Years (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2009), 127. 37. See Heberer, Children during the Holocaust, for primary source material that explores the fate of Jewish and non-Jewish children during the war.

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While the wartime experiences of surviving children varied widely, many of their postwar predicaments remained consistent. The most pressing questions included, Would there be a home and a family to return to? If not, would these children go to Jewish children’s homes or to known or unknown relatives in Europe or abroad, or, for hidden children, would they remain with the nonJewish families who rescued them during the war? What would become of those hidden in Christian religious institutions? Where would they go, and in what religion would they be raised? What should be done with children who had little or no recollection of their prewar lives as Jews or of their prewar Jewish families? Should children be removed from Christian families that they presumed to be their own? Finally, not all of these children were easy to find, particularly if non-Jewish caretakers did not come forward in the postwar period. How, on a basic level, would these children be located? Just as complex was the perspective of the children themselves. Indeed, for many, an ambivalent relationship existed between their Jewish families and the families that “adopted” them during the war. To complicate matters more, France, like the Netherlands and other countries, was not always inclined to return children to survivor parents, having deemed them psychologically “damaged.”38 For some children, their parents were now virtual strangers, whose religion and even language they no longer shared. Still other Jewish children, orphaned during the war, were placed in Jewish children’s homes of various ideological and theological persuasions. None of these predicaments presented easy or straightforward solutions, and the fate and impact of the Holocaust on child survivors is now being systematically studied.39 Document 3-5, a statement from Arthur Gold to Gerhart Riegner, secretary-general of the World Jewish Congress, outlines some of these general

38. For the situation in the Netherlands, see Diane L. Wolf, Beyond Anne Frank: Hidden Children and Postwar Families in Holland (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007). For the French context, see Daniella Doron, “In the Best Interest of the Child: Family, Youth, and Identity among Postwar French Jews, 1944–1954” (PhD diss., New York University, 2009). 39. Many such studies of children are now emerging. For a sustained study of the postwar history of hidden children in Poland, see Nortmany-Gafny, Dividing Hearts; for a study of the Kindertransport, the harboring of German and Austrian Jewish children by British families, see Vera K. Fast, Children’s Exodus: A History of the Kindertransport (New York: I. B. Taurus, 2011); for general studies of the experience of children, see Lynn H. Nicholas, Cruel World: The Children of Europe in the Nazi Web (New York: Knopf, 2005); Nicholas Stargardt, Witnesses of War: Children’s Lives under the Nazis (New York: Knopf, 2006).

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issues regarding the care and education of Jewish orphans.40 The document reflects general concerns regarding the upbringing and placement of these children, many of whom held only a loose identification with Jewish life, religion, and culture. Gold insists on dealing with these children internally and strongly advocates raising them as “conscious Jews.” His opinion stems from the viewpoint of the collective rather than the individual—a common angle just two months after the end of the war. This conversation regarding the fate and place of these vulnerable yet intrinsically important members of the Jewish community would continue throughout the postwar period. DOCUMENT 3-5: Statement from Arthur Gold, Montreux, Switzerland, to Gerhart Riegner, Geneva, on care for Jewish orphans, July 1945, USHMMA RG 68.045M, reel 18, file 137 (translated from German).

STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL Dear Gentlemen, After a thorough briefing with leading officials of Swiss and international Jewish organizations, I will permit myself to submit to you the following suggestions concerning the issue of Jewish children. The Problem: In the case of caring for tens of thousands of children who were robbed of irreplaceable things—their parents—through war and deportation, the following considerations must take precedence: Physical well-being of the children from a medical standpoint (which will not be further addressed here). The emotional and psychological condition of the children who lost their parents. The issue of religious-ideological-social training, that is, keeping them in and reintegrating them in the Jewish community. The anguish that these “abandoned, parentless” children, besides their physical and material suffering, experienced and are experiencing has 40. Gold (b. 1924) was born into an orthodox family in Leipzig, where he had attended a Gymnasium as well as a Talmud Torah school. He counted as a Polish national. He moved to Poland for a few months in 1938, then to Belgium before the war broke out. With the approach of the German army, he moved on to France. Gold was briefly held in Gurs, then made his way to Lyon, where he trained as a worker in the fur trade. He crossed the Swiss border illegally in September 1942 with his mother, Ryfka Gold (née Dolinger; b. 1896), and his younger brother, Abraham (b. 1927). (His father had died in the early 1930s.) While interned in Switzerland, he began working as a teacher of young children in his internment residence or center. He later enrolled in a Jewish school, eager to pursue rabbinical studies. See USHMMA RG 58.001, reel 96.

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Chapter 3 negative effects that are hardly noticeable but are ultimately very dangerous. The core of this problem, which in practice has been and continues to be given little attention, is often a total lack of selfless love, devoted caring, and a humane and loving atmosphere of trust in the care and upbringing of the children. This problem arose out of living apart from (the loss of ) one’s parents, whose nature it is to provide the vital factors for the growth and development of the child. These factors are not present, and thus the child lacks an emotional balance, and the children are being set in a psychological void that can cause resentfulness. Indeed, the child’s distrust of these caregivers who are strangers to them is present from the outset. The educator does not understand how to gain the complete trust and devotion of the child, or s/he even offends the child’s sense of justice, so that the child’s initial distrust hardens into an emotional defense. Ultimately, hate can arise from the distrust, defensiveness, and bitterness. The child, retreating into their own small world, thus can develop a defensive disposition because of the behavior of just one or a few careless educators/caregivers—the child pulls back into himself and rejects even the most sensible measures (that the child often does not even grasp or refuses to comprehend anymore). The child’s trust in adults is shattered, and the child is turned into a misanthrope. Incapable of any charitable work, the child thus belongs to the social classification “asocial.” Through this emotional/psychological paralysis, which is strengthened by a spiritual emptiness and the absence of any alternative, the first preconditions for nihilistic, anarchistic, and finally criminal thoughts and behaviors develop. This enormous danger is firmly grounded in the laws of psychology and must not be overlooked. In addition to this general, interdenominational problem that affects all orphaned children is the specific problem for us Jews of the revival and survival of our people—the existential problem of the children’s Jewish orientation. These children, who were spiritually hardened as a result of enormous suffering, can be the invaluable building material for our people’s future. Our people’s very existence was put in the throes of death in the bloodiest catastrophe of our history. The revival of our people requires a renewed and grand effort. But the contributors to this effort are in great danger of being lost to us, indeed, even in danger of working against us. The issue today is not whether the children will become or remain more or less self-aware Jews, but whether they will count themselves among the Jewish community at all; yes, even whether we might be looking at a “small generation” of the worst—Jewish—anti-Semites.

Adjusting to Peace, Surviving Survival Today we must be perfectly clear that Jewish children who are not being consciously raised Jewish, who are at best being raised with indifference to Judaism, are indifferent to all branches of Judaism. We know that many children—we cannot yet estimate their number—are being raised in a different faith and anti-Jewish. But all children who are not currently a part of the Jewish community will likely turn away from us in the future. They’ll say, “We want no part of the Jewish community who did nothing to care for us.” The consequences of the psychological condition described above and of the children’s potential anti-Jewish upbringing will be a step from rejecting the community, from turning away from this community, toward actively working against it. To what extent is the Jewish community today in the position to develop an answer to the large and important issues confronting them? We unfortunately have to realize that we are ultimately responsible for our Jewish children—children whose last thoughts are of their murdered, innocent brothers and sisters in faith. If we are honest with ourselves, then it is mainly our fault. True, we lay the past behind us [ad acta]—we are thankful from the bottom of our hearts for the efforts of all the non-Jewish organizations that worked to save Jews and care for our children. But it is now of utmost importance that exclusively Jewish organizations assume the role of “Protectorate” for our Jewish children. As was shown, we often had to ignore our more narrow Jewish interests and turn for help to interdenominational organizations. Today the Jewish community must see its most sacred duty as assuming the care of the children who are currently in the care of others. The various Jewish organizations of all ideologies are now prepared for the rescue work on behalf of our children. Financial resources are being obtained, technical preparations are being taken care of; in short, the fight for the Jewish child has begun. But exactly how this fight threatens to play out is evident in a terrible example of the differences among various Swiss organizations. The fight for the “minds of the children” has tremendously retarded the effort to find a temporary solution to the problem of child refugees in Switzerland. One thing is for sure: None of the existing Jewish organizations can alone deal with the daunting tasks. We must avoid at all costs a splintering of the minimal energies and abilities we can still muster to deal with the rescue of parentless, Jewish, child-victims of war. The most pressing requirement of the hour is the broad coordination of all possible forces that are willing to work on behalf of the Jewish child.

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Chapter 3 It is in the best interest of the various opposing sides to bury their differences at least temporarily and bridge their divides, because this is about not simply which ideology and in what type of care the children will be raised but the very existence of the Jewish community’s future. Because it is a matter of rescuing the children’s Jewish identity, it is a self-destructive argument that “in ideology there can be no compromise.” [. . .]

While orphaned children presented an organizational, bureaucratic, and even theological challenge to Jewish organizations after the war, reunification for those children who had families to return to was also far from simple. Those children who endured the reality of the ghettos and concentration camps and witnessed genocidal violence firsthand faced another set of personal trials. Hundreds of these surviving children found their way to DP camps and children’s homes throughout Germany. In the months after the end of the war, adult Jewish DPs in camps such as Bergen-Belsen, Feldafing, Landsberg, and Föhrenwald charged themselves with the care of these adolescents, most between the ages of fourteen and eighteen. This was not an easy task; indeed, circumstances had forced these children, chronologically adolescents, to mature quickly during the war, making them difficult to control and even more difficult to “parent.” Indeed, at Föhrenwald in particular, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (AJJDC) decided to separate children from their surviving parents, presumably to “protect” them from psychologically “damaged” adults. These children were thus housed in the Kinderheim group home, supervised by AJJDC personnel, and allowed visitation with their relatives. This “solution” proved disastrous, and AJJDC social worker Becky Althoff recommended the dissolution of the Kinderheim in the summer of 1946.41 41. For a detailed account of these children’s homes and their dissolution, see Margarete Myers Feinstein, Holocaust Survivors in Postwar Germany, 1945–1957 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 164–68. Althoff (née Machanofsky, later Adelson; 1909/1911?–1997) was a Russian-born, Yiddish-speaking daughter of a clothing shop presser. Her family had immigrated to the United States when she was still very young; by the time she joined the AJJDC in late 1945, she had long worked at the New York Department of Welfare and recently obtained a master’s degree from the New York School of Social Work at Columbia University. During the war, New York City’s Committee of Mental Hygiene employed her as a medical survey advisor, social work administrator, and psychiatric consultant. After her stint with the AJJDC, she joined the Jewish Family Service in New York City and was active in refugee work through the National Conference of Jewish Social Welfare. See Civil Service Leader 2, no. 24 (February 25, 1941): 7; Civil Service Leader 6, no. 52 (September 4, 1945): 5; Becky Althoff, “Observations on the Psychology of Children in a D.P. Camp,” Journal of Social Casework 29, no. 1 (January 1948): 17.

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In the reports excerpted in document 3-6, Althoff outlines her assessment of several children, their potential for being returned to their families, and her overall dissatisfaction with the Kinderheim. These children faced significant physical and psychological problems. They had matured too quickly or not enough, and many had acquired survival skills now out of place in a postwar society. There was also much discussion surrounding to whom these children should be returned. Female relatives were preferred, and sometimes, if none could be found, the children remained in group homes despite the existence of living male family members. Brothers and sisters or close friends, made in DP or concentration camps, were sometimes separated in the name of resettlement.42 Each situation was different, and Jewish relief organizations saw themselves as assiduously working in the best interests of each child. Ultimately Althoff’s report challenges the reader to consider what constituted the “best interests of the child” in an unprecedented, unanticipated situation. DOCUMENT 3-6: Reports by Becky Althoff, psychiatric consultant to the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee at the Föhrenwald DP camp, children’s home, Germany, June 7, 1946, USHMMA RG 10.146 Henry Holland collection.

June 7, 1946 To: Miss Ethel Ostry, Principal Welfare Officer43 From: Becky Althoff, Psychiatric Consultant, AJDC Re: Semi-Monthly Report As indicated in my last report of 5/24, this two week period was the completing of my work at the Kinderheim,44 initiate a random sampling of Kibbutzim at Hochland Lager, and continue to accept individual referrals. As discussed with you, in our weekly conferences every child and wherever possible, the responsible relative has been interviewed at the Kinderheim.

42. See Feinstein, Holocaust Survivors in Postwar Germany, 166–72. 43. Ethel Ostry (b. 1901) was a Russian-born Canadian citizen with a social work background; she was working as a welfare officer for UNRRA at this time and made her home in Toronto. NARA, ship passenger lists for the Uruguay, March–April 1945. 44. The Kinderheim, or children’s home, consisted of the orphanage at the Föhrenwald DP camp. It was run by both AJJDC and UNRRA workers, who evaluated the children’s physical and mental “rehabilitation” for immigration purposes. For more information, see Feinstein, Holocaust Survivors in Postwar Germany, 159–97.

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Chapter 3 Because of lack of time and secretarial assistance, I am unable to give full case histories of each child, but will give in writing in summary, a short review of each child and the disposition. You will also remember that in addition each child has been examined by the visiting psychologist, and where possible, I have discussed the findings with the relative. We started with 13 children in the Kinderheim, the following have been removed to their own parents or relatives, after discussion with me, D., Sonia45—Mother at Missouri 1246 G., Pepa— " " " " S., Chaskel—two brothers and sister-in-law at Florida 8 Of the remaining ten the situation is as follows: W., Mila, Chana, and Moniek—The father of these three children was interviewed. He is vitally interested in the children and is anxious to establish a home with the three of them. As the Mother is deceased, and since the ages of the children are 12, 11, and 10, he felt that his married sister could assume responsibility for them, with his help. The brother-in-law is also willing to be of assistance. The psychologists’ report indicates that they are for the most part mentally retarded, with shallow affect. All the children expressed a keen desire to return home with their father and relatives. The doctor’s findings indicate that Mila and Chana are suffering with closed TB lesions, and suggest a rest home for both under the supervision of the aunt. We are awaiting approval from the UNRRA Doctor to send the two children and aunt to Hochland Lager, where they can get the necessary diet, rest and fresh air. The billeting officer has been informed of the need for a room to accommodate 6 people, and as soon as the physical condition is taken care of, will endeavor to find suitable living arrangements for them. M., Riwka, has a 20 year old brother in Dorfen, who is employed as a cook. He brought her here, about a month ago, with a friend placed her

45. Please note that all names have been anonymized in the interest of privacy. 46. Sections of the DP camp.

Adjusting to Peace, Surviving Survival in the Kinderheim, awaiting emigration to Palestine and the arrival of the rest of the family. A mother and three sisters are still in Poland. The boy has an affidavit to go to America, and is undecided as to the plans concerning his sister. He refused to be parted from her, and would not consider Ansbach. Today we heard through the Welfare Officer at Dorfin that the rest of the family have arrived, staying at Camp Foehrenwald, unregistered. It is possible, that the family will be registered here or go to another camp where registration is not closed and take Riwka with them. H., Lutke, has a father here in Camp who is working as a bookkeeper. He was conflicted about taking the child to live with him. When, however, we told him that afternoon play groups were established, and that a 12 year old girl should definitely be accommodated, he seemed somewhat relieved. Here too, the question of new living arrangements was discussed. He is scheduled for another interview, and was reassured that change of residence would no way interfere with his child’s emigration to Palestine, he was relieved. Since the children now get their noon meal at school, and the evening meal he could share with the child. A later deposition will be forthcoming. F., Basia and G., Lea, aged 8 and 12 respectively, both have aunts living in Munich. It is my feeling, that at one time, the relatives lived here at the Camp, but have found it more convenient to live in Munich and utilize the Kinderheim as a sort of boarding home. Neither children profess to know the address of the aunts, although both visit them frequently. I have asked to see the aunts on their visit to Foehrenwald and although both visited on a weekday, and the supervisor of the Kinderheim knew of my desire to see them, they did not appear. It is my feeling that more strenuous action is indicated. Either we plan to send the children to Ansbach, where they rightly belong, or we ask the aunts to take the children with them to Munich. G., Pepa, has a mother at Camp who works in the diet kitchen. She is anxious to continue working, but would consider doing so on a part time basis. In view of your own interest in Mrs. G. with regard to the recent suicide, another interview is scheduled in which we will plan to find living quarters for the deceased’s daughter, Mrs. G and Pepa. The mother is not adverse to sharing a home with the daughter, and interview with the child,

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Chapter 3 reaffirmed the fact, that the child feels neglected and rejected at the Kinderheim being more anxious to live with the mother than at the Home. G., Julia, has a mother who works in the Kitchen at Dorfen. The mother is anxious to live with the daughter, as is the daughter to live with her, but Mrs. G. informs me that she is able to provide better for her daughter with the silage as a worker than without. Discussions revealed that the mother felt she would be depriving her daughter of going to Palestine, or the “advantages” of group living, if she asked the child to live with her. Another appointment is scheduled, the Messing Officer at Camp, would be willing to have Mrs. G. work here, even part time, to enable her to be closer with the daughter. This too would involve different living arrangements, but further disposition will be contingent upon our second interview with Mrs. G. F., Zosia, has an aunt and putative step-father to live with. Because of family disagreement, as to who shall assume responsibility, the child is residing at the Kinderheim. The child is conflicted herself, and does not know where she should go. Both relatives profess a great interest in the child, who visits both frequently. To my mind, the aunt seems to be the better guardian, but since there is a religious matter involved, it will await my discussion with the Rabbi. My own thinking about the Kinderheim is that it should be dissolved since it has outlived its usefulness. I question its original purpose, as we do not have the space, trained personnel, or equipment to carry on a Children’s Home at the Camp. The purpose has been somewhat misused, in that the family situation, instead of being strengthened, has been weakened by the needless separation and dissolution of family ties. It has served to alienate children from responsible relatives, needlessly, without giving the child substitute relationships which would be constructive for growth and development. It has relieved the parent of the care and companionship of the child without purpose, and has been used as a boarding home for those who wish to continue hold of the child, for visiting purposes only. It would appear therefore that upon subsequent interviews with the responsible relatives, that the children go back to live with the families, and that the Kinderheim, which consists of many more rooms

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than are now being used, be turned into living space which is so badly needed now. [. . .]

Document 3-7 further challenges the normative narrative of survival by addressing the experiences of children who “survived by deportation” in Sovietoccupied Poland and later in Central Asia. With the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, the Nazis gained control over Polish territory west of Warsaw. The Soviet Union occupied the eastern half of Poland, including portions of what is now Lithuania and Ukraine. This demographic includes Jews who resided in those territories during the invasion, along with those who fled eastward in the chaotic period immediately following the German onslaught. The Soviets deported some one hundred thousand back to German territory as “class aliens.” In all, about 230,000 Polish Jews survived in the Soviet Union during the war.47 Scholars have only recently examined the experiences of these Jews, who were sent to Soviet countries such as Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and other locales in Central Asia. Although they endured harsh conditions (from which about ten thousand died),48 they did not face genocidal murder like the majority of their Polish brethren.49 Few Jews wrote about this experience, and if they did, it was in largely positive terms.50 Postwar testimony follows this trend as well; indeed, in various testimony projects from the 1990s, several survivors sing Uzbek songs and describe their wartime memories with nostalgia.51 Document 3-7 depicts this somewhat overlooked story through the experience of orphaned children. These intake forms for the Va’ad ha-Hatzalah children’s home in Ulm, Germany, briefly describe the situation of each new charge. Va’ad ha-Hatzalah, or the Rescue Committee, comprised American Orthodox 47. For a discussion of these demographics, see Albert Kaganovitch, “Jewish Refugees and Soviet Authorities during World War II,” Yad Vashem Studies 38, no. 2 (2010): 85–121. 48. Ibid. 49. For a full history of these refugees and deportees, see Dov Levin, The Lesser of Two Evils: Eastern European Jewry under Soviet Rule, 1939–1941 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1995). 50. Laura Jockusch and Tamar Lewinsky, “Paradise Lost? Postwar Memory of Polish Jewish Survival in the Soviet Union,” H&GS 24, no. 3 (winter 2010): 373–99. 51. From the USC Shoah Visual History Foundation Archive, testimonies by Gloria K. (VHA #46604) and Helen R. (VHA #9159) are but two of approximately 627 interviews catalogued as held with “Soviet exiles.”

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Jews and had been in operation since the beginning of the war. Its original mission—to save and aid rabbis and yeshiva students during the Holocaust—was expanded to include other threatened Jews in January 1944 with the realization of the full depth of the unfolding tragedy.52 After the war, the Va’ad established fourteen rabbinical academies and numerous children’s homes in the DP camps in occupied Germany.53 This form is part of a larger collection of paperwork from the Va’ad children’s home in the DP camp at Ulm. For some children, the documentation is quite extensive, explaining their various movements during the war, their education level, and the fate of their parents. For others, very little is known about their experience or any surviving relatives. Since religious education was among the Va’ad’s central concerns, the degree of Jewish knowledge that the child possessed was also often noted. Indeed, for the Va’ad, it was not just important that these children survived; rather, it was imperative that they survived as practicing Jews. For that reason, children saved through deportation by Soviet authorities in Central Asia were, in the eyes of the Va’ad, at particular risk. DOCUMENT 3-7: Intake form of David and Gita Gutman, 1946–1947, Va’ad ha-Hatzalah Children’s Home, Ulm, Germany, USHMMA RG 68.098M, reel 2, file 13.

Gutman, David 17 years of age Gutman, Gita 13 years of age Both children together with their parents were sent by the Russians to Siberia. At the end of 1940 they were deported to Middle Asia where the parents died from hunger and the children were placed in a home for Russian children. They were the only Jews among a group of 200 Russian children, and they had to suffer much from these children. In 1946 they were repatriated to Poland with the Polish children. One brother 52. For a full history of the Va’ad ha-Hatzalah’s activities during the war, see Efraim Zuroff, The Response of Orthodox Jewry in the United States to the Holocaust: The Activities of the Vaad ha-Hatzala Rescue Committee, 1939–1945 (Hoboken, NJ: KTAV Publishing House, 2000). 53. For a full history of the postwar activities of the Va’ad, see Alex Grobman, Battling for Souls: The Vaad Hatzala Rescue Committee in Post-Holocaust Europe (Jersey City, NJ: KTAV Publishing House, 2004).

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went in 1943 to Teheran and from there to Palestine. Two other sisters perished in Russia. In Poland two children attended the Kindergarten of “Yichud” who brought them to Germany. Another sister, coming from Austria, placed them finally in the Vaad Hatzala Children’s Home at Ulm in March 1947. When they arrived at the children’s home they only knew Hebrew but nothing about Jewish religion, which they are studying now.54

54. Other postwar International Red Cross sources indicate that their parents were Israel and Estera (née Rosbach) Guttman or Gutman, Polish Jews living in Jaroslaw, Poland, before the war. The family fled in 1939 to Kopiesk, Siberia, where they stayed for about a year, when authorities ordered them to move to Tazbekistan. When both parents died there in 1941, an elder sister placed these two children in a Russian children’s home. In the spring of 1946, they were moved to a Polish children’s home and sent back to Poland, then reunited with another sister, eventually ending up in Rosenheim Children’s Center in Bavaria (Germany). David may have been younger than noted here, born in April 1935. He appears to have immigrated to Israel in late 1948; it is unclear where Gita went. T/D file 666251 for Dawid Guttman, 6.3.3.2/104076866_0_1/ITS Digital Archive, USHMM.

PART II

Jews on the Move FINDING AND DEFINING “HOME” IN THE POSTWAR ERA

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ORLD WAR II caused perhaps the greatest population movement of the twentieth century. Millions of people of various nationalities, ethnicities, and religions found themselves in unfamiliar countries with new borders, facing a variety of challenges. These displaced populations fell into many different—and often overlapping—legal, social, and political categories that made the very idea of resettlement difficult and, in some cases, next to impossible. “Displaced person” (a term widely used to designate a host of homeless or otherwise uprooted populations) carried a specific, legal definition from the United Nations and conveyed certain concrete rights and advantages. UN displaced persons (UNDPs) were those who remained, as officially defined, “at a distance from their homes and regions, desiring but unable to return. They are strangers for whom the community feels no responsibility and toward whom it may feel hostility. They will normally, therefore, require care until they can be returned to their own country or homes.”1 Each UNDP was interviewed and registered; by May 27, 1945, over 2 million had been identified in the American Zone of occupied Germany alone.2 The primary goal of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) was the resettlement of these DPs in their home countries of origin. A subgroup within the UNDP population, the so-called infiltrees, came primarily from the now communist-leaning

1. Cited in Laura Hilton, “Prisoners of Peace: Rebuilding Community, Identity and Nationality in Displaced Persons Camps in Germany, 1945–1952” (PhD diss., Ohio State University, 2001), 80. 2. Ibid., 101.

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eastern Europe; over one hundred thousand such infiltrees began flooding the DP camps between 1946 and 1947.3 By contrast, refugees constituted a somewhat different group. Instead of requiring care and rehabilitation, refugees, as defined, while still within the national boundaries of their countries of origin, now resided far from their homes and required assistance to return.4 The category of expellees combined and complicated aspects of both of these groups in different ways. Comprised of populations expelled from their homes for a host of reasons (e.g., redrawing of national boundaries, wartime resettlement), expellees became part of the ethnic and national homogenization of postwar Europe. While some of this group received aid, postwar Allied officials deemed others to have benefited from perpetrator wartime resettlement policies.5 Jews occupied a particularly precarious position among these disparate yet overlapping categories. Against the vociferous objections of Jewish community leaders and aid workers, UNRRA initially refused to include “Jewish” as an official nationality; rather, Jews fell into the larger umbrella categories of “stateless” or “unrepatriable.” From the UN aid perspective, therefore, they were unable (and in most cases unwilling) to return to their nations of origin and remained in camps for far longer than UNRRA ever intended. Add to this the additional Jewish infiltrees from eastern Europe, and DP camp administration became increasingly unwieldy. After widespread reports of debilitating conditions, Jewish DPs were eventually separated from the remainder of the DP population. As a result, they formed their own versions of community within these temporary places of residence. At the same time, the search began for a new locale—and a new country—to call home. One of the most attractive options, for some, remained the magnetic pull of a potential Jewish homeland in Palestine. The appeal of postwar Zionism remained particularly strong among Jewish displaced persons still within the DP camps. While many of these Jews had been self-proclaimed Zionists before the war and belonged to particular movements, others now embraced Zionist ideals for the first time. “Zionism” during this period, however, was far from monolithic. Indeed, different forms and formulations of the Zionist ideal—labor Zionism, religious Zionism, communist-leaning secular Zionism, and Zionism aligned with specific political parties in Palestine, among 3. Ibid., 312. 4. Ibid., 79. 5. See Rainer Schulze, “Forced Migration of German Populations during and after the Second World War: History and Memory,” in The Disentanglement of Populations: Migration, Expulsion, and Displacement in Postwar Europe, 1944–49, ed. Jessica Reinisch and Elizabeth White (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 51–70.

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others—thrived in the DP landscape, and each vied for membership and support among the survivor population. Within the DP population itself, the reality of resettlement in a potential Jewish state was also complex. While Zionist officials from Palestine actively recruited young people (often directly from the DP camps themselves), they sometimes discouraged older survivors. The national image Palestinian Jews were devising of themselves as strong and independent (as opposed to, in their assessment, “weak” and “accommodating,” like the Jews of the Diaspora) excluded many survivors. Moreover, some Jewish DPs professed aspirations to emigrate to Palestine for purely instrumental reasons: indeed, more resources would become available to them through various Jewish aid organizations. Finally, some Jewish DPs emigrated to Palestine only to return to Europe in the late 1940s. In the dream of a Jewish homeland, fantasy often clashed with reality. Jewish refugees and expellees also faced unique challenges. While typically not residing in DP camps, they faced housing shortages, restrictive food rations, and a lack of understanding about their unique position. Jewish expellees often got lumped together with other groups of expellees as European nations attempted to redraw their national and ethnic boundaries. The question of appropriate housing for Jewish refugees residing in Europe immediately after the war was also far from straightforward. Should priority go to concentration camp survivors, to those who were returning to their home cities, or to those who resided in various locales after the war as a result of wartime displacement, having gone into hiding, or other factors? Moreover, what was the status of Jews who could return to their homes, and did homes exist for them to return to? None of these questions came with simple answers, and all challenged the hierarchy of labels and legal statuses imposed by Allied and local governments. Finally, for many Jews, a mass of bureaucratic procedures and roadblocks engulfed the notions of “home” and “homeland.” The process of immigration remained fraught with difficulties and complexities, from navigating the restrictive policies of particular countries, to extracting and transporting resources from one’s current country of residence, to merely assembling the requisite paperwork needed for relief and resettlement. Postwar emigration aspirations often collided with the logistical realities facing Jewish DPs, refugees, expellees, and returnees in various contexts. Ultimately, the answer to the question of where and what constituted a “home” in the postwar period became a confluence of conflicting factors. The diverse and varied documents featured in part II examine how the early postwar period constituted one of the most fluid and entangled physical, psychological, and personal landscapes for surviving Jews of various circumstances and locales.

CHAPTER 4

Returning “Home” EMIGRATION AND THE SEARCH FOR POSTWAR NORMALCY

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OR SURVIVING Jews confronting a variety of circumstances, the idea and ideal of “home” remained loaded. Were they to find home on the bloodsoiled ground of Europe or in a new place—in Palestine, the United States, South America, Canada, South Africa, or elsewhere? What did being of Jewish “nationality” or “ethnicity” mean in the postwar era? Emigration options varied greatly at different points in the postwar period and in different localities. For example, in the immediate aftermath of liberation, the fluidity of borders rendered “national identity” an unstable concept. Was a Jew from Galicia Polish or Soviet, based on the newly established borders of the USSR? Was a Germanspeaking Jew from the Sudetenland part of the restored Czechoslovak state or a German expellee? Where could Jews claim citizenship in this newly reconstituted Europe? Specific destinations posed particular problems and challenges. For example, in the postwar period (as during the war) the US immigration and integration process entailed a complex maze of regulations and red tape that only grew simpler in 1950 with the passage of the Displaced Persons Act. As per immigration laws dating back to the 1920s, founded on American xenophobia and isolationism, new immigrants were not to become wards of the state; anyone “likely to become a public charge” (“LPC”) was denied entry. Survivors and refugees therefore required the support of family members or Jewish organizations. The National Refugee Service, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society

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(HIAS), and the newly constituted United Service for the Foreign Born sought to educate, integrate, and support these immigrants and to move them from their initial port of entry to other locales within the United States.1 Those wishing to immigrate to Palestine also faced numerous obstacles, including but not limited to quotas (discussed later in this chapter) and the social and physical challenges of life in the burgeoning Jewish state. Still other destinations, such as Argentina, Australia, and South Africa, to name only a few, imposed their own restrictive quotas. The Jewish communities in these countries also sometimes hesitated to import large numbers of foreign Jews who would inevitably draw more attention to themselves than was comfortable at the time. This chapter specifically explores the postwar dilemma of immigration. Survivors, refugees, and their families faced a very real conundrum in postwar Europe: where and how to find a home. The solution varied widely based on perspective, geographical location, and political situation, as the documents featured here demonstrate. This chapter addresses two major groups of survivors and their immigration experiences: refugees who fled Nazi-occupied Europe during the war or in the early years of persecution, and survivors caught up in the Holocaust who consequently became stateless or displaced persons after the war. The first category primarily comprises German and Austrian Jews who fled Europe in the 1930s prior to the outbreak of war. These refugees escaped to places as close as Switzerland and as far away as Shanghai to slip the tightening noose of Nazi persecution.2 Some of these temporary respites became permanent homes. The process through which this occurred varied widely according to time of arrival, local immigration and citizenship laws, and the postwar environment experienced by the Jewish refugees. The second group of immigrants consists of concentration camp survivors, hidden children or families, partisan fighters, and others caught up in the Holocaust more directly. For these survivors, who often found themselves in DP camps, the question was not whether to stay in a given locale but, instead, where to go. The available options were often limited, and survivors faced additional complications, such as health problems, loss of family and property, and the general effects of psychological trauma. On a national level, immigration and citizenship laws, as well as the evolving political environment of a particular country or locality, impacted movement and ultimate 1. Beth B. Cohen, Case Closed: Holocaust Survivors in Postwar America (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press in association with the USHMM, 2007), 18. 2. For a comprehensive study of German Jews who fled Nazi-occupied Europe in the 1930s and their postwar fates, see Walter Laqueur, Generation Exodus: The Fate of Young Jewish Refugees from Nazi Germany (Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press and the University Press of New England, 2001).

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settlement. At times, a combination of circumstance, availability, and luck chose survivors’ destinations for them.3 Ultimately, where survivors went after the war reflected a complex confluence of desire and opportunity—two factors that were often at odds with one another.

REFUGEES AND THE POSTWAR LANDSCAPE: BORDERS, CITIZENSHIP, AND NATIONALITY The documents in this section explore several different attempts to reconstitute a postwar existence on European soil in environs that were, in the immediate postwar era, severely deficient in resources. To whom these resources should go and how to distribute them—particularly among the survivor population— became a pressing concern.4 Document 4-1 describes the housing shortage for Jewish concentration camp survivors residing in Vienna, Austria. Dr. Heinrich Schur,5 head of the Vienna Jewish community, writes in an attempt to make arrangements for the imminent arrival of four hundred Viennese Jews from Theresienstadt. Like Berlin, Vienna faced scarce resources in the postwar era. Additionally, Austria had been complicit in the deportation and murder of its Jews. While, in 1943, the Moscow Declaration had declared Austria the first “victim” of Hitler’s Germany, a significant number of civil servants and government officials were themselves members of the Nazi Party. This contradictory Austrian narrative as both victim and perpetrator would play a crucial role in 3. See David Bankier, ed., The Jews Are Coming Back: The Return of the Jews to Their Countries of Origin after WWII (New York: Berghahn Books, 2005); Zeev W. Mankowitz, Life between Memory and Hope: The Survivors of the Holocaust in Occupied Germany (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Margarete Myers Feinstein, Holocaust Survivors in Postwar Germany, 1945–1957 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 4. For a detailed account of the broad issues facing Jews remaining in Europe, see Pieter Lagrou, “European Societies and the Remnants of Their Jewish Communities,” in Bankier, The Jews Are Coming Back, 1–24. For a general survey of the meaning of the “postwar” period in several national contexts, see the essay collection in Frank Biess and Robert G. Moeller, eds., Histories of the Aftermath: The Legacies of the Second World War in Europe (New York: Berghahn Books, 2010). 5. After the war Schur became the first provisional president of the Vienna community, a position he only held until the autumn of 1945. Born in 1871 in Nachod, Schur studied medicine in Prague and later directed a division of the Rothschild Hospital. His “mixed marriage” protected him from deportation during the war. He also took over leadership of the “Joint” in the city when the war ended. See Doron Rabinovici, Instanzen der Ohnmacht. Wien 1938–1945. Der Weg zum Judenrat (Frankfurt am Main: Jüdischer Verlag, 2000), 389; cf. Evelyn Adunka, Die vierte Gemeinde. Die Geschichte der Wiener Juden von 1945 bis heute (Berlin: Philo, 2000), 20ff.

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the postwar reconstruction of the country.6 Document 4-1 grapples with the uncertainties of reintegrating a community that Austria had systematically extricated from social and economic life since 1938: What resources were available to returning Jews, and who would provide them? DOCUMENT 4-1: Letter from Dr. Heinrich Schur, acting head of the Jewish community of Vienna, to the Housing Office of Vienna, July 27, 1945, USHMMA RG 68.045M (WJC Geneva), reel 4, file 32 (translated from German).

To the Housing Authority of Vienna As the acting head of the Jewish community in Vienna, I request that the buildings at XIX7 Bauernfeldgasse 40 (the former orphanage) and at II Castellezgasse 35 (former school building), which belong to the Jewish Community Organization, be made available again for our organization’s use. The District Commission of Döbling8 and the “Roten Falken” organization of the 2nd district confiscated these buildings without any sort of rental agreement. We need these buildings for returnees who we are expecting to return from the camps very shortly. Because we have little time to prepare for them, we also hope that one or more hotels that are not going to be used for any other purpose can be placed at our disposal. But we would not be using these accommodations [hotels] for any extended period of time, because we have to pay 5 RM per person per night. Given that we are expecting 400 returnees, that would greatly exceed our financial resources. From an economic standpoint it would be impossible. We cannot be expected to lend our property for purposes that have nothing to do with the Jewish community and without any sort of compensation, and at the same time to pay a rent we can hardly afford for housing our people elsewhere. For most of the current camp inmates, of course, the best course of action 6. See Tony Judt, “The Past Is Another Country: Myth and Memory in Postwar Europe,” Daedalus 121, no. 4 (fall 1992): 83–118. See also Evan Burr Bukey, Hitler’s Austria: Popular Sentiment in the Nazi Era, 1938–1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000); Rolf Steininger, Austria, Germany, and the Cold War: From the Anschluss to the State Treaty (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2008). 7. City district (Bezirk). 8. Döbling is a district in Vienna, and the “Red Falcons” were a youth wing of the Austrian Social Democratic Party banned in 1934 but reconstituted after the war.

Returning “Home” would be to quickly locate private apartments for them, where they can pursue their professions and thereby work to rebuild our fatherland and their own financial lives. From both a moral and educational perspective, it is neither defensible nor desirable to condemn them any longer than absolutely necessary as economic drones to sad idleness instead of allowing them to engage in their professions. The occasion that gave rise to this situation9 was that the Americans seized for their own use the hotels that were originally allotted to the Jewish community as replacements for our two seized buildings. Because this could happen just as easily in other hotels that might be placed at our disposal, the only halfway decent guarantee for an undisturbed accommodation for the refugees in our care would be to house them in our own two buildings. The hotels will only be a temporary housing measure for the first wave of people we are expecting. Many of the new arrivals are very sick, weak, or infirm. These people will undoubtedly have to remain longer in the Jewish community’s hospitals and relief centers. Most of the refugees and arrivals who are already here can only be cared for effectively in the long term if we quickly find accommodations suitable for that purpose. The Jewish community administration is solely responsible for such care. The Jewish community administration will probably be responsible for the urgent care, too, but it is our wish and our moral obligation to put forth our best effort to use our resources to help alleviate the situation. We can do this to some extent through the property that belongs to the Jewish Community Organization, but only if we are not prevented from using it due to the quartering of troops. As they have demonstrated to us, the Americans are showing a lot of consideration for the needs of the returnees and the Jewish community and especially for the property of the Jewish community. Of course, they cannot just give us hotels that they need for their own people, because these hotels do not belong to us, especially when they discover that we would have enough room in the two buildings [confiscated by the District Commission of Döbling and the “Roten Falken”] that belong to us were they returned to us. As we all heard, the Americans would have no objections 9. Referring to the Jewish community’s urgent need for more housing.

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Chapter 4 if we used the hotels for a short period of time, and we are very grateful for this. The arrival of 400 Theresienstadt Jews is expected in the next few days, perhaps as soon as tomorrow or the day after. Time is therefore of the essence if we wish to provide them with halfway decent care. I am hoping for a swift and satisfactory solution to this and remain Yours sincerely, Respectfully, Dr. Heinrich Schur Acting head of the Vienna Jewish community

Austria was not alone in having a complicated relationship with both refugee and native Jewish populations. In Switzerland, “stateless” Jews faced the predicament of being unwelcome in both their adopted home and their place of origin.10 Swiss Jews found themselves in a particularly precarious position both during and after the war. A community of only nineteen thousand, they sought 10. The role of neutral Switzerland during the war remains a contested history. Switzerland had declared its neutrality prior to the outbreak of World War II. Surrounded by Nazi, fascist, or collaborationist powers by 1940 (Germany, Italy, and France), Switzerland maintained economic ties with Axis powers as well as their Allied counterparts. Seen as a safe haven for Jews during the war, Switzerland applied a contradictory policy toward the most vulnerable refugees of Hitler’s Europe. On the one hand, officials admitted about twentynine thousand Jews to Switzerland between 1933 and 1946; at the same time, officials turned away another twenty thousand Jews at the border, including those attempting to escape deportation between 1942 and 1943. In fact, the Swiss closed the border to Jewish refugees in August 1942, a few weeks after the infamous Vél’ d’Hiv roundup in Paris, during which thirty thousand Jews were arrested in the middle of Paris in a matter of days. Moreover, it was Swiss officials who requested the “J” imprint stamp on German passports in 1938. Restrictions on Jewish immigration were also prevalent. For example, Swiss Jewish women who had married men of other nationalities were now considered foreigners and needed to apply for entry into the country. And in 1938, when the need was highest in the wake of “Kristallnacht,” the Swiss government threatened to close the borders to Jews entirely unless the Swiss Jewish community could shoulder the financial and physical burden of their care. For a short digest of Switzerland’s wartime foreign policy, see Jacques Picard, “On the Ambivalence of Being Neutral: Switzerland and Swiss Jewry Facing the Rise of the Nazi State,” Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Annual Lecture, September 23, 1997 (Washington, DC: Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, USHMM, 1998).

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recognition as loyal Swiss citizens and fought the perception of foreignness that plagued the Jewish refugees arriving in the 1930s and 1940s. Fears of antisemitism were also heightened during this period. Swiss Jews thus worked to meet the needs of refugees while at the same time attempting to avoid raising any questions about Swiss refugee policy.11 They received support from American Jewish organizations such as the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (AJJDC) and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. In sum, foreign Jewish charities sent about 44 million Swiss francs in aid.12 Several of these organizations, including the World Jewish Congress (WJC), used Geneva as their base of operations during the war. As early as the 1930s, the Swiss government made clear to Jewish refugees that Switzerland was not to become a permanent home. In fact, Jews were not considered eligible for political asylum in Switzerland until July 1944.13 In the postwar era, Switzerland held fast to the stance that it served as a temporary respite. Document 4-2 makes the opposite case and calls on the Swiss Jewish community to support Jewish refugees in their efforts to remain in Switzerland. Otto H. Heim,14 president of the Aid Society for Jewish Refugees, appeals to the community on both ethical and national grounds; the refugees, he claims, are Swiss in every way, save having legal citizenship. The document asks, What measures can the local population practically take to sustain its refugee population? How do the “stateless” deal with the precarious position they now find themselves in? Ultimately, what might the transition from refugee to permanent resident look like?

11. Ibid., 8–9. 12. Picard, “On the Ambivalence of Being Neutral,” 10. 13. Regula Ludi, “Dwindling Options: Seeking Asylum in Switzerland 1933–1939,” in Refugees from Nazi Germany and the Liberal European States, ed. Frank Caestecker and Bob Moore (New York: Berghahn Books, 2010), 87. 14. Heim, a textile manufacturer, was politically “very conservative” and had long been active in Swiss Jewish community work. See Stefan Mächler, Hilfe und Ohnmacht. Der Schweizerische Israelitische Gemeindebund und die nationalsozialistische Verfolgung 1933–1945 (Zurich: Chronos, 2005), 20. On the history of the Verband Schweizerischer Jüdischer Fürsorgen (VSJF), see Jacques Picard, Die Schweiz und die Juden, 1933–1945. Schweizerischer Antisemitismus, jüdische Abwehr und international Migrations-und Flüchtlingspolitik (Zurich: Chronos, 1997); cf. 279 on Heim, president of the VSJF beginning in 1943. Heim penned a postwar account, Jüdische soziale Arbeit und Flüchtlingshilfe in der Schweiz (Zurich: Schweizerischer Israelitischer Gemeindebund, 1954).

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DOCUMENT 4-2: Reflections on the Jewish refugee problem in Switzerland by Otto H. Heim, president of the Swiss Aid Society for Jewish Refugees (Verband Schweizerischer Jüdischer Flüchtlingshilfen), November 1945, USHMMA RG 68.045M, reel 20, file 146 (translated from German).

Reflections on the Jewish Refugee Problem in Switzerland The end of the war that for the last six years plunged the world in bloody horror and tore the fate of peoples and individuals into inconceivable misfortune was certainly viewed by all of humanity as its salvation. With the end of the war, however, the difficult problems created by a world come undone did not disappear. Such great shocks have occurred since 1933 that a return to the past order is out of the question. In Switzerland, which miraculously was preserved and spared, the individual was not as greatly impacted by the experience of war as the inhabitants of countries affected by the war. A certain numbing, a clearly perceptible defensive attitude visà-vis the responsibility that is incumbent upon each of us, threatens in many cases to lead to indifference and isolation. The Jew in Switzerland is also subject to this danger. He certainly viewed the fate of our brothers and sisters who were so inhumanely persecuted with pain and horror, but the cessation of persecution let him take a deep breath and simultaneously weakened his willingness to help. One often hears others saying, “The war is over now; soon all our refugees and émigrés should be able to leave the country.” Perhaps only few can grasp the extraordinary difficulties that stand in the way of resolving the problem of Jewish refugees. Indeed, several hundreds, even thousands, have already left Switzerland, but thousands still remain here. It is easy to understand that Italians, Belgians, French, Dutch have a comparatively easier time going back. But for Jewish refugees with Czech and Yugoslav citizenship, for Hungarians, Poles, Austrians, and Germans, things are incomparably more difficult. Can they all still consider their countries of origin as their homeland? Can they be expected to return there? Unshakeable is our demand that no Jewish refugees may be forced to return or to emigrate anew to a given country. On the other hand, one cannot overlook the fact that the stay of refugees, who found refuge in Switzerland, was viewed from the very beginning as temporary. But where would they go to? Up to now no nation has shown any great inclination to accept the refugees and offer them a place to settle, a work permit, and therefore the conditions for a humane existence. The

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European and the overseas countries will hardly make a generous immigration policy their own. We have to expect that young, hardworking people will find their place in building the world anew. It is especially for Jews a great satisfaction and empowering for their conscience that thousands of Jewish refugees have found refuge in Palestine and that alone in the past few months more than 1,500 people from Switzerland were able to move to Eretz Israel. But the issue of Jewish refugees in Switzerland is for us far from solved. We are still giving shelter to more than 2,500 Jewish emigrants from Germany and Austria, some of whom have been here more than seven years. They know only one language, and many of them have grown old here. They have gained a foothold here, their children attended school here and speak Swiss-German as well as any Swiss child. They live in a peaceful and beautiful country. The support given them, even if meager, has ameliorated their struggle for their very lives. Can we hold it against them if they do not want to trade this situation for a leap into the unknown, into what might be very difficult living conditions? Where, for example, is a former German attorney who is now older than fifty supposed to go? Where should the elderly and the sick go? Our view of Jewish dignity is not reconcilable with advising the victims of bloodthirsty policies to return to countries from which they were driven away and in which their—our—brothers and sisters were murdered. We therefore have the absolute duty to guarantee these people shelter and a livelihood in the future. The Swiss Jews committed themselves in 1933 to rising to the occasion for these emigrants.15 The Swiss Confederation assumed responsibility for the livelihood of refugees who have come to Switzerland since 1942—it directed the refugees into camps and homes while the emigrants were permitted to live freely. Refugees that have been here since 1942 have constituted the great majority of the departures of the last few months. They have received only secondary support from the Jewish institutions. If today we fully supported more than 2,500 Jewish emigrants, this would translate into a financial expenditure of close to 5 million Francs per year. In addition, we are sheltering here in Switzerland over 7,000 Jewish refugees. Although Swiss authorities have guaranteed support for them, the Jewish institutions still must provide additional expenditures for them. 15. Note that the writer distinguishes in these next sentences between proper “emigrants” (Emigrantes) and “refugees” (Flüchtlinge).

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Chapter 4 Our aid encompasses not just the physical well-being of the Jewish refugees and emigrants. We have to provide them with vocational opportunities and retrain them; we have to support their cultural and religious aspirations, mentally prepare them for their futures, and assist them using all of the resources at our disposal. It is clear that the 18,000 Jews who currently reside in Switzerland can raise only a part of the funds necessary to do all of this. We are extremely grateful that our Jewish brothers in America have made possible our activities by providing permanent help through the “Joint,” “HICEM,”16 and “O[RT].”17 With sincere gratitude we also must acknowledge the non-Jewish Swiss public, Swiss officials, institutions, and a large circle of well-meaning men and women for their sympathetic, energetic, and generous efforts and cooperation, especially in the last few years. The readiness to help others must have greater importance than material resources. We cannot become indifferent. We must always recognize that the fortunate ones who were spared have the duty to stand in a Jewish and humanitarian solidarity with the victims of the war, and our Jewish refugees are counted among them. We all are striving for a strengthened Jewish awareness. The source of the pride we can take in our Jewishness should be earned through our hard work and willingness to help.18 Otto H. Heim President of the Swiss Aid Society for Jewish Refugees

16. An acronym for the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, based in New York; the ICA, or Jewish Colonial Association, based in Paris, and Emigdirect, a migration organization based in Berlin. HICEM worked to provide relief and rescue to Jews both during and after the war, primarily funded by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the American Friends Service Committee, affiliated with the Quaker movement. For more information on the HICEM, see Susan Elisabeth Subak, Rescue and Flight: American Relief Workers Who Defied the Nazis (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2010); Yehuda Bauer, American Jewry and the Holocaust: The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, 1939–1945 (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1981). 17. A Jewish labor-training organization founded in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1880. ORT conducted vocational training in the Kovno ghetto until 1942, then worked extensively in DP camps in 1945. For more information about ORT’s activities with Holocaust survivors in the postwar, see Sarah Kavanaugh, ORT, The Second World War and the Rehabilitation of Holocaust Survivors (Portland, OR: Valentine Mitchell, 2008). 18. Original German: Haltung, also meaning “posture,” “attitude,” or “stamina.”

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The Jewish refugees in Switzerland began as strangers and became, in the eyes of the Swiss Aid Society for Jewish Refugees, integrated into the larger population. For some concentration camp survivors who were transported to Sweden for convalescence, a similar transformation took place. In the spring and summer of 1945, Sweden received about twenty to thirty thousand former concentration camp inmates in the final days of the war in an operation referred to as the “White Bus,” so named for the neutral buses used to transport them. Approximately one-third were Jewish.19 As a result of their fragile condition, these Jews were placed under quarantine for several weeks. In fact, several Swedish medical personnel contracted typhus from the survivors.20 As a neutral country during the war, Sweden has long held a special status in the history of the Holocaust. Perhaps most famous for sheltering the seventy-two hundred Jews of Denmark from deportation, Sweden also authorized the rescue efforts of diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who liberally distributed Swedish certificates of protection to Hungarian Jews in Budapest facing deportation in 1944.21 At the same time, Sweden’s history is not completely unblemished; its severely restrictive immigration policies and treatment of those refugees who reached its shores left a complicated wartime legacy.22 In the final years of the war, Swedish anti-Nazis and intellectuals formed the Cooperative Committee for Democratic Reconstruction (Sambetskommittén för Demokratiskt Uppbyggnadsarbete, SDU), which coordinated an initial effort to record the testimonies of the survivors convalescing in Sweden in 1945 and 1946. Dory Engstrӧmer made the first attempt, interviewing French-, Hungarian-, and Romanian-speaking survivors still under 19. For more information about this operation, see Sune Persson, “Folke Bernadotte and the White Buses,” in Bystanders to the Holocaust: A Reevaluation, ed. David Cesarani and Paul A. Levine (Portland, OR: Frank Cass Publishers, 2002), 237–68. 20. For a contemporary account of the arrival of these Jews in Sweden, see “Key Refugees Arriving in Sweden from Nazi Camps Gravely Ill, Some Have Died,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, May 31, 1945, www.jta.org/1945/05/31/archive/key-refugees-arriving-in-swedenfrom-nazi-camps-gravely-ill-some-have-died (accessed December 10, 2014). 21. For more information on the actions of Denmark during the Holocaust, see Israel Gutman et al., eds., The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations: Rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2003), 5:61–167; for more information on the rescue efforts of Raoul Wallenberg, see Leni Yahil, “Raoul Wallenberg: His Mission and His Activities in Hungary,” in The End of the Holocaust, ed. Michael R. Marrus (Westport, CT: Meckler, 1989), 398–444. 22. For more information, see Sven Nordlund, “The War Is Over—Now You Can Go Home! Jewish Refugees and the Swedish Labor Market in the Shadow of the Holocaust,” in Cesarani and Levine, Bystanders to the Holocaust, 171–98.

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quarantine. After the quarantine lifted in June 1945, SDU continued its interview project with Jewish women from Poland and later recorded the experiences of Dutch, Hungarian, Romanian, and Czech survivors. SDU’s questionnaires asked survivors for basic biographical information: place of birth, religion, reason captured, camps where interned, causes of death in camps, and survivors’ worst personal experiences. These questionnaires also inquired about plans for the future and survivors’ impressions of postwar life in Sweden. The SDU received six hundred replies, of which it selected two hundred for a book published in 1945, Those Who Were Sentenced to Death Testify, compiled by SDU president Einar Tegen and his wife, Gunhild. While this volume quoted most survivors anonymously, it published nineteen complete questionnaires and interviews with names.23 Document 4-3 excerpts one of these questionnaires, filled out by Zdenka Fantlová, a Czech survivor of Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, Gross-Rosen, and Bergen-Belsen.24 Fantlová was among a group of ill survivors sent to Sweden from Bergen-Belsen as part of their convalescence. In this text, she, like many others interviewed, discusses the welcoming nature of the Swedes, the abundance of food, and other more psychological aspects of her recovery. Composed in response to a stock interview question, her positive attitude may merely have reflected what the Swedish interviewers wanted to hear. Or Fantlová’s response might have been genuine, in which case it reflects a fluid definition of “home” as no longer one’s place of origin but instead a place where one is welcomed. Given the fluid nature of the narrative presented here, it may have been rewritten from an earlier interview or draft. Ultimately, Fantlová’s stay in Sweden was short; the only surviving member of her family, she immigrated to Australia in 1949.

23. Original Swedish publication in 1945: De dö dsdö mda vittnar: Enquê tesvar och intervjuer by Gunhild and Einar Tegen, Pia-Kristina Garde, Pia-Kristina Garde Collection, USHMMA Acc. 2004.635. Garde traced the whereabouts of two hundred of these survivors for her book, De dödsdömda vittnar: 60 år senare [Those Who Were Sentenced to Death Witness: 60 Years Later] (Bromma: Megilla-förl., 2004). 24. For a full account of Fantlová’s story, see her memoir, The Tin Ring (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Northumbria University Press, 2010). Fantlová was born in 1922. After working in Sweden for a time, she immigrated to Australia in 1949 and became an actress. She later settled in London. Cf. USHMM ITS Collection Data Base Central Name Index.

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DOCUMENT 4-3: Statement by Zdenka Fantlová to the Sambetskommittén för Demokratiskt Uppbyggnadsarbete, or the Cooperative Committee for Democratic Reconstruction, Norrköping, Sweden, May 15, 1945, USHMMA Acc. 2004.635 Pia-Kristina Garde collection (translated from German).

[. . .] It is May 15, 1945, the war is finished. Around the whole continent victory music is heard, and “Peace” is announced. People are happy, people cry, the war is over. Is it possible? Yes, the war is over, and the time to settle accounts has come. Believe me, there is no punishment in the world that would provide expiation for all the misery, pain, and unnecessary murder. I doubt that the human imagination could think of something better that would trump the present German methods. I am leaving this question to the highest gods that sit at the green table that they should judge this nation according to their best knowledge and conscience. The first thing that was done for the good of the people was to open the concentration camps. Finally, freedom. The people departed slowly to their home countries and breathed freely, moved freely, and thought freely at last. What is freedom? Our Karel Hašler25 sings of it: “Freedom is freedom, without which you cannot live; Nobody sells it; One has to experience it. And when we have earned it through struggle, we must have enough strength to live for it; then we will have it forever; And will be able to appreciate it.” Shortly after the peace announcement, through the Red Cross we were informed about the generous offer of Sweden. The Swedes invited us to their country, which had the good fortune to escape this horrible war. They offered us physical and spiritual recuperation. And that is why I traveled to Sweden instead of my home country. On one hand because I needed to recuperate [. . .] and on the other hand because 25. Karel Hašler (1879–1941) was a Czech cabaret director, film actor, and composer, in part famous for his patriotic (implicitly anti-Nazi) songs. A member of the underground movement, he was arrested by the Gestapo and most likely killed in the Mauthausen concentration camp. Cf. the 2008 documentary The Immortal Balladeer of Prague, dir. Josef Lustig and Marek Jícha.

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Chapter 4 even as a small girl I liked to travel, see new countries, meet new people, learn new habits. And here again, I take my hat off to the Swedes. They did not have any war and spared themselves many war amusements, but they had complete understanding and feeling for our misfortune because we lost our dearest ones, and they prepared a true paradise. Do you know what it means for us to get a clean, white bed in which you can sleep alone?? Comfortable bath and perfumed soap (a comb, a toothbrush that we haven’t seen for years). And finally the best and abundant food that we only dreamed of? With all that we were overwhelmed and could not believe that it all was truth and fact. Such a jump directly from hell and the horrible hole of death brought us to the light of God and saved us to live our future life. Everyone is so good to us that it is almost touching. We were so used to rough and raw treatment, and that is why we are touched by the tenderness and friendliness. The people in the street smile at us, and one can see in their eyes that they would like to do something that we would enjoy. I will tell you what happened to me recently: I went to town “to shop.” (That means for us either 2 pieces from the bakery or 1/2 kg [1.1 pounds] tomatoes.) I stopped in front of a delicatessen store. With an experienced grasp I weighed my change purse (a small matchbox) and decided to buy 10 kg [22 pounds] of sausage. After I completed this extensive purchase I spotted frankfurters in the window. Don’t ask me—me and my frankfurters. I could really buy them, too. No . . . yes! I decided for this enormous purchase. I returned to the shop and in a foreign language, a mixture of Czech, German, English, and a little Swedish (which I have learned until now with no success), I asked how much this was. The woman in the shop weighed it and told me the price. I had to tell her I did not have that much money, and I hurried with a bad feeling out of the store. I had walked already quite a bit and occupied myself with new matters and expenses when suddenly from the back someone touched my hand, put a package of franks in my bag, and walked away. It was the woman from the store. I stopped, standing fixed on the sidewalk, and had no words. I don’t think I even pulled myself together to thank her. And such scenes take place here by the dozen. People sympathize with us, and as I said before, they would like to help us at every step and make us happy. I would like to give another compliment to the Swedes. Do you know

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what is the best here? The children. I have never seen such wonderful and charming children in my life, and I believe that such children are only born in Sweden. We, who saw how our children were murdered, are jealous of the good fortune of these mothers. And if I see a whole family together, it appears to be a wonder. I have found many friends here, and I slowly begin to live anew. I can feel the ground under my feet, and a new desire to live flows in my veins. I always remember my lovely golden father who sang, “Happy is the one who forgets; what cannot be changed anymore.” And he was right. Yes, it is true that a human being will live as long as he breathes. I never thought that after my terrible family misfortune I could be happy again. But I see today that in spite of all the suffering I went through, I can newly enjoy with full gulps the smell of the fruit garden and the country air, filled with ripe grain. I will never forget the beautiful days of my new freedom in Sweden, where the ocean with its waves, breaking at the rocks, also made a deep impression on me. And what about looking at the meadows where the cows were pasturing. And what about the woods with their beautiful trees that are standing quiet and are silent. Nature is magical. It tells us that as sun and rain and thunderstorms alternate, the life of the human being is the same. After dwindling luck comes the catastrophe, after which redemption appears once again, and a new life begins. It is a law of nature, after all, that trees don’t reach the sky, and everything in life has an end.

CREATING HOMELAND: ASPIRATIONS FOR PALESTINE The desire to immigrate to Palestine was not an exclusively postwar phenomenon. Throughout the war, Jews confronted the strict quota system imposed by the British.26 From 1939 to 1944, the White Paper of 1939 established 26. For more information on Jewish immigration to Palestine during the war, see Aviva Halamish, “Palestine as a Destination for Jewish Immigrants and Refugees from Nazi Germany,” in Refugees from Nazi Germany and the Liberal European States, ed. Frank Caestecker and Bob Moore (New York: Berghahn Books, 2010), 122–50; Dalia Ofer, Escaping the Holocaust: Illegal Immigration to the Land of Israel, 1939–1944 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).

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a maximum of ten thousand Jewish immigrants per year, with a total of twenty-five thousand additional visas for Jewish refugees. Such a figure proved woefully inadequate for the number of Jews anxious to leave Europe. In the postwar period, these quotas continued. The desire of Jewish immigrants— who were, according to the British Mandate, meant to make up only onethird of the total population of the country—to fill these slots continued unabated.27 The letters in documents 4-4 and 4-5 concern the potential immigration of Rachel (Chelly) Nordheim,28 age thirty-two and a mother of four (Moshe, Batsheva, Rivka, and Shimon Nehemia), to Palestine. The two younger children (Rivka and Shimon) had survived in hiding; David (Rachel’s husband), Rachel, Moshe, and Batsheva had been transported to Westerbork and later to Bergen-Belsen. The Nordheims were liberated by the Soviets near Tröbitz after being transported there by train from Bergen-Belsen. David Nordheim did not survive long after. In June 1946, all four children left for Kfar Hassidim, a religious settlement near Haifa, in Palestine to join their grandparents; Rachel’s visa had not yet materialized. The first letter constitutes a plea from Rachel’s father for the immigration of his daughter. The second letter, from Rachel herself, anxiously awaits the arrival of a visa to join her children in Kfar Hassidim. Rachel’s entrance visa for Palestine finally arrived in March 1947, and by April she was reunited with her children in Haifa. In his memoir, Moshe Nordheim explains that although Rachel and her children shared a triumphant reunion, “five year-old Nehemia found it all very strange. He had to get used to his ‘stranger’ mother once again—without a common language. Nehemia had forgotten his Dutch, whereas my mother did not know Hebrew.”29

27. For a history of Zionism and the British Mandate, see Michael Brenner, Zionism: A Brief History (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2003). 28. Rachel Nordheim (née Nordheim; b. 1914), daughter of a prosperous businessman, grew up in Amsterdam. After some brief vocational training, she married when she was comparatively young, in 1933. After the war she took ORT classes while waiting to emigrate; she remarried in Israel and had three additional children. 29. Moshe Nordheim, From Rebuke to Rejoicing (Victoria, Canada: Trafford Publishing, 2004), 428.

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DOCUMENT 4-4: Letter from Simon Nordheim to British authorities on behalf of his daughter, Rachel (Chelly) Nordheim, July 12, 1946, cited and reproduced in Moshe Nordheim, From Rebuke to Rejoicing (Victoria, Canada: Trafford Publishing, 2004), 445.

Kfar Hassidim, the 12th of July, 1946 Simon Nordheim His Excellency The High Commissioner for Palestine30 Government House Jerusalem Your Excellency, I take the liberty of approaching Your Excellency in order to bring to your notice a matter of exceptional hardship which deserves your special attention, and I pray that Your Excellency might be pleased to appreciate the humanitarian aspect of this matter with a view of giving it a just and proper solution. I am a legal resident of Palestine. My daughter Rachel (Chelly) Nordheim of Amsterdam was in Holland with her husband and children when Holland was invaded in 1940. The Nazis took them in 1943 to the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp where they were kept for more than two years.31 The liberation came too late, and my son-in-law, Dr. David Nordheim, did not survive. My daughter was thus left behind with four small children.32 30. This was Sir Alan Cunningham (1887–1983), a British army general who had played a significant role in the East African campaign in 1941. He served as the final high commissioner for Palestine before the British Mandate expired. See obituary, New York Times, February 1, 1983, D23. 31. Moshe Nordheim’s diary indicates that the family was held in the “Star camp” at Bergen-Belsen. On conditions in this part of the concentration camp, see essays in Jo Reilly et al., eds., Belsen in History and Memory (London: Frank Cass, 1997). 32. A medical doctor with a large private practice in Amsterdam, David (b. 1904) came from another branch of the Nordheim family in Arnhem. He probably died of typhus shortly after liberation. See Nordheim, From Rebuke to Rejoicing.

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Chapter 4 About the 3rd of May, 1946, the Commissioner for Migration and Statistics issued an immigration certificate in favor of the four children of my daughter, and these children arrived in Palestine a few weeks ago. Their ages are between four and twelve years, and they live now in my house at Kfar Hassidim. In the result, however, these children who only a year ago had lost their father are now separated from their mother as well, as she was not permitted to accompany them to Palestine. The mother (my daughter) who was born on the 12th of December, 1914, is naturally anxious to rejoin her four children, and I am likewise anxious to have her here as soon as possible. It goes without saying that these minor fatherless children need, at least, the personal care of their mother. So far, however, I was unable to obtain an immigration certificate for my daughter. To the contrary, the Haifa Immigration Office only recently gave a flat refusal. I sincerely trust that Your Excellency will be impressed by these facts and will authorize the early admission of my daughter to Palestine where she will join again her four small children. I have the honor to be Your Excellency’s Most respectfully, Simon Nordheim33

33. Simon (1886–1965), his wife, Betsy (née Cohen de Lars), and their other daughter, Rika, survived the war.

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DOCUMENT 4-5: Letter from Rachel (Chelly) Nordheim near Leiden, the Netherlands, to her children in Kfar Hassidim settlement, northern Israel, December 19, 1946, USHMMA Acc. 2007.510.1 Moshe and Chaya Nordheim collection (translated from Dutch).

December 19, 1946 Dear Children! Although I haven’t received any mail from you, I do write this letter. There is a sharp frost. During the day 7 degrees and 0 at night. There is skating on all the canals. The whole week there was a terrible wind. Therefore the ice was unreliable [unsafe] for a long time. The Ijselmeer was not navigable; the Wadden Islands are once again isolated. Almost everywhere on the big rivers shipping is at a standstill. The room cannot get warmer than 55 degrees. I walk around with 2 sweaters on top of each other and long slacks. The cold is the reason why I still haven’t been to Leiden. There is a thaw in the forecast, so next week I will be able to travel. We have little gas for cooking because of a shortage of coal. My meals are not elaborate, so that doesn’t bother me much. As you can gather from this letter, there is no El Dorado here in Holland. There hasn’t been any snow yet. Lucky, because overshoes are not available, and our shoes are not waterproof. In the meantime it’s Chanukah, so I wish you many more years. You will understand that I pass these days without any cheer. At school there was a big celebration where children were well entertained. On the radio there were 2 broadcasts in honor of Chanukah. There are efforts from all sides to propagate [our] traditions. There are due to be a variety of meetings that are arranged though the Central Committee of the Jewish Community and JNF [Joods Nationaal Fond, Jewish National Fund]. If the program is very good, then people will definitely come. You have to have lots of energy in this cold weather to go there. How are things now with Moshe? Is his fever gone completely and the diarrhea as well? Have you as a result of his illness been able to achieve anything concerning a visitors’ visa? From Holland there is no way to achieve anything, and applications that are filed here are forwarded to Palestine for review. That means that however often I try, my name always

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Chapter 4 appears before the same person with the same set of eyes. But the gentlemen at the consulate will not even accept an application made in Holland. It’s still not very easy here. Can you imagine what it is like to live all alone under such a nerve-racking strain? From time to time I have the desire to smash everything to bits and pieces. Last Shabbat I was the guest of the Hartog Jacobs family.34 They can’t understand why I don’t visit them more often. But even if I weren’t busy, I am too apathetic to walk all the way to the stadium. After my visit with them, I also stopped by the old Jacobs couple in the Harmony Hof. The “zij” [wife] is laid up with a nerve inflammation in her back. Otherwise they are doing well. I think often that these people are waiting for their deaths because they will never get to go to Palestine. [. . .] As you can see, I don’t have much to talk about. The non-Jews here talk only about Ling gadjatie (Indonesia),35 something that doesn’t interest me enough. The parliamentary debates dominate the radio all day. That too doesn’t interest me. I don’t hear much about certificates, and that is all I want to know about. But perhaps there will be some light shed on that issue soon. So much for now. All the best and kisses and a speedy Lehitra’ot.36 Chelly37

THE OTHER “PROMISED LAND”: REFUGEES AND SURVIVORS IN THE UNITED STATES From 1946 to 1954, approximately 140,000 Jewish displaced persons immigrated to the United States from Europe.38 Many of these Jews reaped the benefits of the Truman Directive, passed in December 1945 in response to the Harrison 34. The author was unable to uncover further information about these friends. 35. Refers to the Linggadjati, or Cheribon, Agreement, which declared Indonesian independence from the Netherlands on November 15, 1946. 36. Hebrew for “see you later.” 37. Rachel Nordheim, born December 24, 1914. 38. Cohen, Case Closed, 1.

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Report, which exposed the conditions endured by Jews in the early Allied-run DP camps in Germany.39 The Truman Directive called for preferential admission of displaced persons according to extant US immigration law. The total sum to be admitted over and above the usual immigration quotas, some 39,681 displaced persons, included various religions and nationalities housed within the American Zone of occupied Germany. While about two-thirds of the quota did in fact go to Jews, this did little to alleviate the refugee crisis in Europe overall. In fact, the lowest proportion of this quota, reserved for Poles (6,524 slots), constituted one of the highest needs in terms of the nationality of the Jewish DP population.40 The opinion of and reception to these displaced persons is a matter of some historical debate. Historian Beth Cohen contends that Jewish displaced persons remained outsiders within the American Jewish community. By contrast, Hasia Diner suggests that survivors became integral to the postwar Jewish world and were instrumental in memory and memorial activities.41 Either way, the arrival of survivors and refugees from Europe profoundly changed the landscape of American Jewry. The documents in this section present both insider and outsider views of the influx of survivors to American soil. Document 4-6, a Jewish Telegraphic Agency ( JTA) article announcing the arrival of the first Jewish refugees to the United States, describes the experiences of broad categories of survivors: the partisan, the concentration camp inmate, the Jew who passed as Christian, and so forth. This article presents some of the models and terminology of survival. Indeed, these short portraits introduce the contemporary American Jewish reader to what would become the major survivor archetypes. The article notably elides, however, any specificity or distinction (or even explicit mention) of Jewish victimhood. Indeed, one must infer the Jewish identity of several of the survivors named in the article. Furthermore, the JTA already presents these first arrivals as good Americans: singing newly learned patriotic songs and enthusiastically greeting other ships. Overall, the article implicitly asks, What types of survivors will Americans “accept,” and what place will they occupy both inside and outside the American Jewish community? Furthermore, what types of Americans will they become, and how will the greater American public incorporate—or ultimately ignore—their experiences? In the end, what will acceptance on these new shores cost? 39. See chapter 5 for details on these camps and the context and impact of the Harrison Report. 40. Cohen, Case Closed, 9–10. 41. See Hasia R. Diner, We Remember with Reverence and Love: American Jews and the Myth of Silence after the Holocaust, 1945–1962 (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 18–85.

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DOCUMENT 4-6: “677 Jewish Refugees Arrive Here from Europe on First Postwar Immigrant Ship,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, May 21, 1946.

May 21, 1946 677 Jewish Refugees Arrive Here from Europe on First Postwar Immigrant Ship New York Six-hundred and seventy-seven displaced Jews from Europe arrived here this morning aboard the converted troopship Marine Flasher, after a nineday trip from Germany. They are the first immigrants to be admitted under President Truman’s directive facilitating immigration of displaced persons. Youngest of the arrivals was five-month old Johanna Kaiser, whose parents are natives of Poland.42 The oldest was 82-year-old Siegfried Neu, a veteran of three years at Theresienstadt, who is bound for Minneapolis.43 As the ship proceeded up the river to its berth, the refugee passengers sang American patriotic songs they had learned on the trip over. They waved and shouted as passing vessels blew their whistles in welcome. The loudest outburst came when the ship entered its berth and they saw several hundred persons lining the dock to welcome them, among whom were representatives of Jewish organizations which had helped to make their trip possible. 42. She was the daughter of Bronia Kaiser (also Katetski; 1913–1999), originally from Lwów, who had spent part of the war in hiding in Warsaw and Kraków, and Filip (Philip) Kaiser (also Kajtocki), born in 1910 in a town then in Galicia, Poland. Filip had survived two years in the Lemberg/Lwów ghetto and time in the notorious Pawiak prison in Warsaw before being deported to Auschwitz in late 1943. See USHMM Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database (http://www.ushmm.org/remember/the-holocaust-survivors-and-victims -resource-center/holocaust-survivors-and-victims-database); USHMM ITS Collection Data Base Central Name Index; NARA, alien passenger manifest for the SS Marine Flasher, arriving in New York on May 20, 1946. 43. Neu (b. 1864) had evidently lived in Fürth, Germany, before his September 1942 deportation. He was able to emigrate with the help of the AJJDC and joined his daughter in Minneapolis.

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The immigrants represent sixteen different nationalities, including 343 Poles, 218 Germans, 45 Latvians, 30 Hungarians and 27 Czechs.44 Among them were former members of the Yugoslav partisan forces, veterans of the Warsaw Ghetto revolt and several who fought with the Red Army. Most of the refugees had been inmates of concentration camps which have become bywords for Nazi cruelty, such as Oswiecim, Dachau, Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen, and many of them bore the numbers tattooed on their arms by Nazi guards. Virtually every one of the immigrants had a harrowing story to tell of survival in Hitler Europe. Seventeen-year-old Moritz Frischman,45 who does not know where he was born and can only remember that his parents’ names were David and Ida, is seeking a relative in America named Firschman or Singer. Several years in concentration camps destroyed all other memories of his childhood. Dr. Ignatz Alter, 35, told of how a Catholic girl in Cracow had married him so that he could secure papers which would enable him to pose as a non-Jew. He never saw the girl after the marriage ceremony was performed, and has no idea what happened to her. Others told similar tales of Nazi savagery and miraculous escapes from camps and prison. Among the organizations which had representatives on the pier to aid the immigrants were the Joint Distribution Committee, the HIAS, National Refugee Service, National Council of Jewish Women and the Vaad Hatzala.

Documents 4-7 and 4-8 address the practical realities and extensive red tape involved in immigration. Frederick Weinstein (aka Friedrich Winnykamien) was born in Bielsko-Biała, Poland, in 1922. Together with his parents, Leopold and Isabel, he survived the numerous deportations of 1942 and 1943.46 Frederick participated in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in April 44. A front-page New York Times article, dated May 21, 1942, gives a figure of 795 aliens immigrating/arriving on this ship. The presence of non-Jewish immigrants on board may account for the discrepancy in numbers. 45. The author could not find further information on this individual or others mentioned below. 46. They spent the period from February 1941 to August 1942 in a ghetto near Radom. See USHMM ITS Collection Data Base Central Name Index.

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1943, after which he and his parents went into hiding; his older sister, Pola, was killed. After the Warsaw Uprising on August 1, 1944,47 the family was arrested. Frederick was sent to a forced labor camp in Modlin Fortress in Nowy Dwór Mazowiecki near Warsaw until the end of the war. His parents were sent to a forced labor camp in the mountains southeast of Chemnitz. Frederick’s youngest sister, Risia, was killed in an air raid at the end of the war in Berlin, where she was in hiding. After the war, Frederick and his parents left Poland for Berlin. Frederick worked for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) in the DP camps until he gained entry to the United States on May 24, 1946; his parents registered in a DP camp in Munich, where they remained until 1947.48 Documents 4-7 and 4-8 chronicle the somewhat arduous and bureaucratic process of attaining US entrance visas. Even in an environment of far more openness and transparency than the wartime years, the US government still presented numerous hurdles. For example, Frederick had to compile the necessary documents, affidavits, and other verification, as well as determine what income was sufficient to ensure that his parents would not fall under the “LPC” clause. The question of integration and American assimilation also emerges within the linguistic fabric of this document. Leopold and Isabel’s fragmented English stands in stark contrast to their son’s fluency. Ultimately, these documents depict an identity and a sense of homeland in transition.

47. The Warsaw Uprising was launched in August 1944, over a year after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Led by the Armia Krajowa (AK, Polish Home Army), the resistance fighters included some survivors of the ghetto fighting. The battle lasted for three months and ended in the defeat of the resistance and a huge death toll among AK soldiers and civilians alike. The Germans emptied out and began burning down the city in the aftermath. See Barbara Engelking and Jacek Leociak, The Warsaw Ghetto: A Guide to the Perished City (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), xvi–xvii. 48. Isabella (née Gerschange) and Leopold initially moved to Israel at the end of 1948 but managed to relocate to the United States in 1953. USHMM ITS Collection Data Base Central Name Index. Cf. Frederick Weinstein’s self-published memoir titled Life on the Precipice of Hope and Fate (2000), available in the library of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

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DOCUMENT 4-7: Letter from Leopold and Isabel Winnykamien to their son, Frederick Weinstein, in New York, July 3, 1946, USHMMA Acc. 2008.321.1 Frederick Weinstein collection.49

Munich, 3rd July 1946 Our love and only son Fred! How do you do? Yesterday at last after a very long waiting we have received your first letters. Till now your mother was very upset. You very good know her and you can imagine yourself her restlessness. Therefore you understand our joy when we received this letter. What we are happy, that you are already out [of ] Europe. We are hoping that your future will be good, you will have a good job and you will also be very satisfied from your life. Yes, it is already the highest time for it. We have a great joy that you are content from the company of Mrs. Ruth and we are sure that you will spend a good and rest life. We are also sure that Mrs. Ruth will be a good friend in your life. The sister of Mrs. Ruth—Lili—has visited us in the meantime. She was here in Munich at our house two weeks. Now she is again in Eschwege. Yesterday we have telegraphed her that we have received a letter from you. I can also you communicate that last week we sent you, by the same way as this letter, a telegram and a letter of Mrs. Schülle’s address. I can also write you that with the registration we were waiting for your first letter. Today we registered us in the society “HIAS” and now we are waiting for the affidavits from you or from the cousin Mrs. Käthe Schüller.50 My brother’s address in Argentine is following: Solomon Winnykamien El Zanda 1631 Buenos Aires Argentine

49. Please note that all grammatical errors appeared in the original document. 50. The author was unable to find further information on this woman or the other friends mentioned here.

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Chapter 4 Will you as soon as possible write him a letter, let he knows my address in Munich and let he also knows that you are already in New York. Besides, I send you enclosed a second letter to my friend Dr. Martin Kranz (surgeon dentist) who had left Zgiez in the year 1938. Call him yourself and hand him this letter. Will you ask him for the price of the dental instruments. I will know if I must take with me from here the instruments. Love, Fred! Write answers as soon as possible. Write often and very much. We read your letters with great pleasure. It is the only pleasure for us, particularly now when you are far from us in a foreign country. Send all correspondence of this sender’s address, do not mention in the address my name. We kiss and embrace you very much and violent. We wish you a good luck and a good healthy. We greet you with all our heart. We also greet cordially Mrs. Ruth and her relations. Your loving parents P.S. For the affidavits I write you our personal dates: Dr. Leopold Winnykamien-Weinstein born in Warsaw 30.5.1893 Isabella " " " 5.1.1903 Why do you not mention in the letter of our dog “Zibs.” It is very fine! Will you write me if I have good written this letter. It is my first letter in the English language. I learn again now the English language. Write me also English letters, I will translate it for the mother. Enclosure: 1 letter to Dr. Krantz Munich, 4th July 1946 Our love Fred! Today we received your second letter (6/2/46). We are the happiest in the world that you have these real freedoms. We hope you will have a good life. We are very happy that you are living in a house of good men. Let you

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know that we have registered us here of our old name (Winnykamien). We kissed you very much and embrace very strong. We greet cordially Mrs. Ruth and her relations. We greet also Mrs. Spielman. Fred! Answer as soon as possible. Your loving parents

DOCUMENT 4-8: Affidavit to the state of New York from Frederick Weinstein on behalf of his parents, Leopold and Isabel Winnykamien, New York City, June 19, 1947, USHMMA Acc. 2008.321.1 Frederick Weinstein collection.

State of New York County of New York Frederick Weinstein, being duly sworn, deposes and says: I reside at 869 Eagle Avenue, Bronx, New York. My original full name is Friedrich Winnykamien, but since I am here I have changed my surname to the English translation Weinstein, and have Americanized my first name from Friedrich to Frederick. I am a native of Poland, 25 years of age, and have been a legal resident of the United States for the past year. I have registered under the Alien Registration Law and hold receipt No. 6297693. I have declared my intention of becoming an American citizen, and hold Declaration of Intention No. 153177 issued to me by the Supreme Court, Bronx County, on September 26, 1946. I am married and living with my wife, Ruth Weinstein, but she is not dependent on me for support as we are both working and neither of us has any dependents. I am a mechanist employed by the Beacon Machine Works earning $54.25 per week, as appears by the statement of my employer being submitted herewith.

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Chapter 4 My wife is an operator employed by the Atlantic Pad Company and earning $45.60 per week, as appears by its statement being submitted herewith. We paid over $250 net income tax for 1946 between us. We have a balance of $557.56 in the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank, as appears by its statement being submitted herewith. Besides this we have furniture and personal effects worth at least $800. The reason we don’t have more assets is because I have been here only since May 24th, 1946, when I came over as a refugee from Berlin on the SS Marine Perch. I came over with nothing because prior to that I was assisting in the UNRRA Center in Berlin for five months as a volunteer, as appears by the statement of Director Harold J. Fishbein being submitted herewith.51 I was a participant in the Ghetto Uprising in Warsaw and after that was quelled my parents and I were concealed in a cellar in Warsaw for twenty months until the Polish Uprising. Thereafter we were captured by the Germans and my mother was sent to a labor camp in Germany and my father and I put to forced labor until the end of the war. One of my sisters was shot and killed by the Nazis in Warsaw and another sister was killed in an air raid in Berlin while she was at forced labor there. I now wish to sponsor the admission of my parents, Leopold Winnykamien and Isabel Winnykamien, both born in Warsaw, Poland, on May 3, 1893 and January 5, 1903, respectively. Their present address is Kufsteinerstrasse 2-2, Munich 27, Germany. Both my parents are displaced persons as they both were in the displaced persons camp in the American Zones of Berlin in December, 1945. They have both registered for a visa with the U.S. Consul in Munich in June, 1946.

51. Fishbein (1898–1996) was the son of Galician-born immigrants to the United States. After graduating from the University of Chicago, he became a lawyer and went into business. He worked for the American Red Cross for much of the war, then joined UNRRA from 1945 to 1947 and its successor organization until 1948. He subsequently became a business executive in the United States. See USHMMA Acc. 2003.116 (Harold Fishbein collection); USHMMPA WS #15639, #15667, #21018; Oberlin Review, March 15, 1949, 1; Who’s Who in the West, 1974–1975, 14th ed. (Chicago: Marquis Who’s Who, Inc., 1974), 217.

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My father is a dentist and my mother is a housewife, both in good health fortunately, and both able to take care of themselves. Nevertheless, I unconditionally promise and guarantee that neither of them will become a public charge upon the United States or any political subdivision thereof or any private agency. I am making this affidavit to induce the U.S. Consul at Munich, or any other Consul to whom it may be presented to rely thereon and to grant them a visa, and the immigration authorities to admit them. I am also prepared to pay for their transportation if necessary. I am making an application on Form I-475 for verification of my entry and requesting that the information be sent to the U.S. Consul in Munich. Frederick Weinstein State of New York County of New York Ruth Weinstein, born Cohn,52 being duly sworn, deposes and says: I am the wife of Frederick Weinstein, who makes the foregoing affidavit. I met him in the UNRRA Center in Berlin where I worked as a volunteer for some months, as appears by the statement of Director Harold J. Fishbein being submitted herewith. We were married in New York City on November 30, 1946. This is my second marriage. My former husband Ulrich Chotzen died in a concentration camp.53 I am a survivor of three different camps myself. I unconditionally join my husband in the guarantee that his parents will not become a public charge if they come over here. Ruth Weinstein

52. Born in Berlin in 1922, Ruth was deported to Theresienstadt in June 1943, then transferred to Auschwitz in September 1944 and later to Gross-Rosen. 53. Ulrich Chotzen (b. 1920), also from Berlin, was transferred from Auschwitz to Dachau and died there (or in the subcamp in Landshut) in late 1944 or early 1945. See USHMM ITS Collection Data Base Central Name Index.

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A HOME ELSEWHERE: EMIGRATION OUTSIDE PALESTINE AND THE UNITED STATES Although the United States and Palestine remained two of the preferred destinations for many survivors and refugees, their restrictions made immigration a fraught and difficult process. Documents 4-9 and 4-10, presenting two articles from AJR Information, the newsletter of the Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR), describe immigration opportunities, obstacles, and challenges for survivors and refugees attempting to settle in locales as diverse as Latin America and South Africa. While the AJR, formed in 1941 by Jewish refugees from central Europe residing in Great Britain, was a refugee organization, its members also self-identified as future British citizens with no intention of returning to Germany. Consequently, AJR Information, which began as a circular to AJR members in 1941 before becoming a regular journal in 1946, was published in English rather than German. Other refugee community newsletters, such as the American-based Aufbau or Koleinu (Our Voice) from the German Jewish refugees in the Dominican Republic, were written in German rather than the local language.54 While AJR members viewed themselves as part of British society, however, they also strongly identified with the refugee community from whence they came.55 The following two articles, which outline the potential points of immigration for survivors after the war, reflect this concern. The first article explicitly elides the position on Palestine, which, it states, is “widely known.” AJR Information did not specifically promote settlement in Palestine and avoided any defense of illegal immigration there in the interest of not antagonizing British authorities. The attractiveness of the remaining immigration options varied greatly, as did policies and quotas. These two articles therefore explore the complex considerations of and differing environments available to the Jewish refugees who sought a home beyond the shores of Europe. 54. For more information about the history of the Aufbau newspaper, see Dagobert Broh, “The History of the Newspaper Aufbau, 1934–1948” (PhD diss., Concordia University, 1996). For more information about the German Jewish community of the Dominican Republic during the war, see Allen Wells, Tropical Zion: General Trujillo, FDR, and the Jews of Sousa (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009); Hans-Ulrich Dillmann and Susanne Heim, Fluchtpunkt Karibik: Jüdische Emigration in der Dominikanischen Republik (Berlin: Links, 2009); Marion A. Kaplan, Dominican Haven: The Jewish Refugee Settlement in Sosúa, 1940–1945 (New York: Museum of Jewish Heritage, 2008). 55. For more information on the AJR and its newsletter, see Jon Hughes, “AJR Information in the Context of German-Language Exile Journal Publication, 1933–1945,” in Refugees from the Third Reich in Britain, ed. Anthony Greenville. The Yearbook of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies 4 (Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi B.V., 2002), 4: 187–98.

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DOCUMENT 4-9: “Windows into the World: Immigration Overseas,” AJR Information (issued by the Association of Jewish Refugees in Great Britain), no. 1 (January 1946): 2.

The fate and future of the Jewish survivors on the Continent are much on our minds. The primary question is: will they be able to join their families? Where else can they go? Which countries will offer them asylum? What, as individuals or as [a] member of organizations, can we do to find a new permanent home for them? For some considerable time past, the AJR, being geographically close to the Continent, has been inundated with inquiries both from individuals in this country and from abroad as to getting these survivors out of Germany. A great many difficulties stand in the way of their early departure from the Continent. There is the non-existence of consular services, lack of land transport and insufficient shipping space. In order to prepare for future developments, the AJR has asked a number of Jewish organizations overseas to report on the present immigration position and, at the same time, to indicate the future immigration policy in their respective countries. As the Palestine position is widely known, the enquête56 has been restricted to the British Empire and South Africa. Argentina57 For the time being, it is only possible for children living in the Argentine to apply for a visa on behalf of their parents and, vice versa, for parents to apply on behalf of their children. However, we have been advised that new regulations governing immigration into the Argentine are in preparation. Bolivia58 With few exceptions, this country has been closed to Jewish immigration for many years. The Bolivian authorities are preparing new

56. Meaning “survey.” 57. For Argentina’s wartime refugee policies, see Leonardo Senkman, “Argentina’s Immigration Policy during the Holocaust (1938–1945),” Yad Vashem Studies 21 (1991): 155–88. 58. For more information on Bolivia’s wartime refugee policies, see Marion A. Kaplan, “‘A Very Modest Experiment’—the Jewish Refugee Settlement in Sosúa, 1940–1945,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 53, no. 1 (2008): 127–55.

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Chapter 4 immigration laws, but some time will pass before they are issued. It is doubtful whether the new regulations will favor the immigration of Jews. Brazil59 Some time ago a very liberal immigration law was issued by the Government. However, it will take some time until we can judge what the practice will be. According to the new law, the Brazilian consuls abroad have full authority to grant visas to an alien who wishes to immigrate to Brazil, provided 1) he can produce a valid passport and a medical certificate confirming his good state of health; and 2) the annual immigration quota for the nationals of the respective country is not yet exhausted. The quotas are as follows: Belgium: 113; France: 1,080; Germany: 4,772; Great Britain: 423; Holland: 149. Agricultural workers may immigrate even outside the quota. Agricultural workers, engineers and capitalists will not encounter many difficulties in obtaining a visa; they should discuss their case with Counsel so as to find out what the requirements are. Apart from these categories, it is believed that there are possibilities for persons who have relatives in Brazil, in particular if these relatives are either ascendants or descendants. In those cases the relative in Brazil has to send to the prospective immigrant some sort of affidavit which he has to produce at the consulate so as to prove that his maintenance in Brazil is guaranteed. Chile60 Whilst during the last five years the immigration of Jews has almost come to a standstill, the admission of certain cases, in particular where children wish to join their parents and vice versa, is now possible. However, the respective provisions do not apply to Jews immigrating from Germany, since the regulations whereby Germans are considered as enemy aliens also apply to Jews, at least as long as they are resident in Germany.

59. For more information on Jews in Brazil during and after World War II, see Jeffrey Lesser, “From Antisemitism to Philosemitism: The Manipulation of Stereotypes in Brazil, 1935–1945,” Patterns of Prejudice 30, no. 4 (1996): 43–55. 60. For more information about Jewish flight to Chile (as well as other Latin American countries) during and after the war, see Laqueur, Generation Exodus, 215–40.

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Only recently the Government has submitted to Congress a Bill which is to regulate immigration on a new basis. It is, however, too early to state what the new regulations will be like. New Zealand61 The official policy of the Government is not to grant immigration permits until the rehabilitation of the returned soldiers has been successfully settled. This was stated by the Prime Minister when he was interviewed regarding the immigration of British subjects. The same policy applies to aliens. In some cases Jewish refugees have made applications for the immigrations of their aged parents or other relatives. However it will not be possible to obtain a great number of permits for Jewish displaced persons in the near future unless arrangements are made by the British Government with the Dominions. DOCUMENT 4-10: “Refugees in the Dominions,” AJR Information (issued by the Association of Jewish Refugees in Great Britain), no. 5 (May 1946): 2.

The Commonwealth of Australia If the Jewish refugee problem were no more than a variety of the housing problem, the British Commonwealth of Nations would, without circumstance, present a generous solution. The “vast open spaces” are still there, as under-populated as ever.62 Although migration into the Dominions has been a recurrent topic of public discussion for many years past, it was not until a few weeks ago that the first effort was made to organize the peopling of at least one of the Empire’s reservoirs: Australia, which was repeatedly stated to have room for as many as 70,000 immigrants per year. It is true that the recent migration agreement between the British and Australian Governments, providing for free and assisted passages applied at the moment to British citizens only, but admission will also be granted to “approved immigrants,” 61. For more information about Jewish refugees in Australia and New Zealand during and after the Holocaust, see Paul Bartrop, Australia and the Holocaust, 1933–45 (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 1994). 62. For more information on links between the Holocaust and colonialism, see Michael Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009).

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Chapter 4 though mainly, it would appear, to people of Teuton stock. How many Jewish refugees will be added, remains to be seen. Last August, the Federal Government decided to issue permits for a carefully defined 2,000 Jews in Europe, Shanghai, and the Philippines, thus promising to increase the number of their Jewish refugees to closer on 10,000. In view of the priority due to returning servicemen, it was at once explained that permit-holders might have to wait another two years. The all but inevitable anti-refugee propaganda spreading the lie that the Government had vested control of “Jewish immigration to Australia from all parts of the world” in Jewish hands, was vigorously refuted by the able leader of Australian Jewry, Mr. A. Masel.63 The Dominion of Canada64 Rather less than the relative liberality of Australian policy was, up till recently, practiced in Canada. The Canadian Jewish Congress (equivalent to the Board of Deputies) on several occasions called upon the Government to change an immigration policy which, they pointed out, was “seriously out-dated in the light of world demands.” It is known that between 1931 and 1941 some 92,000 more people left Canada than entered it, yet among the 22,722 immigrants in 1945 no more than 347 were Jews. If reasons are sought, one at least may be found in the “racial animosity” which, according to the Director of Departments at Montreal City Hall, is a hidden source of social unrest in all classes of Canadian society. Early in April, however, it was learned that a special Cabinet Committee had begun to reconsider the question of immigration. The Prime Minister, Mr. Mackenzie King, declared that though few had been permitted to settle in Canada, “as the situation in the world changes, we hope to

63. Born in western Australia to parents from Russia, Alec Masel (1898–1988) practiced law and was also a founding member of the Zionist Federation of Australia and other Australian Jewish organizations. He worked for the welfare of Jewish soldiers during the war and fought for admission of more Jewish refugees and stateless survivors in an often hostile climate. See J. S. Levi, “Masel, Alec (1898–1988),” Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/ biography/masel-alec-14942/text26131 (published first in hardcopy 2012, accessed online March 11, 2015). 64. For more information on Jewish immigration to Canada during and after the Holocaust, see Irving Abella and Harold Troper, None Is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe, 1933–1948 (New York: Random House, 1985).

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take a more liberal attitude than it has been possible to take in the past.”65 Already an important decision has been made. An Order-in-Council authorizes Immigration Officers to grant regular permits to refugees who entered Canada under non-immigrant status during the war. Some 3,500 refugees are affected by this Order, including those “enemy aliens” who were released in Canada after their internment in Britain. The Order is also important in that it removes a barrier to naturalization. The Union of South Africa66 While thus two of the great Dominions would seem to be deciding on a progressive handling of the refugees, another, South Africa, continues to enforce severe restrictions. During the whole six years of the Hitler war, 220 Jews entered the Union for permanent residence, and since then the Immigration Board has decided to defer all applications by refugees from Germany until after the signing of a Peace Treaty. At the same time immigration is felt to be an urgent need. “In the next 5 or 10 years,” General Smuts67 said December last, “we shall see that our human resources are not great enough for the development, industrial and otherwise, which is to come.” He added that it was necessary to have a much bigger European population. But, unfortunately, the man in charge, the Home Secretary, declared that it was his policy to encourage “suitable immigrants,” and as if to remove all doubts as to who was and who was not “suitable,” he announced that approval had been given to his scheme by the notorious Jew-baiter Eric Louw.68 The fact is, of course, that the issue of immigration is being exploited for the purpose of a vicious anti-Jewish propaganda which insists that the country has already a larger Jewish population than is compatible with 65. William Lyon Mackenzie King (1874–1950) was prime minister of Canada from 1935 to 1948. On Canadian immigration restrictions, see, e.g., Abella and Troper, None Is Too Many. 66. For more information about Jews in South Africa after the Holocaust, see Shirli Gilbert, “Jews and the Racial State: Legacies of the Holocaust in Apartheid South Africa, 1945–60,” Jewish Social Studies 16, no. 3 (2010): 32–64. 67. Jan Smuts (1870–1950), South African politician and soldier, as well as prime minister between 1919 and 1924 and again from 1939 to 1948. 68. Louw (1890–1968), a controversial politician, member of parliament, and diplomat, was pro-Nazi during World War II. He held a number of cabinet posts in the 1950s and 1960s.

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Chapter 4 harmonious race relations, etc. The arguments sound vaguely familiar, though in South Africa their sting is sharpened yet and poisoned by the prevailing color prejudice.

The AJR Information articles discuss the possibilities and problems entailed by Jewish immigration to places outside the United States, Britain, and Palestine. Document 4-11 explores the various challenges faced by the refugee population in Argentina. Prior to World War II, Argentina had the largest population of Jews in Latin America; indeed, during the interwar period, Argentina’s 115,600 Jews outnumbered the Jewish population of Palestine.69 These Jews consisted of both Ashkenazi Jews from eastern and central Europe and Sephardic Jews from the former Ottoman Empire and North Africa.70 Just as German Jews sought to flee Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1938, however, the Argentine government—then in the midst of an economic depression that spurred xenophobic nationalism—began to close its doors to immigrants from Europe. Argentina sought to admit only those Jews who could contribute agriculturally to the state. The Jewish Colonial Association, founded in 1891 to relocate Jewish refugees from violence-ridden eastern Europe to Canada and Latin America, attempted to establish additional agricultural settlements in Argentina as a result of the unfolding persecution of German Jews in the 1930s. These efforts enjoyed modest success; between 1934 and 1937, 13,800 to 16,600 Jews reached Argentina.71 In September and October 1938, immigration was ostensibly closed; then, a debate surrounding the implications of “Kristallnacht” in November of that year reopened limited opportunities for agricultural workers. During the war itself, Argentina remained neutral and maintained diplomatic relations with Germany until January 1944.72 This neutral status, however, did not translate into immigration opportunities. Between 1942 and 1943, the height of the Nazi genocide, only about two to three thousand Jews made their way to Argentina’s shores.73 Overall, between 1933 and

69. Haim Avni, Argentina and the Jews: A History of Jewish Immigration (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1999), 91–92. 70. For a full study of Sephardic Jewish identity in Argentina, see Adriana Brodsky, “The Contours of Identity: Sephardic Jews and the Construction of Jewish Communities in Argentina, 1880 to the Present” (PhD diss., Duke University, 2004). 71. Avni, Argentina and the Jews, 141. 72. Ibid., 158–67. 73. Ibid.

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1945, Argentina admitted 24,488 Jews in total. By contrast, European Jewish immigration in 1929 and 1930 numbered 75,505.74 The following document, from the Delegation of Argentine Jewish Associations (Delegación de Asociaciones Israelitas Argentinas, DAIA), speaks on behalf of the approximately twenty-five thousand predominantly German and Austrian Jews who had been living in Argentina since the 1930s. The document appeals to the Argentine government to remove the label of “enemy alien” from their group. While the document addresses practical questions at a time when the war in Europe was still raging, it raises larger questions related to belonging and identity: At what point does a Jewish refugee become a permanent resident of his or her adopted country? After 1945, Argentina became home to a thriving community of Yiddish speakers and published some of the first memorial books to the murdered Jews of Europe. It also played host to Nazi war criminals, Adolf Eichmann being the most famous among them.75 DOCUMENT 4-11: Copy of a report submitted to the Argentine government from the Delegation of Argentine Jewish Associations, Buenos Aires, April 2, 1945, USHMMA RG 72.003 (Selected Records Relating to Jewish Immigration and Settlement in Argentina) (translated from Spanish).

The Delegation of Argentine Jewish Associations (DAIA)—in its character as the Republic’s federation of Jewish societies, representing Argentina’s Jewish community, located at 1979 Corrientes Street—has the honor of addressing the SE so as to bring to its highest consideration the following governmental problem related to the war effort and to the security of our continent. The Decree of April 1st, 1945, the “Special Registration of Enemy Countries’ Citizens Residing in the Republic,” is the immediate and logical result of our declaration of war with Japan and Germany. The Decree, in accord with Argentine public sentiment, does not distinguish among the foreign nationals over whom the state rules. The proposition of the Decree, also clearly in accord, is to prevent [enemy] foreign nationals from jeopardizing the security of the Republic, the peace of the Americas, or the war effort of the United Nations. 74. Ibid., 170–71. 75. For a full history and analysis of Adolf Eichmann’s trial and its significance, see Deborah E. Lipstadt, The Eichmann Trial (New York: Schocken, 2011).

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Chapter 4 But in neither case, Excellence, do we believe that the Decree could impose a restrictive or cautionary measure upon those persons who, for special reasons of public domain, could not incur acts or behave in ways favorable to the Nazi regime, of which they are victims and to which they are categorically adverse. We refer, Excellence, to Jewish people who have fled from Hitler’s Germany and arrived to this land of liberty; knowing that, here, they work under the protection of Argentine laws. Here, they have found a new homeland and forged definitive new lives in prosperity. The Jewish people born in Germany and living elsewhere are not German citizens, Excellence. They are, by their own conscious wills, divorced from the Reich’s regime. They are also such legally, having been declared “expatriated” by the Reich government, following the Decree of November 25, 1941. In articles [16] and [26], the Decree mandates: “A Jew with permanent residence outside the country cannot be a citizen.” “The Jewish person loses her German citizenship on the day on which this Decree is enacted, if on this day she has permanent residence beyond [this country] and if her future residence is beyond [this country].” Germany is their “country of origin,” but they are not “nationals” of that country, in accordance with the wording and essence of the April 18th Decree. The Jewish people were the first victims of Nazism. In and following 1933, Hitler’s regime unleashed a relentless, exterminating action against the Jewish people in their own country and, declaring war, practiced the same persecution in each of Germany’s conquered territories, feeding antiSemitic propaganda to all. Millions of Jewish deaths have resulted from the barbaric racism of Nazism. The Jewish Germans who were unable to flee from the Reich were almost entirely annihilated; those able to enter our country or other countries were saved from extermination, but their families were made to disappear under the regime that marked “Jewish assassination” as a fundamental point of its program. In fact and by the Reich’s judicial ordnance, the German Jewish person risked extermination by remaining in Germany or by leaving Germany and keeping secret a German nationality—according to the previously transcribed articles of the cited Reich Decree. In these conditions, Excellence, to not contemplate the particular situation of the Jewish people, previously of Germany, would be to weightily conflate victims with victimizers. The former [the Jewish people of

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Germany], by visceral sentiment, do not have, nor could they ever have, any connection with the Nazi regime. Therefore in no case would they constitute a danger to our country’s war effort or to the security of our continent. And so we have contemplated and favorably resolved the same problem that, here, we present to our sibling-countries of the Americas: Mexico, the United States, Panama, Guatemala—after breaking relations with or declaring war against Germany and her allies. The Jewish people of German origin form part of the Jewish community that constitutes the DAIA. The DAIA intimately knows the convictions and conduct of these Jewish people, and, in this spirit, is willing to offer individual certificates to Jewish people of German origin and to their families, given that conduct has been meticulously investigated along certain criteria. Such certificates would lift the obligations of the April 16th Decree. Consequently, Excellence, we request that the Superior Government of the Nation exempts expatriated persons of Germany from the obligations imposed by the April 16th Decree, that [expatriated persons] may document their impeccable sensibilities, and that, for practical purposes, the testimonies of aforementioned persons, given by the DAIA with full support and responsibility, be recognized. Greetings to the SE, with great respect. Benjamin Rinsky76 Secretary Moisés Goldman, President77

Argentina began as a temporary haven and became a long-term home. What happens, however, when the provisional home is no longer viable and emigration remains a distant hope? Such was the postwar situation of the Jews of Shanghai, which had become a city of refuge for Jews both before and during 76. The author could not locate further information on Benjamin Rinsky. 77. For a discussion of the history of the DAIA, see Raanan Rein, Argentine Jews or Jewish Argentines? Essays on Ethnicity, Identity, and Diaspora (Leiden: Brill, 2010); Avni, Argentina and the Jews.

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the war. Until August 1939, entering Shanghai required no visa; this resulted in the immigration of over thirteen thousand German and Austrian Jewish refugees in 1938 and 1939 alone.78 Between 1940 and 1941, another two thousand Polish Jews reached the city.79 With the end of the war in the Pacific theater in the summer of 1945, American troops arrived in Shanghai; UNRRA and Jewish relief organizations soon followed. Refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe now seized their chance to emigrate. According to a 1946 memorandum from the AJJDC to the World Jewish Congress, about 40 percent of Shanghai Jews wished to go to the United States, 21 percent to Palestine, 26 percent to Austria and Germany, and the remaining 13 percent to Latin America.80 With its announcement of the AJJDC activities in Shanghai and touting of a separate migration department, document 4-12, an excerpt from the 1946–1947 Shanghai Almanac, reflects this desire to leave the city. By 1951, the AJJDC had closed its Shanghai office; in subsequent years, nearly all of the some twenty thousand Jews who had once found refuge in the city had left its shores.81 DOCUMENT 4-12: Selections from The Shanghai Almanac, 1946–1947, published by the Shanghai Echo, 37, 80, USHMMA RG 69.005M.001 (Australian Jewish Historical Society).

The American Joint Distribution Committee in Shanghai [. . .] Establishment of a Separate Migration Department Among the new tasks facing the J.D.C. representation, the most outstanding was that of preparing and organizing the remigration and repatriation of the Shanghai refugees. While as long as late in 1945, it seemed safe to assume that at least a considerable portion of them could be permanently settled in China, later developments proved this hope unfounded and made it clear that the only solution to the untenable situation into which this emigration had tumbled, was its wholesale liquidation. This problem confronting the administration of helping around 13,000 mostly pennyless persons to find new homes at a time when political developments, transportation restrictions, and the general economic situation were anything but favorable 78. Marci Reynders Ristaino, Port of Last Resort: The Diaspora Communities of Shanghai (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), 103. 79. Ibid. 80. Ibid., 251. 81. Ibid., 270.

Returning “Home” to such an objective, made the installation of a special agency solely devoted to the handling of this business a necessity. This is how, in February of 1946, the Shanghai J.D.C. Migration Office came into being. As from March 1st, 1946–Jan. 15th, 1947, 2,067 persons left Shanghai with the aid of this department. Several hundred more have been processed and are awaiting transportation in the near future. Not included in this figure are the 810 Austrians so far repatriated. Though repatriation is in the first place an UNRRA responsibility, much of the work involved had to be handled by the J.D.C. Clothing had to be issued, trunks for transportation of the luggage to be provided and piles of administrative work to be dealt with. Since UNRRA took care only of food and transportation, each needy refugee was allotted a sum of boardmoney of US $15. It would, however, be unjust to measure the activities of this department by these tangible results only. There is a steady flow of callers to be disposed of. They are given advice, and if necessary assistance, in all matters pertaining to their emigration. There are piles of correspondence to be handled by mail and by wire, with consulates, governments and all kinds of official and semiofficial agencies. Continual contact is being maintained with the American Consulate General. It can be stated altogether that every single chance of emigration is followed up as long as one ray of hope is left. Renovation of Camps and Lane Houses It is by no means in contradiction to the conception that a speedy liquidation of the Shanghai emigration is the goal to be attained with the least possible delay, that in the meantime a substantial improvement of the housing conditions for a great many of the refugees is a matter of the first importance. However big the efforts made cumulatively and individually, there can be no gainsaying the fact that for a great portion Shanghai will still mean a stay for some time to come. The conditions in which they are going to spend the last period prior to their final departure will have a vast bearing on their fitness for resettlement and new work. A minimum standard of cleanliness, accommodation and comfort is indispensable for the upkeep of a feeling of human dignity. Conditions in some of the Camps left much to be desired in this respect and also some of the “Lane” houses owned by the J.D.C. were in sad need of overhauling. In a great many cases the roofing

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Chapter 4 was in such bad state of repair that on the occasion of heavy downpours so frequent in Shanghai, the inmates had to use all kinds of makeshift contraptions to prevent the rainwater from flooding the rooms. It must not be forgotten that as far as the refugees are concerned, J.D.C. is far and away the biggest landlord. In addition to 2,238 persons living in the various Camps, 1,201 are sheltered by the J.D.C. in private “Chinese Style” houses. Together with CNRRA,82 the J.D.C. went about a thoroughgoing overhaul of the living and recreational quarters in all Camps. This program resulted in considerable repairs, alterations and improvements in the conditions and facilities in all premises under the care of the J.D.C. The number of inmates of the dormitories was cut down as far as feasible, recreational facilities created, rubbish accumulated in the course of years removed, etc. It is safe to say that the Camps are now a better place to live in than they were as recently as one year ago. [. . .]

The previous documents speak to the overarching communal and personal challenges of immigration in various countries. Those difficulties were only exacerbated when the immigrant in question was not an adult or part of a family unit but instead an orphan. Chapter 3 explored various issues related to the plight of the child survivor. Here, these concerns manifest as part of a larger problem of citizenship, nationality, and custody. As the case files in document 4-13 attest, Irene Kayem, her parents, and her maternal grandparents fled Germany in 1939 for France, where the family was then interned at the Rivesaltes concentration camp. In August 1942, Irene’s parents were sent to “an unknown destination”—they most likely formed part of a transport of

82. Chinese National Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, a program of UNRRA for postwar aid in China between 1945 and 1947.

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twenty-five hundred Jews sent to Drancy83 and then on to Auschwitz84—while Irene and her grandparents remained in France. Irene was transported to an OSE (Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants) home, Domaine des Granges Crocq Maison, in January 1942, where she remained until the end of the war.85 Her maternal grandparents, Leon and Hilda Mayer, survived the war in France.86 After the war, Irene’s maternal uncle, Leon Mayer Jr., endeavored to bring Irene to Cape Town, South Africa. Irene’s status as an orphan at age eleven rendered her fate uncertain. Ultimately, after a lengthy correspondence, Irene and her grandmother made the nearly six-thousand-mile journey to South Africa. South Africa had a Jewish population of 104,156 in 1946, up from 90,645 ten years earlier.87 Nearly all of these Jews entered the country prior to 1939. Throughout the war, strong pro-Nazi, antisemitic sentiment prevented large groups of Jewish immigrants from arriving on South Africa’s shores.88 Even in the postwar period, as the May 1946 AJR Information article notes (document 4-10), hopes were not high for an increase in entrance visas for Jews. As a child sponsored by her uncle, Irene Kayem avoided these restrictions. The correspondence below does not, however, convey her reaction to the decisions made on her behalf; indeed, Irene’s voice is completely absent from these letters. As for many of these children, we know only where Irene found a home on foreign soil, not how she made one, thousands of miles away from Europe.

83. Irene was six years old at the time. Her German-born parents—Adolf Kayem (b. 1900), a livestock dealer, and Elizabeth Kayem (née Mayer; b. 1907)—may have been under pressure to leave the country after Adolf ’s release from a five- or six-week detention in Dachau in late 1938. Leon Mayer (b. 1876) and his wife, Hilde (née Maier; b. 1887), were also German-born. See German “Minority Census,” 1938–1939, USHMMA RG 14.013M; USHMM ITS Collection Data Base Central Name Index. 84. Irene’s parents were first sent to Gurs, in October 1940, and from there to Rivesaltes in March 1941. They never returned from Auschwitz. See Yad Vashem, Central Database of Shoah Victims Names (http://db.yadvashem.org/names/search.html?language=en); “Gedenkbuch,” Das Bundesarchiv, www.bundesarchiv.de/gedenkbuch. 85. Frederick Raymes and Menachem Mayer, Are the Trees in Bloom over There? (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2002), 126. 86. The fate of Irene’s paternal grandfather, Gustav (b. 1864), who had also left for France in late 1938, is unclear; her maternal grandmother, Rosalia (Rosalie; b. 1862) died in 1934. 87. Daniel J. Elazar with Peter Medding, Jewish Communities in Frontier Societies: Argentina, Australia, and South Africa (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1983), 159. See also Sander L. Gilman and Milton Shain, Jews at the Frontier: Accommodation, Identity, Conflict (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 67–90. 88. Elazar and Medding, Jewish Communities in Frontier Societies, 158.

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DOCUMENT 4-13: Case files of the Jewish War Appeal, South African Jewish Board of Refugees, regarding the placement of Irene Kayem, Records of South African Refugees, USHMMA RG 78.001M, reel 3.

27th February, 1945. To: Mr. M. Alexander, K.C., M.P.89 From: Mr. Dwolatzky90 I shall be extremely obliged if you would kindly take up with the Secretary for the Interior the case of Miss Irene Kayem, a child aged 11 who is at present at: Exp. Aron, 76 Ave Mal, Lyantey. Brive (Cze). France. Irene Kayem is a refugee from Germany and fled with her parents to France in 1939; together with the grandparents Mr. and Mrs. Leon Mayer. At the time of the Vichy regime she was interned with her parents and in August 1942 the father and mother were dispatched from the Concentration Camp Rives Altes [Rivesaltes] to an unknown destination. The last advice the relatives have had from them was the 12th August 1942 by way of a postcard and since then nothing has been heard of them. The Immigrants Selection Board has been pleased to grant to the grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Leon Mayer, permission for permanent residence in the Union91 (Reference Department of the Interior B.6613) and this 89. Morris Alexander (1877–1946) was a Polish-born Cape Town lawyer and politician with Zionist leanings. A founder of the Board of Deputies in 1904, he was elected to the colonial Cape parliament in 1908 and the national parliament in 1910, when the Union of South Africa was formed. Serving as a member of parliament until his death, he is remembered for his stance against discrimination. See Robert E. Levinson and Ruth Beloff, “Alexander, Morris,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica, ed. Fred Skolnik and Michael Berenbaum, 2nd ed. (Detroit, MI: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007), 1:624. Cf. Enid Alexander, Morris Alexander (Cape Town: Juta, 1953). 90. J. Dwolatzky held a number of posts with the board until the end of the war and conducted surveys of Jewish life and antisemitism in outlying areas as the board’s countries community organizer. The author was unable to locate additional information about him. 91. Referring to South Africa.

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office is now making arrangements with the Secretary for the Interior to cable the permission to the Union Consul at Lisbon so that the HICEM, Lisbon, will deal with the matter in order to facilitate their journey by sea to South Africa. Irene Kayem therefore remains entirely on her own in France and at her tender age it is obvious that bereft as she is of her parents, her fate there is at the will of the Gods. The grandparents are coming out to the sons in Cape Town, one of whom is Mr. Albert Mayer, 97 Hanover Street, Cape Town, and the other is Cpl. Jack Mayer, 74606, Supply Depot, Wynberg. In view of the time factor, and in view also of the humane attitude of our Government in similar instances, would it be possible to obtain from the Secretary of the Interior a temporary permit for Miss Kayem to enter the Union and then be in a position to accompany her grandparents. Being under 16 years of age, no doubt the uncles will take the necessary steps to adopt her legally within the Union. 5th April, 1946. Mr. G. Osrin,92 P.O. Box 5991. JOHANESBURG. Dear Mr. Osrin, I wonder if you will be kind enough to ask Dr. Joseph J. Schwartz to do what he can to help Mr. Leon Mayer of Cape Town.93

92. Most likely Gus Osrin (1897?–1973), an AJJDC official; see Edgar Bernstein, “South Africa,” American Jewish Yearbook, 1973, American Jewish Community Archives, www .ajcarchives.org/AJC_DATA/Files/1973_12_SouthAfrica.pdf (accessed July 3, 2014). The author was unable to locate additional information. 93. The son of an orthodox rabbi, Joseph Schwartz was born in Russia in 1899 and came to the United States as a child. He became a distinguished literary scholar but gradually took a series of administrative positions in Jewish aid organizations beginning in the 1930s. As director of the AJJDC’s European operations, he mobilized relief and rescue efforts for hundreds of thousands of Jews. See obituary, New York Times, January 2, 1975, 36.

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Chapter 4 Mayer managed to get permits for his father and mother, Leon and Hilda Mayer, and his niece, Irene Kayem, to enter South Africa. There was a mass of correspondence between this office and the Paris office of the J.D.C., and we understood from them that the HICEM was doing all it could to get the Mayer’s on a boat for South Africa. Some weeks ago we were advised that Mr. Leon Mayer died in France a week before he was due to sail from Portugal, and the latest advices that we have had are to the effect that the HICEM is not yet in a position to tell Hilda Mayer and Irene Kayem when they might expect to leave France. Mr. Mayer was shocked by the death of his father, particularly when rescue was so close at hand, and he is deeply distressed that he can get no definite information about the future movements of his mother and niece. He is in a position to help them financially, and if the only way of getting them from France to Lisbon is by plane, he is prepared to defray the expense of chartering such a plane. One cannot, of course, from this distance express an opinion on what happened so many thousands of miles away, but at first blush, at any rate, it does seem to me that Mayer’s case was not dealt with as expeditiously as it might have been. He is in a state of nervous tension all the time and I am sure it will be a considerable relief to him if we can assure him that Dr. Schwartz will be good enough to ask his office to make sure that everything possible is being done to get the Mayers to Lisbon and that in the meantime they are being cared for. I did propose to write to the HICEM direct, but I think it would be more effective and certainly very much quicker if Dr. Schwartz could take the facts with him when he returns to Paris. I know that it is rather unfair to burden him with these cases, but from what I saw of him, I know that he will not mind doing what he can to bring a little peace of mind to the Mayers. Yours faithfully, A.M. Melamet.94 Secretary. [Jewish War Appeal, South African Jewish Board of Refugees]

94. Melamet remained secretary of the Cape Committee of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies for some years after the war. See The Jewish Year Book (London: Jewish Chronicle Publications, 1954), 260.

CHAPTER 5

Jews and Displaced Persons Camps in Postwar Europe

I

N THE SUMMER of 1945, over 7 million civilians were in some manner dislocated in western Europe as a result of the events of World War II; another 7 million traveled throughout the Soviet Union.1 This population included concentration camp survivors, eastern European forced laborers,2 ethnic Germans residing in Polish territory or other central European countries,3 former partisan fighters, hidden children and families, and surviving Jews, who often belonged to several of the categories just listed. While most of this roving population repatriated to their homes of origin, about 1.5 million people who could not or would not return to their prewar homes remained in Germany in September 1945, including some three hundred thousand Jews. “Displaced person” (DP) was both a social and legal designation conveying particular rights and privileges. For those who could prove wartime persecution, official DP status 1. Mark Wyman, DPs: Europe’s Displaced Persons, 1945–1951 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), 17. 2. For a detailed history of these forced laborers, see Pertti Ahonen et al., eds., People on the Move: Forced Population Movements in Europe in the Second World War and Its Aftermath (New York: Berg, 2008), 167–98. 3. For more information on the movement and resettlement of ethnic Germans in the postwar years, see Rainer Schulze, “Forced Migration of German Populations during and after the Second World War: History and Memory,” in The Disentanglement of Populations: Migration, Expulsion, and Displacement in Postwar Europe, 1944–49, ed. Jessica Reinisch and Elizabeth White (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011), 51–70.

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conferred housing and ration privileges, in addition to special immigration status for some countries.4 There were several types of DP camps: former military barracks; former concentration camps; “dwelling house” camps, in which entire villages or portions of cities housed refugees; and other smaller residences that often had belonged to Nazi officials.5 In practical terms, then, many former concentration camp internees found themselves living in their erstwhile places of imprisonment. These camps required an enormous amount of administration by the Allied governments—a responsibility for which they were largely unprepared. The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Association (UNRRA) was established in 1943 as the primary aid organization for refugees. By December 1944, however, UNRRA had already established 200 teams to deal with the anticipated influx of refugees who would find themselves in Allied-controlled territory as the war progressed; by June 1945, the number of teams had increased to 322. In his study on the displaced persons of Europe, Mark Wyman notes that by the end of 1945, UNRRA was in charge of 227 centers in the American Zone in Germany and 25 centers in Austria. By 1947, the number had grown to 762 DP centers: 8 in Italy, 21 in Austria, 416 in the American Zone in Germany, 272 in the British Zone, and 45 in the French Zone.6 While the conditions in these centers and camps affected all displaced persons, Jewish DPs faced particular challenges unique to their situation. Former Jewish prisoners lived in camps alongside their previous captors and persecutors; little effort was made to accommodate their need for higher rations; concerns for Jewish culture or community activities were often disregarded. Complaints from Jewish DPs, Jewish organizations, and Allied forces reached such heights that a specific committee was needed to address concerns. In September 1945, Earl G. Harrison of the Inter-Governmental Committee on Refugees released a report to President Harry S. Truman titled The Plight of the Displaced Jews in Europe. Later dubbed “the Harrison Report,” it presented nothing less than a scathing review of the conditions of Jewish displaced persons in Europe, stating, “Up to this point, they have been ‘liberated’ more in a military sense than actually. [. . .] Beyond knowing that they are no longer in danger of the gas chambers, torture and other forms of violent death, they see—and there is— little change, [and] the morale of those who are either stateless or who do not 4. For a study of the interaction between DPs, expellees, and refugees, see Adam Seipp, Strangers in the Wild Place: Refugees, Americans, and a German Town, 1945–1952 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013). 5. Wyman, DPs, 43–44. 6. Ibid., 47.

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wish to return to their countries of nationality is very low. They have witnessed great activity and efficiency in returning people to their homes, but they hear or see nothing in the way of plans for them and consequently they wonder and frequently ask what ‘liberation’ means.”7 Harrison detailed housing disparities, food shortages, and a lack of recognition of the somewhat special status of Jewish DPs.8 While his report was the first public document to speak to DP conditions, internal memoranda recognized the need for action months earlier. Sergeant Martin Hausner9 reported on June 20, 1945, that food and clothing shortages had caused much resentment among the Jewish population since “it means that their suffering during the last years has not been taken into consideration and they do not enjoy a better treatment than our former enemies.”10 In addition to these practical difficulties, Hausner noted the psychological challenges for Jewish DPs, for whom “the lack of information about their families, their women and children, lies heavy upon their minds, and causes everywhere grave depressions. Everyone is most anxious to know whether any member of his family is still alive, but there is nobody whom they could ask and who could supply the information.”11 Harrison’s solution to at least some of these problems was recognition of Jewish DPs as a separate group with separate needs, chief among them being immigration, predominantly to Palestine but also to South America, the United States, Canada, and other locales. The report called for immediate admittance of one 7. Earl G. Harrison, “A Report to President Truman: The Plight of the Displaced Jews in Europe” (September 29, 1945; rpt. New York: United Jewish Appeal for Refugees, Overseas Needs and Palestine on Behalf of Joint Distribution Committee, United Palestine Appeal, National Refugee Service, 1945), 4–5. 8. For a study of food rations and their impact on the DP population, see Atina Grossmann, “Grams, Calories and Food: Languages of Victimization, Entitlement, and Human Rights in Occupied Germany, 1945–1949,” Central European History, no. 44 (2011): 118– 48. See also Alice Weinreb, “Matters of Taste: The Politics of Food and Hunger in Divided Germany, 1945–1971” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2009). 9. Sergeant Martin Hausner of the Royal Air Force was the first Allied soldier to tour the concentration camps in southern Germany (Munich and Tyrol region) for the Red Cross. His report on the refusal of American officials to separate Jewish and non-Jewish DPs proved foundational for other, similar accounts, such as the Harrison Report. See Yoav Gelber, “The Meeting between the Jewish Soldiers from Palestine Serving in the British Army and She’erit Hapletah,” Yad Vashem, http://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20 -%206563.pdf (accessed September 9, 2014). 10. Sergeant Martin Hausner, “Special Report on the Situation of Jewish Refugees in Displaced Persons Centers in Austria and Bavaria,” June 20, 1945, USHMMA Acc. 2009.401 (Joseph W. Eaton collection), box 6. 11. Ibid.

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hundred thousand Jewish DPs to Palestine. The British government only offered fifteen hundred visas, the remaining amount available from the preset wartime quota of seventy-five thousand.12 Harrison’s appeal for one hundred thousand visas became a battle cry for survivors who wished to leave Europe as quickly as possible. Despite Jewish DPs’ deep-seated desire to leave Europe, the camps, meant to last mere months after the war, became transformed from way stations into temporary home. The DP camp population shifted significantly over the course of the postwar period and posed several challenges for both aid workers and the displaced persons themselves. While these centers initially housed Jews liberated on German soil from concentration camps, death marches, hiding, and other circumstances, a new population of eastern European refugees (the so-called infiltrees) also arrived in the hopes of escaping rising antisemitism and communism. The strained interaction and competition for resources between these two groups became a major issue for Allied authorities. Nevertheless, within the DP camps, a sophisticated political, cultural, linguistic, educational, and family life persisted despite the scarce conditions faced in the former detention centers. Almost immediately upon liberation, Jewish DPs began organizing a representative body to voice concerns and needs to the Allied armies controlling the camps. In the British Zone, the Central Jewish Committee was formed at Bergen-Belsen on April 25, 1945, and elected Josef Rosensaft as its director. Josef ’s future wife, then Hadassah Bimko, was also extremely active in advocacy on the part of DPs.13 On July 1, 1945, forty-one representatives of the she’erit hapletah gathered in Feldafing (American Zone) to discuss conditions in the camps. However, given the diversity and disparity of Jewish DPs’ political, economic, linguistic, and religious orientations, the success of this supposedly representative body was never ensured. Rather, far more dissent than agreement emerged. For example, Bund (the Jewish Marxist labor party founded in Vilna in 1897) representative Dr. Rosenthal14 argued against the strong Zionist majority, while the Zionist representatives viewed settlement in Palestine as a central issue. Ultimately, the committee struck a compromise that defined its principle concern as the representation and protection of Jewish 12. For a concise summary of the concerns of Jewish displaced persons in the postwar era, see part IV of Deborah Dwork and Robert Jan van Pelt, Flight from the Reich: Refugee Jews, 1933–1946 (New York: W. W. Norton, 2009), 287–380. 13. Margarete Myers Feinstein, Holocaust Survivors in Postwar Germany, 1945–1957 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 253. 14. The author was unable to locate additional information about this person.

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DPs, with a clause that allowed for cooperation with the Zionist movement in Bavaria. The first Conference of the Central Committee of Liberated Jews met in the St. Ottilien DP camp on July 25, 1945. Ninety-four delegates spoke for some forty thousand Jews living in forty-six centers across Germany and Austria.15 Following this initial gathering, on August 8, 1945, the Council of the Liberated Jews in Bavaria met to elect a new central committee. Devoted to aiding the current DP population, the committee also saw itself as a distinctly Zionist entity working toward the ultimate goal of immigration to Palestine. It also ran a tracing service (zukhdienst) and published the weekly Yiddish newspaper Unzer veg (Our Way).16 By the time of the First Congress of the She’erit Hapletah of European Jews in the American Zone of occupied Germany (held January 27–29, 1946), the move toward Jewish self-government was well underway. This chapter explores the contradictory Jewish experience of the DP camps,17 focusing primarily on the American Zone of occupied Germany. These documents ask, How did Jewish camp administration and aid respond to the postwar crisis of these survivors and refugees? What resources did camp administrations have at their disposal, and how did they perceive the problems faced by Jewish DPs? How did the DPs themselves understand their situation, and how did they reframe, remember, and translate their Holocaust experience in cultural and political life? How could the interactions between Jewish DPs and the community at large be characterized? How did Zionist aspirations shape the experience of Jewish DPs? By 1951, most of the major DP camps had closed, and all but a handful of Jews had emigrated. As Abraham S. Hyman, adviser on Jewish affairs to the American military government in Germany from 1946 to 1950, noted in his memoir, “No group of DPs had suffered as much as the Jewish survivors. On the other hand, no group of post–World War II refugees 15. Zeev W. Mankowitz, Life between Memory and Hope: The Survivors of the Holocaust in Occupied Germany (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 48–49. 16. For a complete summary of the work of the Central Committee, see Mankowitz, Life between Memory and Hope, 101–30. 17. It is important to note that although this chapter—and indeed this series—isolates the Jewish experience, much significant work remains to be done in comparing the experiences of Jewish and non-Jewish DPs. Several studies have been devoted to the interaction between Jews and Germans in American-occupied Germany. Two of the most notable are Atina Grossmann, Jews, Germans, and Allies: Close Encounters in Occupied Germany (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007); Anna Holian, Between National Socialism and Soviet Communism: Displaced Persons in Postwar Germany (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011).

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had as much attention and devotion lavished on them as the Jewish DPs.”18 The means, challenges, and results of that attention are the main subject of the documents presented in this chapter.

JEWISH INVOLVEMENT IN DP CAMP ADMINISTRATION In the first days and months following the end of the war, the Allied armies in the British and American zones of occupation administered the DP camps. Jewish chaplains often stood at the front lines of conflicts between US Army staff and survivors. Both sympathetic to the needs of the Jewish DPs and mindful of their status as officers, Jewish chaplains often found themselves arbitrating between both parties. Indeed, one of the most common misperceptions among US Army officials more generally was a lack of understanding of the fundamental difference between German Jewish DPs and refugees and the general German population. Thus, a fundamental misunderstanding existed between the army’s definition of “enemy personnel” and the situation of the Jewish DPs, closing down many opportunities to provide resources and aid to one of the most vulnerable populations. Largely in response to these types of misunderstandings and as a means of gathering information about the conditions of the DP camps for everyday Jews, Rabbi Judah Nadich conducted a comprehensive study throughout the American and British zones. Nadich served as the first advisor on Jewish affairs (a position and office created in response to the damning observations of the Harrison Report) to General Dwight D. Eisenhower, commander of US forces in Europe. In that capacity, Nadich toured the DP camps in the summer and fall of 1945. The report excerpted in document 5-1, the third in a series of updates sent to the Office of Military Government, United States (OMGUS) in the fall of 1945, outlines the improvements made and challenges facing the DP camp administration. The report draws from Nadich’s handwritten notes on each camp, taken down in English, shorthand, Hebrew, and Yiddish. 18. Abraham S. Hyman, The Undefeated (Jerusalem: Geffen House Publishing, 1993), 402, cf. 487. Hyman (1904–1995) was born in Russia and immigrated to the United States with his family at a young age, becoming a lawyer in Chicago and Indiana. He served as an officer in the army from 1942 and in the military justice section from 1944. From 1946 to 1949 Hyman was an adviser on Jewish affairs to the US military government in Germany and Austria. He then became general counsel to the US War Claims Commission and, from 1953, associate administrative director of the World Jewish Congress. He and his family immigrated to Israel in 1968. See Who’s Who in World Jewry: A Biographical Dictionary of Outstanding Jews (New York: Who’s Who in World Jewry, 1955), 348.

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In this final document, Nadich expresses a plethora of multifaceted concerns about everything from the nutritional value of the food rations, to housing, to emigration, to religious and cultural activities. Despite the shortcomings he points out, he is confident that the US Army can rise to the challenge.19 Nadich serves as both an advocate for the displaced Jews of Europe and as a liaison to the governing authority of the camps themselves. This dual perspective highlights the important role these army chaplains played—for the liberators and for the victims. DOCUMENT 5-1: Report on conditions in assembly centers for Jewish displaced persons, Chaplain Judah Nadich, advisor to the theater commander on Jewish activities, October 22, 1945, USHMMA RG 19.036 Rabbi Judah Nadich collection.

HEADQUARTERS, U.S. FORCES, EUROPEAN THEATER Office of Military Government (U.S. Zone) Displaced Persons Branch 22 October 1945 SUBJECT: Report on Conditions in Assembly Centers for Jewish Displaced Persons. To: Chief of Staff, Headquarters, United States Forces, European Theater, APO 757, U.S. Army. Reference is made to report, same heading, to Chief of Staff, Headquarters, United States Forces, European Theater, dated 16 September 1945. This present report is based on field trips made between 1–17 October 1945 to various assembly centers and towns in Bavaria and Czechoslovakia, U.S. Zone. Appendix “A” deals with conditions in German communities.20 Generally speaking, much improvement in conditions has occurred within the past several weeks. Steps have been taken to relieve the overcrowded conditions. Some improvement in food is noticeable. The supply problem is beginning to be solved, particularly as regards clothing, 19. For a complete account of Rabbi Judah Nadich’s involvement with and reports on the DP camps of Europe, see Judah Nadich, Eisenhower and the Jews (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1953). 20. The appendices have not been included here.

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Chapter 5 blankets, fuel. Frequent inspections are being made and a general tendency can be observed among officers of all ranks concerned with this problem to deal with it in the spirit desired by the Theater Commander. The alleviation of the situation is under way but it should be stressed that continuing and constant attention is called for and that several aspects of the situation still need further consideration. As regards housing considerable improvement in the previously overcrowded situation has been secured by making Fahrenwald [sic; Föhrenwald] (Wolfratshausen) and Deggendorf all-Jewish camps, by adding a number of private houses to the camps in Feldefing [sic; Feldafing] and Landsberg and by opening a Jewish DP hospital in the village of Feldafing to which the Feldafing camp hospital has now been moved. However, while considerable improvement has thus been obtained, more remains to be done along such lines. At Feldafing, where the total census averages about 4,400, some 400 have been transferred to Föhrenwald, 27 houses in the village are occupied by between 500–600 people and 10 additional houses have been requisitioned, but not yet occupied. However, the number of people in the camp proper should be cut still further. Some rooms still contain as many as 25 and the wooden barracks, whose conditions have been referred to in the previous report, have been only partially evacuated. Additional houses in the village should be requisitioned, perhaps another 25. At Landsberg, with some 5,000 residents, some people have been transferred to Föhrenwald, a group of houses in the town are now occupied by 450 and 3 additional houses have been requisitioned. [. . .] As regards emigration desires, the situation remains the same, with the overwhelming majority wishing to go to Palestine as soon as possible. A minority wish to go to the U.S., the U.K., and the British Dominions and South American countries, largely because of the presence of relatives in these lands. The only exception is the Deggendorf camp where two factors exist not true of any other camp: the average age is 50, with 350 being over 60, and 700 of the 1,000 residents are of German Jewish origin. However, even here a registration indicates that while the greatest single number 209, wish to go to the U.S., the second largest group, 170 are anxious to immigrate to Palestine. Generally speaking, the age level in all other camps is in the lower 30s with a very large number in the 20s. Some 811 children under 18 are at Föhrenwald and 56 children under 14 are at Deggendorf. [. . .]

Jews and Displaced Persons Camps in Postwar Europe As regards food, the situation has improved. The caloric content varies in the different camps between 2000–3000. However, the same complaints are voiced as to the lack of balance in the diet, an overabundance of bread and potatoes and a lack of food rich in protein, minerals and fats. Desires are expressed for more fruits, vegetables, fresh meat, cheese, butter, fresh milk and eggs, sugar. At Deggendorf the caloric content is between 2000 and 2500, but the diet is starchy and because of the large percentage of the aged and ill more food, better balanced, is needed. [. . .] Education and recreation programs are developing but need further attention. An excellent Yiddish newspaper has been started by the Central Committee of Liberated Jews of Bavaria, located in Munich, and 15,000 copies of the first issue have been distributed gratis in the camps. A “People’s University” was started on 4 October 1945 at Landsberg with courses offered by DP instructors (with no text books available) in biology, political economy, philosophy, Zionism, with over 100 students registered. A goodly number are enrolled in manual training courses, taking shop instruction by DP teachers in carpentry, metal work, radio, electricity, nurses aids, dental and laboratory assistants, shoe repair. A camp newspaper is soon to appear as in the case at Feldafing where a similar but less developed vocational training program is in effect. Here a dramatic group is organized and a band is planned but musical instruments are lacking. Each block of houses boasts of a day room and a number of radios are now on hand. At St. Ottilien there are school classes for children, including a kindergarten, which needs toys and educational materials. Literary evenings are held for adults. The St. Ottilien DP orchestra gives concerts for its own and neighboring camps and hospitals. Föhrenwald has organized a kindergarten and children’s school and courses for adults in English, Hebrew, music, typing, nurses aids and health and beauty as well as a school of 80 students learning how to drive and service automobiles. The program also includes vocational training courses, a dramatic group, concerts, dances, and [illegible] athletics. Deggendorf has concerts, dances, a dramatic group which stages shows, a lounge, and radios have been promised. The former Commanding General, Third [illegible], has ordered projectors and screens to be made available for Föhrenwald and Feldafing as has the Commanding General, 83rd Division for Deggendorf. What is required for almost all installations are the following: projectors, [illegible] and films, photographs and records, radios, additional books (both text books and library books, especially in Hebrew and Yiddish), athletic

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Chapter 5 equipment, such as ping-pong sets, soccer and volley balls, footballs, boxing gloves, musical instruments for the organizing of bands. It is also felt that many young people would welcome a program of calisthenics, drill and marching if arrangements could be made whereby U.S. Army personnel could act as instructors. Religious activities continue to be well conducted under the guidance of a council of 12 DP rabbis, who form a department in the Central Committee of Liberated Jews of Bavaria. Academies of religious learning are conducted at Landsberg, Föhrenwald, Feldafing, and St. Ottilien. Kosher Kitchens are supervised at those 4 camps. The mass cemeteries are being put in order. A central registration for marriages is being organized. In this latter connection questions are asked as to proper procedure for marriages among DPs and clarifying instructions are needed. At present the couple to be married appears before a rabbi for the religious ceremony. Information is asked for also concerning registration of births. Morale and discipline are always factors to be considered among people living in camps which at its best constitutes abnormal living, particularly when such people are former inmates of German concentration camps where law and order meant Nazi law and order. Added is the factor of much idle time. In view of all this the number of undesirable incidents among Jewish DPs is amazingly low and is a source of gratification. Morale has been considerably lifted by the personal appearances made in DP camps by the Theater Commander and by the publicized [illegible] of his generous spirit, as well as by the personal interest evident recently by the Third Army Commander, Commanding Generals of the Corps and Division concerned and by the local Commanding Officers. Even more improvement in morale and disciplines can be obtained by placing more responsibility upon local DP camp committees, by drawing them more into the problems of camp management and granting them more autonomy—a practice suggested by our American philosophy of democracy—by further encouragement to the Central Committee of Liberated Jews of Bavaria in its various useful functions, and by expansion of the work and leisure time programs as suggested in paragraphs 12 and 13 above. The removal of armed guards, except for night security, the lifting of the pass system, and removal of “off-limits” restrictions on German towns and villages have all contributed toward raising morale as have, of course, the improvements in the clothing supply. Morale could be given a further boost by the early instituting of an easy workable method whereby these people could communicate by mail with relatives in other camps

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and in foreign lands. New situations have been recently created by the discovery by some residents of camps that children or/and wives are still alive in Poland or the Baltic countries. A great humanitarian work could be wrought by the establishment of a procedure whereby these remnants of families could be reunited within our DP camps. The Jewish DPs, the remnants of millions of Jews exterminated by the Nazis, would like to be permitted to send an official representative to the forthcoming War Crimes Trial at Nurnberg. It would be a dramatic symbol that justice is being done to those who suffered longest and worst from the criminals and would raise the morale of every Jewish DP. Such a representative should be an ex-inmate of a concentration camp and might possibly be selected by the Central Committee of Liberated Jews of Bavaria. [. . .] A general summing up of the situation indicates a steadily growing improvement in almost all respects. So much was happening during the last several days of this officer’s visit to Bavaria that many of the remarks made in this report may already be out-dated. Much has already been accomplished in what is and will undoubtedly continue to be a complex and difficult problem. But the U.S. Army and UNRRA are evincing the will to do the job and it no doubt can be entertained that the job will be done. JUDAH NADICH Chaplain (Major), USA Advisor to the Theater Commander on Jewish Activities

The reports of Rabbi Judah Nadich represent an attempt to address the needs of Jewish DPs across several different camps. Document 5-2, excerpting letters from UNRRA representative Harry Lerner,21 focuses on one particular locale: the Stuttgart West DP camp. Unlike other camps, Stuttgart West consisted of a group of consolidated apartments in an entirely urban environment; in fact, a streetcar line ran directly through the DP center.22 The local German population frequently accused the DPs of black market and criminal activity, which culminated in a raid of the camp by German police on March 29, 1946; 21. Harry Lerner (1913–1992) was an attorney in Omaha and served with the US Army during the war. He came from a Yiddish-speaking household and became an UNRRA team director after the war (team 622), covering two Jewish DP centers in Stuttgart, Germany. In 1947 he joined the Civil Affairs Division of the United States European Command (EUCOM). See USHMM finding aid, USHMMA, RG 19.029. 22. Feinstein, Holocaust Survivors in Postwar Germany, 48–50.

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Lerner’s response to and explanation of this raid is examined in chapter 6. The three letters featured here depict a myriad of challenges and frustrations, large and small: from endemic overcrowding to difficulties establishing cultural activities, receiving mail, or getting Yiddish newspapers. Stuttgart West would come to include a Talmud Torah (religious elementary school) and a kosher kitchen and maintained two separate Yiddish newspapers, Oyf der fray (Of Freedom) and the Shtutgarter byuletin (Stuttgart Bulletin). At its height in the fall of 1946, the camp contained over fourteen hundred Jews. DOCUMENT 5-2: Letters from Harry Lerner, Stuttgart DP camp, to his parents in Nebraska, December 21, 1945, and January 11 and February 5, 1946, USHMMA RG 19.029.01 Harry and Clare Lerner collection.23

H. Lerner, UNRRA Team 502 APO 757 21 Dec 45 Dear Mother, Am sending this care of Joan.24 You and dad probably are there, and will get the letter quick in that way. So far I’ve had lots of work from my job, and darn little result. I don’t know whether other Jewish camps in Germany are better or worse off than this one. I cannot understand how those of us who are with the UNRRA have worked so long and so hard and so earnestly with so little result. This camp was in a mess when I got there and it is still in a mess. People are still coming in—from Poland, and even from Russia, all unofficially. If the present trend continues, there soon will be no Jews left in Poland. There was an article on the subject recently in Stars and Stripes; the whole situation is now in the open. Here in Stuttgart, the Military Government has forbidden me to accept any more people. But so far they have not set up another place for the newcomers to go. Now I have about 400 people squeezed into corners and attics, without proper quarters. The 23. His parents, Samuel and Ida Lerner, were Yiddish-speaking immigrants from Minsk, arriving in 1907 and 1908; his father worked as a house painter and his mother for a time as a clothing saleswoman (“canvasser”). See US federal censuses for 1920, 1930, and 1940. 24. The author could not identify this woman.

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Military, and UNRRA, did not anticipate such a flow of newcomers; that explains the [illegible] lack of stability in the situation. Have been receiving the New York Yiddish newspapers lately, as well as now and then some from Omaha. The Joint has two people here now, and is also bringing in newspapers. In about 10 days, I hope to have a building for a school, library, welfare, and for an office for the Joint. That will make their work easier—finding relatives for example. [. . .] 11 Jan 46 Hi folks I am so far behind in my mail that I am not even going to look through it all now to find your last letters—it would take too long. Tonight we are having a farewell for two of our good people—Mr. and Mrs. Tobias, two Hollanders who are resigning from UNRRA to go back home.25 They have been with these people (of our Center) from the very first day that UNRRA made contact with them. They themselves were in underground activity in Holland and France during the war, several times just escaping death. We are sorry to see them go. They have been working hard and long without results or encouragement from the people—and without recognition from UNRRA. If they themselves weren’t Jewish, they would have gone home long ago. Tomorrow we plan the opening of a Cultural Center: a library, school, and place for the choir and dramatic groups. How different from 2 and 3 months ago when the people were solidly organized against everything except transfer to Palestine. About 6 or 7 weeks ago, I got a Welfare Officer, and about 5 weeks ago a lady from the Joint. Most of the time they are like fire and water. But on the Culture Center, I’m hopeful they will work together. There will be classes for children and adults; a special kitchen for children; and group activities. About a month ago, an Oneg Shabbath observance was started, and is going well. Last night about 400 or 450 came. We are starting, at least, to move forward. 25. The author was unable to identify this couple. Elsewhere Lerner indicated that one held an administrative position and the other had a job in the mess. USHMMA RG 19.029; Harry Lerner, letter to father, November 23, 1945.

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Chapter 5 I’ve gotten several packages of books and clothes lately. I have not had time to go through them myself—I’ve been that busy—just turned them over to Joint to open up and sort. Lt. General Keyes was here Thursday.26 He was quite sour in his short visit. But the Colonel who is here and knows him says we did all right. There has been almost no mail for anyone for two weeks. The UNRRA Central Offices are being moved, that’s why. We have just moved our own offices, by the way, to a bigger (but still not big enough) place; next week, the Joint is supposed to move their office in with ours. Also, we now have a good set-up for the infirmary and dispensary. We still need a good hall, a place for a synagogue, and more staff transportation, and lots of other things. But even so, the prospects for rehabilitation are much improved. I’m trying to get the Military Government to open another camp for people who are still coming in from Poland—we are too crowded here. UNRRA is backing me. If I can get that agreed do, and UNRRA can set up another Team for it, I can then begin to have some time for myself for a change. [. . .] 5 Feb 46 Dear Dad, Have several of your letters; the one last received is dated 29 September. It was apparently sent back once for better address, although the address was perfect and complete. The Anglo-American Commission on Palestine was supposed to be here at noon tomorrow. 7th Army called this afternoon that the Commission had been delayed, and will not be here till Thursday evening. I am quite sure they already know the sentiment of these people about Palestine. As a tentative program (depending on what the committee wants) we are planning 1) a brief 15 minute resume of how a Jewish community (Radom, Poland) was destroyed; 2) Statements by Partisans and combatants on how they fought for the Allies; 3) Testimony by people who have left Poland

26. Geoffrey Keyes (1888–1967), a career US military officer trained at West Point, had risen to commanding general of the II Corps during the war, then commanded the US Seventh Army (1945 to 1946) and the US Third Army (1946 to 1947). He became US high commissioner in Austria in 1947.

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(including more recently the Partisans) on conditions there and why they left; 4) a statement on the impossibility of remaining in Germany; 5) figures on how many want to go to Palestine, their ages and trades, etc. if the Commission asks, etc. If the Commission spends some time here, I think we will make their time interesting. [. . .] Everyone has been complaining the last month about mail, including the soldiers and the British. So all the complaints from you, Mother, and Vicki are matched over here.27 I think I acknowledged all the packages I’ve received. In the last four weeks (when mail has become more plentiful) I’ve received half a [illegible] package from the Zukumft—including a complete set of Shalom Aleichem.28 These of course go into the library we now have set up in our Community Center, Beth Bialik. The only item I can’t seem to get ahead on is tea; everything else I’m getting. I’m receiving all the Yiddish papers from New York City except the Freiheit. After months of scrapping for more space for our people here, the Military gave us a school building almost 25 miles away, which can hold about 400. The last few days we have been having a hectic time trying to get our 500 overflow (for which we have no rooms) to move there. Our people would rather float from room to room night after night, than go to some new place they have not seen, and where they know no Jewish activity exists. Did you talk much to Gene while you were in NYC? How is Joe getting along in his new set-up?29 Any political activity at home? Have been reading about the strikes; seems that the whole wide world is unsettled. Hope your intestinal trouble definitely has turned out to be no trouble. Love to you and the rest of the family. Harry P.S. Got a letter from Der Tog, saying that they were not going to send the paper to our DP’s anymore unless I could write them immediately that 27. The author could not identify Vicki. 28. Shalom Aleichem (pen name for Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich; 1859–1916) was a foundational Yiddish author and playwright from Ukraine. His plays and short stories depicted shtetl life in eastern Europe and were widely published in the United States as well. 29. The author was unable to identify Gene or Joe.

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Chapter 5 we wanted the papers, and how we were using them. Told them to send it. They may print my letter, which after all I think was their main idea. HL

With scarce resources available, the constant influx of Jewish displaced persons into American- and British-occupied Germany caused significant tension among the Allied camp administration. This pressure came to a head with the comments of British general Frederick E. Morgan, head of UNRRA European operations.30 On January 2, 1946, in a discussion following an official briefing, Morgan referred to Polish Jews as “well-dressed, well-fed, rosy-cheeked and [having] plenty of money.” Morgan implied that these Jews were being aided by a “secret Jewish organization” and clandestinely ferried to Palestine illegally, and he cast doubt on the veracity of reports of pogroms in Poland.31 Morgan’s statement also reflected linkages between Jews and “bolshevism,” while at the same time gesturing toward future Cold War politics. Indeed, the Nazi regime frequently equated Jewish politics with a communist threat, building on antisemitic stereotypes of the Jews as part of a conspiracy to gain world domination. Morgan’s comments caused an uproar in the Jewish press. The next day, on January 3, 1946, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency published an article titled “UNRRA Chief in Germany Slurs Polish Jews, Say Secret Jewish Force Organizing Flight.” Chaim Weizmann, leader of the World Zionist Organization, publically called Morgan’s statement “so palpably anti-Semitic that I would not deign to enter into any discussions.”32 AJR Information, the newsletter of the Association of Jewish Refugees in Great Britain, turned Morgan’s statement into a revelation on Jewish aspirations to emigrate: “What has been established is the desire of tens of thousands of Jews to leave the places of their humiliation and degradation and to emigrate, the majority of them wishing to go to Palestine. 30. Lieutenant General Sir Frederick E. Morgan (1894–1967), a career soldier who had served as a corps commander in Britain, became key in laying the plans for the Allied invasion of occupied western Europe (Operation Overlord); he went on to serve as General Eisenhower’s deputy chief of staff during the war. Appointed chief of operations for UNRRA in Germany in September 1945, he caused several public controversies and was finally dismissed in August 1946, when he suggested that Soviet agents had found cover in the organization. Morgan continued to serve in public life in his country. See obituary, Washington Post, March 22, 1967, B8; “Gen. Morgan’s Dismissal,” Washington Post, August 22, 1946, 8. 31. Cited in Feinstein, Holocaust Survivors in Postwar Germany, 45. 32. “Weizmann Calls Morgan Statement on Polish Jews ‘Palpably Anti-Semitic,’” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, January 3, 1946, www.jta.org/1946/01/03/archive/weizmann-callsmorgan-statement-on-Polish-Jews-palpably-anti-semitic (accessed December 10, 2014).

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[. . .] General Morgan’s statement might in the end have helped to demonstrate the urgency and scope of that problem.”33 Document 5-3 presents the Board of Deputies of British Jews’ response to Morgan’s remarks. It condemns, in no uncertain terms, the assumption that Jewish life in postwar Poland could be characterized as “comfortable” in any way. Indeed, the document characterizes Morgan as at best grossly misinformed and stops just short of overtly labeling him as antisemitic. While concerned with this specific incident, the response also raises larger questions about the strain between DP camp administrators, their charges, and the Jewish community. DOCUMENT 5-3: Response by the Board of Deputies of British Jews to the statement of Lieutenant General Frederick Morgan, European head of UNRRA, London, January 3, 1946, Board of Deputies of British Jews Records, USHMMA RG 59.023, reel 28.

General Morgan’s Statement: Reply by Board of Deputies of British Jews The Board of Deputies of British Jews notes with deep regret the statement by General Morgan on the Jewish Displaced Persons escaping from Eastern Europe to Germany. It is astonishing that the Chief of UNRRA in Europe should have tried to discount the evidence of persecution of Jews and their hardships in Eastern Europe and to have been so ill informed by his agents, when there had been repeated official statements by Polish and Czechoslovak Statesmen on antisemitic attacks in their countries, which in many cases culminated in pogroms and murder. It is painful to note that he should have shown so little understanding of the desperate anxiety of the survivors of the Nazi measures to escape from places of horror in the hope of starting afresh in the Jewish National Home. Nobody can expect that the few survivors of the 3,500,000 of Polish Jews could wish to live in the huge cemetery of Polish Jewry, as solitary remnants of the once so populous Jewish Communities. No one would believe that these people would leave “comfortable living in Poland” to brave the rigors of winter in a haphazard journey through devastated Europe in order to live in an UNRRA camp in frozen and starving Germany.

33. “A World Conspiracy,” AJR Information 2 (February 1946): 1.

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Chapter 5 General Morgan’s references to a “Jewish plot” to become a “world force” coming on top of the Nuremberg evidence of the extermination of nearly 6,000,000 Jews by the Nazis is not only a grotesque bogey, but highly uncharitable and unworthy when it comes from the head of an organization whose purpose it is to bring comfort to suffering victims of Nazi barbarity.

THE DAILY LIVES OF JEWISH DPs: INTERPRETING THE HOLOCAUST FROM THE INSIDE As DP administrators struggled to fulfill the physical needs of their populations, Jews in DP camps set out to rebuild and reformulate Jewish culture in the wake of profound tragedy. Their activities assumed many different forms: from cultural pursuits, to educational efforts, to political activism. The diversity of these efforts raises questions about the nature of DP life: How did these camps, at various points reviled and idealized, serve as both an impediment to and a catalyst for what has been termed a “life reborn.”34 This section explores cultural artifacts of DP camp life created by the survivor population. Chapter 6 examines political activity, specifically as it pertains to Zionism and the flowering of DP Zionist activity. Discussions of culture in the DP camps consider several different manifestations of Jewish life, including language, literature, reportage, music, theater (and other forms of performance), and religious life. This early postwar period also demonstrates a spirit of experimentation with regard to representation of the Holocaust. What types of artistic expressions and “moral messages” were appropriate within the DP camps? What forms of representation lay “beyond the pale”? Who comprised the audience for these publications or performances, and how did that impact their content? Together, these expressions created a uniquely postwar perspective on Jewish culture and continuity. Ultimately, both the production and the result of this myriad of cultural artifacts ask questions such as, What will a postwar Jewish cultural life look like, and how will the Holocaust impact its content? Moreover, how much does Jewish DP cultural life integrate the Holocaust into the larger narrative of the Jewish experience and, indeed, the experience of total war? The Yiddish newspapers of the DP camps provided one major source of literary culture. Between 1945 and 1950, nearly 150 Jewish newspapers (the majority of them Yiddish) were published in Germany.35 Within the polyglot 34. For example, see “Life Reborn: Jewish Displaced Persons, 1945–1951,” USHMM, http://www.ushmm.org/exhibition/displaced-persons (accessed March 12, 2015). 35. For a complete analysis of Yiddish newspapers and Yiddish literature in postwar Germany, see Tamar Lewinsky, “Dangling Roots? Yiddish Literature and Culture in the German Diaspora,” in “We Are Here”: New Approaches to Jewish Displaced Persons in Postwar Germany, ed. Avinoam Patt and Michael Berkowitz (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2010), 308–34.

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Jewish DP population, Yiddish became the lingua franca of choice: classroom instruction and theatrical performances most often took place in Yiddish, and much of DP political life also utilized Yiddish or Hebrew.36 While frequently neither Yiddish nor Hebrew were the native languages of many Jewish DPs, these languages proved the easiest means of communication among this transnational group.37 These newspapers contained significant literary material, including poetry, songs, testimonies, and other similar pieces.38 Document 5-4 contains selections from the edited collection Zamlung fun katset un geto lider (A Collection of Camp and Ghetto Songs), published in 1946 by the Central Jewish Committee in the Bergen-Belsen DP camp and the Bergen-Belsen DP newspaper Unzer sztyme (Our Voice). The book, edited by Sami Feder,39 founder and director of the KZ-teater 40 (Concentration Camp Theater), contains song lyrics, poems, music, photographs, and drawings depicting ghetto and camp life in graphic detail. Like the DP newspapers, the historical commissions were also extremely active in collecting cultural material such as poems, songs, 36. In the aforementioned article, Lewinsky discusses the “pocket war” between Yiddish and Hebrew as the DP language of choice. While Yiddish remained the language of everyday life, the revival of Hebrew became important for immigration and Zionist education. The conflict this caused among DPs is addressed in Lewinsky, “Dangling Roots?,” 320–24. It is also important to note that not all Jewish DPs spoke Yiddish as their first—or even their preferred—language. Margarete Myers Feinstein points out that some DPs learned the language for the first time postwar in order to communicate with fellow survivors. See Feinstein, Holocaust Survivors in Postwar Germany, 220–24. 37. For more information on the use of Yiddish in DP camps, see Miriam Isaacs, “Yiddish in the Aftermath: Speech, Community, and Cultural Continuity in Displaced Persons Camps,” in Jewishness: Expression, Identity, and Representation, ed. Simon J. Bonner (Portland, OR: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2008), 85–104. For information on Yiddish, song, and memory, see Shirli Gilbert, “Buried Monuments: Yiddish Songs and Holocaust Memory,” History Workshop Journal, no. 66 (2008): 106–27. 38. For a full account of DP poets who appeared in these newspapers, see Tamar Lewinsky, Displaced Poets: Jüdische Schriftsteller im Nachkriegsdeutschland, 1945–1951 (Götttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008). 39. Sami (Sajnwel) Feder (1909–2000) was born in Zawiercie (then part of Russia) to a textile factory worker and skilled seamstress. He grew up in Poland and Germany, becoming active in Poale Zion and the Yiddish theater scene as an actor, writer, and director. He left Berlin for Warsaw in early 1933 in the face of harassment after the arson attack on the Reichstag. He spent the years between 1941 and the end of the war in a series of forced labor and concentration camps before being freed from Bergen-Belsen. His DP theater troupe later toured Belgium and France. Feder subsequently became a typesetter and writer in Paris, continuing this work after he immigrated to Israel. See Sophie Fetthauer, Musik und Theater im DP-Camp Bergen-Belsen. Zum Kulturleben der jüdischen Displaced Persons 1945–1950 (Neumünster: von Bockel, 2012). 40. “KZ” stands for Konzentrationslager, or “concentration camp.”

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short stories, and idiomatic expressions from ghetto and concentration camp life. Together, these sources reveal a cultural landscape of trauma in the process of being created. The songs themselves were created both during and after the war by a variety of authors from a variety of locales.41 Scholar Shirli Gilbert points to the complex positioning of these songs within the experience of the ghettos and concentration camps and encourages a complication of the standard narrative of music as resistance to Nazi oppression.42 Indeed, the tone of the songs themselves, from solemn to darkly humorous, depicts a variety of responses that descriptors such as “redemptive,” “noble,” or “spiritual resistance” can often flatten.43 Included here is the introduction to the song collection, as well as one example of an unknown lyric written in a munitions factory in Salzwedel, a subcamp of Neuengamme,44 an all-women’s camp. Salzwedel held about one thousand Jewish and non-Jewish women during its operation from the summer of 1944 until its liberation on April 14, 1945.45 Sami Feder’s introduction explains the impetus for the project: to preserve and remember songs and poems from the ghettos and concentration camps. These lyrics, he says, were chosen not for their artistic merit alone but for the purpose of historical preservation. The song from Salzwedel fulfills this purpose and, with its simultaneous nostalgic 41. Jewish historical commissions recorded survivors singing many of these songs on gramophone records that now reside in the sound archives of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. 42. See Shirli Gilbert, Music in the Holocaust: Confronting Life in the Nazi Ghettos and Camps (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). 43. Feder was not the first to embark on this type of project; others also aimed to preserve the songs and folklore of the ghettos in other ways. In the summer of 1946, Latvian-born Jewish psychologist David Boder conducted 130 interviews with survivors in several DP camps. Recorded on wire tape, these interviews often included the performance of songs. Moishe Beregovskii, a Russian Jewish folklorist, collected songs from the Transnistria region in Romania in the postwar era. For more information on Beregovskii, see chapter 12 and Document 12-6. 44. Neuengamme was a subcamp of Sachsenhausen in a suburb of Hamburg, Germany. In total, approximately 104,000 to 106,000 prisoners were interned in Neuengamme from December 1938 to May 1945; approximately 13,000 of these prisoners were Jews. For more information on Neuengamme, see Geoffrey P. Megargee, ed., The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, vol. 1: Early Camps, Youth Camps, and Concentration Camps and Subcamps under the SS-Business Administration Main Office (WVHA) (Bloomington: Indiana University Press in association with the USHMM, 2009), 1074–78. 45. For more information on the Salzwedel camp, see Dietrich Banse, “Salzwedel,” in The USHMM Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1:1170–72.

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longing for the past and painful recognition of the present reality, typifies the other songs in the album. Together, these songs demonstrate an early impetus to document and define the Holocaust experience for a DP audience that understood these experiences all too well. DOCUMENT 5-4: Selections from Zamlung fun katset un geto lider, compiled by Sami Feder, Bergen-Belsen DP camp, Germany, January 1946, USHMMA Acc. 1996.80 Henry Hanski papers (translated from Yiddish).

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Chapter 5 Zami Feder, Foreword, January 1946, Bergen-Belsen While still in the concentration camp, I began to collect katset [concentration camp] and ghetto songs by known and unknown poets. Each time, I had to destroy the songs due to the frequent changes of clothing and the inspections. After the liberation, I again took up the labor. As head of the Cultural Division of the Jewish Central Committee in Bergen-Belsen, I set myself the task of publishing a series of brochures from that collection, which will reflect this tragic period in our life for future historians. In collecting the songs, I did not at all search for literary or artistic merit. I considered rather their historical character. This is how “the common people” wrote; this is how they sang. Unfortunately it is not possible for me to provide the names for a number of authors. [. . .] Miriam Vaksman, “I Long,” written in the concentration camp at the munitions factory in Salzwedel in 1944 What groans so, whines, cries in silence? It’s a feeling that can’t be described. I want to walk a bit where the world has no end, But something holds me back, doesn’t let me loose. I want to run! To yell! But silence—not a word, I sit, engrossed, in the same spot, I feel a pain, but I’m not ill, I remember what is already long, long past. I want to breathe more freely, I’m short of air, I stretch out my arms toward something that calls I suffocate, I struggle, I feel so cramped . . . This is how my heart is when I long. My thoughts course, accompanied by a gaze, I again see images from years ago . . . When I’m a young child, playing in the sunshine, For me, life is still foreign, life’s sufferings still foreign. Here an image slips through, and soon disappears,

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I recognize it!!! It’s mama’s faithful figure, With her never-ending concern, the question on her lips: “Did something happen to you?” Yes, that’s her worry. Here my heart cries and laments, it beats faster, I long for her, and feel such pain deep down. My thoughts continue to soar. A gray morning. He and I. Dead silence all around. No one is to be seen. It is the day of our separation. Life wants it like this, the times want it like this!! Since then my life has been colorless, valueless, My heart continually afflicted, continually aggrieved. I long for a word from him, I long for a look from him, For life, for the youth that will no longer come back. I long for the youth that has already past, I long for the life that might come anew, I long for life in its full splendor, For the glimmer of the morrow, for the magic of the night. Ho, ho, ho, and suddenly my spirit bursts out laughing, “Do you want to forget yourself? By gnawing at your solace?! For shame! What’s going on in your head! How then do you differentiate yourself from the beast?” I feel humiliated, like a slave to his master, I feel guilty.—O spirit, you’re right! But is it not possible in times of hunger and want? To yearn for love in the face of death . . . For love, for music, for one’s youth, for fun, When the God of vengeance, the God of hate rules. The spirit, the soul suffers from great hunger too, One yearns for peace in times of war, It’s difficult to forget oneself, from life’s reality, Continually I want to long for something . . . to yearn, to strive.

The performance and publication of music formed a significant portion of DP cultural life. Documents 5-5 and 5-6 depict this aspect of the survivor experience. “Ten Railroad Cars ‘UNRRA,’” written by Reuben Lipszyc-Green

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and published in Bergen-Belsen in 1946, is a humorous look at the aid (or lack thereof ) provided by UNRRA.46 Written in the style of a repetitive drinking song, it parodies the scarcity of resources available in the DP camps. Published by and for other Jewish displaced persons, it mocks the conditions that they all face on a daily basis. The second song, “Dos lid fun yidishn Di-Pi” (“The Song of the Jewish DP”), was written by noted Jewish poet H. Leivick (Leivick Halpern), a prolific Yiddish author whose credits included a reworking of the Jewish folktale “The Golem.” Leivick had been a prisoner in Siberia from 1912 to 1913 as a result of his revolutionary activity in Russia before being smuggled out of the country for the United States. He visited the DP camps as a member of the Cultural Mission of the World Jewish Congress in April and May 1946.47 The song, published by the refugee section of the Jewish Union in France, laments where the DP has arrived and where he would like to go. The DP comes from the flames of the crematoria, so the song intones, and longs for unattainable settlement in Palestine. The refrain reinforces a sense of homelessness: “I am a Jewish DP / A Jew from eternal nowhere.”48 The front cover of the sheet music reinforces this image: a clearly observant Jewish man (with a beard and a yarmulke) holds the barbed wire of the camp while dreaming of a ship and sees himself lying on a beach, under the palm trees of Palestine. Thus, Leivick exports his understanding of the DP experience to the refugee community in France and the Zionist community as well.

46. Lipszyc-Green (also Reuben Lipschitz, Richard Lipschultz) was born in 1918 in Warsaw; some details of his life history have been difficult to verify, in part because he used pseudonyms. He studied music and worked in the theater before the war, spent late 1940 to April 1943 in the Warsaw ghetto, and was then sent to a series of forced labor camps. After searching for relatives in Poland after the liberation, he lived in DP camps in the US and British occupation zones in Germany for several years, writing poems and songs for DP theater before immigrating to the United States. See Fetthauer, Musik und Theater im DP-Camp Bergen-Belsen, esp. 178–80. 47. Shirli Gilbert, “We Long for Home: Songs and Survival among Jewish Displaced Persons,” in Patt and Berkowitz, “We Are Here,” 290–91. H. Leivick (also Leivick Halpern) was born in 1888 and died in 1962. 48. Translated by Shirli Gilbert in ibid., 300.

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DOCUMENT 5-5: “Ten Railroad Cars ‘UNRRA,’” from Lebedik Amchu, a zamlung lider fun R. Lipszyc-Green (Bergen-Belsen, 1946), YIVO Library collection, 00055468 (translated from Yiddish).

Ten Railroad Cars “UNRRA” A. Ten railroad cars “UNRRA” The railroad is bringing to us. The night was dark So only nine were left. B. Nine railroad cars “UNRRA” With many good things. So one made a wrong turn left So only eight remained. C. Eight railroad cars “UNRRA” With things everyone loves. There was a strong wind So only seven remained. D. Seven railroad cars “UNRRA” Clothing, coffee, and crackers. Transported through desolate forests So only six remained. E. Six railroad cars “UNRRA” Sent to us from Argentina. So one lost its way So only five remained.

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Chapter 5 F. Five railroad cars “UNRRA” With unlimited quantities of wine. But a catastrophe happened So only four remained. G. Four railroad cars “UNRRA” With all sorts of canned goods. While avoiding a tunnel Only three remained. H. Three railroad cars “UNRRA” Very nice stuff for refugees. Traveling through a “stock exchange”49 Only two remained. I. Two railroad cars “UNRRA” The allotment is now small. Spent the night on the ramp Next morning only one was left. J. One railroad car from “UNRRA” The people cheerful, joyful. When the car was opened It was, alas, empty.

49. The term used here, berze, is DP camp slang for “stock exchange,” a reference to the black market.

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DOCUMENT 5-6: “Dos lid fun yidishn Di-Pi,” music by Meshulam (Sylvain) Lewin50 with lyrics by H. Leivick (published in Paris, 1947), YIVO Library collection, 1988-Y12.5 (translated from Yiddish).

The Song of the Jewish DP Lyrics by H. Leivick Music by Meshulam (Sylvain) Lewin Published in Paris in 1947 by l’Union Juive en France, Section des Réfugié [Jewish Union in France, Refugee Section] I’m a Jewish DP A Jew eternally not from here I come from the crematorium’s flames I come from the bunker and the forest I gather my last strength To live on beyond violence I’m a Jewish DP A Jew eternally not from here My summer is still full of winter My peace is still restless My burned-in “Jude” number Covers all my limbs I’m a Jewish DP A Jew eternally not from here Europe’s piercing cold threatens— My fiddle hangs, fades away in silence Be cursed seven times, Germany As just one string creates a roar I’m a Jewish DP A Jew eternally not from here 50. The author was unable to find further information about this composer.

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Chapter 5 My gums mustn’t dry up— No one cares about my song anyway And no one lets me approach The threshold of a country in these parts I’m a Jewish DP A Jew eternally not from here My path to Eretz is barred John Bull blockades ship after ship My son, oyle,51 lies dead Shot on the very shore of Tel Aviv I’m a Jewish DP A Jew eternally not from here The fortunate one does it like this too— My little UNRRA worker [UNRRA-dicker] He too builds thicker and thicker fences Around my camp straits I’m a Jewish DP A Jew eternally not from here I put on my armor of disputatiousness When I’m struck by fear I am what I am, a Jew through and through I stride into the camp and out of the camp I’m a Jewish DP A Jew eternally not from here

The previous two songs describe—with mockery and melodrama, respectively—the conditions in DP camps and the emotional state of Jewish DPs. Document 5-7 presents a hybrid of both of these forms in a booklet 51. Like the Yiddish expression oy, a general statement of woe.

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created by the DPs of Deggendorf for the director of the UNRRA team, Carl Atkin,52 upon his departure from the camp at the end of 1945. Located in the Bamberg district of American-occupied Germany, Deggendorf was, by the time of its closing in 1949, home to about two thousand Jewish DPs who were extremely active culturally and politically. In addition to producing two newspapers, they had a library of seventeen hundred volumes, an ORT training center, a theater group, a ritual bath, and a kosher kitchen. Most of these Jews were former inmates of the Theresienstadt concentration camp.53 Document 5-7, excerpting a hand-illustrated booklet for Atkin, bears witness to these positive camp conditions. The DPs created and translated the bilingual book (English and German), which describes the disorganized conditions before Atkin assumed leadership and goes on to declare Deggendorf “the best place for Jewish DPs.” Through a detailed description of the history of the camp, the authors draw a sharp distinction between pre-UNRRA administration and life under Atkin’s direction. The book portrays Deggendorf as a place in which Jewish life flourishes. DOCUMENT 5-7: Selections from the commemorative booklet “A Memory of Good Friendship in Hard Days, Dedicated to Carl Atkin, Director of UNRRA Team 55, Deggendorf, December 1, 1945, the Jewish Community,” USHMMA Acc. 2007.162 Carl Atkin collection.

Dear Mr. Atkin, What shall the following pages be like? Just a simple statement of some facts. And these facts are the result of an interesting development. This development proves one fact. Good will and collaboration in the most difficult situation can overcome the hardest troubles and resistances. This fact was proved previously many times. Even the victory of the United Nations 52. Carl Atkin (1903–1976) was a businessman in Los Angeles before the war. He served with UNRRA in the US Zone in occupied Germany in a variety of posts until 1947, becoming increasingly critical of the policies on Jewish DPs. See USHMMA Acc. 2007.162 (Carl Atkin collection); “Jewish Adviser to UNRRA Chief in U.S. Zone of Germany Resigns; Successor Being Sought,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, June 8, 1947; Lorrie Greenhouse Gardella, The Life and Thought of Louis Lowy: Social Work through the Holocaust (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2011). 53. For more information, see “Life Reborn: Jewish Displaced Persons, 1945–1951,” USHMM, http://www.ushmm.org/exhibition/displaced-persons (accessed March 12, 2015).

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Chapter 5 over the powers of destruction is a clear specimen of the effect that good will and collaboration may have. Half a year has passed since Germany capitulated. Europe is on the way of being rebuilt. The Nations which fought for liberty and democracy lend their hands to those who were victims to the Nazi-Policy, in our days of reconstruction. For this purpose an especial [sic] organization has been established, the U.N.R.R.A. The goal of this organization can be expressed in a very simple manner: Fulfilling human duties, i.e. helping those, who are in want of help. Everybody who feels strong enough should be considered compulsory to do this job. It is the most beautiful work that a man can carry out. In our days we have got to realize that a permanent peace can be maintained only [if ] everybody is convinced that he has to contribute his share in securing peace. To talk in beautiful words is very common but real doing is not only more desirable but also more necessary. If everybody is conscious that collaboration means more than happy feeling then he can start to take part in a program of reconstruction. Our community here was not a community before it has grown into one. And why? Because a great part of the members of this community have realized that a reconstructed life can be made possible only if everybody feels some responsibility towards the others. This is called community spirit. Whenever and wherever community spirit is ruling that is a justified hope of progress and success. The following pages shall prove that a small part of reconstructive work has been done thus approaching the goals of the present necessities. Relief and Rehabilitation.

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Deggendorf you are the nicest camp for Jewish DPs Deggendorf and everybody here is happy to be. When one day we start from here away, We all sing very sadly We meet again in short time again with you We all sing very sadly: We meet again in short time again with you!

The larger trend toward cultural activity in the DP camps also included the creation and performance of Jewish theater. DP theater became an integral part of camp life fairly early on; performances began at Föhrenwald in the summer of 1945, and Sami Feder initiated the aforementioned KZ-teater shortly

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thereafter in Bergen-Belsen. In the spring of 1946, the Musical Yiddish Cabaret Theater, originally based in Poland, came to the DP camps of Germany, and several actors broke away from this group to form the Munich Yiddish Art Theater (MIT). Most often performed in Yiddish, these productions ranged widely in topic and perspective. The religious and the secular, Bundists and Zionists put on plays, which included dramatizations of prewar literature, such as the work of Yiddish writer Sholem (Shalom) Aleichem, as well as staples of Yiddish theater and original pieces that directly reflected Holocaust themes and scenarios. The photograph in document 5-8 shows a performance that rests at the intersection of secular showmanship and religious ritual: the Purim play, or purimspiel. While plays were performed to commemorate other Jewish holidays, including Hanukkah, Purim, the story of Jewish perseverance in the face of near annihilation in ancient Persia, held special resonance. Traditionally, the purimspiel provided an opportunity for Jewish communities to satirize their oppressors in various contexts, from ancient through modern times. In the DP camps, these plays took the form of revenge fantasies against Hitler himself. A good number of photographs document these types of performances: examples include Hitler hanging from the gallows, Hitler and Joseph Goebbels as paupers begging in the street, and Hitler burned in effigy. The photograph in document 5-8 from the Landsberg DP camp depicts a Jewish DP dressed up as Hitler and “captured” by DP police, flanked by a child wearing a striped concentration camp uniform. The photo, taken by an American Jewish chaplain on Purim in 1946, appeared in the April 15 edition of the Yiddish DP newspaper Unzer veg.54 Today, these photos may appear shocking. At the same time, however, they grapple with the impact of the Holocaust through the lens of a preexisting Jewish tradition that makes use of humor and satire.

54. See Feinstein, Holocaust Survivors in Postwar Germany, 210.

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DOCUMENT 5-8: Jewish DPs dress up one of their own as Adolf Hitler for a Purim masquerade at the Landsberg DP camp, Germany, March 24, 1946, USHMMPA WS# 37376.

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While purimspiels enacting retribution were commonplace, plays like Ich leb (I Am Living) spurred debate among the Jewish DP population. Like others of its kind, Ich leb, by Moshe Pintschewski,55 dramatized the conflict between ghetto leaders and partisan fighters. The MIT first performed the play on November 6, 1946. Pintschewski’s rendering presented ghetto leaders as weak intellectuals and partisan fighters as brave, self-sacrificing martyrs. Thus, the play valorized armed resistance over and above all other forms of response, garnering a fair degree of criticism from DP newspapers such as Judisze cajtung, Unzer hofenung, and Ibergang. Still other critics pointed out that Pintschewski, who had written the play while in exile in Argentina and later in the Soviet Union, did not possess the requisite personal experience to speak on the matter. Director Israel Segall attempted to mitigate some of these concerns by framing the play in terms of a greater call for remembrance.56 Ultimately, both the play and its reception speak to wider concerns about the nature of the Holocaust narrative in these early years. These original productions often experimented with the boundaries of Holocaust representation: Whose story should be staged and how? What values should be extolled for the DP audience and for the wider Jewish world? Should plays portray the struggle for immigration to Palestine, and if so, how? Were certain costumes, set designs, scenes, and themes too graphic? There was little agreement among a diverse DP population regarding these matters. Rather, these discussions revealed—both on stage and off—Jewish DPs’ active engagement in the production of memory.57

55. The author was unable to find further information on this writer. 56. For a full account of the reception of the play Ich leb, see Feinstein, Holocaust Survivors in Postwar Germany, 233–34. 57. For an overview of the various types of DP performances and their reception, see ibid., 226–38.

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DOCUMENT 5-9: Program and synopsis of the play Ich leb, by Moshe Pintschewski, directed by Israel Segall, produced by the Munich Jewish Theater, 1946–1947, USHMMA RG 68.097M, folder 2, image 2186 (original in Yiddish and English).

I am living M. Pintschewski 1st Act A collective camp on a cemetery. The Jews driven together are extremely despaired. Will their pain and torture take an end? Is there any hope? They expect the answer for these burning questions from Prof. Zalel Shafer, the

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Chapter 5 most respected and learned man among them. Now he is a prisoner of the camp. Schafer, however, has no answer for the questions. But this is coming from the part of another Jew, Levi Stelmach, “Don’t despair, we must fight.” The sick Benjamin Pawes sets an example of courage and iron will. He organizes an underground movement which he has to pay with his young life. His fiancée, Miryam, Zalel Schafer’s daughter, helped him in his activity. She is sacrificing and brave and comforted the prisoners, “to endure until our will come.” Miryam disguised herself as an old woman in order to evade the eager eyes of the Ukrainian camp police. Levi Stelmach does not find a possibility to get in contact with the partisans, and he agrees with other Jews to declare him dead. Thus he will be carried out from the camp together with the other dead. At this time the partisans make a sudden attack upon the camp and take Stelmach along with them. The partisans are thrown back by the Germans and Benjamin Pawes falls into German captivity. In connection herewith Zalel Schafer is called to the Gestapo boss. Miryam is sought by the Gestapo, but in vain. All investigations remain without success, as the Jews declare that Miryam is dead. 2nd Act Johann von Kitel, Gestapo boss orders to evacuate the camp on account of the approaching enemy. The staff-officer Dr. Georg Deber is harassed by the front-news. He sees that the situation in which they are, is critical. Deber’s excitement increases, he is depressed and despairing for the enemy is approaching ever more. They are surrounded. He expresses his doubts toward the Gestapo boss, explains to him that their situation is hopeless, and a fight with the Jews ridiculous. Zalel Schafer becomes the senior of the Jews. His task is

Jews and Displaced Persons Camps in Postwar Europe to bind Jews for “government purposes.” This, however, is only a pretext by which the arrested Jews are totally demoralized. Paul, an inferior to Kitel, brings the report after unsuccessful investigations, that Miryam has died. Kitel, however, does not believe this and orders to arrest a group of Jews as hostages, among them also the old woman with the glasses who had attracted his attention at his last inspection in the camp. Von Kitel incites the arrested Jews against Schafer and hopes to learn thus the whereabouts of Schafer’s daughter Miryam. But nobody discloses the secret, though their despair is very great. Now Kitel has Zalel Schafer brought forward and orders him to call over the list of Jews who are to be evacuated. After the call, Schafer is marched off by order of the most furious Kitel. Miryam, who is overwhelmed by grief, calls her father by name and so reveals herself. All Jews are marched off; only Miryam remains with the Gestapo boss. This one forces Miryam to work as person of confidence of the Gestapo, remarking that her father as well abide by the order and is even disposed to comply with the desires of the Gestapo boss, hoping thus to be able to save her father. The maid-servant Maryanke, who serves the officers, is the secret liaison man between the partisans within and outside of the camp. She succeeds in handing out a false pass to Miryam with which she can leave the camp. Miryam kills von Kitel and flees into the woods. Zalel Schafer and Herschele the violinist get liberated by Deber who despairing at his situation intends thus to sue for friends among the prisoners. He releases them, saying that they might think of him with gratitude if another time should come once. Zalele Schafer and Herschele flee into the woods. 3rd Act Zalel Schafer and Herschele lost each other in the woods. Up to now Zalel has not yet any news about Miryam. Incidentally Schafer and Herschele meet again. Maryanke, too, meets with them in the woods. She hurries

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Chapter 5 to town with important news and a summons to the partisans. She is surprised by Paul, is involved in a fight with him and kills him, together with Zalel Schafer who comes to help her. Now Maryanke calls together all the partisans. Among them is Levi Stelmach, too, who informed Zalel that Miryam stays with them. Zalel and Herschele join the partisans.

CHAPTER 6

Citizenship, Nationhood, and Homeland JEWISH AND NON-JEWISH ENCOUNTERS AND THE ZIONIST IDEAL

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ISPLACED PERSONS operated in a world in which the context of “home” was fluid, unstable, and, at the same time, idealized. What happens when, as the previous chapter explored, the camp itself becomes “home” for years at a time, while Allied authorities simultaneously attempt to resettle and relocate survivors, refugees, expellees, and DPs outside the militarized occupied zone of Germany? Where was “home” for the thousands of refugees and expellees from eastern Europe who no longer wished to reside behind what was quickly becoming the communist iron curtain? Finally, how did the promise, if not necessarily the reality, of a possible Jewish homeland in Palestine impact the complex landscape of these interwoven, yet at times competing, groups of Jews? While Jewish survivors had these conversations among themselves, their interactions with the postwar world and the emerging political landscape— be it welcoming, hostile, or indifferent—impacted their choices. The options presented to them varied greatly based on individual circumstance, wartime experience, country of origin, and the locality in which they found themselves at the war’s end. This chapter addresses how Jewish displaced persons, refugees, expellees, and returnees dealt with and perceived the complex political landscape surrounding them. No choice came without consequence, negotiation, or dispute. For Jews who placed their hopes in a Zionist future, much discussion

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surrounded the particular vision for a future Jewish state and the place of survivors within it. For those who returned to previous homelands, the nationalist aspirations of emerging nation-states often wrote out the possibility of a Jewish presence. For those reentering a communist state, conflicting narratives often emerged; while emerging communist governments officially decried antisemitism, contrary policies continued and often thrived. Overall, then, this chapter explores how surviving Jews traversed these diverse and often treacherous political landscapes, both physical and imagined, on their way to establishing a home outside the ravages of war, persecution, and genocide.

IMAGINING “HOME”: JEWISH DISPLACED PERSONS AND DIFFERING VISIONS OF ZIONISM What one might call “DP Zionism” remained a diverse and varied set of organizations, ideals, and outcomes that could operate in concert or in competition with one another. The scholarship surrounding DP Zionism has typically emphasized two opposing explanations for its source. On the one hand, writers like Zeev Mankowitz argue for a kind of “intuitive Zionism” among DPs, in which the desire for a homeland became central to the reconstitution of a postwar Jewish identity.1 Others, such as Idith Zertal, have suggested that Zionism was, to a certain extent, thrust upon Jewish DPs by eager emissaries from Palestine who seized on a chaotic postwar period to lay further groundwork for the Jewish state that Britain had promised.2 Avinoam Patt endeavors to find a middle ground between these positions.3 No matter how one analyzes the causes of DP Zionism, however, its profound impact on the mind-set, daily life, and politics of the Jewish population in the DP camps remains undeniable. While the specter of Zionism loomed large, there was hardly consensus among the various Jewish political parties in the postwar era. Indeed, the Jewish Labor Bund (founded in Vilna in 1897, the very same year as the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland) provided a vociferous debate against the principle of a Jewish state. Focusing instead on the Marxist battles for class equality and against economic disparity, the Labor Bund continued to envision a communist ideal in the postwar era. As document 6-3 demonstrates, the Bund 1. See Zeev W. Mankowitz, Life between Memory and Hope: The Survivors of the Holocaust in Occupied Germany (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 69–87. 2. Idith Zertal, From Catastrophe to Power: Holocaust Survivors and the Emergence of Israel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 1–16. 3. See Avinoam Patt, Finding Home and Homeland: Jewish Youth and Zionism in the Aftermath of the Holocaust (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2009).

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was in the minority—and, its adherents felt, often at a distinct disadvantage— within the Jewish DP camp population. Ultimately, as Zvi Gitleman points out, “the assumption of the Bund that socialism would solve the ‘Jewish problem,’ along with all other ethnic problems, was contradicted by the failure of the states that called themselves socialist, most notably the Soviet Union, to solve not only the ‘Jewish problem’ but those of other peoples and cultures.”4 Today, the Bundist ideals of viable Jewish life in communist eastern Europe appear misguided at best. In the immediate postwar period, however, they were both sincere and much discussed.5 While large umbrella committees served to represent DPs to either the US or the British army administration and to the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), smaller, often prewar Zionist, communist, and socialist groups also vied for membership within the DP camps once Jewish self-rule was firmly established. The diversity and disagreement among these organizations ultimately demonstrates the multiple visions for the political and national future of the Jewish people in the postwar years. Indeed, many prewar Zionist groups attempted to reconstitute themselves in 1945. Movements such as Hashomer Hatzair, a socialist Zionist youth movement, ran its own schools and kibbutzim (collective farms); other movements, such as the labor party, Mapai (whose leader, David Ben-Gurion, would become the first prime minister of the new State of Israel in 1948), conducted similar activities.6 Still other movements pursued different avenues toward establishing a Jewish state. The orthodox Agudat Israel, which had rejected Zionist ideals in the prewar period, now called for a Jewish state based on an understanding of the biblically based “promised land.” In sharp contrast, the Revisionist Party held strongly right-wing, irreligious views that called for a proactive, military stance in establishing a state. In the initial postwar years, many of these groups came together under the umbrella of the United Zionist Organization and Ichud (Unity), a movement that called for the association of various Zionist groups under one banner for a common cause. However, by the spring of 1946,

4. Zvi Y. Gitelman, ed., The Emergence of Modern Jewish Politics: Bundism and Zionism in Eastern Europe (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003), 8–9. 5. For an overall history of the Bund, see Daniel Blatman, For Our Freedom and Yours: The Jewish Labour Bund in Poland, 1939–1949 (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2003). 6. For details on Mapai’s activities with the Jewish DP population, see Yehiam Weitz, “Mapai’s Programs Regarding She’erit Hapletah,” in She’erit Hapleatah, 1944–1948: Rehabilitation and Political Struggle, ed. Yisrael Gutman and Avital Saf (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1990), 405–17.

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this coalition had devolved into seven different entities.7 Document 6-1 is the text of a campaign poster for the Ichud party from the Landsberg DP camp. It makes the case for uniform and independent representation. In fact, the poster goes so far as to request independent, UN national status for Jews.8 The question of exactly what that might look like, however, it leaves unanswered. DOCUMENT 6-1: Yiddish-language election poster issued by the Zionist Ichud party in the Landsberg DP camp, Germany, October 1945, USHMMPA WS# 20071 (translated from Yiddish).

ICHUD! ICHUD! To all Jews of Landsberg! Elections for the Jewish administration will take place on Sunday, October 21. For the first time in many years, you will have the opportunity to choose and determine the people capable of leading and representing you both internally and externally. Considering the gravity of the situation we now face, the heads of all social groupings have come to an agreement and consensually recommend to you persons worthy of representing you. Candidates are proposed: 1. who demand the Jewish people be recognized as an independent national entity, equal in rights to all other peoples; 2. who demand the immediate opening of the gates of Eretz Israel and the creation of a Jewish state; 3. who demand the recognition of the Jews as an allied nation and their treatment as a free people, just like all other peoples of the United Nations; 4. who demand Jewish self-administration, national discipline, protection of Jewish honor for the individual Jew and for the entire people;

7. Mankowitz, Life between Memory and Hope, 99–100. 8. Here, the international status accorded by the United Nations refers to its post–October 1945 establishment rather than the abbreviation for wartime Allied powers.

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5. who in years of struggle, in years of pain, and in years of abuse held high and honorably the flag of national and social liberation, of social purity and social devotion; 6. who in various realms of activity have proven their understanding and capabilities; 7. who have never used their social engagement for personal enrichment. [. . .]

While Ichud advocated for unity along social and secular lines, the poster in document 6-2 demonstrates a very different Zionist perspective: it introduces a religious Zionist perspective—a stance nearly unthinkable prior to the war. In this poster, the Agudat Israel (Union of Israel) party advocates for the abandonment of Jewish life in Europe. Using religious overtones, language, and metaphor, the party aims to encourage resettlement in Palestine. Indeed, by framing settlement in (or, at the very least, support of ) a Jewish state in sacred terms, the poster seeks to attract a religious Jewish population that was once profoundly anti-Zionist in its orientation. DOCUMENT 6-2: Poster, Agudat Israel, February 18, 1947, religious Zionist political posters, DP camp, USHMMA RG 68.097M, folder 1, image 2266 (translated from Yiddish).

We can only rely on our father in Heaven You lost all, but not the belief and security in God, the strength which gave the Jewish nation strength to go on in the difficult Diaspora. The faith that led us in the centuries through blood and fire, and through which our parents perished in the name of “Kiddush Hashem,” with the shout: Hear O Israel, on their lips. And in this time the Jewish nation calls to us: Each will assist his neighbor and say to his brethren be strong! Brother and friend be strong and strong for your brother. Everybody abandoned us, we have to help ourselves.

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Chapter 6 All hate Jews, so we have to help each other as the Torah teaches: Love thine neighbor as yourself, in Eden you will see what you lost. You were left alone; without father and mother, you have lost the warmth of home, and now you stand a wanderer with a cane in hand at the cross roads, searching for the right way. Brother give us your hand, we want to guide you to the right way. Yes, the road is hard, many obstacles, even though you are weak, make it to our camp. We must get out of here. We do not want to be a nation of parasites in Europe, this is not our place, nor our holy land. The Holy Land awaits us, our mother Zion with outstretched arms. There we will build our future, there we will regain our future, we will regain our moral balance. Prepare yourself to receive the spiritual and holy treasures of your nation. Learn the living language of Eretz Israel, the language of our holy prophets. Do not waste the time on nothingness, throw away the golden calf, don’t worship mammon. You alone have already passed a bitter moment and learned self-help. Learn a profession, become a productive member of your land. Brother, lend a hand and carry bricks to rebuild the land of our people in the spirit of our Torah. Workers of Agudat Israel Secretariat in Germany Munich, February 18th 1947

While DP Zionism flourished for both ideological and at times practical reasons, the communist Bund still operated, albeit as a distinct minority. The Bund supported Zionist efforts in name; however, it advocated equally vociferously for the local settlement and integration of Jews in postwar Europe. Thus, the Bund aimed to foster Jewish life locally rather than send aid abroad or encourage large-scale immigration across the sea to Palestine. To many DPs and DP camp leaders, the Bund’s hope seemed deluded at best. Indeed, by 1947, only 949 of the 200,000 Jewish DPs in occupied Germany were affiliated

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with the Bund.9 And, as Document 6-3 shows, they often faced discrimination from camp administration.10 Ultimately, the heated political discussions (only touched on here) asked whether all hope lay in Palestine or, as the Bund insisted, Jews could reconstitute life locally. What type of Zionism should be pursued? Was a strong ideological tie to and desire for a new Jewish state a prerequisite for immigration in the first place? In the aftermath of tragedy, there was no single answer to the question of postwar Jewish life. Perhaps, in the end, the “solution” lay in the debate itself, which performs an active form of survival embedded within the very existence of the argument. DOCUMENT 6-3: Statement by Kupper,11 representative of the Jewish Labor Bund in Salzburg, Austria, November 11, 1947, to the AJJDC European Headquarters, Paris, USHMMA RG 68.066M, reel 12 (translated from Yiddish).

To Mr. Jack Unterhalter, Area Director12 As leader of the “Bund” group in Austria, I am pleased to give herewith a short review of AJDC activities on behalf of the Bundists in the Austrian camps: We, the Bundists, have met with great difficulties which were raised by the Camp Committees in different ways: Our members were dismissed from work, thus losing their chance of better living. The Committee’s intention was to put pressure on these people and induce them to break with the party. Physical force and insults were used as weapons against us. The Bundists were not considered for food and clothing distribution.

9. Margarete Myers Feinstein, Holocaust Survivors in Postwar Germany, 1945–1957 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 271. 10. See ibid., 269–73. For more information on the life of the Bund in the postwar period, see David Slucki, “The Bund Abroad in the Postwar Jewish World,” Jewish Social Studies 16, no. 1 (fall 2009): 111–44. 11. The author was unable to locate the full name of this individual. 12. The author was unable to locate detailed information for any of the men mentioned in this document.

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Chapter 6 We held a conference in Camp Hallein13 to discuss possibilities of emigration. When the committee had learned about it, they organized Zionist groups, both left and right, and broke into Mr. Hollander’s flat, destroying windows and furniture, beating our comrades with iron sticks, and throwing stones at them. A short time later, an IRO [International Refugee Organization] representative, Mr. Katler, came to Camp Puch14 to register our party members for immigration to Sweden. The Camp Committee immediately organized different groups under the leadership of Mr. Silberstrauch, the “Ihud”15 representative who beat our comrades, and demolished Mr. Kupper’s flat. At the same time the windowpanes of Mr. Katler’s car were broken. As for me, they terrorized me and used different other means, so as to compel me to leave the camp altogether for some time. [. . .] We, the Bundists, did not want to break openly with the existing camps on Austrian territory, and that is why we complied with the Central Committee’s request and suggestion which, unfortunately, has not been fulfilled. Considering the fact that the promises of the Central Committee had not been realized, and we continue to be persecuted and dismissed from our jobs, we had to approach the AJDC about it. After I had come to the AJDC office I wanted to see the Director. I was, however, received by Mr. Reingold, who told me that he was the Director and could arrange and settle everything. Upon my request that I would like to see Mr. Friedman, I was told by Mr. Reingold that Mr. Friedman was absent—which was absolutely not true. After I had related to Mr. Reingold about the conference at Col. Hill’s, and the following facts of regular discrimination against us, I received this answer:

13. A DP camp in the Salzburg area that offered vocational training to predominantly Hungarian and Polish Jews. For more information, see Michael John, “Dislocation, Trauma and Selective Memory—Austria 1945–1950: Recollections of Jewish Displaced Persons,” Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History 19, no. 3 (2013): 73–104. 14. A transit camp run by the AJJDC and administered by UNRRA. 15. Please see earlier discussion of Ichud as the unity political party.

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You, the Bundists, are not regarded as Jews, and you will therefore not receive any assistance. Some action should be started in order to banish you from all the camps. What the Camp Committees are doing to you is not sufficient— he added. At that, Mr. Reingold used various expressions which cannot be publically used. When I remarked that I would have to blame publically his illicit action and expressions toward us, both as an AJDC representative and as a Jew, Mr. Reingold replied, not without irony, “You can request food and clothing from the American Bund; here there is no room for you.” [. . .]

Zionist political movements within the DP camps sought to convince the greater Jewish population of their cause. One major possibility for young people who wished to prepare themselves for possible immigration to Palestine rested with the kibbutz movement on the site of various concentration camps. Document 6-4 consists of a memorial book from one such kibbutz movement on the site of the former Buchenwald concentration camp. These collective agricultural settlements did not arise solely in the postwar context; indeed, kibbutzim had existed in various Zionist communities throughout Europe before the war.16 Meant to train young potential immigrants (olim, in Hebrew), life on a kibbutz taught members various farming techniques that they would presumably use in Palestine. In addition to undergoing this vocational training, kibbutz members also prepared for their transition by learning Hebrew, as well as Jewish and Zionist history. Not all members of the kibbutzim in DP camps were self-avowed Zionists, however. In fact, some came to these groups simply because they had nowhere else to go. Becky Althoff, psychiatric consultant for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee at the Foehrenwald DP camp, was harshly critical of the kibbutz at Hochland Lager, as noted in her report to UNRRA on June 7, 1946:17 “Several with whom I spoke, showed deep conflict as to whether they are to remain in this group congregate living or not. They seemed overwhelmed on the one hand, by a desire to live individually and make their own choices and a feeling of gratitude toward the Kibbutz for taking them in, when they had no other place to go.”18 16. See Henry Near, The Kibbutz Movement: A History, 2 vols. (New York: Littman Library through Oxford University Press, 1992). 17. See document 3-6 for Althoff’s assessment of children in the Kinderheim camp. 18. Henry Holland Collection, USHMMA RG 10.146.

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The members of Kibbutz Buchenwald hand made the booklet in document 6-4 for Major Alexander Rosenbaum of the Geringshof DP camp19 in recognition of his efforts on their behalf. Three former members of the Zionist youth pioneer movement Hashomer Hatzair—Arthur Posnansky, Yechezkel Tydor, and Eliyahu Gruenbaum—had formed Kibbutz Buchenwald.20 All concentration camp survivors, they created the first training farm in postwar Germany on an estate near Eggendorf on June 3, 1945. On June 23, they moved to Geringshof in the American military zone to avoid Soviet control. The group concerned itself with both the practical and philosophical needs of its members. Practical questions included how to acquire enough food and how to care for the orphaned. On a philosophical level, they considered how observant they wished to be, the ethics of cultivating German soil, and even whether the kibbutz was only a temporary stop on the way to emigration.21 On August 27, 1945, the group left for Palestine. The final image in the booklet is a photograph taken on the eve of this departure.

19. Alexander (also Alex, Antzel) Rosenbaum (b. 1903) was born in Russia or Poland and immigrated to Chicago with his Yiddish-speaking family as a young child. He became an attorney with a private practice, served with the Illinois National Guard, and began active service in March 1941, serving with the 70th Infantry Division during the war. He rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel and may have served as the military governor in Fulda after the war. See donor’s file, USHMMA Acc. 1996.15; US federal censuses for 1910, 1920, and 1940. For more information on the Foehrenwald DP camps, see Angelika Königseder and Juliane Wetzel, Waiting for Hope: Jewish Displaced Persons in Post–World War II Germany (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2001), 95–166. 20. Tydor may have been Chaskiel Tydor (b. 1903?–1993) born in Bochnia, a town near Kraków. Artur Posnanski (b. 1912) may have been a German Jewish tradesman who was originally arrested in February 1943 in Berlin, where he lived and had once been active in Hashomer Hatzair. All three eventually landed in Palestine/Israel after the war. See USHMM ITS Collection Data Base Central Name Index. For more detailed information on these three Buchenwald survivors, see Judith Baumel, Kibbutz Buchenwald: Survivors and Pioneers (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997); Avinoam J. Patt, “Living in Landsberg, Dreaming of Deganiah: Jewish Displaced Youths and Zionism after the Holocaust,” in “We Are Here”: New Approaches to Jewish Displaced Persons in Postwar Germany, ed. Avinoam J. Patt and Michael Berkowitz (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2010), 105–6. 21. For a full consideration of this and other kibbutzim for Jewish DP camps, see Patt, Finding Home and Homeland, 13–67. For more information on Kibbutz Buchenwald specifically, see Baumel, Kibbutz Buchenwald.

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DOCUMENT 6-4: Booklet given to Major [Lt. Col.] Alexander H. Rosenbaum, Geringshof DP camp, Germany, August 1945, from the Kibbutz Buchenwald, USHMMA Acc. 1996.15 Lt. Col. Alexander H. Rosenbaum collection (original in Hebrew, Yiddish, and English).22

Concentration Camp Buchenwald We are free. The dream of six years is a reality. But, are we free indeed? No, the camp robbed us of our dignity and morality, deprimated everything that was good and human. Work—there is only hatred for it. Work was the means to kill us! But we are free—No!! We do not want to be drown in the deeps of life, while we escaped from the deeps of death. We are anxious to go to Eretz Israel Home. Our homes are destroyed, Palestine is our home. But, we want to go there prepared. On Friday, May 25th 1945 we erected in Eggendorf the “Kibbutz Buchenwald.” Now we like our work. We create, build—there is something already, achieved. Difficulties again. Some political changes. The territory 22. Poor English and misspellings left as in original.

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Chapter 6 is occupied by the Russians. We must move. We have to start another time. It is hard. We take hold of Gehringshof. No bed, no table, no locker, no tools to do some work. In our depression appears Major Rosenbaum. Like a brother—he offers his help full hand. He talks a little but does!!! There are, already beds, lockers, food enough. Quickly, but quietly. We do not see him much—only his careful hand is felt everywhere. But these has come sorrowful day in our life. Our major is leaving. We see him, in the last moments: “What do you need?” And supplies anything we ask for, to continue our work smoothly. Major!! We shall never forget you! You wrote your name deep in our hearts. We are thankful to you for your concrete work, but much more for the hope that there are many brothers of your kind, who feel for us and will give a hand, to save us from being drown.

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BETWEEN TOLERANCE AND ANTISEMITISM: MAKING A HOME IN THE DIASPORA Jewish DPs walked a tightrope between forming a “home” on seemingly temporary soil while at the same time looking forward to an imagined homeland that most had never seen. No matter the eventual intentions of the Jewish DP population, they nevertheless remained “stateless” inside the DP camps for far longer than the Allies ever originally intended. Jewish DPs had both harmonious and discordant relationships with their non-Jewish neighbors. Occasionally, the clash between local German populations and the Jewish populations in their midst turned violent. This is precisely what occurred in Stuttgart on March 29, 1946. The Stuttgart West DP camp, an all-Jewish camp located within the city, housed approximately fourteen hundred Jewish DPs in private apartments. The camp remained in operation until 1949. At Stuttgart, as indeed inside many DP camps, black market activities were part of daily life. With strict rationing in place, Jewish and non-Jewish DPs, as well as local Germans, engaged in trading that fell outside the US Army economy. While black market activities were a standard feature of life in early postwar Germany, the German public perceived Jewish DPs as the primary instigators of illicit activity. Sometimes this view grew out of subtle or obvious antisemitism that attempted to cast postwar Germans as victims of a Jewish plot to rob the country of the few resources it had left. At times it stemmed from a perception of the “foreign invasion” of eastern Europeans, who all became equated with foreign Jewish (and often Jewish communist) elements. Some cast all DPs as inherently criminal, an accusation that often had antisemitic underpinnings. Either way, local Germans framed black market activity as one more way in which the outside world was taking advantage of them.23 The raid on the Stuttgart DP camp occurred in this charged environment. On the morning of March 29, 1946, and against official regulation, German police raided the camp, seeking evidence of black market activity. Violence ensued after a German policeman shot a member of the Jewish police (who believed that the Germans had no right to be present in the camp in the first place). Mayer Gutman, chairman of the DP camp committee, blamed the raid in part on the local German newspaper, Stuttgarter Zeitung, for labeling 23. To read more about accusations of Jewish DP criminality, see Michael Berkowitz and Suzanne Brown-Fleming, “Perceptions of Jewish Displaced Persons as Criminals in Early Postwar Germany,” in Patt and Berkowitz, “We Are Here,” 167–93. For more about the German perception of DPs, the black market, and victimhood, see Laura Hilton, “The Black Market in History and Memory: German Perceptions of Victimhood from 1945–1948,” German History 28, no. 4 (2010): 479–97.

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the camp a center of black market activities.24 In the end, one Jewish survivor was killed, and several were wounded. The one fatality, Auschwitz survivor Samuel Danziger, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported, was survived by his pregnant wife and two children, also former Auschwitz inmates.25 Jewish DPs had long complained about the practice of German police monitoring this and other camps. Stuttgart was not the only locale in which such riots occurred; one month later, riots broke out in Landsberg as well.26 Document 6-5, a letter written by Jewish military officer Harry Lerner (also featured in document 5-2), describes the riot from the perspective of the American military.27 Lerner’s letter to his family has a largely exasperated tone, bemoaning the bureaucratic mishaps that, in his mind, caused the problem. Overall, Lerner expresses his frustration at the distraction; the incident has taken time away from the important work of keeping the camp running. Lerner’s letter, like the event as a whole, points to the complicated relationship between Jewish DPs and their German neighbors. Far from resolving tensions between Germans and Jews, the living situation overseen by the Allied military government exacerbated the problem. Indeed, after this riot, German police would be forbidden from entering the camp or investigating claims of illegal activities, however legitimate.

24. The DP representative was probably Izrael-Majer Gutman, born in 1906 in Radom, a teacher or writer (Schreiber) by profession. After time in the Radom ghetto beginning in 1941, he worked in a forced labor camp and was finally freed by Allied troops in April 1945 from a subcamp of the Natzweiler concentration camp. See T/D file 259729 for Izrael-Majer Gutman, 6.3.3.2/90205436_0_1/ITS Digital Archive/USHMM. 25. “Stuttgart Camp Returning to Normal after Order Barring Further Raids by Germans,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, April 1, 1946. The man who was killed was probably Samuel (Shmuel) Danziger, born in 1910 in Radom. His wife was Regina Danziger (née Mandelbaum), also from Radom. She was sent to Auschwitz in July 1944 after several years in the Radom ghetto and at a forced labor camp; she was liberated from the Gross-Rosen concentration camp. Less detail survives about her husband’s war years or about their children’s names. See USHMM ITS Collection Data Base Central Name Index. 26. Berkowitz and Brown-Fleming, “Perceptions of Jewish Displaced Persons as Criminals,” 181. 27. For further biographical information on Lerner, see document 5-2.

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DOCUMENT 6-5: Letter from Harry Lerner, Stuttgart DP camp, Germany, to his family in Nebraska, April 4, 1946, describing the riot that occurred there on March 29, 1946, USHMMA RG 19.029.01 Harry and Clare Lerner papers.

4 April 1946 Hi everybody I suppose you all know about the riot in my camp last Friday. One Jewish DP was killed, 3 injured by gun fire. Since then I have been meeting Generals, investigators, delegations, and reporters until I’m sick and tired of almost everything. Today the DPs had a meeting in the Camp commemorating the shooting, and protesting use of German police. So starting at 8:30 in the morning I was bedeviled by UNRRA, the military government, the occupation forces, and the DPs with all sorts of kleinigkeiten28 and all for nothing. I had five full colonels at the DP Center today, plus I don’t know how many lesser officers. And then, just to make the day complete, I had the “Oberbürgermeister” or Mayor of Stuttgart for dinner tonight. Since the riot last Friday I haven’t had a minute for myself, not even to open letters and read my mail. I’m assuming you know all about the riot. Do you? Last Friday 230 German police, accompanied by GIs, began a raid on the DP Center at Stuttgart West. I knew nothing until the raid was already on—although Army directives say that UNRRA directors shall be first consulted. When I arrived at the DP Center, as a result of a phone call, there were no American military personnel and only the German police. They were with dogs, had come into the center of the camp with a loud speaker apparatus telling all the people to leave their rooms and come out on the street. The MPs—there had been 8—had not been told where they were going. They and the German police in turn, with instructions that they were to protect American soldiers who might be involved. So when the DPs had to be forced from the houses they did not know what to do and left. Since then, no one in the Center has been able to do a lick of work. Reporters, investigators, visitors, litigations, reports, writings—and the 28. Meaning “details” or “odds and ends.”

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Chapter 6 day is gone. Yesterday there was a protest [illegible] in the camp, and somebody called the American troops in here to prevent trouble. That’s why all the “brass” was at my place. The troops were kept around the corner, where the brass meeting couldn’t see them. And someone [had] all the roads to Stuttgart blocked off until the meeting was over. What great lengths they went to. The Oberbürgermeister was a very nice man to meet, he explained that the police were selected not through him, as would be done in peace time, and that he knew nothing of the raid until it was over. He asked for an affidavit with me and Mr. Gutman (president of the Camp)29 as soon as the Investigation Board established by the Army makes its report. I’ve been before the board once, and I’m expected to be called again today. More time taken. Naturally everyone connected with the portion of the DP Center has been working even later than usual because of the riot. (And coincidentally, the Joint’s working quite hard in our offices now re immigration. They had a very good typist, half Jewish and half German who hasn’t come back to work since the riot. Too frightened, perhaps). We are all well and surprised at how much spirit and energy we can show. Love to all, Harry

The Jewish DP population, however, constituted only one among many groups marooned across Europe in the wake of World War II. Others—consisting of both Jews and non-Jews—also negotiated the postwar landscape. Some Jews who fell into these categories (refugees, infiltrees, evacuees, expellees, and the self-labeled she’erit hapletah) deemed rebuilding a life in Europe preferable to uprooting themselves to settle in an unfamiliar locale. These Jews, however, often came into conflict with the emerging political states as they were conceived postwar. Many—if not most—European nation-states now had different borders and included different ethnicities and nationalities than their prewar counterparts. Where and how Jews “fit” in these new political entities remained a topic of much debate. 29. Refers to Marek Gutman, president of the Stuttgart DP Camp.

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While many (although certainly not all) Jews within DP camps had Zionist aspirations, as previously discussed, some instead actively advocated for remaining on German soil. One such population comprised the aforementioned infiltree population. These eastern European Jews, fleeing the onset of a communist state in Poland and elsewhere, faced the particular challenge of settlement or resettlement in postwar Germany. They thus populated both small towns and larger cities throughout the American and British zones. Often times, cities or towns with little, if any, Jewish presence prior to the war became listed as postwar Jewish communities. Other tensions also arose between the very distinct populations of German Jews (called yekkes, in Yiddish, by the eastern European Jews) and “Jews from the east” (called ostjuden, in German, by the German Jews). Differences in religious observance, language, and culture could not be overlooked. These groups also had different ultimate aims for settlement and immigration. Many eastern European Jews held no particular attachment to Germany and instead saw this perpetrator country as a means to the final end of settlement in Palestine. Many German Jews wished to reestablish the German Jewish community, to which the ostjuden did not belong.30 Document 6-6, a letter addressed to the chief governor of Bavaria in Regensburg,31 originates from the Polish Jewish community temporarily living in the region. It pleads for the right to remain in Bavaria until immigration to Palestine becomes possible. These Jews were not alone in their predicament; by 1949, 93 percent of the Jewish population of Bavaria alone hailed from eastern Europe.32 Jewish displaced persons were not, moreover, the only itinerant and nonnative group in rural regions like Neunburg vorm Wald. Indeed, in addition to non-Jewish DPs, there were homeless postwar Germans (Evakuierte) and ethnic German expellees fleeing or ejected from eastern and central Europe (Flüchtlinge or Vertriebene). These groups competed for limited resources throughout postwar Germany, particularly in rural areas that, prior to the war, had small, religiously homogeneous populations.33 All of these difficulties were amplified with regard to Jewish DPs, who often did not share the language or culture of the countryside around them. This letter, written in broken German

30. See Michael Brenner, After the Holocaust: Rebuilding Jewish Lives in Postwar Germany (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 41–51. 31. The name of the chief governor is not specified in the document. 32. Brenner, After the Holocaust, 45. 33. For an integrated case study of the interaction between DPs, expellees, and refugees, see Adam R. Seipp, “Refugee Town: Germans, Americans, and the Uprooted in Rural West Germany, 1945–1952,” Journal of Contemporary History 44 (2009): 675–95.

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(and subsequently translated into broken English), reveals the difficulty of writing an official letter in a nonnative language. DOCUMENT 6-6: Request from the Jewish community of Neunburg vorm Wald to the chief governor of Bavaria, Regensburg, Germany, June 16, 1945, USHMMA Acc. 2009.401 Joseph W. Eaton collection, box 6, file 5 (original in German and English).34

To the Chief Governor of Bavaria in Regenburg [sic] In the name of all the Jews [who have] been political prisoners, who are living on terrain of Bavaria we beg very much the Chief Governor of Bavaria to let us stay in these towns where we live, until we shall have the possibility to emigrate from Germany to countries overseas. Most of the Jews were brought to the concentration camps in Germany from concentration camps in Poland where we have lost all our families. It is a rare case if somebody still has a living brother or another member of his family in the whole of Europe, we are quite alone. It is known that ninety percent of the Jews in Europe were killed or burnt and especially those Jews of Poland got annihilated in a most cruel way from the beginning of the war, that means, from over five years ago. As regard returning to those countries where from we came out, we declare that we were persecuted always in Poland before the war still, terrors, knockings down, discriminations and even homicides were our lot there. Alas, we are already a few only who remained by life [sic] and we are not able to fight with great difficulties. If to avoid such a fate in the future we want to begin to build a new life there where hatred is not the principle idea. We wish a moderate life and nothing more than that we shall never attain in Poland. This is our conviction. Besides it we have nothing in Poland, neither family, nor home, or estate. We don’t want a life of condemned men, we suffered so much already that nobody can imagine it even. Therefore we implore the Chief Governor to permit us to stay here in Bavaria in those towns where we are living today as long as we shall be

34. Please note that all typographical errors are in the original document.

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able to emigrate to countries where most of us have still brothers, uncles or somebody else of our families. In the meantimes we shall work here on the terrain of Bavaria everybody suitably to his profession and qualifications. We are making tryings in this directions already. For settlement our request in a good way we thank very much in advance. Neunburg, June 26th, 1945. The Jewish community in Neunburg vorm Wald.

The Polish Jews of Neunburg vorm Wald wished to remain in a locale where they could—temporarily or in the long term—create a version of “home.” Others found themselves included in groups being expelled from countries that had once included multilingual, multiethnic populations. Many times, these expellees were identified with the perpetrator nations, such as ethnic Germans in the Baltic states and Hungarian speakers in the reconstituted Czechoslovak state. Jews, however, also became caught up in these forced population movements, and the letter in document 6-7 attests to one such scenario. Forwarded to the Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities, it pleads for a reprieve from deportation out of Lučenec, a town just thirty-seven kilometers (twenty-three miles) from the Hungarian border with Czechoslovakia. In November 1938, the First Vienna Award, a direct result of the Munich Agreement that partitioned Czechoslovakia, had made the town (together with much of southern Slovakia) part of Hungary. When these lands reverted at the end of the war, these ethnic Hungarians now found themselves in Czechoslovakia. The deportations were not unique to Slovakia but rather formed part of a general pattern of voluntary and forced migrations meant to create homogeneous ethnic European states in the aftermath of World War II.35 This postwar population shift included the expulsion of German speakers from Czechoslovakia and Poland, the exodus of Italians from Istria and Dalmatia, the flight of Poles from Soviet territory to American- and British-controlled Germany, and other group movements.36 35. For a study of ethnic German Jews in Czechoslovakia in the postwar period, see Kateřina Čapková, Czechs, Germans, Jews? National Identity and the Jews of Bohemia (London: Berghahn Books, 2012). 36. For a detailed history of population movement, voluntary and involuntary, during and after World War II, see Pertti Ahonen et al., eds., People on the Move: Forced Population Movements in Europe in the Second World War and Its Aftermath (New York: Berg, 2008).

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This letter therefore chronicles the individual, personal toll taken by these border changes and population movements. An estimated ten thousand Jews survived the war in Hungarian-occupied territories and returned to Slovakia after the war; about nine thousand of those Jews repatriated to the Czechoslovak state.37 The writer of this letter, Josef Gansel,38 finds himself at the center of this complicated situation. A Slovakian Jew with Hungarian background, Gansel is threatened with expulsion in the name of cleansing the state of its wartime occupiers. At first glance, then, this letter does not appear to demonstrate an antisemitic postwar environment per se; it does, however, reveal a fundamental lack of understanding of the unique status of Jews in the aftermath of the Holocaust. The grouping of returning Jews of Hungarian decent with Hungarian fascists in the effort to rid the Czechoslovak state of its wartime occupiers seems shortsighted at best and may or may not contain overt or intentional antisemitic leanings. Either way, the larger question becomes, How could or should Jews have fit into the new national and ethnic models of Europe? Even more profoundly, where did “nationalism” end and antisemitism begin in this kind of environment? Gansel’s letter highlights but does not answer these questions, made all the more acute by the unstable national status of Jews in the postwar world. DOCUMENT 6-7: Plea for assistance by Josef Gansel against discrimination in postwar Czechoslovakia, August 1945, USHMMA RG 68.045M, reel 30, file 197 (translated from German).

I, Josef Gansel, the undersigned, request that the responsible authorities protest the actions that are currently being taken in Slovakia.

37. For a short article on postwar Jewish returnees to Slovakia, see Anna Cichopek, “After Liberation: The Journey Home of Jewish Survivors in Poland and Slovakia, 1944–46” (working paper, European University Institute, Florence, Italy, 2009). For her sustained study of this topic, see Anna Cichopek-Gajraj, Beyond Violence: Jewish Survivors in Poland and Slovakia, 1944-1948 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). 38. After his release from the infantry in November 1938, Gansel (b. 1915) worked for a time for his father, then fled to Switzerland in early 1939, where he remained an agricultural laborer and clothing trade worker until June 1946. He left Prague illegally in 1950 for Austria and managed to immigrate to Canada with his wife and son. See USHMMA ITS 3.2.1.4, CM/1 file originating in Switzerland; testimony of Joseph Gansel, USC Shoah Foundation, VHA #7355.

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In 1938 I was a Czechoslovak soldier. Immediately following the Munich Agreement I emigrated because my hometown, Lučenec, was ceded to Hungary. In 1944 I obeyed the military call-up, and I now work at the Czechoslovak Consulate. Under the Hungarians my father lost his business license, and immediately after the German invasion in March of last year, he was placed in the Nagy Kanisza concentration camp.39 My mother and three sisters were deported to Auschwitz, and from there my sisters were taken to the Oranienburg concentration camp.40 Only two sisters survived Hitler’s atrocities, and now they face the threat of having to share the fate of the fascists and of being deported to Hungary with 50 kg [110 pounds] of luggage since their native language, like mine, is Hungarian. We all speak fluent Slovak, although the population of my hometown mainly speaks Hungarian. I request that you protest this outrageous injustice so that loyal citizens of the republic and those who had to suffer the most under Nazism are not placed in the same category as the Nazis simply because they did not speak the desired language as children. I convey my deepest thanks in advance for your friendly efforts. Sincerely yours, Josef Gansel 39. Gaspar Gansel (b. 1884) was probably killed in Auschwitz. See Yad Vashem, Central Database of Shoah Victims Names (http://db.yadvashem.org/names/search. html?language=en). 40. His mother was Hedvig Gansel (née Reif; b. 1886), a salesperson by training, probably killed in Auschwitz. His sisters were Elona Gansel (age and fate unknown); Laura Kratochvil (b. 1919), who survived Auschwitz, Ravensbrück, and forced labor in Berlin and later moved to Israel; and Renee Lantos (b. 1920), who also survived Auschwitz, Ravensbrück, and forced labor in the vicinity of Berlin, then returned to Prague and later emigrated to Guatemala. See USHMM ITS Collection Data Base Central Name Index; Yad Vashem, Central Database of Shoah Victims Names (http://db.yadvashem.org/names/search. html?language=en).

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While Gansel’s letter describes a process of exclusion from the prewar state, for the Soviet Union (at least in the initial postwar years) the return of surviving Jews provided an opportunity for reintegration into and reeducation within the communist body politic.41 Document 6-8, a report submitted to the World Jewish Congress, depicts the wartime and postwar USSR as a veritable utopia for Jews, a place where one could excel in the professional world, attain the highest military honors, and receive earned and deserved respect. Indeed, the report begins by contrasting the relative tolerance encountered in the Soviet Union with the experience of Jewish soldiers who abandoned the Polish Home Army on January 16, 1944, due to ill treatment and antisemitism.42 The content of the report no doubt reflects the influence of the communist ideology and propaganda of this early postwar period. Indeed, at this early stage, Jews were seen as one subgroup among the larger population of “peaceful Soviet citizens” who had suffered during the war.43 At the same time, in the immediate postwar period, Jewish religious institutions such as synagogues and burial societies were in fact allowed to function under communist supervision.44 Moreover, as discussed in chapter 3, about 230,000 Polish Jews survived the war in Soviet territory; while they certainly suffered harsh conditions, these Jews nevertheless escaped the grasp of Nazi terror and genocide.45 The report also cites the prominence of Jews in the Red Army, a topic that has received recent attention

41. For an exhaustive history of these populations from the interwar through the Cold War era, see Michael R. Marrus, The Unwanted: European Refugees from the First World War through the Cold War (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2002). 42. For a full account of this specific incident, see David Engel, Facing a Holocaust: The Polish Government-in-Exile and the Jews, 1943–1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), 108–22. 43. For an analysis of Soviet Jewish memories of the wartime and postwar period, see Anika Walke, “‘It Wasn’t That Bad in the Ghetto, Was It?’ Living On in the USSR after the Nazi Genocide,” in Survivors of Nazi Persecution in Europe after the Second World War, ed. David Cesarani et al. (Portland, OR: Vallentine Mitchell, 2010), 218–36. 44. For more information, see Yaacov Ro’i, “The Reconstruction of Jewish Communities in the USSR, 1944–1947,” in The Jews Are Coming Back: The Return of the Jews to Their Countries of Origin after WWII, ed. David Bankier (New York: Berghahn Books in association with Yad Vashem, 2005), 186–205. 45. For a detailed account of these “evacuees” and their memories of the wartime period, see Albert Kaganovitch, “Jewish Refugees and Soviet Authorities during World War II,” Yad Vashem Studies 38, no. 2 (2010): 85–121; Laura Jockusch and Tamar Lewinsky, “Paradise Lost? Postwar Memory of Polish Jewish Survival in the Soviet Union,” H&GS 24, no. 3 (winter 2010): 373–99.

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from Oleg Budnitskii, among others.46 Still, Stalin’s brutal purges, which explicitly targeted Jewish intellectuals, leaders of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAFC), and others, quickly overtook this professed environment of tolerance.47 In hindsight, then, the report’s somewhat unbridled optimism appears at best wishful and perhaps even misguided. However, in 1945, the possibility of Jewish life (in some form) in the USSR was still promising and reflected a certain daily reality, temporary though it would be. DOCUMENT 6-8: Report on the situation of Jews in the postwar Soviet Union, mid1945, USHMMA RG 68.045M, reel 5, file 38 (translated from French).

The press information about Jewish soldiers deserting the Polish army in Scotland due to anti-Semitism, as occurred in similar cases, often leads to the irony about the Jews’ “organic” (or natural) incapacity to fulfill their public duties, especially military obligations. This same old story, coming back regularly in different types of groups either in a friendly manner or among hostile circles, was an axiom in the Russian Empire, where antiSemitism was a proof of good citizenship and morality, just as it was in Hitlerian Germany. As soon as the revolution put an end to racial persecutions these same anecdotes about bad Jewish soldiers lost all their spice and signification. The highest distinction in the Soviet army is the title of Hero of the USSR. About 10% of those who have the title for military reasons are Israelites. The number of Jewish generals and high-ranking officers is relatively large in the Red Army. Simple soldiers and junior officers are similar in terms of numbers and quality to their “Aryan” and “Turanian”48 or other companions. It is true that the number of engineers, chemists, geologists, physicists, doctors, artists and writers of Jewish origin is quite high in the USSR. But this never caused disgusting scenes of supposedly Christian “colleagues” acting violently against the 46. For more information, see Oleg Budnitskii and Susan Rupp, “The Intelligentsia Meets the Enemy: Educated Soviet Officers in Defeated Germany, 1945,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 10, no. 3 (2009): 629–82. 47. For example, Stalin’s purge of some of the most prominent members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in the late 1940s and early 1950s is well documented. See Shimon Redlich, War, Holocaust, and Stalinism: A Documented Study of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in the USSR (Luxembourg: Harwood Academic Press, 1995); see also Arno Lustiger, Stalin and the Jews: The Red Book: The Tragedy of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee and the Soviet Jews (New York: Enigma Press, 2003). 48. An antiquated term referring to Finns, Estonians, and Hungarians.

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Chapter 6 “Jewish invasion.” It doesn’t happen not only because of fear of immediate repression but mainly because of the fact that all useful capabilities for the Collective are used with no limitation of race, because social parasitism is equally fought without discrimination. Under these circumstances it appears that the Jewish people are not more inclined than others to engage in useless or harmful activities. As for the famous “greediness,” it is particularly comical in a country where, before the revolution, the majority of Jewish people were living in sinking misery, and now under the new regime all forms of rapacity are legally, physically and morally impossible for anyone, even orthodox Kulaks,49 and that says a lot. Actually usurers disappeared from the immense country that long ago was forbidden to Jews and where the many Aryan proselytes and “Christianly” pious of Shylock50 were devastating the country and were soothing their victims by promising them Jewish extermination. The actual percentage of Soviet Jews in the army in fighting units as well as in scientific services in the back lines is particularly high while taking into account the horrifying loss in the Israelite population due to the massacres perpetrated by German and Romanian invaders and less vigorously by other members of the Axis. It has been noticed in areas already liberated from the occupant, a little bit more than 2 million Jews were assassinated, which represent about 2/5 of the Jewish population in the USSR, within the 1940 boundaries. Some large Ukrainian regions where the majority of the population was Jewish were found empty; the other factors of the population had been deported or assassinated too. Berdychiv, Uman, Zhytomyr, Zlatopol, and many other cities were of a similar case. One can imagine the “purification” imposed by the Romanians in cities like Odessa where half the population was Jewish, when one knows that in Eupatoria, a small nonJewish city of the Crimea, they shot 15,000 people and deported 10,000.

49. A pejorative term for Ukrainian peasants. For more information on Soviet persecution of small landholders, see Sheila Fitzpatrick, Stalin’s Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). 50. A reference to the Jewish antagonist of William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice (written circa 1596). A moneylender, Shylock embodies a paradigmatic antisemitic stereotype.

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The radio on the front, loud speakers, leaflets keep warning the invader about his responsibility and the fact that it will be held accountable if it persists in maintaining its brutal practices. We know of some isolated cases in which Hitlerian soldiers, after more or less hiding some Jews, asked them for their certificates as part of the final procedure. We have many more testimonies about inhuman brutes whose crimes are like a nightmare defying any possible reality. The Congress of Soviet Jews that was held recently in Moscow reported facts about systematic extermination of Jews fallen in the hands of the enemy, heroic Jewish actions, the USSR antiracial policy, and its efficient efforts to push back the Hitlerian scourge. Among the 260,000 Jews of Odessa, an official leaflet mentioned in 1942 that they were no more poisoning this beautiful “Romanian” city; 77,000 were found until now in the close surroundings of the city, in a state of disabled pieces. The rest apparently perished in various ways during deportation. Among the French fighters in Odessa’s catacombs, who were able to stand there for two years and a half in horrible conditions, harming the enemy constantly, there were a great number of Jews. Opposed to Zionism and Bundism for a number of reasons, but not having anything in common with the antiSemitism which it abhors, the anti-racist USSR will have earned, by its heroic struggle for independence and liberty, the recognition of multitudes of the oppressed of all races, and in this combat, to which it is obliged, it will have been able to demonstrate that, among other verities, its Jewish citizens, when placed in the desired conditions, stand out for accomplishment of their duty, for their bravery, and for their wisdom.

Among the surviving Jewish communities in Europe, Polish Jews found themselves in one of the more precarious positions after the war. Decimated by the Nazi genocide, displaced from their homes, and caught between communism and nationalism, many Polish Jews faced a nearly impossible dilemma: to return to Poland, to flee (illegally) to DP camps in Allied-controlled Germany, to remain in the Soviet Union (where those in eastern Poland had been transported), or to attempt to find other options. On the one hand, the Bund advocated for Jewish continuity on Polish soil and solidarity with the Communist Party.51 At the same time, Zionist groups pushed for relocation of the Jewish community to Palestine and drew attention to the ongoing and worsening 51. For a concise history of the Polish Bund in the postwar years, see Bożena Szaynok, “The Bund and the Jewish Fraction of the Polish Worker’s Party in Poland after 1945,” in Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, vol. 13: The Holocaust and Its Aftermath, ed. Antony Polonsky (Portland, OR: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2000), 206–23.

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occurrences of antisemitism between 1944 and 1946.52 The reality in postwar Poland constantly fluctuated and culminated with the violent Kielce Pogrom on July 4, 1946. In 1945, the political fate of Poland was far from sealed. On the one hand, the Polish government-in-exile had been operating in London since 1940. From there, it funded the “underground state” in Poland, which consisted of an illegal skeleton parliament that brought together the National Democratic Party, the Peasant Party, the Polish Socialist Party, and the Labor Party. After the Red Army liberated Poland in 1944 and 1945, however, previous association with the London government was cast as at best suspect and potentially treasonous.53 This suspicion extended to the Polish Home Army, many members of which were compelled to sign declarations of loyalty to the emerging Polish state.54 German soldiers’ discovery in 1943 of executed Polish army officers at Katyn, known as the Katyn Massacre, did not improve the Poles’ opinion of Stalin or the Red Army. All of this gave rise to the idea that Poland was the victim rather than the beneficiary of its Soviet liberators. As had happened throughout the interwar and wartime periods, Jews became synonymous with the emerging communist government. This perception quickly became a justification for widespread antisemitism and, in the case of Kielce, the murder of forty-two Jews by Polish police, soldiers, and civilians. Indeed, the stereotype of the “Jewish Bolshevik” certainly held some popular appeal, be it large, small, or somewhere in between. Document 6-9—a short selection from Ashes and Fire, Jacob Pat’s55 compelling travelogue of postwar Poland published in Yiddish in 1946 and in English in 1947—reflects this complex set of factors. A journalist and Bund member born in Białystok in 1890, Pat travelled in 1938 to New York for a fund-raising trip and remained there throughout the war. One of several Jewish refugees who 52. For a survey of anti-Jewish violence in Poland during the immediate postwar period, see Joanna Michlic-Coren, “Anti-Jewish Violence in Poland, 1918–1939 and 1945–1947,” in Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, 13:34–61. 53. Jan T. Gross, Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz: An Essay in Historical Interpretation (New York: Random House, 2007), 6–7. For more on the Polish governmentin-exile, see Engel, Facing a Holocaust. 54. Gross, Fear, 7. 55. Jacob Pat (1890–1966) gained renown as a Yiddish writer and educator in his native Poland before emigrating, becoming director of Poland’s secular Central Jewish School System. He served as executive secretary of the Jewish Labor Committee from 1939 until 1962; in the 1930s the organization provided aid to victims of Hitler’s regime. He authored over twenty books and also became a founder of the World Congress of Jewish Culture and sought to revitalize Jewish cultural life in the postwar years. See obituaries, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, April 27, 1966; New York Times, April 27, 1966, 47.

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visited Poland immediately after the war, he wrote about his experiences in the travelogue. When the book was first published in the aftermath of the Kielce Pogrom, the fate of Jewish life in Poland was far from settled.56 For even as Emil Sommerstein, president of the Central Committee of Polish Jews, warns against the nearly untenable situation of Polish antisemitism, he nevertheless “favors the idea of reconstruction of Jewish life in Poland.”57 After Kielce, much of this positive attitude, however muted, evaporated. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported of an exodus of five thousand Polish Jews to Czechoslovakia as early as July 14, 1946, in direct response to the pogrom.58 To be sure, the antisemitism present in Poland in the immediate postwar years did not mark the end (or even the beginning of the end) of Jewish life there; the anti-Zionist demonstrations in 1968 would in many ways mark a much more palpable shift.59 Nevertheless, by the time Pat’s book was published, who would light those candles—and how—had become an open question. DOCUMENT 6-9: Selection from Jacob Pat, Ashes and Fire (New York: International Universities Press, 1947), 248–54.

I think back to the things I have seen, and the talks I have had. I run through my catechism: What would the Jews of Poland do if they had freedom of action?—They would leave Poland. What do they do while 56. See David Engel, “Patterns of Anti-Jewish Violence in Poland, 1944–1946,” Yad Vashem Studies 26 (1998): 43–86. 57. The Polish Zionist leader Sommerstein (1883–1957), a lawyer, had served as a member of parliament in Poland’s Sejm during the interwar period. He was imprisoned during the Soviet occupation of Lwów early in the war. After liberation, he became part of the new provisional government of Poland, was a founder and head of the Central Committee of Polish Jews, and helped repatriate over one hundred thousand Polish Jews from the Soviet Union. See David Engel, “Sommerstein, Emil,” in YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, ed. Gershon David Hundert (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 2:1784; Nathan Eck, “Sommerstein, Emil,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica, ed. Fred Skolnik and Michael Berenbaum, 2nd ed. (Detroit, MI: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007), 19:7–8. 58. “5,000 Polish Jews Flee into Czechoslovakia despite Dangers of Journey,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, July 15, 1946, www.jta.org/1946/07/15/archive/5000-polish-jews-flee-intoczechoslovakia-despite-dangers-of-journey (accessed December 10, 2014). 59. For a micro-study of Polish Jews and their self-identification in the wake of the immediate postwar period and 1968, see Karen Auerbach, “Nusekh Poyln? Communism, Publishing, and Paths to Polishness among the Jewish Parents of 16 Ujazdowskie Avenue,” in Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, vol. 24: Jews and Their Neighbours in Eastern Europe since 1750, ed. Israel Bartal, Antony Polonsky, and Scott Ury (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2012), 275–97.

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Chapter 6 they are prevented from leaving?—They try to rebuild Jewish communities. What would Poland’s 80,000 Jews do if they were presented with 80,000 certificates for Palestine?—They would have themselves shipped to Palestine with the least possible delay. What would they do if they were given 80,000 visas to America?—They would sail for America with the least possible delay. Almost all of the 4,000 Jews who gave me letters to their relatives in America begged for visas and affidavits. At the same time the manager of a Palestine bureau told me that Jews come in thousands and ask for Palestine certificates. Is it Palestine they want then, or America? Do these facts contradict each other? No, for the Jews’ urge to leave Poland is stronger than the preference for this or that place. And yet, stronger even than their longing to emigrate is their urge for immediate reconstruction. Simultaneous with their frontier sneaking, towards Germany and the Displaced Persons camps, towards Palestine and the beckoning Eden of America, goes the upbuilding of producercooperatives—30 of them to date—of trade courses, schools, kindergartens, newspapers, magazines and theaters. Lodz is the best example; every Jewish problem goes into the Lodz melting pot where Zionism, escapism and reconstruction coexist in a single compound. [. . .] Yes, it is true that the Government disapproves of anti-Semitism. It is true also that in 1945 it contributed 92,000,000 zloties (then worth about 180,000 dollars) to various Jewish institutions. But it is false to say that only “sinister elements” engage in Jew-baiting. The Polish people as such is rotten with anti-Semitism. [. . .] But there is hope and comfort in the Jews themselves and in their brave new beginnings. Perhaps there is comfort also in the 150,000 Jews now pouring back from Russia. Some 200,000,000 zloties are required to set them up again; 100 large new homes are needed for them, thousands of ruined buildings have to be put back in condition; 40 more hostels must be set up, to say nothing of more cooperatives, schools, kindergartens, hospitals. The dreams come easily, airy castles that represent Jewish revival and reconstruction with 150,000 Jews from Russia lending a hand, with all of America’s Jews lending a hand. Where is the truth? Shall I find it in the Zamocz forest where twenty-two Jewish partisans were left unburied by their Polish murderers? Shall I find

Citizenship, Nationhood, and Homeland it on Savinsko Street in Tarnov, where a Jew was shot behind a sentried door? Or shall I find it in the thirty new cooperatives of Jewish tailors, carpenters and bakers; and in the reconstituted Jewish communities of thirty Polish cities? [. . .] I have with me a photograph taken just after the Germans had blown up the world-famous Central Synagogue of Warsaw. Flanking the entrance to the Synagogue were two massive pedestals, each supporting a gigantic carved Menorah, the ancient Jewish seven-armed candelabra. On Sabbath and festival nights these great Menorahs blazed with fourteen lights. They were ancient traditional symbols, replicas of the great Menorah which two-thousand years ago illuminated the Temple on Mount Zion, which was carried in triumph through the streets of Rome and which still graces the Triumphal Arch of Titus, sacker of Jerusalem. Through two millennia the Menorah burned in every pious Jewish home. . . . A few moments after the Germans lit the fuse, the stately edifice was razed to the ground. By some quirk of chance the two Menorahs remained standing, their arms still upraised as though waiting to be lit again.

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PART III

Taking Stock, Searching for Justice

I

N HIS OPENING statement to the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in November 1945, Chief Prosecutor Justice Robert Houghwout Jackson immediately established the historic nature of the proceedings: “The privilege of opening the first trial in history for crimes against the peace of the world imposes a grave responsibility. The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored because it cannot survive their being repeated. That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury, stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes that Power ever has paid to Reason.”1 Jackson depicts these trials and the wrongs that they seek to punish as part of a greater injustice inflicted on the world. The perspective of those Jews who testified at the trial was somewhat different. In his diary entry dated February 17, 1946, Jewish poet and Vilna partisan fighter Avraham Sutzkever described personal and communal rather than existential reasons for testifying at the trial, which he hoped to do in Yiddish: “I will go to Nuremberg. [. . .] I feel the crushing responsibility that I bear on this journey. I pray that the vanished souls of the martyrs will manifest themselves through my words. I want to speak in Yiddish, any other language is out

1. Robert H. Jackson, The Case Against the Nazi War Criminals: Opening Statement for the United States of America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946), 3.

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of the question. I spoke about this with Ehrenburg,2 prosecutor Smirnov,3 and all the others. I wish to speak in the language of the people whom the accused attempted to exterminate. I wish to speak our mameloshn.4 May it ring out and may Alfred Rosenberg5 crumble. May my language triumph at Nuremberg as a symbol of perdurance.”6 Ultimately, Sutzkever’s wish was not granted; he testified in Russian and was identified at the trial at a Soviet citizen—a designation consistent with Soviet policy to flatten rather than highlight Jewish specificity with regard to wartime tragedies. These two differing perspectives ask us to consider the nature and definition of postwar justice: For whom was it meted out and to what end? Was justice to be found in the courtroom alone, or were there other avenues for an individual or community to pursue? Part III explores the concept of postwar justice in a variety of contexts. Chapter 7 conceives of “justice” outside the context of the courtroom. Its documents examine how the complex search for relatives became its own recuperative act, driven by individuals, families, and Jewish organizations. The search for relatives thus served as a means through which surviving Jews attempted to reassemble lives and reconstitute families decimated by war and genocide. In this 2. Refers to Ilya Grigoryevich Ehrenburg (1891–1967), a leading member of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAFC) during the war. A writer, publicist, and military correspondent, Ehrenburg was frequently published in the JAFC newspaper, Einikeit. Together with Vasily Grossman, Ehrenburg was also a coeditor of the JAFC publication The Black Book, which chronicled the Holocaust in the Soviet Union. See Ilya Ehrenburg and Vasily Grossman, The Black Book: The Ruthless Murder of Jews by German-Fascist Invaders throughout the Temporarily-Occupied Regions of the Soviet Union and in the Death Camps of Poland during the War of 1941–1945 (New York: Holocaust Library and the USHMM, 1981), 571. 3. Lev N. Smirnov (1911–1986) served as the assistant chief prosecutor for the Soviet Union at the Nuremberg trials as well as at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (“Tokyo Trial”) established to try Japanese war criminals in 1946 to 1948. He later rose to become chairman of the Supreme Court of the Russian Republic and chairman of the Supreme Court of the USSR, retiring in 1984. See obituary, New York Times, March 27, 1986. 4. Yiddish for “mother tongue.” 5. Alfred Rosenberg (1893–1946) was a key Nazi ideologue. A major proponent of “racial purity,” Rosenberg established the Institute for the Study of the Jewish Question in 1939. In 1941, he was appointed Reich minister of the occupied eastern territories. Also involved in the looting of artwork during the war, Rosenberg was tried and convicted of crimes against humanity at Nuremberg and hung on October 16, 1946. See Jürgen Matthäus and Frank Bajohr, The Political Diary of Alfred Rosenberg and the Onset of the Holocaust (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield in association with USHMM, 2016). 6. Cited in Annette Wieviorka, The Era of the Witness, trans. Jared Stark (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006), 31.

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case, then, “justice” occurs through the very act of locating—or in some cases constructing—family units meant to be destroyed. Chapter 8 moves to explicit and traditional definitions of justice in the postwar period: the context of trials, the most prominent of which were the aforementioned International Military Tribunal proceedings at Nuremberg. However, other “trials” or instances of Jews within the courtroom are also explored, including trials by and for the Jewish displaced persons community regarding so-called collaborators in their midst. Finally, chapter 9 explores the conversation about and reality of restitution and reparations from both a communal and individual perspective. These monetary efforts assume their own symbolic significance in addition to a practical one: What can and should be monetarily compensated? To whom should that compensation go, and what state or national entity should pay? Overall, Part III asks us to consider the meaning and perspective of justice served and justice denied. Is justice on the world stage compatible with or in competition with that which would serve the Jewish survivors of the most calculated genocidal effort in the twentieth century? Ultimately, these documents demonstrate the fluid nature of the very definition of “postwar justice” for various groups and individuals—both inside and outside the Jewish community—and the diversity of perspectives that existed during this early period.

CHAPTER 7

The Search for Relatives

A

MONG THE most important tasks for surviving Jews and Jewish organizations was locating the living—and the dead—amid a chaotic and changing postwar landscape. During this period, Jews turned to both Jewish and non-Jewish entities to search for family members across borders. Long-standing organizations such as the World Jewish Congress (WJC), American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, and others now focused their attention on the daunting task of establishing the means and procedures for complex and far-flung searches. Additionally, newly established Jewish organizations like the Central Committee for Polish Jewry and the Central Historical Commission in Munich, among others, also engaged in vast search efforts that involved compiling and posting lists of surviving family members as well as lists of those who had been murdered. In addition to Jewish efforts, international and Allied government entities also aided in name search endeavors: the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) served as a clearinghouse for such inquiries, as did the Red Cross (the documentation of which would later become the foundation for the International Tracing Service). This vast documentation activity was not just useful for the actual tracing of relatives; indeed, the mass of evidence gathered served as an initial documentation collection effort, much of which would later form the archival foundation for the historical record of the Holocaust. Documentation originated from a variety of sources, some more reliable than others. Some lists and supporting information were gleaned from actual

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Nazi deportation lists either still located on the sites of the camps or confiscated by Allied troops. US Army chaplains who became active in the DP camps and beyond compiled other lists; still more data was gathered from the survivors themselves. This type of information relied largely on hearsay, some of which proved accurate, some of which did not. Oftentimes, a complex triangulation of all of these types of sources was necessary to track a single person or compile a single list of the living or of the dead. Beyond the actual collection of data, however, the search for relatives raises larger questions about the potential reunification of families and the implications of those efforts. What did a “reconstituted family” look like after the war? How could distant relatives now become a new nuclear family when parents, children, siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews had perished? How should orphaned or “unaccompanied children” be treated, both by aid organizations and by their extended families? Should they remain with wartime caretakers or be “returned” to relatives (familiar or estranged)? The documents in this chapter address different aspects of the search for relatives, and each contains its own complications, biases, and utility. They challenge us to consider the implications of decimated and reunified families and ask us to ponder what these terms (“family,” “nation,” “home,” among others) truly mean in a postwar era in which many boundaries—from the personal to the national—were in the process of being redefined.

CREATING LISTS OF THE LIVING AND LISTS OF THE DEAD While individuals searched for relatives through private channels and means, concurrent efforts to create lists of the living and the dead assumed primary importance for Jewish organizations and agencies. These lists originated from a variety of sources: small organizations of Jews from the same town (referred to as Landsmanschaftn), burgeoning yitzkor or memorial books from a single town or region, the efforts of the World Jewish Congress and other international organizations, and individuals who contributed names of surviving or murdered family members. One of the largest such efforts was spearheaded in the DP camps themselves, headed by US Army chaplain Rabbi Abraham Klausner. What began as a local effort soon spread to other DP camps in Bavaria, including Landsberg and Feldafing. Klausner solicited the help of the survivors in these camps to assemble this accounting of the living and the dead.1 1. See Debórah Dwork and Robert Jan van Pelt, Flight from the Reich: Refugee Jews, 1933– 1946 (New York: W. W. Norton, 2009), 346–50.

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The first volume of this list was published in July 1945 in an attempt to disseminate its contents as quickly as possible. Klausner admitted its incompleteness: “Haste took precedence over perfection. Consequently, the lists have not been systematized. [. . .] It is difficult to beg of those who have so long and so severely suffered to be patient. Yet we must constantly remind our unfortunate brethren that the tyrants destroyed our world in six years and as much as we would like to, we cannot repair it in the space of six weeks.”2 Three subsequent volumes covered the areas of Bavaria, Germany, Austria, Sweden, England, and Australia.3 The title Klausner bestowed upon these lists speaks explicitly to their purpose: Sharit Haplatah: An Extensive List of Survivors of Nazi Tyranny Published So That the Lost May Be Found and the Dead Brought Back to Life. Understanding the fate of loved ones was, as far as Klausner was concerned, the first—and perhaps even the most crucial—step toward formulating a process of remembrance. Document 7-1 extracts the preface of the revised edition of this list published in 1946, after its first substantial revision. The volume thus contains a far more complete version of the list than was originally published. Klausner describes the chaotic scene he encountered upon liberation and ties the uncertainty of this moment to the subsequent search for home and family. He also notes the difficulties still faced in the act of list making, including the multiplicity of sources and inadequate resources. Among the most telling inaccuracies remains the complaint regarding the lack of accurate birth dates due to the “chronic falsification” that occurred among survivors during the war. Ultimately, these lists represent a systematized effort of postwar reckoning in memory of the victims and in the service of living family members.4

2. Abraham Klausner, Sharit Haplatah, Bavaria, vol. 1: 1945 (Dachau: Dachau Concentration Camp, 1945), iv. 3. See Dwork and Van Pelt, Flight from the Reich, 349–50. 4. For more information on the aid to and search for Holocaust survivors in the DP camps, see Michael Brenner, After the Holocaust: Rebuilding Jewish Lives in Postwar Germany (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997); Angelika Königseder and Juliane Wetzel, Waiting for Hope: Jewish Displaced Persons in Post–World War II Germany (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2001). For more information on Klausner and other US Army chaplains who provided aid in the DP camps in Germany, see Albert Isaac Slomovitz, The Fighting Rabbis: Jewish Military Chaplains and American History (New York: New York University Press, 1999); Deborah Dash Moore, GI Jews: How World War II Changed a Generation (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004).

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DOCUMENT 7-1: Preface and notes by Abraham Klausner, Sharit Haplatah, vol. 1 (rev.): An Extensive List of Survivors of Nazi Tyranny Published So That the Lost May Be Found and the Dead Brought Back to Life (Dachau Concentration Camp: Central Committee of Liberated Jews, Bavaria, 1946).

I met the Jew when he was free. Yet hardly a victim of the German concentration camps had permitted himself to be tantalized with the thought that someday he would be free. Observing the web of death spinning about him, he was able after his experiences in the ghetto and in the camp to time his meeting with death. Nevertheless, he played with the thought of eventual freedom as you and I play with the thought—If I were God. “On a day unlike all others,” his mind whispered to his head, “the great Allied Might will storm the gates of these camps. Its proud bars will twist and bend and kneel before the victorious armies. Soldiers of freedom will flank the gates as the great world of Justice and Righteousness enters to bathe each victim in sympathy and warm each sufferer with admiration. Then will his heroism be extolled, his body clothed and his palate sweetened with the fruits of the earth.” And he believed all he dreamed for it was pleasant to believe in it. The Armored Divisions had run over the camps, completed their missions and continued after the enemy. In the wake of the spearhead came the Medical Battalions to struggle with diseases that were to claim hundreds of lives during the weeks that were to follow. In the camp at Belsen more Jews died after the liberation than remained alive.5 I close my eyes and the Jew appears. He stands listlessly in the striped camp uniform given him by his former master. Day follows day and he struggles with his freedom. He takes hold of it and it eludes him. He measures it and it is lost. The people who gave it to him grow strange. He is free, but painfully lonely in his freedom. Senses and affections dulled through years of torture spring to life. Memories of loved ones trample recklessly through fearful thoughts that bring 5. For a detailed account of the surviving Jews of Bergen-Belsen and its subsequent DP camp, see Hagit Lavsky, New Beginnings: Holocaust Survivors in Bergen-Belsen and the British Zone in Germany, 1945–1950 (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2002).

The Search for Relatives back to life those long given up for dead. Are they of the pitiful few to whom was given the miracle of freedom The thought gains momentum and drives the lonely Jew—“Go! Eternal Wanderer, seek thy dead and give them life!” The roads are filled with human wreckage pursuing rumors to the corners of the land. One passes another on the highway and each seeks in the eyes of the other a suggestion that there is still hope from the lips of each a new rumor is awaited. [. . .] Notes on Compilation This book, the first of two volumes to be published, is a revision of Sharit HaPlatah. It includes names previously listed in the five volumes which have already appeared at irregular intervals from May 1945 to October 1945. While this book was still in the process of preparation, new lists were continuously arriving. As many as possible were included in this book; the remaining lists will be printed as a supplement. In this way, we hope to be able to reflect the changing picture of population movements among missing Jews in Germany and Poland. Although statistics on Jews in Germany and Poland have been compiled, they are admittedly incomplete and inaccurate. Conservative estimates record that 1 1/2 million Jews have survived in Europe; this does not include the Jewish population of Russia which is estimated at from 1,000,000 to 3,000,000. Of the 1 1/2 million 70,000 are now in Germany and 40,000 in Poland. The entire Polish list is not included in this book, but is available for tracing purposes. It is reliably rumored that 250,000 Polish Jews who had fled to Russia, will be returned to Poland beginning January 15, 1946. Many difficulties were involved in the compilation of this work. Insecure conditions, lack of trained workers, and insufficient coordination have resulted in understandable inaccuracies. In many instances names are listed with addresses of camps which no longer exist. The obsolete address is given primarily as a guide in cases where the present address cannot be determined. Acquaintances in the locations may sometimes be able to furnish further information. Another common error is the incorrect listing of birthdates. This is due to lack of proper documentation, memory lapses, or chronic falsification which arose from necessity during the period of Nazi rule.

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In addition to the larger Jewish organizational repositories of information, Jewish newspapers also served as crucial links between families and communities. These newspapers displayed a diversity of languages and orientations that reflected the specific needs—and at times ideologies—of Jewish communities in particular areas. Even this fairly discrete group of publications represented a plethora of perspectives. Their orientations ranged from Zionist, to communist and Bundist, to religious—to name only a few.6 In addition to articles concerning daily life in DP camps, occupied Germany, and other locales, these newspapers also featured sections devoted to the search for family members. The ads featured in document 7-2 come from a Yiddish prewar newspaper titled Dos naye lebn (The New Life), published in the United States and later in Łódź, Poland. Founded in 1908 by Chaim Zhitlowsky, a Jewish socialist and political and literary thinker, the newspaper became central in the publication of Yiddish literature, including the work of Rachel Auerbach, one of the leaders of the wartime Oyneg Shabbes Archive in Warsaw.7 These ads typify this genre of family search: the name of the family member, last known whereabouts, the person searching, and the surviving family member’s location (in Europe, South America, the United States, or elsewhere). DOCUMENT 7-2: Ads searching for relatives in Dos naye lebn, Łódź, Poland, July 17, 1946, and November 6, 1946 (translated from Yiddish).

[17 July 1946] We Seek Our Relatives Shvander, Joel, of Warsaw is currently in Argentina, seeks his relatives in Poland [and requests] that they contact his brother-in-law Volf Abfol, Łódź, 36 Kiliński St., Apartment #28. [6 November 1946] [Heading at top of page reads “American Jews Seek Their Relatives in Poland”]

6. Dwork and Van Pelt, Flight from the Reich, 350–51. See also Tamar Lewinsky, “Dangling Roots? Yiddish Language and Culture in the German Diaspora,” in “We Are Here”: New Approaches to Jewish Displaced Persons in Postwar Germany, ed. Avinoam Patt and Michael Berkowitz (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2010), 308–34. 7. For more information on Zhitlowsky (1861–1943) and the founding of Dos naye lebn, see Steven Cassedy, To the Other Shore: The Russian Jewish Intellectuals Who Came to America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 98–101. He had lived in the United States since 1906 and died in Canada while on a lecture tour. See obituary, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, May 9, 1943.

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Israel Bider (a teacher) together with his wife and two children from Międzyrzecz near Łuków, 1 Piłsudski Street; Hersh Bider (a rabbi and slaughterer) together with his wife and children from Grinke [Glinki] near Równe; sister Shifra together with her husband Yitzhak and their children from Równe, 12 Handlowe Street are sought by: Hagai Bendavid 4108 Queensbury Rd. Hyattsville, Md. [17 July 1946] [Heading at top of page reads “We Seek Our Relatives”] Rozenblum, Tzirra, née Międzygórka, and child Simek, from Warsaw, deported in 1940 from Mołodeczno to Archangelsk, are sought by husband Rozenblum, Israel. If anyone knows of their fate, please inform: Lower Silesia, Kłodzko, 37 Łukasiński Street #1

“ONLY SAD NEWS TO REPORT”: SURVIVOR LETTERS TO FAMILY OUTSIDE EUROPE One of the most common ways to inform and pursue family members remained through the practice of letter writing. The letters in this section each follow a similar format, sharing the writer’s experience during the war, any news on surviving relations, and an accounting of the dead. Taken together, they represent an early form of testimony melded together with reportage on the survival of the given family. Postwar correspondence contained a specific set of concerns that were related yet distinct from their wartime counterparts: Where would the letter writer ultimately settle, and who would be found there? How could farflung families be reunited? Where and how had relatives died, and what could be done to commemorate that loss? Document 7-3, written in 1944 not long after the liberation of southern France, concerns the Pressel family (Joseph, Miriam, and their son Philippe), originally from Belgium. Upon the German invasion of Belgium, Philippe Pressel and his parents fled to Marseille in southern France. In 1943, the family relocated to Lyon, and in 1944 Philippe was sent to live with a former teacher in Vourles, just south of Lyon. On August 28, 1944, the family was reunited, and on September 2 the city was liberated. This letter, written on September 28, recalls this moment while also chronicling what was known of the rest of the family at the time.8 8. For a full account of the Pressel family story and translations of the family’s wartime correspondence, see Philip Pressel, They Are Still Alive: A Family’s Survival in France during World War II (Pittsburgh, PA: Dorrance Publishing Co., 2004).

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DOCUMENT 7-3: Letter from the Pressel family, Lyon, France, to Elie Schwerner,9 New York City, September 28, 1944, USHMMA Acc. 2007.413 Pressel family collection (translated from French).

Lyon September 28, 1944 J. Pressel 24 Quai Fulchiron Lyon, France Mr. E. Schwerner 539 Ocean Parkway Brooklyn, NY Dear Uncle Elie, “They are still alive! . . . ” Yes, we are still alive, and we can finally breathe in freedom. We are living in Lyon since the end of [19]42. The city was liberated on September 3. We feel like the survivors of a cataclysm. The joy of feeling free is profound, but we have seen too much suffering, and we worry a great deal about all those dear to us whose fate is unknown, for this joy to be complete. It is almost a miracle that we were able to survive safe and sound from this torture. For the past two years, human life counted for nothing. Perhaps later we will have the opportunity to tell you in more detail all that we went through. On November 11, 1942, we saw the arrival of the masses

9. Elie (orig. Elias) Schwerner (1887–1974) was a manufacturer and Belgian national, born in Konin (now Poland). He immigrated to the United States with his wife and three children in 1936. See ship passenger lists, SS Washington (June 1936) and SS President Harding (November 1936), NARA, records relating to passengers, 1820–1940, RG 36, Records of the US Customs Service, 1745–1997.

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of German troops in Marseilles,10 and we had to wait until the month of August 1944 in Lyon, to see the withdrawal of this army, in endless file in front of our house, while being routed and pursued by the Allied Armies coming up from the South of France. What a relief! We waited for so long, and so fervently hoped for deliverance. Our son was evacuated under mandatory order to the countryside since last May in order to be sheltered from the bombings. We rejoined him on the 28th of August to be together no matter what would happen. The village where we found ourselves was already in the hands of the resistance, and all around the French army of the interior were attacking the German troops. Also, in the distance we could see the Allied planes diving and strafing the Germany convoys and releasing their bombs on the enemy trucks. The village was caught in a cross fire, and for several days we lived in an agonizing situation. Anyway the essential thing for the moment is that we can announce to you that we three are safe and sound and happy that we were able to save our little Philippe—who is now seven years old and who never lost hope and who had confidence in everything that we had to do to shelter him from harm. Now concerning other members of the family. Since the invasion of France, postal communications were halted and are still not normal, and we are waiting for news from various quarters. We were therefore very happy to receive news today in the form of a letter that Jacques and Jeanne Schwerner are in good health. They are still in Argenton sur Creuse. Ady is still in Toulouse and intends to rejoin her parents soon. Edmee is in Switzerland.11 Harry [Schwerner], as you probably know, was arrested in 1942 at the Spanish border just as he was intending to resume his Belgian military service; he was interned for several months in a camp in Drancy (near Paris) 10. The fall of 1942 brought the German occupation of certain areas of the previously “free” southern zone of Vichy France, including the city of Marseilles, which had previously provided a refuge for thousands of Jews. While the local collaborationist French government remained in power, a growing number of antisemitic measures were also put in place, including the stamping of identification papers with the label “Jew.” In December 1942, deportations in the south increased, with the help of local French authorities. In January 1943, the Jews of Marseilles, including both French and foreign-born, were rounded up. For more information, see Renée Poznanski, Jews in France during World War II (Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press in association with the USHMM, 2001), 356–72. 11. Edmée Schwerner, born in Belgium in 1931, escaped across the Swiss border in May 1944. See USHMM Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database (http:// www.ushmm.org/remember/the-holocaust-survivors-and-victims-resource-center/ holocaust-survivors-and-victims-database).

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Chapter 7 and was subsequently deported.12 We have not heard from him since. Licy, the eldest daughter, and her husband and two children are also safe and sound. We have not heard recently about the Kincler family.13 You probably don’t know it, but unfortunately their daughter was deported in August 1942; little Irene stayed during this whole time with her grandparents; Jacques was also arrested but was able to escape in time and went underground; we last heard from him about two months ago. We hope that we will learn soon that he too was able to celebrate freedom with his parents. We have not heard from Belgium for about six months. At that time my in-laws as well as Ella were still there, and we hope that they are safe and sound.14 My mother, unfortunately, was deported in 1942, and I have not learned her fate; my sister and her husband were also taken in 1942 to “a destination unknown.”15 Will I ever see them again? Norbert, his wife, and child underwent the same sad fate, as well as Ella’s husband, but he and Norbert have been able to communicate several times since.16 My wife’s uncles who were in France were deported . . . It is an unending list. My wife would have liked to go to Belgium immediately to see her parents except that travel by rail is not yet possible, and to go by road is an expense that we cannot afford. Since I only have your address, Uncle Elie, I cannot write to any other members of the family; therefore I ask you to please convey this letter to my family in New York, to Miryam’s two sisters, and to all the good friends who have asked about us during these hard war years.

12. Harry (Hendrick) Schwerner, born in Anvers, Belgium, in 1916, was a coppersmith by profession and the son of the aforementioned Jeanne and Jacques. He was deported from Drancy to Auschwitz in late June 1943. See USHMM ITS Collection Data Base Central Name Index; Yad Vashem, Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names (http://db.yadvashem. org/names/search.html?language=en). 13. The author was unable to identify these individuals or determine their fates. 14. His in-laws were probably Moses and Lea Schwerner (née Goldschmidt). Moses or Mozes (b. 1877?), one of Elie’s brothers, spent time in the Malines camp during the war but evidently survived. Lea passed away in 1947. It is unclear who Ella was. See USHMM ITS Collection Data Base Central Name Index. 15. Pressel’s mother, Helen (Chaja), was deported from Mechelin, Belgium, on October 27, 1942, and was killed at Auschwitz. His sister, Charlotte Hamel, and her husband, Naftali Hamel, died in Auschwitz. USHMM ITS Collection Data Base Central Name Index. For a full family history, see Pressel, They Are Still Alive. 16. Norbert Schwerner, possibly Elie’s nephew and Joseph Pressler’s brother-in-law, was born 1912 in Cologne; he was deported to Auschwitz, where he was probably killed. USHMM ITS Collection Data Base Central Name Index.

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We would like to know how you passed these last few years, if you are in good health, what you are doing, and what your plans are for the future? Where are Ruth and Sonia, how are the children, etc. . . .17 We do not intend to stay long in Lyon, but we do not know yet where we will go. Like before, we do know how long it takes for correspondence to go from France to the USA and back, so I ask you to please note that all correspondence sent to us should be temporarily sent to: Société Emile PRAT & FILS, for J. Pressel, 24 Quai Fulchiron, Lyon, France. If we leave here, the Society will forward our mail. Hoping that we soon receive detailed news from you, we send you our best wishes and kisses. Your, Jos, Mir, and Philippe [Handwritten addendum] My dear all, We have returned to life; let us hope that our dear parents are also safe and sound, as well as brother, sister, sister-in-law, brother-in-law, mentioning only the immediate family. You cannot realize the good fortune of all those who did not have to live in Europe for the last two years. As far as the future is concerned, we cannot make any plans, but I want to return to Belgium as fast as possible. Write to us quickly if possible, it has been so long since we have heard any news from the family that every letter gives us a great deal of pleasure. A thousand kisses to divide among you all. Your, Mir I would like to see you all again. I send you lots of kisses for both cheeks. Philippe 17. Ruth (b. 1907) and Sonja (b. 1909) were Miriam’s sisters and thus Eli’s nieces, daughters of his brother Mozes (b. 1877?) and sister-in-law Lea.

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The letters in documents 7-4 and 7-5 originate in the Location Service of the World Jewish Congress, established in the second half of 1942 and operational through 1947, and therefore serve as both personal searches and community records. During that time, the office handled more than two hundred thousand letters and traced 24,629 people. In July 1945, the European Tracing Office began compiling a Central Index of Jewish Survivors, which contained 566,505 cards by the end of 1947.18 Both of these letters exist in the collection as typed transcripts rather than handwritten originals—a function of their status as copies saved by the Location Service as further evidence of the Nazi genocide. Each delineates the violent loss of family by deportation and murder, as well as the desperate circumstances of the surviving family member after the war. DOCUMENT 7-4: Letter from an unnamed father in Prague (via the WJC Location Service), June 22, 1945, USHMMA RG 68.045M, World Jewish Congress Geneva Office Records, reel 4, file 29 (translated from German).

Prague, June 22, 1945 Dear Issy, I’m being offered the chance to send you a quick message through one of our soldiers. Along general lines: I returned to Prague on May 20, 1945; unfortunately I have no news at all of Suse and the children. I want to start at the beginning: We were in Prague until September 8, 1942. Your father went away on October 21, 1941, that is, in the second transport from Prague, and was deported to Łódź in Poland, where there was a big ghetto. We received one postcard from him. Nothing more, although we tried again in Prague and later on to find out what happened to him. Finally, this year I met a man in the Fürstengrube concentration camp19 18. Institute of Jewish Affairs of the World Jewish Congress, Unity in Dispersion: A History of the World Jewish Congress, 2nd rev. ed. (New York: Institute of Jewish Affairs of the World Jewish Congress, 1948), 298–300. 19. This subcamp of Auschwitz was established in the summer of 1943 on the site of a coal mine in the town of Wesoła, city of Mysłowice, about 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) from Auschwitz. The mine supplied hard coal for the IG Farben factory to be built at Auschwitz. The mine used Soviet POWs, Jewish slave laborers, and Soviet forced laborers. It remained in operation until January 27, 1945. For more information, see Geoffrey P. Megargee, ed., The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, vol. 1: Early Camps, Youth Camps, and Concentration Camps and Subcamps under the SSBusiness Administration Main Office (WVHA) (Bloomington: Indiana University Press in association with the USHMM, 2009), 239–41.

The Search for Relatives who had gone to Łódź with my father-in-law. He told me that my fatherin-law died in early December 1941 in Łódź. It was to be anticipated that he would not endure life in a concentration camp for long, especially with his diabetes. Suse does not know what I have just described, because we had already been separated by that time. The early days in Theresienstadt were terrible. Hunger and disease were rampant. The children had scarlet fever, typhus, etc. Later on, parcels could be sent, and things got better. Especially when sardines were sent from abroad. Unfortunately, we couldn’t stay in Theresienstadt until the end of the war, because the ghetto was cleared almost completely in fall 1944. On October 18, 1944, we were sent to the Birkenau-Oswieczim [Auschwitz, Oświęcim] concentration camp, and there I saw Suse and the children for the last time, at the train station. The men who were fit for work were separated from the others, and after a few days we were sent to the Fürstengrube-Ksieca camp near Kattowitz [Katowice]. There I worked in the coal mine. The food was wretched, the work hard, and after a short time I weighed barely more than 50 kilos [110 pounds]. On January 18, 1945, our camp was vacated when the Red Army was approaching. About 250 people, invalids etc., stayed behind, including me. Before the Russians arrived, another SS detachment attacked us, and around 220 people were killed, and 30 escaped, again including me. On January 29, 1945, we were liberated by the Russians. Then I was in a hospital in Poland for two months, and in April I returned via Kraków, Tarnów, Przemyśl, Lwów, Uzhhorod, and Munkács to Kaschau [Košice], where I planned to wait for the end of the war. Then, when the fighting started in Prague,20 I traveled by way of Budapest and Bratislava to Prague. There another piece of sad news awaited me. I found only my father still alive; my two brothers died the previous year, one of tuberculosis, the other of leukemia. I have little hope that Suse or the children will come back. At Oświęcim, those unfit for work and the women with little children were usually sent to the gas chambers. A fact that is only now revealed in its dreadful magnitude. Today it is proven that 5 million human beings perished in the gas chambers of Oświęcim, Maidanek,

20. The Red offensive in Prague began on May 6, 1945.

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Chapter 7 and Treblinka.21 The worst that is being said about the Germans falls far short of the truth, as I saw with my own eyes. As I said, my hope of seeing my loved ones again is vanishing. I don’t need to tell you how I feel, you know that my wife and children meant everything to me, and that’s why my attitude toward life is fairly negative for the moment. Now a few words about the rest of the family: Robert Reiser died three days after our arrival in Theresienstadt.22 Ada left Theresienstadt for Poland in October 1942. The Hellmanns went with us to Theresienstadt and went to Poland on September 22, 1942.23 There is no news of them, and it is unlikely that they are still alive. Around 30,000 Jews from Bohemia and Moravia were sent to Poland via Theresienstadt, and about 1,000 of them have come back thus far. A tragic toll. My health is good on the whole, except for my feet; I had an acute purulent inflammation in my legs. I’m living with my father, and I’ve run into a good boyhood friend here, Dr. Erwin Winternitz, who went to university with me and was also in Theresienstadt.24 I’m glad to have him here, and we want to open a law office together as soon as my apathy goes away The letter was sent with a soldier to England, and a copy was sent to me from there.

21. Although the statistic of 6 million Jews is accepted as a roughly accurate estimate of the dead, it is in fact an evolving figure about which much has been written. Leading historian Raul Hilberg contested this figure fairly early on in The Destruction of the European Jews. For a discussion of Hilberg and the statistic more generally, see David Engel, Historians of the Jews and the Holocaust (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010), 134. Further investigation has recently been revising the statistic for mass killings. See Patrick Desbois, The Holocaust by Bullets (New York: Palgrave MacMillan with the support of the USHMM, 2008). 22. Most likely Robert Reiser, born in Rakonitz in 1864, a Czechoslovakian citizen residing in Prague and a manufacturer by profession. He was deported to Theresienstadt in 1942 and died the following month. See T/D file 588309 for Robert Reiser, 6.3.3.2/102524489_0_1/ITS Digital Archive, USHMM. 23. The author has not been able to identify these individuals, the writer of this letter, or his wife. 24. Erwin Winternitz, born 1909 in Grottau, Bohemia, was a lawyer living in Kolin. After his arrest in June 1942, he was sent to Theresienstadt, then transferred to Auschwitz, where both of his parents died. He was subsequently transferred to the Schwarzheide concentration camp and sent on an evacuation march back to Theresienstadt. He immigrated to Australia at the end of 1948. See T/D file 668604 for Dr. Erwin Karl Winternitz, 6.3.3.2/103913128_0_1 and 103913128_0_2/ITS Digital Archive, USHMM.

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DOCUMENT 7-5: Personal letter from a Jewish woman in Vienna (via the WJC Location Service), August 4, 1945, USHMMA RG 68.045M, reel 4, file 32 (translated from German).

Vienna, August 4, 1945 My dear ones, By chance, a gentleman from Bern is staying with us for a few days. He came to Vienna with a Red Cross group from Geneva. We’ve had no news from you since January of this year, but we hope that both you and all our other relatives are healthy and doing well. Unfortunately, I have only very sad news to give you regarding our relatives here and us ourselves: Only Trude, her nephew Jicik, and the Koralek family came back alive from Theresienstadt.25 All the others, as Trude wrote us, were deported to Auschwitz in a transport in November 1944. What happened to them there? We’ve read enough accounts of that. But perhaps we can still hope that one or another of them will come back after all. As for us, we’ve had a terrible time of it ever since the Russians arrived. There is a great famine. There aren’t even any potatoes. For months now, we’ve had no vegetables, fruit, milk, eggs, cooking fat, meat; in short, we’ve had nothing. Our rations consist of 1/2 kilo [under 18 ounces] of bread per day, 1/2 kilo of dried peas and 1/2 liter [1 pint] of oil per month. Now poor Karl has been seriously ill since May. He had an appendectomy, and three weeks later a complication developed, with an infection of the abdominal wall. He was hospitalized for many weeks and a few days ago was brought back home, where he’s lying in bed, reduced to skin and bones. He would have an appetite, but unfortunately there’s nothing to eat. Help is needed quickly. I want to ask you to write Brother Richard26 and tell him this; it may be possible to send something from England through the Red Cross. We have money, but there’s nothing for us to buy. Ernst has lost his job, because his company was completely looted by the 25. The author has not been able to identify these individuals. 26. It is unclear who Brother Richard is.

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Chapter 7 Russians. It was awful. First the monstrous bombing and then the terrible plundering and rapes by the Russians. Karl is very grieved by the fate of his relatives, and this is very bad for the state of his health. Whether we will survive the winter is still very questionable. All the windows are broken, no heating fuel, no gas. I’ve been trying to help my Karl and Ernst get through the bad time, but if things keep on this way, I’ll be totally helpless. We no longer live in #7, but in #23. We’ve switched apartments, that is. Karl weighs around 50 kilos [110 pounds] and can’t even write, and he can walk only a few steps a day. Now I’ve let you know about our misery, and maybe God will help us in our greatest need. With hugs from all of us, and regards to all our dear relatives, your loving Annie Dear friend, I am a guest in the home of the P. family, which has been through a great deal on account of the boy’s illness. But things are getting better. The description above is unfortunately all too true. Let’s hope that the seven lean years will be followed by seven fat ones. Help can come only from other countries. Couldn’t the Swiss brothers help, too? Let’s hope they don’t fall down on the job, like the ones from America; I’m still halfway fit for work and hope, once the food situation improves, to work in my professional field again. How is your dear wife? I wish you all the best. I will give a detailed report in the near future. With a kiss on the hand for your wife, I remain your old friend, H.

Document 7-6 is a letter from Max Schweitzer, residing in Romania, to his sister, Esther Williams, in Cleveland, Ohio.27 Schweitzer struggles with the 27. He was probably Max (also Mordechai) Schweitzer, born in 1899 in Gura Humorului (now Romania). Liberated in March 1944, he subsequently went to Cyprus and from there immigrated to Israel in 1948. See T/D file 659300 for Mordechai Max Schweitzer, 6.3.3.2/103786893_0_1/ITS Digital Archive, USHMM. Esther Williams (b. 1884), a dressmaker, was married to an American and had become a US citizen. See 1940 US federal census.

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act of remembering paired with the daily concerns of survival. He delineates the precise dates of family deaths and the conditions of life in Transnistria and documents his own dire circumstances at the moment. At the end of his letter, Schweitzer notes both the secular and Hebrew dates of death for various family members—facts that would aid in the observance of a yahrzeit, or memorial. While the letter does not specifically ask for assistance, it notes (like the previous two examples) the destitute condition of the writer. DOCUMENT 7-6: Letter from Max Schweitzer, Brăila, Romania, to his sister, Esther Williams, Cleveland, Ohio, April 10, 1945, USHMMA RG 10.374 Schweitzer family papers (translated from Romanian).

Brăila, 10.IV.1945 Dear sister Esther, Some weeks ago I wrote you through the Red Cross the dates when our parents died. Now, after the post-mail communication between America and Romania has been reestablished, I want to write you more. One morning in October 1941, the prefect of Câmpulung, Bucovina, arrived in our town, Gura-Humorului, assembled the elders of the Jewish community at the mayor’s office, and told them, “You are all communists and traitors, and must leave the country.” He gave orders to all the Jews to be at the train station by two o’clock, with only hand luggage, and to leave the town in cattle cars. All the valuable things, like foreign currency and jewels, must be delivered to the mayor’s office. If somebody did not obey the order, he would be shot. The mayor permitted no exceptions. All the Jews obeyed that order for fear of being shot, because the soldiers, armed with machine guns, waited to shoot the Jews. Each one of us took only a rucksack with things, delivered the jewels and the key of the house to the mayor without receiving a receipt, and left. After some days of suffering, we arrived at Atachi (at the frontier with the Ukraine). There the representative of the National Bank took our money and gave us rubbles, exchanging 40 Lei to 1 Ruble. Before we crossed the Dniester, we were searched, and from the few things we had left, the most valuable were taken.

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Chapter 7 After we were robbed, we were thrown on the other border of the Dniester [into Transnistria]. What happened there, I think you read a little in the papers. I shall write you about our life there on another occasion. The family and I received permission to stay in Moghilev because Wumi and a few other skilled workers obliged themselves to work in a factory without a salary. Our parents arrived after a month. Before they crossed the Dniester, they were forced to stay a day and a night in rain, water, and mud up to their knees. When they crossed the Dniester, father could not walk. He was very weak and ill. I begged the officer to let them stay with us 3 days before they went further. If they had gone on without rest, they would have died on the road like thousands of other people who could not walk and were shot and left to be eaten by the dogs. Anyway, the officer agreed to let them stay with us. I am going to conclude the letter: Father died in the Moghilev ghetto on the 13th of Adar 5702.28 Mother died in the Vindiceni ghetto on the 12th of Adar Sheini 5703.29 Uncle Kiva died in Moghilev on the 21st of Nissan 5701.30 Father died from a cold and weakness. He was 84 years old. Mother, 73, and Uncle Kiva, 68. Both died of typhus fever.31 I, Esther, and the children are staying with Emanuel and waiting to go to Palestine. We are in a deplorable state, and we have nothing, are poor, and desperate. We all kiss you, Max Schweitzer

28. March 1, 1942. 29. March 19, 1943. 30. April 18, 1941. 31. His parents were Mosche and Taube Pisem. The author has been unable to locate further information on Schweitzer’s uncle.

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SEARCHING FOR JEWISH CHILDREN IN THE POSTWAR PERIOD: THE ORGANIZATIONAL PROCESS As families struggled to reunite in the postwar period, children remained among the most vulnerable and complicated populations to address. Indeed, approximately 153,000 “unaccompanied children,” as they were called, resided in Germany alone in July 1945.32 While both Jewish and non-Jewish children found themselves displaced from their homes and separated from their parents, Jewish children faced unique challenges in the postwar era. These young people had survived the war in a variety of contexts—in hiding, in children’s homes, or “passing” as Christian with families. Some had endured the concentration camp system and lived to report and record its horrors. Depending on the circumstances, then, these children emerged from the war in vastly different physical and emotional conditions. A camp survivor might be skeletal and malnourished. Children hidden in a religious environment might display more psychological scars or, having converted to Christianity of their own accord, might no longer consider themselves Jewish.33 A child hiding with a Christian family from a young age might not know or remember surviving family members now entrusted with his or her care.34 All of these issues converged upon those children declared orphans in the postwar era, raising a series of questions. Whose responsibility were the “unaccompanied” Jewish children of Europe, and to whose custody should they be returned? Could their identities be reliably determined, and if not, how could aid organizations properly decide their fates? Ultimately, how could, or should, they be reintegrated into a multitude of postwar Jewish communities—from secular, to Zionist, to religious, among others—some of which saw them not only as sacred surviving remnants but also as the future of the Jewish people?35

32. Tara Zahra, The Lost Children: Reconstructing Europe’s Families after World War II (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 8. 33. For a detailed account of Belgian children’s memories of hiding in convents and other religious environments, see Suzanne Vromen, Hidden Children of the Holocaust: Belgian Nuns and Their Daring Rescue of Young Jews from the Nazis (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). 34. For an example of a hidden child who grew so attached to her “adoptive” wartime caretaker that she initially refused to be reunited with her mother, see Sarah Kofman, Rue Ordener, Rue Labat (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996). 35. For a sustained study of children and the reunification of Jewish and non-Jewish families after the war, see Zahra, The Lost Children.

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The documents in this section approach the special challenge of reuniting Jewish children with surviving family members in the wake of the Holocaust. They speak to the organizational and individual challenges of locating, supporting, and “rehabilitating” these children. The agendas of the organizations established to locate the youngest victims of the Holocaust also greatly influenced child-tracing methods and efforts. The two letters from Robert S. and Arno M.36 in document 7-7 demonstrate one of the core missions of the WJC after the war: assisting with the rehabilitation and immigration efforts of orphaned children. These letters (contained within the same file) implore foster families in the United States to temporarily adopt the teenagers in question, who hope to leave a French children’s home in Limoges and the Bergen-Belsen DP camp, respectively. In addition to promoting the goal of emigration, however, the WJC (and other organizations) also widely used letters like these for fund-raising campaigns. Indeed, letters were often tailored precisely to tug at the heartstrings of American Jews who might give money to help resettle “lost” Jewish children from Europe to the United States or Palestine.37 Thus, these letters push us to consider not only the individual content of such pleas for sponsorship and immigration but also the mission of the organizations through which they were funneled. DOCUMENT 7-7: Letters from Robert S. and Arno M., Limoges, France, November 11 and August 4, 1945, Children’s Letters and Excerpts, World Jewish Congress series D, subseries 4: Child Care Division, 1942–1953, USHMMA RG 67.011M, box D80, file 10.

Translation of a Letter from a Jewish Boy in a Children’s Home at Limoges, France Limoges, November 11, 1945 World Jewish Congress “Foster Parents” 1834 Broadway New York, N.Y. Some time ago I wrote to the “AUFBAU” inquiring whether there exists a committee which would furnish us with the possibility of corresponding with a Jewish family. 36. Names are anonymized in the original archival document. 37. See Rachel Beth Deblinger, “‘In a World Still Trembling’: American Jewish Philanthropy and the Shaping of Holocaust Survivor Narratives in Postwar America (1945–1953)” (PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 2014).

The Search for Relatives In reply the paper informed me that my letter had been forwarded to you and, also, that you have established a “Foster Parents” service. I am a Jewish boy of 16 years of age who has gone through a terrible experience and whose parents both, unfortunately, have been deported by the Nazis. As I have no one left, my most ardent desire is to belong to a family again. This is the reason why I write to you today and am sure that you will give me a favorable answer. Hoping to hear from you and with my thanks in advance, I am, Very sincerely yours, /s/ Robert S. P.S. I have a comrade whose case is similar to mine. His age is seventeen, and he has no family left. He also would like to correspond with a family in the United States. His name is Arno M. at the same address. Copy Bergen August 4, 1945 My dear family whom I have not met: . . . I spent very little time with my parents because I was studying in Vilna. I finished there [at] a Hebrew gymnasia. Outside of the Hebrew language I am accomplished in the Polish, Russian, English, and German languages. I used to come home only a few times a year and for that reason, unfortunately, tasted very little of family life. Today I miss this sadly. From the whole family it fell to my lot alone to be saved. All else is lost. Dear Aunt, you were in Ivia, my mother once told me. Just imagine on that day that the war broke out there was a Jewish community of twenty thousand persons there. Today I am the sole survivor. So was destroyed the whole Jewish community in Europe. In some cities a few people were left, and there are some communities who do not have a single witness to tell a story of the great tragedy of a people which was destroyed in barbaric fashion. Uncle Abraham Isaac Minkin was shot together with my father on Tisha B’Av, 1941. I dug their grave. Aunt Sarah was shot on the twelfth of May,

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Chapter 7 1942.38 Aunt Musha was put to death by gas in 1943. Her daughters were also shot. Aunt Hannah—shot. My mother and smaller sister were burned alive in a death camp on August 30, 1943. I had two brothers who were put to death by gas in a concentration camp in 1943. Uncle Motel (mother’s brother) ran away someplace, and we have not heard from him. I am, therefore, the only one left in the whole family who was fortunate enough through fortuitous circumstances to have survived the war. I was very energetic. After Papa was shot I have to thank my energy and my command of the German language for being able for a time to save the family. A time came, however, when one could not help another person. Mama then gave the order that each one must save himself by his own hand and she asked each one separately that if any one of us should survive the war, we should take revenge for the innocently spilled blood of millions of our brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, infant children and old grandfathers and grandmothers. The feeling of revenge is very sweet. I have lived until the moment of the destruction of Hitlerism but also revenge one cannot take because the spirit of Nazi anti-Semitism has contaminated the entire world and we Jews do not have the opportunity as people to do anything. My dear ones. You cannot understand how strong was the desire to live on the part of each of us. After I witnessed the shooting of hundreds of thousands of Jews, small children buried alive, thousands of people burned alive and gassed, I was determined to survive at all costs the end of the horrible play. Six times I ran away from under the guns. I ran and they shot after me but no bullet ever struck me. I ran away from the most horrible concentration camp and no one could catch me. I have suffered lonesomeness, hunger, cold and want. You cannot imagine what sort of a life it was. There were times when I ate once in thirty days, twenty [sic] bread and half a liter of water. Without stockings, without a shirt, in a thin summer dress, wooden shoes in the most severe winter cold. Working hard all day without food and eaten up by a million lice. Sleeping three

38. This uncle may have been Abraham Isak Menikin, a rabbi or ritual slaughterer in the town of Ivia/Ivje (in prewar Poland), whose wife’s name was Sara. See Yad Vashem, Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names (http://db.yadvashem.org/names/search. html?language=en). The author was unable to trace the names of Arno’s other family members.

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hours a night, half standing, half sitting over a period of half a year. Sick from typhus, malaria, and various other camp sicknesses, and with all that the fear that they should not burn me to death. And I still survived to this day, healthy but with a broken heart, a one hundred percent orphan. I am now in a camp at Bergen, Germany on the English side, two kilometers from the most horrible concentration camp in the whole world—Belsen. I was there for almost a year. And now the question is what of the future. I do not want to go home. My home has been soaked with the blood of my dear ones. I would like to go to Palestine, but this has to take years before I will be able to get there. Perhaps you could take me to you for a short time? If it would be possible I would be very grateful because it makes no sense to live in a camp after the war.

The World Jewish Congress operated from a number of different offices in the United States, Europe, and Palestine. After the war the Child Tracing Service (which would become the International Tracing Service [ITS]) worked from within the DP camps to trace unaccompanied children, place them, and, if possible, reunite them with family members. The ITS began its existence under the Allied High Commission in Germany. Tracing efforts had begun, however, during the course of the war. As early as 1943, the International Red Cross organized the Foreign Office Relief Department under the direction of Major Eyre Carter.39 Located in Frankfurt am Main, the organization was initially created to aid displaced persons and refugees. At the end of 1945, a new service was created, the Child Tracing Service, for the purpose of reuniting children separated from their families during the war; to that end, this organization interviewed some two hundred thousand children and adolescents. By late 1946, however, efforts began to centralize the tracing services for displaced persons and refugees. The central site of Bad Arolsen, Germany,

39. Eyre Carter continued his relief work after the war, becoming assistant secretary of the National Council of Social Service in Britain by 1947.

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was chosen as the repository of the vast documentation being amassed by the Allies.40 The documents within the ITS collection thus tell the stories of families lost and families found. Document 7-8 shows the beginnings of an ultimately failed search for the whereabouts of Edit Neumann, born in Berlin in 1938. In the fall of 1945, Else Heinrichmeyer, Edit Neumann’s aunt, sent an inquiry to UNRRA’s Central Tracing Bureau regarding her niece’s fate. In her letter dated November 4, 1945, Heinrichmeyer notes her willingness to take care of the child in the absence of her parents, both killed at Auschwitz. The resulting investigation into Edit’s fate lasted from 1945 until 1951, when the case was finally closed. The ITS Child Tracing Service file chronicles a lengthy correspondence with the Central Committee of Jews in Poland, the International Refugee Organization, UNRRA officials, and others to locate the child. At one point, Edit Neumann was mistaken for another child, Edit Sieting, who survived the war and then lived in a foster home in Berlin. The case was closed after Edit Neumann’s name was discovered with her mother’s on a June 1943 transport to Auschwitz. As this list indicated, then-five-year-old Edit and her mother, Viktoria, were gassed upon arrival. Document 7-8 shows the beginning of the protracted process involved in tracing the fate of a single child who had ultimately fallen victim to the vast machinery of Nazi genocide. 40. The location of Bad Arolsen was chosen for two reasons: first, the area had not been heavily bombed during the war, and thus many buildings remained intact; second, Arolsen had housed an SS training facility. Thus, as the Allies approached the area, these now empty buildings served as a convenient dumping ground for the confiscated documents that would become the heart of the International Tracing Service (ITS) collection. ITS was officially created by the Allied powers in 1947 “for the purpose of tracing missing persons and collecting, classifying, preserving and rendering accessible to Governments and interested individuals the documents relating to Germans and non-Germans who were displaced as a result of the Second World War.” In 1955, management of this vast archive changed hands and now rested with the International Red Cross. Ironically, these documents remained largely inaccessible to the public until 2007, when, largely through the efforts of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the archive was made open to not only survivors and their families but researchers as well. The records of the ITS relate to the fates of more than 17 million people who were subject to incarceration, forced labor, and displacement as a result of World War II. Digital copies of the archive are being transferred in their entirety to the USHMM, which currently holds digital copies of over 100 million pages of documents spanning the period from 1933 until the mid-1950s. These documents include prewar and wartime prisoner arrest, incarceration, and transport records from German concentration camp and police authorities; prewar, wartime, and postwar records concerning foreign and forced labor in the German war economy, generated by the Nazi state, individual German firms, and postwar Allied occupation authorities; and postwar Allied records of individuals and families seeking DP status and emigration.

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DOCUMENT 7-8: Letter from Else Heinrichmeyer to the International Tracing Service regarding the whereabouts of her niece, Edit Neumann, US Army Central Headquarters, Germany, November 4, 1945, 6.3.2.1/ 84406125_0_1/ ITS Digital Archive, USHMM (translated from German).

Else Heinrichmeyer Regensburg, November 4, 1945 Regensburg, Rachelstrasse 16 UNRRA Tracing Bureau F r a n k f u r t a. M. I herewith request that you kindly inform me whether the child described below is one of the children found in concentration camps. G i r l, born February 27, 1938, 7 1/2 years old N a m e: E D I T N E U M A N N, known as D I T T A, born in Berlin. The child is the little daughter of my sister, Mrs. Viktoria Neumann, who was a resident of Berlin. Mrs. Neumann, along with this child and her husband, Hermann Neumann, was taken from Berlin presumably to Auschwitz in June 1943.41 Since that time, we have had no word of my sister and the child. Mr. Neumann wrote once from Auschwitz, and since then there has been nothing more from him either. The child is physically healthy and has gray eyes and brown hair. If a girl who could be this child is among the children who have been found, then I request that you inform me, because I would take her into my home, of course. I am Jewish and was in the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Many thanks for your efforts. [Signed] Else Heinrichmeyer [Stamp] U.N.R.R.A. HQ Germany, Nov. 10, 1945, Central Registry

In addition to the Allied organizational structure, private tracing efforts also thrived both during and after the war. The American Friends Service 41. No one in the little family appears to have survived. Viktoria Neumann (née Sabatier) was born in 1907 in Vienna and had two Jewish grandparents. Her husband, Hermann Neumann, was born in 1897 in Culmsee, West Prussia (now Poland). They had gone underground for a time in Berlin before being caught by the Gestapo. See USHMM ITS Collection Data Base Central Name Index; T/D file for Hermann Neumann, 6.3.3.2/84907337_0_1/ ITS Digital Archive, USHMM; German “Minority Census,” 1938–1939, USHMMA RG 14.013M. Wilhelm Sabatier, another of Viktoria’s relatives, survived the war.

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Committee (AFSC) served as one such effort. The AFSC was established in 1917 during World War I and as a way for the largely pacifist Quakers to respond to the war effort. By the end of World War II, the organization had six offices that employed over two hundred workers. Indeed, throughout the war, the AFSC ran an active Refugee Section that attempted to secure and negotiate affidavits for refugees, many of them Jewish.42 During this time, the AFSC also aided in the resettlement efforts of children through the United States Committee for the Care of European Children (USCOM). Established in the summer of 1940, USCOM relocated eight hundred children from war-torn Europe to the United States. Its efforts were halted in 1940, then resumed in 1942–1943 to find homes for Jewish refugee children. The AFSC aided in this mission until 1953, when USCOM was shut down.43 Document 7-9, a letter from Franz Blumenstein, demonstrates the tireless work of this partnership while at the same time illuminating the very real frustrations of a family caught up in the bureaucratic web of search and immigration procedures. Franz Blumenstein spent his childhood and early career in Vienna. He and his wife, Else, had one son, Heinz-Georg (born September 22, 1935). During the November Pogrom (“Kristallnacht”) on November 9–10, 1938, Franz was arrested and sent to Dachau until January 1939. In early 1939, he successfully immigrated to Cuba and awaited entrance visas to the United States.44 Blumenstein’s family was slated to join him in Havana after their voyage on the ill-fated MS St. Louis, which left Hamburg on May 13, 1939. After the ship turned back to Europe, Blumenstein’s wife and son disembarked in the Netherlands. Blumenstein then left Havana for Sosúa, in the Dominican Republic, where he lived out the rest of the war, frantically attempting to secure visas for his family. Blumenstein’s wife and mother were probably killed in Auschwitz; his son survived in hiding in the Dutch countryside.45 42. For more information about the wartime activities of the AFSC, see William E. Nawyn, American Protestantism’s Response to Germany’s Jews and Refugees, 1933–1941 (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1981), 107–36. 43. For more information about the efforts of the AFSC together with USCOM, see Howard Wriggins, Picking Up the Pieces from Portugal to Palestine: Quaker Refugee Relief in World War II (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2004), 45–55. 44. Blumenstein finally managed to reach US shores in April 1946. He settled in New York and became a citizen. 45. His wife Else or Elsa (née Frankenstein; b. 1905), a Vienna native, was arrested in Amsterdam in September 1943 and probably killed in Auschwitz. Blumenstein’s mother, Regina (“Regi”; b. 1866; née Frank), was sent to the Westerbork camp, then Ravensbrück and Auschwitz, where she perished. See “Voyage of the St. Louis,” USHMM, http://www. ushmm.org/online/st-louis (accessed July 1, 2014); USHMM ITS Collection Data Base Central Name Index.

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Blumenstein’s AFSC file—containing over one hundred pages of correspondence—chronicles his efforts to secure affidavits and visas for himself and his son to enter the United States. Over the course of two years, he wrote to several members of the AFSC in an attempt to locate his son, Heinz. Although the following letter specifically highlights the question of timing (and the necessity of Franz’s arrival in the United States before his son), the correspondence as a whole demonstrates the breadth of his ordeal. DOCUMENT 7-9: Letter from Franz Blumenstein, Sosúa, Dominican Republic, to John F. Rich, American Friends Service Committee, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, November 2, 1945, case no. 4276, USHMMA Acc. 2002.296 American Friends Service Committee Refugee Assistance Case Files collection.46

Sosúa, Puerto Plata Dominican Republic November 2, 1945 Mr. John F. Rich47 20 South Twelfth Street Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Dear Mr. Rich: I am grieved to inform you, that my dear wife and my dear mother were murdered by the Nazis at Auschwitz in Poland. My little son, who is now ten years old, was hidden by the Dutch underground organization by a Dutch farmer who himself has seven children. But besides this he took also another Jewish boy whose father and mother were also murdered.48 Imagine such a deed! As other people wrote me 46. Please note that the grammar and syntax mistakes have been retained as the writer was not a native English speaker. 47. Rich (orig. Reich; 1903–1973), born in England, was a former journalist who began working for the AFSC in 1936. He engaged in extensive international relief work for the organization throughout the war and later founded a fund-raising consulting firm. He had had Jewish grandparents in Berlin; his father, Max Reich, had moved to London as a young man and become a Quaker. His mother was originally Danish. See obituary, New York Times, April 25, 1973, 29; 1930 US federal census. 48. Isaac (“Isje”) Tropp, born ca. 1938; see testimony of Henry Blumenstein, USC Shoah Foundation, VHA #22738.

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Chapter 7 from Amsterdam it was very dangerous for him and his whole family to hide Jewish children. My language is too poor to express my feelings for such wonderful Christian people, who have real Christian faith. The name of the Hero is: Joh. Dijkstra, Rauwerd onder 65, Friesland, Holland.49 I am already in touch with him and in his first letter he even invited me to come to Holland and stay with him as long as I wish to. Naturally my sister and I were sending food parcels and clothing for the whole family but I have to do something similar in order to repay a bit. Dear Mr. Rich, you know the whole tragedy, you know that my dear family was already in the safe (!!) harbor of Havana and were sent back to Europe in order to be murdered by the Nazis. My heart is breaking when I think of it, that such a barbarism was possible. My little son is writing to me heart breaking letters in Dutch, because he has forgotten his native language and I must let [sic] translate it. For example, in his second letter he wrote: . . . “dear father are you coming? I am so longing for you!” He was 3 1/2 years old as I was forced to leave him, so I am 6 1/2 years separated. My dear Mr. Rich, my immigration papers are already examined and the American Consul at Ciudad Trujilla found them sufficient. He [the American consul] has requested my quota number from the State Department in Washington, DC, in order to issue the visa. But, as I am informed, it will take months until the State Department will send the quota number. Therefore I beg you, dear Mr. Rich, to do something for me to help me to be reunited with my son at the earliest time. Please be so kind as to interpret my case to the Commissioner of Immigration or to another

49. The Righteous Among the Nations program recognized Johannes Dijkstra (1890– 1961), a Catholic Dutch farmer in Raerd (Rauwerd), Friesland, and his wife, Sjoukje, in 1982 for hiding the two boys; the couple also hid two Dutch non-Jews evading the German occupiers. See entry in Jozeph Michman and Bert Jan Flim, eds., The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations: Rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust. The Netherlands, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2004), 214.

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person who is able to help me. I can’t bring my son over to America, until I myself am not there.50 Please excuse me, when I have troubled you. I remain very sincerely yours, Franz Blumenstein

PICKING UP AND MOVING ON: GRAPPLING WITH DECIMATED FAMILIES For many, if not most, Jewish survivors of genocide, the experience of losing one or more immediate family members was the norm. Document 7-10, a selection from Rachel Bryk’s diary, instead reflects a teenager’s horrifically evolving reality. Rachel Bryk was born on December 10, 1927, in Łódź, Poland, the youngest of four siblings: Josef (who died before the war), Sala, Levy, and Elus. In March 1940, the Bryk family was forced into the Łódź ghetto, and in August of that year, Bryk’s father, Nechemia, died as a result of the conditions there. In the spring of 1942, a few days before a scheduled transport, Bryk’s mother, Dworja, and the family were placed under quarantine because of a typhus outbreak. This prevented their deportation to the Chełmno death camp. On March 24, 1942, Dworja died, leaving her children alone. Together with Rachel, Sala, Levy, and Elus resided in the ghetto from 1940 to 1942. Levy was killed at Auschwitz in 1942; Elus was killed at the Chełmno death camp on June 26, 1944. Two months later, Rachel and Sala were deported from the Łódź ghetto to Auschwitz II–Birkenau, then to the Hambühren forced labor camp,51 and finally, in February 1945, to Bergen-Belsen, where they were liberated by British troops in April 1945. During this time, Rachel met Leon Kaner, whom she later married. Rachel and Leon Kaner immigrated to the United States in 1946. Bryk’s diary entry dates to September 22, 1945, five months after her liberation. The somewhat verbose entry depicts the coping mechanisms of a 50. Heinz-Georg (later Henry) Blumenstein reached the United States in August 1946, possibly with help from the AJJDC. See NARA, ship passenger lists for the SS Athos II, August 1946; AJJDC Jewish Transmigration Bureau Deposit Cards. 51. Hambühren was a subcamp of Bergen-Belsen that received its first transport of Jews on August 23, 1944. These four hundred women and girls from Łódź were in Auschwitz for a few days before arriving in this camp located about 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) south of Bergen-Belsen. There were additional labor camps in the area as well, with civilian workers, prisoners of war, and other forced laborers, who worked for the main ammunitions factory of the Luftwaffe and for Wintershall AG for oil and drilling. For more information, see Megargee, ed., The USHMM Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1:284–85.

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young woman attempting to make sense of her present situation. It shows us a young woman’s efforts to cope with and live next to death—a daily struggle that evolves in the present tense. DOCUMENT 7-10: Diary of Rachela (Rachel) Bryk, Bergen-Belsen DP camp, September 22, 1945, USHMMA Acc. 2008.390.1 Ray Kaner collection (translated from Polish).

What happens in a given moment, no one realizes [illegible]. It is 6 in the morning. The sky is a beautiful blue and the clouds are of various shades. In certain areas, the clouds are darker, lighter, and golden. On the bottom, across the fog, the outline of a mountain is visible. I am in the vicinity of a lager. Short and long barracks stretch out in front of me. The lager is beginning to wake up. In front of the lager, there is a sign, “House of Israel.” There is indeed a mass of Jews here. It is our house, because there is no comfort like being among your own. Here, we do not feel that they do not like us. Above the lager, the Jewish flag is blowing in the wind—a blue-white sign. Our banner flutters like the others. Proudly. Looking at the flag, no one could tell that, although it is dependent on the wind like the others, it presents itself like banners of a different color. The banner flutters for a people oppressed for years. For the wandering Jews, chased from place to place, this moment was dreamt of during all of these years, and the most during the recent times in German captivity: The sight of the banner, which signifies freedom. Often, lying in the grass in [illegible] with a stupefied mind, I dreamt [illegible] to once see and feel freedom, and then to die. We survived. We saw freedom and we felt it. In the first moments, it was intense, but gradually everyone understood that our freedom is fictitious. That today, a man who has left the camp [kacetu]52 is a Jew. Our liberators treat us worse than the Germans, who were the cause of the loss of so many people, destruction, and ruin. It is true that no one likes us and will not accept us. Our hopes are dying that someone will open his arms for us. The borders are closed to us, will they ever open again? I thought about all of this waiting for Leon in front of the dining room. Leon is still sleeping. What a complicated character he is. He gets worked up about trivial things, but when it comes to serious matters, he is calm and balanced. His sister is in Bergen, she came there from Łόdź. 52. Short for Konzentrationslager.

The Search for Relatives When I heard about this yesterday, I was so moved that my legs were shaking. I wanted to fly over like a bird to his job. And now, when I have been ready to leave for some time, he is sleeping peacefully. He is going to see his sister, I am going to find out the news and details of the death of my dearest brother. It saddens me that while he will be experiencing his happiest moments, I will be experiencing my most tragic ones. I will do my best to conceal what I am experiencing. How I dreamed about and waited to meet my brother. I thought a hundred times about our meeting. How will it go? What will I tell him? And how will he answer? Now I will never see my brother again, I will not even see a photograph of him, as I left behind all of my photographs in Auschwitz. Life is so cruel. Nature is so stern. I know that a time will come when I will not be able to evoke his image. What will be the worst, he will then be dead to me. Today, he died for the world. How many times I see a boy who resembles him. I cry over the fate of my poor Levy.53 Often, when I pronounce the name Levy, at once I see not the living one, but one who is probably lying in the ground for some time now, or whose ashes were blown away a long time ago. How it hurts, how my heart stings me, when I write these cold naked words. But I want to suffer, to torment myself in his absence so I can at least know what pain means. It is supposed to do me good in the moment that He died. My dearest Levy, I will never forget you, I will never get over the pain of losing You. I still wait for you in my dreams. How it hurts me, how I grieve for You, poor one, how sad I am that I will never see Your kind face, Your beautiful figure. Oh, my dearest. Why are you not here? So many survived, but why not You? I know that I am an egoist for thinking in this way, but oh well. You can have concern about the general state of affairs, but never as in the way of a private matter. If it pertains to you, it bites you, some bug sits inside of you and penetrates you. It is completely different from something that is happening near you, not inside of you. Yes, yes, Levy, I am going far away in order to tear out the mystery of your departure, without returning. We are finally leaving. The sun is peeking out. There is no great [illegible]. It is not giving off heat. The train is arriving. The black monster is visible from a distance, steam is belching out of its jaw. Leon is sitting on one bench, I listen to his stories about his two sisters. You can read happiness 53. Refers to the author’s brother.

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Chapter 7 in his face and pride in his eyes. I am sitting on another bench, with pain in my heart and tears in my eyes, listening to reticent sentences about my brother. I do not have to hear anything, I just look into the speaker’s eyes, full of pity. The puff-puff can already be heard. The train moves along heavily and arrives. I am standing. All of the compartments are stuffed with people, so that you could not even squeeze a needle inside. I am standing on the step. One hand is holding on to the steel, in the other hand I am holding a bag. Leon is leaning against the ladder. A whistle. The train is moving. Slowly at first, then gradually faster. We are not saying anything. I put my face into the wind. A light wind beats and pinches my cheeks, blows my hair. I think about what it will be like when I arrive in Bergen. I think about how Leon’s sister looks. What happiness there will be when they see each other. But suddenly my brother’s face appears. The other thoughts disappear. I see my brother, his face expresses pain at himself. My heart stings, I choke on my tears, and they flow down my face. My tears are dripping on the ground on the way to Frankfurt. We arrive at the station. The station is as battered from the war as us Jews. Every second window is broken. We leave the platform. I do not have a ticket. I do not know what to say. Finally, when he [train conductor] stops me, I say: K.L. He lets me through. I do not know why, but however many times I benefit from saying K.L., I have the same feeling as in school, when some bad student that did not have its homework said: my father died. To use the death of a father for such a purpose. We enter Hotel Victoria. Leon leaves me and goes to the city. I am sitting at a table and writing. Hours pass, he is not returning. At the beginning, I wait patiently, after hours of waiting, I become irritated. Every time someone opens the door, I stand up impatiently, but no, it is not he. What the devil. When is he going to return? The hotel empties out. They start cleaning, but still no sign of him. This cannot go on any longer. It is the worst to wait for someone, when he does not return. I walk the streets and continually look for him. After a very, very long time, he finally arrives. I do not tell him anything. We take a picture, buy bread rolls, and go to the station. We wait a few minutes. The train arrives. It does not even stop, but a mass of people surrounds it. The crowd is enormous. Everyone is pushing. Whoever gets through first takes a seat. Whoever arrives later will have to stand for many hours. For the time being, we have seats. I cannot write as the noise is great and it is getting dark. I am putting off writing until tomorrow.

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For all too many survivors, the search for relatives often ended in failure to locate those who lived and, at the same time, to confirm how family members may have died and where. For these people, a profound sense of the unknown defined the postwar experience and had the potential to cast a pall over postwar life and the possibility of rebuilding. This lack of closure, however, had practical as well as psychological implications. Indeed, for religious Jews—particularly religious Jewish women—the inability to prove the death of a husband presented a profound problem in the eyes of traditional Jewish law, or halakhah. According to halakhic principle, a woman who could not prove her husband’s death became an agunah, literally “chained” to her marriage and unable to wed another. Normally, rabbinic authorities would require a death certificate or a witness to the death in order to declare a Jewish woman a widow. The Holocaust introduced a form of death that had no such official certification and oftentimes no living witness who could speak to its precise circumstances. Concerns over these types of problems permeated the religious Jewish community even as the war still raged; indeed, Rabbi Shlomo Kahane, who left Warsaw in May 1940, organized special bureaus for these types of issues almost immediately upon the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939.54 After the war, when the full picture of the genocide began to emerge, these questions became all the more urgent; in order for religious women to remarry and produce new Jewish families, some procedure must be put into place to release them from their husbands, now presumed dead.55 In August 1946, a general committee of rabbis was formed in the DP camps in the American Zone that specifically addressed the issue of agunot and established new standards for proof of death that accounted for the new form of industrialized killing introduced by the Holocaust.56

54. Esther Farbstein, Hidden in Thunder: Perspectives on Faith, Halachah, and Leadership during the Holocaust (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 2007), 1:371. 55. This concern also arose in the wake of the 9/11 World Trade Center tragedy. See Leora Nathan, “Preventing an Agunah Crisis in the Wake of the World Trade Center Disaster by Establishing Death through Various Forms of Evidence,” Alberta Law Review 40, no. 4 (April 2003): 895–916. 56. Farbstein, Hidden in Thunder, 377–92.

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Document 7-11, from the Hungarian orthodox rabbinate, releases Golda Leitman Weiss57 from her marriage to Moshe Weiss. Moshe Weiss was presumed dead as part of the 1944 Hungarian transports to Auschwitz that resulted in the murder of some 450,000 Jews. This standard printed form speaks to the quotidian, unremarkable nature of Golda’s request. It also potentially implies (although it does not explicitly state) her intention to remarry. Golda most likely became a part of the postwar marriage and “baby boom” analyzed by Atina Grossmann.58 In addition to allowing Golda to remarry within the Jewish faith (and even remarry a Cohen, a member of the biblical priestly class for whom higher standards of ritual life apply), the form serves another purpose as well: from the rabbinic point of view, it is also a de facto death certificate. The end of a search for one family results in the potential creation of another, a responsibility that Jewish religious authority took very seriously. Embedded within the official notice of a death is the hope for a new life. Upon what foundation and where that new life would be built remained to be seen—and all too often changed according to constantly shifting circumstances and opportunities.

57. Olga (Golda) Leitman Weiss was originally married to Laszlo (Moshe Tovia) Weiss. In 1944, Laszlo was taken to a slave labor camp. He was given permission to come home in the middle of the night for one hour before being shipped out to the Russian front. That was the last time his wife and daughter saw him. Together with her daughter, Eva, and her mother-in-law, Sara Weiss, Olga remained in Budapest, where she narrowly escaped deportation to Auschwitz when she ran away during the Budapest roundups. Olga survived in one of Raoul Wallenberg’s safe houses; she also paid a Christian widow to hide Eva. After the Soviets liberated Budapest on January 18, 1945, Olga retrieved Eva, but shortly afterward Sara Weiss passed away from typhus. In 1946 Olga married her first cousin, Eliezer Avraham (Albert) Freedman, who had lost his entire family. In 1947 Olga gave birth to Yakov Joseph Freedman, who became Eva’s half brother. Less than two years later, however, the Freedmans felt compelled to flee again to avoid religious persecution by the communists. They escaped with the clothes on their backs to Kassau, where the Bricha organized an evacuation to Vienna. From there they went to a DP camp in Hallein in Austria in the summer of 1949. Eliezer Freedman became the head of the camp and remained in that position until they immigrated to Canada in January 1951. See “Document Issued to Golda Leitman Weiss by the Orthodox Rabbinic Court in Budapest Testifying That Her Husband Moshe Tuvia Weiss Passed Away and That She Was Free to Remarry,” USHMM, http://digitalassets.ushmm.org/ photoarchives/detail.aspx?id=1161120 (accessed September 22, 2014). 58. See Atina Grossmann, Jews, Germans, and Allies: Close Encounters in Occupied Germany (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 184–235.

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DOCUMENT 7-11: Rabbinic certificate of widowhood issued by the Central Bureau of Orthodox Communities in Budapest, Hungary, to Golda Leitman Weiss, May 14, 1946, USHMMA RG 10.522 (translated from Hebrew).

Special Court to Adjudicate Abandoned Wives Permit , # [typed] 1424/250 Conducted in the main office of the orthodox congregations in Hungary (God willing). Appearing before the special court to adjudicate abandoned wives was the undersigned, who gave evidence regarding the death of [typed] Moshe Toby, son of Yhoshua Weiss, who was the husband of Golda daughter of Abraham Jacob residing in [typed] Budapest,59 and according to this testimony and in line with the laws in “Shulchan Aruch” and fundamental religious judgments provided by Hungarian rabbis we decided to release the woman [typed] Golda daughter of Abraham Jacob Leitman from the shackles of abandonment. 59. Meaning Moshe Weiss, who was last seen alive in Budapest.

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Thus it became clear to us that she [typed] was neither divorced [typed] nor dependent, and is allowed to marry any man, and even a Cohen. Thus, we give permission to any rabbi to preside over her marriage, if the latter does not conflict with the state laws. In witness is [signed] Rabbi Jacob David Klein. The [typed] 13th of Iyar, 1946,60 central offices of the orthodox congregations, Hungary.

60. Corresponds with May 14, 1946.

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N OCTOBER 12, 1945, the Jewish DP newspaper, Unzer veg, ran an editorial by Leivy Salitan1 titled “We Accuse: A Word to the Judges in Nuremberg.” The title draws from French journalist Émile Zola’s 1898 French editorial “I Accuse” (“J’accuse”), which indicted French-institutional antisemitism,2 closes with the following plea: “Shall we enumerate the crimes of the accused? Shall we speak of the millions who have died and describe the manner in which death came to them: call upon any one of those of us who have survived. Ask one of us to unburden our hearts. Give ear to the story of the child, the mother, the father who now struggles through the living death bequeathed to him by those standing at the Bar of Justice. His story is the story

1. Leivy Leo Salitan (also Shalit, Schalitan, Szalitan), a Lithuanian Jew born in 1916, was a son of Chone (Hanan) Salitan and Chaja Salitan (née Davidow). Arrested in 1941, he survived the Kauen and Dachau concentration camps. (His brother Beno and mother appear to have survived the war, but his father died in Dachau in 1943.) See USHMM ITS Collection Data Base Central Name Index; American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Names Index (http://names.jdc.org). 2. Émile Zola (1840–1902) was a French writer instrumental in the exoneration of Jewish military officer Alfred Dreyfus, wrongly accused and convicted of treason in 1894. The ensuing Dreyfus Affair was a watershed event in France that caused antisemitic riots in both France and Algeria. In 1898, after new evidence emerged, Zola authored his famous article, “J’accuse” (I accuse) directed at the French government. The judgment against Dreyfus was annulled in 1899, but Dreyfus’s innocence was not finally recognized until 1906. Overall, the “affair” became proof of the antisemitic undertones of supposedly liberal France. For more information, see Alain Pagès, ed., The Dreyfus Affair: “J’accuse” and Other Writings (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996).

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of the Jew. Bitterly, in the despair of his great loss in the burning memory of flowing blood, he cries with a heart-rendering silence: ‘WE ACCUSE!’”3 Salitan asks for a communal voice in the trial and a reckoning that will acknowledge the crimes against the Jews during what we now know as the Holocaust. The process and product of postwar justice, however, proved far more complex. As many scholars assess, Jewish voices may have been present, but they were in many ways much muted4 and certainly did not issue the clarion call that Salitan suggests is necessary. Nevertheless, Jews were hardly silent bystanders to the justice ostensibly being sought in their name. This chapter explores the variety of ways in which they participated in, reacted to, and attempted to shape—with greater or lesser impact—the process of postwar trials, from the very public proceedings at Nuremberg to smaller and more private hearings on cases of individual or communal importance. Amid all of the official discussion regarding the establishment of postwar trials, both individual Jews and Jewish groups involved themselves in the preparation for (and at times participation in) various aspects of postwar justice. From advocating for the inclusion of Jewish voices and interests in the trial process, to lobbying official leaders on the American and British war crimes commissions, to serving as witnesses, to collecting testimony, to filing individual complaints and even administering their own trials, the victims were actively involved in the search for justice. This chapter explores the breadth and depth of these activities. The documents address questions such as, What were the primary concerns of Jewish communities regarding the Nuremberg proceedings and other Allied trials? How did perspectives vary by constituency? How, for example, did Jewish DPs react, as opposed to the Jews in Palestine or America? How did Jewish victim testimony (however scarce) differ from its non-Jewish counterparts, and to what end was it given? Ultimately, how were the trials framed and understood in the aftermath of a Jewish tragedy whose own definition was in the process of being formed?

3. Leivy Salitan, “We Accuse: A Word to the Judges at Nuremberg,” Unzer veg, English supplement, October 12, 1945, 1. 4. See Donald Bloxham, Genocide on Trial: War Crimes Trials and the Formation of Holocaust History and Memory (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); Devin O. Pendas, Laura Jockusch, and Gabriel Finder, “Auschwitz Trials: The Jewish Dimension,” Yad Vashem Studies 41, no. 2 (fall 2013): 139–71; Laura Jockusch, “Justice at Nuremberg? Jewish Responses to Nazi War Crimes Trials in Allied Occupied Germany,” Jewish Social Studies 19, no. 1 (fall 2013): 107–47.

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OFFICIAL JUSTICE: ALLIED WAR CRIMES TRIALS Since 1942, the United Nations War Crimes Commission (UNWCC), officially founded in 1943, had been gathering evidence in anticipation of a future reckoning of crimes.5 There was much argument among the international community regarding the limited nature of the UNWCC’s role in merely compiling lists of potential war criminals. Dr. Bohumil Ečer, Czechoslovakia’s representative, saw this work as inadequate and the commission as unqualified to perform it.6 Lawrence Preuss,7 the US representative, agreed and advocated for the establishment of an international military tribunal. The British, however, wished to avoid becoming embroiled in multiple trials that might be perceived as imposing a “victor’s justice.” Rather, British authorities desired merely to pass along the criminals to the appropriate national courts. Preuss was concerned about this procedure, believing that the effectiveness of these trials would be varied at best. He also maintained that there was no need to define new forms of war crimes—a position that would be set aside with the establishment of “crimes against humanity.”8 Document 8-1 presents a confidential report of a conversation between Preuss and a representative of the Board of Deputies of British Jews (“W.F.”) 5. For an early overview of this body’s work, see United Nations War Crimes Commission, comp., History of the United Nations War Crimes Commission and the Development of the Laws of War (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1948). 6. Bohumil (or Bohuslav) Ečer had practiced law in Brno after World War I, where he became deputy mayor in 1924. He also became a member of the Communist Party but was expelled in the mid-1930s. Ečer fled to Paris in 1939, then to London in 1942, where he served in the Czechoslovak Ministry of Justice in exile on postwar settlement questions. The Czechoslovak representative to the UNWCC from 1943 to 1945, he was given an honorific military rank. Ečer served as a delegate to the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg in 1945 and later returned to Brno, where he taught international law for a time. See Ithiel de Sola Pool, Satellite Generals: A Study of Military Elites in the Soviet Sphere (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1975), 52; “War Crimes Policy of Allies Rebuked,” New York Times, April 10, 1945, 9; UNWCC, History of the United Nations War Crimes Commission, 500. 7. Preuss (1905–1956) was a widely published political scientist in the field of international law, long affiliated with the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He worked as a legal officer for the US State Department and for the US Division of International and Organizational Security of the UNWCC in London during the war and helped draft the Convention for an International War Crimes Court. See obituary, American Society of International Law 50, no. 4 (October 1956): 907–9; UNWCC, History of the United Nations War Crimes Commission, 504. 8. Arieh J. Kochavi, “The British Foreign Office versus the United Nations War Crimes Commission during the Second World War,” H&GS 8, no. 1 (spring 1994): 28–49.

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urging Jewish involvement in the UNWCC.9 Preuss’s response is indicative of a fundamental difference in understanding between the surviving Jewish community and the ways in which postwar justice was being administered. While W.F. (and other members of the Jewish community) argued for consideration as a separate group, Preuss echoed the views of his colleagues and included Jews as nationals of the countries in which the crimes were committed. This difference of opinion would haunt postwar trials for many years after. DOCUMENT 8-1: “W.F.,” confidential report of a conversation with Professor Lawrence Preuss, advisor to the representative of the United Nations War Crimes Commission, London, March 21, 1944, Board of Deputies of British Jews Records, USHMMA RG 59.023M, reel 54.

Confidential 23rd March, 1944 I had lunch with Professor L. Preuss, Assistant Director of the American War Crimes Commission,10 on Tuesday, 21st March, 1944. I raised the question as to the possibility and desirability of Jews being associated in some form or another with the United Nations War Crimes Commission. Professor Preuss said that the Commission was organised on a strictly territorial basis, so that Jewish organizations would have no locus standi.11 As far as crimes against Jews were concerned, they would fall within the competence of the Commission if they were committed against Jews who were nationals of any of the United Nations, and he knew that this matter was being considered by the War Crimes Commission of States such as Poland 9. W. F. may have been William Frankel (1917–2008), who became a barrister during the war and served for a time as general secretary of an influential religious Zionist organization. Frankel may have been the person who became the new secretary of the Board of Deputies’ Foreign Affairs Committee in 1944. From the mid-1950s he took over as the long-serving editor of the British Jewish Chronicle. See Meier Sompolinsky, Britain and the Holocaust: The Failure of Anglo-Jewish Leadership? (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 1999), 258n11; obituaries, Guardian, April 25, 2008; New York Times, May 3, 2008. 10. Note that this title is incorrect. Preuss was the advisor to the representative of the United Nations War Crimes Commission at this time. 11. Meaning “right to bring an action in court.”

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and Czechoslovakia, in which massacres of Jews had taken place. As far as stateless Jews were concerned, they would also come within the jurisdiction of the Commission if crimes against them had been committed in any of the occupied countries, for atrocities in occupied countries were acts outside the legitimate activities of an occupying Power and would be considered as war crimes. Whether acts against nationals of Germany could possibly be considered war crimes, Professor Preuss said that the Commission had not finally decided its attitude, but it would appear that, on the lines on which the Commission was working, no extension of the definition of war crimes would be made to cover such cases. He said that this attitude was taken most strongly by the British Commission, which did not consider most of these questions from a strictly legal point of view. Still, the precise definition of the offence which would come within the competence of the Commission was under consideration at this moment. No observers were at present admitted to sessions of the Commission, and he did not think that any representation we made for this purpose would be successful. I asked whether the War Crimes Commission would deal solely with retribution, or whether it would have those powers of ordering restitution of property which, for example, an English criminal Court possesses. He said that he was quite clearly excluded from the work of the Commission, but he informed me that there was in existence a United Nations Commission on Restitution of confiscated property, which had until now not been publicised. I indicated our interest in this question of restitution of property, and Professor Preuss promised to introduce me to the American representative on this Commission, Mr. Harry Spiegel, who I presume is a Jew.12 Professor Preuss himself was soon leaving this country to report back to the State Department in Washington and to take up a new assignment. He believed that this would probably have something to do with the blueprints that are now being made for the future international organisation. 12. This may have been Harold R. Spiegel (b. 1911), an economic analyst with international experience, who had been with the US Treasury Department beginning in 1939. After working for the Foreign Service Auxiliary in London, he became a State Department economist in 1944, rising to the top of the Division of Financial Affairs. See [Biographic] Register of the Department of State, April 1, 1950 (Washington, DC: Office of Public Affairs, Department of State, 1950), 477.

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Chapter 8 Arising out of this discussion, I was very interested to hear that the State Department is considering, as a subject not outside practical politics, the possibility of an international Declaration of the Rights of Man. He seemed, personally, to favor this scheme as much more likely to be successful than the Minorities Treaties, particularly as such Treaties would have, in the future, to include Germany. I told Professor Preuss that I should like to get into touch with the representatives of some of the United Nations on the War Crimes Commission in order that I might hear their views, and also as establishing some contact with the Governments of those countries. He offered to furnish me with introductions to the representatives of Belgium, Holland, and Poland on his Commission. W.F.

While the UNWCC was addressing the process of gathering evidence (and the question of how to use it) in 1943, in the Soviet Union this process began almost from the outset of the German invasion. Soviet authorities were documenting German war atrocities as early as December 1941, just after the Red Army had held off the German advance toward Moscow. These efforts began as a conglomeration of uncoordinated initiatives from various Soviet institutions. As part of this process, “peaceful Soviet citizens” were asked to report on crimes as they saw them, including actions against Jews. Some of these accounts were published in official organs of the USSR, as well as sponsored newspapers such as Eynikeyt (Unity), the newspaper of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAFC). Local military units usually compiled these eyewitness accounts as they entered particular towns. Not until March 1943, when the Red Army had attained victory in Stalingrad, could a systematized effort of investigation be undertaken. At that point, the Extraordinary State Commission on Reporting and Investigating the Atrocities of the German Fascist Occupiers and Their Henchmen and the Crimes Inflicted by Them onto Citizens, Kolkhozes, Public Organizations, and State Enterprises (hereafter referred to as the Extraordinary Commission) began its work in earnest.13 13. Kiril Feferman, Soviet Jewish Stepchild: The Holocaust in the Soviet Mindset, 1941– 1964 (Saarbrücken, Germany: VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, 2009), 28–29. For Feferman’s article on the Extraordinary Commission and its data, see Kiril Feferman, “Soviet Investigation of Nazi Crimes in the USSR: Documenting the Holocaust,” Journal of Genocide Research 5, no. 4 (December 2003): 587–602.

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The findings of the Extraordinary Commission were widely published within the USSR from 1943 through 1946. Soviet courts regularly used the evidence collected and occasionally loaned materials to foreign courts for prosecutions, even though these materials remained inaccessible to researchers until fairly recently. A volume in English of selected statements gathered by the commission was published in 1946 under the title Soviet Government Statements on Nazi Atrocities. The Soviets compiled these records with the distinct purpose of swift and harsh prosecution and punishment. “Collaboration” could sometimes be broadly defined; indeed, because of the methods of interrogation and the notes taken and sent back to central authorities, the Extraordinary Commission reports have varying degrees of reliability. The interrogations themselves often assumed an accusatory tone. Those who remained in what was once enemy territory by definition had not fled with the retreating Red Army; hence their loyalty was inherently suspect. Both Jews and non-Jews faced equal scrutiny. Thus, a witness’s testimony had to not only speak to German atrocities but provide a credible explanation for the failure to flee with the Red Army. Failure to produce this testimony was considered a criminal offense.14 Document 8-2 originates from this vast repository. It excerpts an interrogation of a Jewish woman on October 3, 1944, by a member of the Red Army. As with other interrogations submitted to the Extraordinary Commission, the interviewee is noted as initially uncooperative. The atrocities described took place in Lithuania, where approximately 85 percent of the country’s prewar Jewish population was murdered during the Holocaust.15 The interviewee, Dina Tsenelevna Noll, testifies to the crimes committed by both Lithuanian police and the occupying German forces. Importantly for the Extraordinary Commission, she also names several perpetrators. Notably, all of those indicated have Lithuanian or Latvian surnames. The format, circumstance, and bias of these reports can make the Extraordinary Commission records somewhat difficult to work with. Nevertheless, specific crimes against Jews were solicited and recorded, and the criminals were harshly—and quickly—punished. Oftentimes these acts were later flattened as they became absorbed into a general narrative of fascist atrocities against Soviet citizens. But, as the following interrogation records show, the commission did take crimes against the Jewish people into account to some degree. Thus, the complications presented here certainly do not make such 14. Feferman, Soviet Jewish Stepchild, 36–37. 15. For more on the Holocaust in Lithuania, see Konrad Kwiet, “Rehearsing for Murder: The Beginning of the Final Solution in Lithuania in June of 1941,” H&GS 12, no. 1 (1998): 3–26.

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records useless from a historian’s perspective. They do reflect potential challenges of ideological bias that one must take into account when reading the testimonies. DOCUMENT 8-2: Interrogation record of Dina Tsenelevna Noll, Lithuania, September 12, 1944, GARF f. 7021 op. 149 d. 35 ll. 56–58, USHMMA RG 22.002M Extraordinary State Commission to Investigate German-Fascist Crimes Committed on Soviet Territory from the USSR (GARF) (translated from Russian).

Secret: Copy no. . . . USSR People’s Commissariat of Defense [NKO USSR] Main Political Administration of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army October 3, 1944 No. 47681 Moscow, 19 Frunze Street To the Extraordinary State Commission for Ascertaining and Investigating Crimes Perpetrated by the German-Fascist Invaders and Their Accomplices Comrade Bogoiavlenskii I am sending you materials on the atrocities committed by the Germans in the Lithuanian SSR in the town of Shadov [Šeduva].16

16. For an overview of events at this camp, see Alexander Kruglov and Martin Dean, “Šeduva,” in The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, vol. 2: Ghettos in German-Occupied Eastern Europe, ed. Martin Dean (Bloomington: Indiana University Press in association with the USHMM, 2012), 1116. Kruglov and Dean indicate that a woman named Shulamith Noll escaped from the mass killings; this may in fact have been the same woman. Testimonies from a son of Shulamit Noll (Yad Vashem, Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names [http://db.yadvashem.org/names/ search.html?language=en]) also indicate that Shulamit’s husband, Shmuel (b. 1901), a textile merchant, and children, Betzalel (b. 1929) and Shimon (b. 1934), were killed.

Punishing the Perpetrators Enclosure: 25 pages Deputy Chief, UP [Propaganda Department], Administration of GlavPURKKA [Main Political Administration of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army], Colonel [Signature] B. Sapozhnikov INTERROGATION RECORD of the witness Dina Tsenelevna NOL’ [Noll]—on September 12, 1944 N O L ‘, D.N., born 1900, native of Shadov, Lithuanian SSR, of worker origin, Jewess, citizen of USSR, non-Party, secondary education, married, lives in town of Shadov, 27 Tavil’skaia ulitsa. She (Nol’) was notified that she bears responsibility for refusal to give a deposition pursuant to Article 92 of the RSFSR Criminal Code, and for giving a false deposition pursuant to Article 95 of the RSFSR Criminal Code. QUESTION: Where did you live during the time of the temporary German fascist occupation? ANSWER: In the town of Shadov. QUESTION: During the entire occupation period? ANSWER: No. On July 20, 1941, my family—my husband and my two children, age 9 and 12—and I were confined in a Jewish camp located at the airfield of the Shadov airdrome. I was held in the camp until August 28, 1941, until the time when all the Jews being kept in the camp were exterminated in the Liaudiškiai forest. Three families, including mine, at the request of the residents of Shadov, managed to escape this cruel fate for some time. QUESTION: Were you a witness to the events in the Liaudiškiai forest? ANSWER: I only witnessed how, at the order of the German authorities, members of the Lithuanian auxiliary police employed trickery and took the condemned families to be shot.

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Chapter 8 QUESTION: Will you tell us about that? ANSWER: On August 25, the Shadov police administration ordered all the people who were using Jews from the camp as laborers to deliver them to the camp by 8 a.m. the next day. On August 26, all were assembled. It was announced throughout the camp that on August 26, all the Jews being held in the camp would be transported to Panevėžys for construction work of some kind. After some time, an open truck arrived, and the first batch—approximately 30 persons, mainly young men—was loaded onto the truck and taken out of the camp. Behind the first vehicle, after various time intervals, came others. People and [illegible] were loaded on them. During the course of August 25–27, 1941, all 664 persons were taken out of the camp. There remained, as I have already said, only three families. The people from the camp got into the trucks of their own free will, [nobody] could even conjecture that such a large quantity of people, men, women, children, old people, would be exterminated in the [next] two days. When I was liberated from the camp, I learned from talk going around in Shadov that such a tragedy had occurred in the Liaudiškiai forest, performed by the Germans and their protégés, with the Jews from the camp as victims. Three months after this, our three families, which had survived the events of August 25–27, were shot. I was the only one of them all who survived. I ran away during the [shooting] of our families. QUESTION: Do you know the names of any of those who participated in the extermination of the Jewish population? ANSWER: From conversations with people nearby, sometimes people completely unknown to me, I know that the following took part in the shootings of Jews:

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SENULIS, Stasis, is a resident of Shadov. He served in [illegible], but I don’t know in what capacity.17 He was recommended [illegible] as the representative of the German military commandant of [illegible] vilishki. KIGA, commandant of the Shadov Jewish camp. He lived in Shadov.18 MERKIS, Vitovtas, is from the village of Davkoni. He served as a policeman in the Sadov police administration. IANUSHAUSKIS, Ignas, from the village of Regeniny. VENTSLAVAS, Kazis, from the village of Regeniny. PAMINALTKO, from the village of Regeniny. PROTSKEITIS, from the village of Regeniny. PLUNGAS, from the village of Pakal’nishki. DLIKSNIS, Ionas, from the village of Pakal’nishki. PETRAUSKAS, from Shal’[illegible]19 Of the camp guards who participated in the shootings, [illegible] the ZHUL[ ] brothers, Ionas and Karolis. QUESTION: Do you have anything to add to your statements? ANSWER: I want to say that during the time of my presence in the camp, they took people out to be shot (besides the shootings conducted on August 25–27) several times. This applies to early August 1941.

17. He was the Lithuanian city commander during the mass murder. See Christoph Dieckmann, Deutsche Besatzungspolitik in Lituaen 1941–1944 (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2011), 865n307. 18. The author was unable to locate information on this man or most of the others on this list. 19. This was probably Konstantinas Petrauskas, district police chief for Svyriai by 1942. See Dieckmann, Deutsche Besatzungspolitik, 1253.

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Chapter 8 Five groups were shot, approximately 25–3 [illegible] people in each group. This transcript of my words is accurate, [illegible] (Nol’) [Noll] INTERROGATOR: Chief of Section 4, OKR20 “SMERSH”21 5th Guards Tank Army, Guards Captain [signature]

COVERAGE OF POSTWAR TRIALS IN THE JEWISH PRESS Once the Allied war crimes trials were underway, the discussion, evaluation, and concern about their relevance to the Jewish tragedy continued. The many different Jewish constituencies—from DPs, to the Jews of the yishuv, to American Jews, among others—expressed their views in a variety of ways, many through Jewish periodicals. Documents 8–3 and 8–4 reflect the perspective of Jewish DPs residing in Germany. For this group, the concern for justice was specific and personal. Much of the DP press was not satisfied with the Nuremberg proceedings or verdicts. From the very beginning of the investigative process, the Jewish DP population sought involvement in the trials of the perpetrators. In July 1945, delegates at the DP conference in the St. Ottilien Camp requested formal Jewish representation at and active participation in the International Commission for War Crimes.22 However, despite these high hopes, many correspondents for DP newspapers—including the author of the report in Document 8-3, which appeared in Unzer veg—remained pessimistic about the ultimate impact of these trials.23 Once the final verdicts appeared in 1946, for many the victory rang hollow. An October 9, 1946, article in the DP paper Unzer hofenung (Our Hope), published in the Eschwege DP Camp in Kassel, expressed a common sentiment: We Jews, like all nations, we may examine the verdict from our standpoint. We may examine the sentence from the standpoint of 6 million 20. Otdel Kontrrazvedki, or Department of Counterintelligence. 21. Smert’ Shpionam (Death to Spies), another name for the Red Army counterintelligence agency. 22. Zeev W. Mankowitz, Life between Memory and Hope: The Survivors of the Holocaust in Occupied Germany (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 247–48. 23. See Mankowitz, Life between Memory and Hope, 247–51.

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dead of our people and from that standpoint look at the results of the work of the international tribunal. The 6 million did not have their representative at the prosecutors’ dais, did not have their representative among the judges. [. . .] Yes, we the living do not have the right to criticize, but they, the tortured, the gassed, the shot, the thousands of brothers martyrs, they have the right to scream! They cannot be forbidden by anyone! If there in Nuremberg at the court of the major defendants a just verdict cannot come down, then what will happen in the day-to-day cases of little crimes?24

According to this perspective, the trials did not serve the purpose of the living or the dead. The article in document 8-3 from November 1945, written as the Nuremberg trials were taking place, therefore expresses a combination of skepticism and hope about a process that was not yet complete. DOCUMENT 8-3: Dr. Zalman Grinberg, “Nürnberg,” Unzer veg, November 20, 1945, 4, USHMM Library microfilms 0377.25

It is not coincidental that the city from which stemmed the laws which disfranchised, belittled, and finally destroyed European Jewry should be chosen as the Seat of Justice for the criminals who conceived and executed the Nürnberg Racial Laws. The murderer should be brought to justice in the city in which he fashioned his murderous decrees. Yet, it is not these alone who are responsible for the merciless destruction wreaked upon an innocent humanity for a period of twelve years. The entire German population bears that guilt. The numbered criminals summoned before the bar of justice spoke in the name of the people and perpetrated their crimes with the consent of that people. The German way of death, designed by the masters in Nürnberg was accepted by the entire German people. 24. Cited in Margarete Myers Feinstein, Holocaust Survivors in Postwar Germany, 1945– 1957 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 247. 25. A Lithuanian-born physician, Dr. Grinberg (1912–1983) had been the director of the Kovno ghetto hospital and survived the Dachau concentration camp. He became chair of the Central Committee of Liberated Jews in the US sector of Germany after the war and set up a hospital in St. Ottilien staffed by other camp survivors. After living in Israel, he immigrated to the United States in 1955. See obituary, New York Times, August 9, 1983; Mankowitz, Life between Memory and Hope.

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Chapter 8 It is difficult to prosecute an entire people. Cities cannot be summoned to the witness chair, especially when the penalty of death is the only verdict for those summoned. We, the remnant of European Jewry, though we have not been called to the prosecutor’s table, are convinced that we are the ones who should point an accusing finger. It is our voice, we know, that should be the first to be lifted against those who stand accused. Not being called, we exploit this opportunity to express our feelings and make our demands. Feelings and demands that should be supported by a humane and moral world. During the past twelve years we have witnessed a people slavishly following their Fuhrer. There was hardly a protest against the ways into which he led them and hardly an attempt was made to destroy his evil plans. Instead, songs of praise were sung to the honor of the Fuhrer and in their pseudo German heroism, they promised to follow him into the grave. At the ledge of the grave they remained standing, they would go no farther. It is this people which now maintains that it was not they who gave the Fuhrer his power nor was it they who supported his grandiose schemes for destruction. Who was it then? Where are the 80,000,000 who voted for the Nazi party? Are they no longer alive? Or were they never in life? The answer is that they live and will continue to live as National Socialists in their minds and in their actions. At present, under the dominations of military authority they fake the appearance of innocent sheep. They cringe and humble themselves before the victorious armies. And it is right that they should belittle themselves for the soul of a slave quickens the German body. We have been dealt with by a slave people, which became a master people. “Woe unto the nations of the earth,” when the slave becomes master. His warped brain and hardened heart break open and all the hate and venom that had been stored up through the years, strangles and poisons all those about him. The German people must remain the slaves! Never again shall they be permitted to rise and threaten humanity! We, the small remnant of Jewry condemn the German people to death as they condemned our people to death and carried out their condemnation. The Democracies, sitting in judgment, may choose to be more than

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generous to the German people. Whatever their verdict, our moral sentence of the German people must be made known to the world. We demand full reparation for all Jewish property confiscated and destroyed. We do not make this demand in the sense that the German destruction inflicted upon our people should be made good. There is no force in the world that could conceivably make good that which was undone by the German people. The monies realized from the reparations would be set aside as a “Rehabilitation Fund” which would guarantee, in a sense, the future of the surviving Jew. The best of our people lie in unmarked graves in the desecrated European soil upon which spring flowers will soon blossom. Let not the flowers deceive you! You Mighty of the Earth! Together with the ascending scent goes forth a heart rendering cry for justice. The fate of humanity is dependent upon whether or not we are granted justice. For the Jew is the barometer which gauges the peace of the universe. Should the world bypass the Jew and his problems and go on to concern itself with supposedly greater issues, like a moral atom bomb, the barometer will explore and again, will Humanity come to grips with death. The Nürnberg laws were our death sentence. From the Nürnberg Trials we await the proclamation of our rights and the vindication of our claim to free and equal rights as individuals and as a people in the world of peace and humanity.

The German-language Tel Aviv–based newspaper Yedioth HaYom reported on the trial of Josef Kramer (camp commandant at Bergen-Belsen) quite differently. While describing a few details of the proceedings of Kramer’s trial at Lüneberg, the editorial primarily advocates for immigration to Palestine. Indeed, in the writer’s view, the trials served as a potential means of forgetting the past rather than of recording the crimes of the Holocaust. Thus, the article highlights one perspective from the German Jewish émigré community in Palestine: the belief that ultimately neither European states nor Allied courts could be trusted to bring justice to the victims. Rather, from this perspective, a trial verdict does nothing to solve the core problem: establishing a homeland for Jews outside, as the editorialist states, the “cities in whose streets synagogues were burned and Jews were driven by howling crowds to train stations for deportation.”

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DOCUMENT 8-4: “To Avoid Disaster,” Yedioth HaYom, September 23, 1945, Leo Baeck Institute Archive (New York), fiche 117 (translated from German).

23 September 1945 To Avoid Disaster 1. In the trial against Josef Kramer,26 the camp commandant of BergenBelsen, the 40-year-old Dr. Ada Bimko27 appeared as a witness and testified to the atrocities committed there and in Auschwitz. In that moment, this woman from Poland was a witness and accuser on behalf of all Jewish people, and she demanded retribution in the name of the millions who were killed in this war by Hitler and his collaborators. At the onset of the trial there can hardly be any doubt. Josef Kramer and his accomplices are guilty and will receive their punishment. After them, many more war criminals will be sentenced whose trials have yet to begin. And any time that one of these trials begins, the press the world over will open its columns and report on the atrocities of the Nazis and the suffering millions of innocent Jews had to endure. 2. Is this great injustice perpetrated on the many dead and the few who managed to survive this torture avenged through the punishment of 47, 26. Josef Kramer (1905–1945) was the commandant of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Kramer was tried together with forty-four other war criminals at the Belsen Trial in Lüneberg, Germany, between August 17 and November 17, 1945. Found guilty, Kramer was hanged on December 13, 1945. For more information on the history of the camp and the Belsen Trial, see David Cesarani et al., eds., Belsen in History and Memory (New York: Routledge, 2013). 27. Hadassah Bimko (also Ada Bimko, Hadassah Rosensaft) (1912–1997) was born in Sosnowiec, Poland. On August 2–3, 1943, she was deported to Auschwitz with about five thousand other Jews from what was then the Sosnowiec ghetto. Her husband and five-yearold son were among those killed. Bimko worked in the camp infirmary and was later sent to Bergen-Belsen. In both camps, Bimko clandestinely provided medical aid and care to Jews. In May 1945, upon the liberation of Belsen, Bimko became a member of the Central Committee of Liberated Jews in the British Zone of occupied Germany. She was also a key witness in the Belsen Trial at Lüneberg. For more information on her wartime story and postwar experiences, see Hadassah Rosensaft, Yesterday: My Story (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem Publications, 2005).

Punishing the Perpetrators or 100, or even 10,000 war criminals? Is it only for the benefit of the survivors that these war criminals are punished, and through these trials is the world thus relieved of its duty to the victims? Is the world press going to devote its energy to publicizing the crimes of the Nazis for the moment, regret the fact of the many victims and the few survivors, and then simply bring its reporting to a close? Will and should this be the only reaction at the end of this war? The vast majority of Jews have already given their response, which is that this cannot all simply end with forgetting the great tragedy of these years. A lasting solution for Jews as Jews must emerge from the tragedy and the suffering of these years—a solution that finally frees them from their status as a reluctantly tolerated people, from a people persecuted and exiled and seen as bothersome beggars. The vast majority of Jews cry one word to their liberators in the Allied Armies, to the workers at the UNRRA, and to all others who wanted to care for them: Palestine. 3. But it is this very word which all the liberators and care workers did not want to hear. Instead, they told of a new, better life in Warsaw, Vienna, and Berlin. They did not understand these insistent Jews who no longer wanted to know of such cities, cities in whose streets synagogues were burned and Jews were driven by howling crowds to train stations for deportation. Some Jews could no longer stand it in the relief camps and actually returned to their cities. And the few who were seen as laughable pessimists and lofty Zionist dreamers saw their Cassandra prophecies confirmed. In free Poland they held a pogrom of Jews; in Budapest they wished the Jews back to Auschwitz; and in Berlin and Vienna, where these sort of outrages were not permitted to occur, they live a life without hope . . . and most importantly without food. After years of hunger behind the barbed wire fences they can now hunger “freely.” 4. The call rang out ever more urgently: Palestine and passports—and no answer came from London. Because there in London sat a government who had sworn Jews would be permitted to travel to Palestine only with the consent of the Arabs. The British government was also prepared to continue the games of 1929 and 1938 and buy for itself peace and quiet at

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Chapter 8 the expense of a weakened third party. And then came the game-changer. The new government that came into power was the representative of the party that condemned the White Paper of 1939 as a breach of trust and declared these policies immoral. They never supported these earlier policies and their leader declared that the White Paper would not bind them.28 This government—opponents of the politics of surrender, fighters against the spirit of Munich29—appears now, out of weakness and exhaustion, not to have the courage to hear the voices of the Jews. Now, as the issue of Palestine is taken up again, in the place of generous policies on the issue of immigration and initiating a constructive relief program for Hitler’s victims, weak policies are supposed to suffice—policies that are supposedly going to provide Jews with 1,500 certificates and modest help with acquiring land. [. . .] Today, the Zionist leadership is waging a desperate campaign to prevent disaster. They are leaving no stone unturned. President Truman, leader of the most powerful country in the world and the true winner of the war, has thrown his support behind the Jews, and perhaps his intervention will change the atmosphere in London. Perhaps the question will come before the United Nations. But let us not rely solely on outside help. The Jews themselves, and especially the Yishuv of Palestine, must fulfill their duties in this great historical struggle. Are you really prepared for this struggle, as it will soon be carried out not in London but here? Many understand well what it’s come to today, that Zionism as such is in danger. But many cannot free themselves from their “opposition,” from the small bickering of the day. Some are more concerned about the elections in the food workers’ trade union than about the future of the country. Others scream scandal if the

28. On May 17, 1939, the British government under Neville Chamberlain issued a socalled white paper outlining its new policy on Palestine. Effectively reversing its commitment to a “national home for the Jewish people” there, as stipulated in the 1917 Balfour Declaration, the British government now envisioned limiting Jewish immigration and land purchases and establishing a state with majority (Palestinian Arab) rule in the near future. See Benny Morris, Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881–2001 (New York: Vintage, 2001); Walter Laqueur and Barry Rubin, eds., The Israel-Arab Reader: A Documentary History of the Middle East Conflict (New York: Penguin, 2008), 44–50. 29. Refers to the Munich Agreement of September 30, 1938, that ceded the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to the Nazis.

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arrival of new people in a Beth Olim30 doesn’t work, and if departments of the Jewish Agency aren’t organized to their specific tastes. None of this would occur if these people and the groups to which they belong truly understood the magnitude of the situation, and more importantly, if they had the resolute determination to change our fate and bring the Zionist project onto firmer footing. The most important Zionist leaders are in London these days, but in this hour the Yishuv needs leadership and directives. It is the duty of the members of the Executive who are here to show the way. They now have the task of gathering and uniting everyone, so that the Yishuv, as the vanguard of the Jewish people, is ready to fulfill its duty in the great struggle. Yachin31

Not all responses to the Allied trials in the Jewish press presented an overtly Jewish perspective on the proceedings. Some, like the article by jurist Louis Nizer32 excerpted in Document 8-5, framed the Nuremberg proceedings as part of a more universal concept of justice. Writing for the Record, a publication of the American Jewish Conference, on October 7, 1946, as the verdicts were being handed down, Nizer’s account mentions Jews only once; he compares the relative plenty of the food received by the Nuremberg defendants to the paucity of rations received by Jewish displaced persons. One must be careful not to read this absence of a distinctly Jewish perspective, however, as an absence of Jewish interest in the proceedings. Several recent studies have explored the varied American Jewish response to the Holocaust in the immediate postwar years.33 While opinions about the impact, intention, and reach of the newspaper 30. A communal house for new immigrants to Palestine. 31. The author was unable to locate this person. 32. Louis Nizer (1902–1994) was born in London and brought to the United States as a child. He became an accomplished trial lawyer, specializing in cases involving the American film industry. Among his many books, Nizer also wrote a controversial monograph about the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg espionage case (The Implosion Conspiracy) and authored the foreword to the report of the Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. 33. See Hasia R. Diner, We Remember with Reverence and Love: American Jews and the Myth of Silence after the Holocaust, 1945–1962 (New York: New York University Press, 2009); David Cesarani and Eric J. Sundquist, eds., After the Holocaust: Challenging the Myth of Silence (New York: Routledge, 2012); Beth B. Cohen, Case Closed: Holocaust Survivors in Postwar America (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press in association with the USHMM, 2007).

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articles, community events, and memorials vary, scholars have yet to fully examine the fact that such responses occurred. Nizer’s account, published by the American Jewish Conference as its own stand-alone pamphlet, explores the legal, moral, and ethical questions surrounding the inception, existence, and final verdicts of the Nuremberg trials in some detail. Unlike the opinions featured in the DP newspapers, Nizer does not purport to speak on behalf of an entire community. Rather, he writes as a lawyer and scholar to an audience actively interested in Jewish representation on the world stage.34 DOCUMENT 8-5: Louis Nizer, “The Nuremberg Verdict: An Appraisal,” reprinted from Record 3, no. 7 (October 1946) (New York, American Jewish Conference).

The words “Guilty as Charged” for 12 of the defendants are the echo of a judgment rendered years ago by all mankind against all 22 defendants and against millions of other Germans. It is a verdict uttered by men in their hearts, wherever they happened to live, whether in a town in the western United States or a village in Korea, and whatever they toiled at, whether pressing pedals on a repetitive machine in some huge factory, or coaxing oxen over a dry road in Australia. It is a verdict rendered by every rectangle of ground which contains a skeleton of a man who might still have been alive, or a women who might still be enriching life, or a child who might be maturing to fulfill its future. The verdict at Nuremberg is an echo—long delayed. Radio waves rush around the globe seven times in one second. But man’s moral pronouncements are still ground slowly through a mill. The leisurely arrival at such a long delayed verdict is in itself infuriating. The crimes were too enormous to permit such protracted and calm procedure. Formalism became enthroned and we lost the most precious ingredient of law—righteous indignation. When one is so fair to men who have killed thirty million people, he is automatically unfair to their victims and survivors. The choice is not 34. The American Jewish Conference, established in Pittsburgh in 1943, comprised representatives from sixty-four American Jewish organizations, including the American Jewish Committee. The organization aimed to represent postwar Jewish interests and advocated for Jewish settlement in Palestine. Among the representatives was Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, leader in Reform Judaism and wartime advocate for Jewish interests in Europe and the United States.

Punishing the Perpetrators between law and lawlessness. It is between swift, inexorable punishment and slow, self-defeating formalism; it is between justice and procedure. With maddening “correctness” we granted the Nazi leaders nine months of comfortable life. They were shaved and cleaned daily by soldier valets. Their food was good—much better than that of Jews in displaced persons camps. The prisoners sat before a great tribunal, enjoying the attention of great nations, and reveling in the constant photographing and polite interviews, which they “granted.” They thrilled to the ceremony which permitted them to address the world as though they were cosmic figures rather than depraved men. They variously proclaimed their innocence, their patriotism and their lack of responsibility, creating momentarily the illusion of their martyrdom. When ill, or dope-ridden like Goering, they were cured by good doctors. They chuckled and laughed joyously at humorous incidents during the trial. They constituted their own claque, applauding one another’s testimony and ceremoniously congratulating one another upon skillful evasions or retorts while under cross-examination. [. . .] And now finally only 11 of them will die. They presented to the last [that] they were only the victims of their conquerors—not criminals punished by society. Would it not have been better to have brought these evil men before military tribunals solely for identification and summarily executed them within 24 hours after they were apprehended? Later, we could have issued an official report of incriminating documents found in German archives and, supplemented by affidavits and depositions, have thus established a formal, authentic record of the greatest crime in all history. [. . .] Also, the living as well as the unborn are to be considered. Our dislocated generation must know that its sacrifices do not weigh less in the balance than the formalities of a trial. The conscience of mankind is instinctively true and it knows that not even death, or torture, were we capable of inflicting it, is adequate punishment for these men. Ought we not at least [to] have satisfied that conscience by a speedy disposition of the matter, as if we could not waste more than a moment upon such base men? Many a lowly spy has been so summarily blotted out. Were these evil men entitled to more? [. . .]

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IN PURSUIT OF JUSTICE: STATEMENTS OF THE VICTIMS From its inception, the UNWCC had been gathering evidence of Nazi crimes with an eye toward prosecution. The question of how to treat Jews and Jewish testimony immediately became a challenge. With a legal system that had not yet established a place for Jews—let alone the Jewish distinctiveness of the Holocaust—the role of Jewish testimony remained unresolved. Additionally, the very question of eyewitness testimony itself remained an open one: how much space would be given to victims’ voices of any stripe as opposed to the vast documentary evidence of genocidal crimes.35 Indeed, Nuremberg and its pretrial investigations grappled with the focus (or lack thereof ) on Jews and Jewish victims. At the same time, Jews were present at, testified to, and gathered evidence for this and other immediate postwar trials. While often not at the forefront of the judicial proceedings, and in some cases not explicitly identified, Jews participated in the trials of their captors. Document 8-6, a statement from Otto Langfelder, 36 is most likely a translation from the original Serbo-Croatian deposition taken by the County Commission for the Ascertaining of War Crimes, established by the Yugoslav communists in 1943. Albert Vajs, a leader of the postwar Yugoslav Jewish community, served as one of the principal members of this commission and was the most likely conduit for this deposition. Vajs, an expert on international law, served as a member of the official Yugoslav delegation at Nuremberg.37 Jasenovac, a concentration camp in the wartime Independent State of Croatia established by the collaborationist Ustaša regime in August 1941, was in operation until April 1945.38 It was overrun by Yugoslav partisans in May 1945. During its operation, over one hundred thousand inmates (Serbs, Jews, and Roma) 35. For a summary and commentary on this position, see Bloxham, Genocide on Trial. 36. Otto Langfelder was born in 1915 in Đakovo, Croatia, in the district of Osijek. He fled the German invasion in 1941 and was later captured by Croatian Ustaša forces and interned in the Jasenovac concentration camp. For more information, see “Massuah,” Infocenters.co.il, http://www.infocenters.co.il/massuah/notebook_ext.asp?book=58968&lang=en g&site=massuah; “Langfelder Otto,” Victims and Survivors, CENDO, ” http://www.cendo. hr/BazaZrtavaDetalji.aspx?id=3629&name=langfelder-otto (accessed September 23, 2014). 37. For more information about the postwar Yugoslav Jewish community and the role of Albert Vajs in particular, see Emil Kerenji, “Jewish Citizens of Socialist Yugoslavia: Politics of Jewish Identity in a Socialist State, 1944–1974” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2008), 121–76. 38. For more information about Serbian and Yugoslav memory of this camp, see Jovan Byford, “When I Say ‘the Holocaust’ I Mean ‘Jasenovac’: Remembrance of the Holocaust in Contemporary Serbia,” East European Jewish Affairs 37, no. 1 (April 2007): 51–74.

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were killed. This statement testifies to the brutality of this camp—into which research is still ongoing—from the perspective of one of its survivors. It does not, however, specifically single out Jewish suffering or a particularly Jewish perspective. In the context of postwar Yugoslavia, this is hardly surprising; indeed, the camp experience in Jasenovac would have been thought of as part of a larger narrative of Yugoslav suffering during the war.39 DOCUMENT 8-6: Sworn statement on his detention in the Jasenovac concentration camp, 1941–1945, by Otto Langfelder, circa 1945, USHMMA RG 68.045M, reel 3, file 17 (translated from German).

J A S E N O V A C CONCENTRATION CAMP (From the Records of the County Commission for the Ascertaining of War Crimes: Questioning under Oath of Otto LANGF[ELDE]R of Osijek, a Returnee from the Jasenovac Camp) [. . .] We were taken to Jasenovac, to Camp II. This camp was located 5 to 6 km [3.1 to 3.7 miles] from the train station, near the forest. It was also about 2 km [1.2 miles] from the highway, so that we were completely cut off from the outside world. We were escorted into the camp by Jasenovac Ustashas [Ustaše]. There we were just piled in by the score, that is, without any drawing up of a list of the new arrivals. [. . .] On August 18, 1943, I was transported back to Jasenovac. When I arrived at Jasenovac I, I noticed at once that all the camp inmates were in chains. They all were chained up for three days. At this time the commandant of the camp was Captain Brkljačić,40 and the labor chief was Colonel Picili.41 After three days, the prisoners were unchained, but another punishment was imposed: a ban on writing letters and receiving packages. As a result, the camp was affected by indescribable famine, because people got only a soup with no salt or fat in the morning, and at noon and in the evening only 15 decagrams [5.3 ounces] of cornmeal with no salt or fat. At this time, even any “addition” to the foods was prohibited. People 39. See Kerenji, Jewish Citizens of Socialist Yugoslavia, 121–76. 40. Refers to Ivica Brkljačić, who became commandant of the Jasenovac camp in the spring of 1943. 41. Dominic Hinko Picili oversaw labor at the camp.

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Chapter 8 were dying en masse. As far as I could ascertain, Picili received the orders for murder and torture from Luborić and Pavlović.42 In the chain factory, the engineer Salomon43 was in charge, the leader of the workers was Bela Grünberger, and then Rosenberg, who moved around freely. There were Serbs, Croats, and Jews here. Engineer Salomon enjoyed the trust of the Ustasha, because allegedly the drawing of the model for the “mattock” was his work. However, he treated the people very well and saved the lives of many, especially the Serbs and Croats. He also saved Lazo Jankara, a typographer from Zemun, who is now back at home. I know that he saved the lives of a group of the best craftsmen, including Taus from [Slavonski] Brod, Radaš, a camp inmate for four years, the Müller brothers, Jakica Altarac, a master craftsman, Leo Blacher (an emigrant from Vienna), Zlatko Kohn from Požega, although they had to go around in chains for two months as punishment. The chain factory had greater comforts than the other part of the camp, because it was valued. The food was actually the same, but it was supplemented with meat and bread. The workday was 10 or 11 hours long. Liquidations of people from the chain factory were rare, because SALOMON had great influence with Picili. In the meantime, mass executions were carried out in the camp, especially in Gradina and in the bell workshop [Glockenwerkstatt; Zvonara]. The “bell workshop” was a prison from which nobody emerged alive. People were tortured and murdered there in the most gruesome way. In command here were Platoon Leader Vrković, Zudar, Lieutenant Prpić,44 Zrničić, and Alagar. In the bell workshop, people were often torn into pieces while still alive and thus killed, subjected to the most dreadful torments. On February 1, 1944, I was put into the forest group, which was commanded by Mihajlović and Brkonić. The hardest job here was dragging the logs from Krapija and Drvena Voka to Jasenovac. Work continued even in the heaviest snow and rain. We were beaten terribly. Vrkonić struck the people here with ropes and axes. I spent a month at this work and then

42. Members of the Ustaša. 43. The author was unable to find further information about this person and, unless otherwise noted, about other people mentioned in this testimony. 44. Refers to Lieutenant Stipe Prpić.

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was ordered to go into the forest near Gradina and Koštanica to chop wood. Here, everyone had to hew 1.5 cubic meters [53 cubic feet] of timber. This forest group was never liquidated during the year, only in the fall during the mass liquidations. I worked here until October 1944, when I was transferred to the chain factory once more. Serbs, Croatians, and Jews worked in the forest, and only the Jews were heavily beaten. From 100 to 150 people worked here. As I already mentioned, the camp was bordered on one side by the Sava River, while the other sides were surrounded by heavily tangled barbed wire. Behind the barbed wire was a wall 4 meters [13 feet] high, atop which was another set of tangled barbed wire. At a distance of 150 meters [492 feet], guard towers about 10 meters [33 feet] high were set up for observation. Nobody had the right to enter the camp except Ustashas who had a special permit from the camp unit. The commander of the camp unit was Prpić, also Lieutenant Ante Zriničić, Mihailović, Perković, Alaga, Primorac, Vrković, Horvat, Sudar, Lisac, Mandić, Šakić, the last of whom is directly responsible for the shooting of every tenth man and for the mass murders of the Jews. The events of 1943 were as bloody as those of 1942. Liquidation followed liquidation. The shooting of every tenth Jew was publicly carried out. In the same year, the intellectuals in the camp founded a secret party that was in contact with the partisans. Nevertheless, the affair was discovered in August 1944, and all the members, who were betrayed, were hanged. In late 1944 the number of prisoners rose to about 10,000, because the Ustashas stopped all trains traveling from or to Zagreb, and brought all Home Guard45 members and civilians to the camp for liquidation. Only around 700 Croatians were sent to Germany to work. After Belgrade and Zemun fell, the population of the camp dropped from 10,000 to 3,500, not counting those who were not included in the camp population at all.

45. Armed forces from the Independent State of Croatia as distinct from the Ustaša forces.

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Chapter 8 Until the end, I worked in the chain factory. On about April 15, 1945, a group from Osijek and Djakovo came into the camp, around 50 people, whom none of us could see. They spent only one night in the camp and left early the next morning. The fate of these people is utterly unknown. At the same time, that is, in mid-April 1945, the withdrawal of the Ustasha began. In this period they sent prisoners in chains to Gradina, to exhume the victims buried there in 1941 and burn the bones, so that no trace of these crimes would remain. At this time, the prisoners from Sarajevo also came to the camp, and they were immediately sent to Gradina for liquidation. They included around 450 men and women. After the Ustasha had withdrawn from Osijek and Djakovo, they started again with the liquidation of a group of people from Osijek and Djakovo. The liquidation was carried out with the help of the entire Ustasha camp unit. Gradina burned for 20 days because of the bones that were being destroyed there. After this cremation, it was the turn of the now reduced camp population. The first group, 100 people, allegedly went to Lonja to work, but never returned. The second group, numbering about 500 prisoners, allegedly was taken to Uštica to work, but never returned either. On April 20, 1945, 1,300 women and children were locked into six wooden barracks. Then the barracks were doused with kerosene, set on fire, and blown up, while the watchmen kept the cremated remains burning all night long, so that no trace would remain. We surviving men, about 1,300 in number, were locked into a two-story building on April 21, 1945, with the intention of destroying us as well. During the night of April 21 and early morning hours of April 22, the camp’s work chiefs were taken away and killed. On April 22, 1945, when we saw what awaited us, we talked and agreed that we would carry out an attack, and that we would not let ourselves be killed so easily by the bloodthirsty Ustasha. I was on the ground floor of the said building, into which we had been locked. The decision to attack was made jointly by comrades from the chain factory, machinists’ workshop, carpentry workshop, and tailoring workshop. Among the leaders of this attack were Lecker from Tuzla, Pfeffermann from Osijek, Oskar Brucker from Zagreb, Milivoj Popović from Zemun, Kurjaković, Scheriff,

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Dr. Louis Deutsch from Sisak, Daus from Brod, Radosch from Zagreb, the Müller brothers from N. Gradište [Nova Gradiška]; the others were unknown to me. [. . .] In all, only 38 persons managed to get out of the Jasenovac camp alive.

In addition to written depositions, another form of “testimony” originates from those Jews who attended the trials themselves as observers. Document 8-7 shows one example. Between August 17 and November 17, 1945, the British army tried forty-four men and women from Bergen-Belsen for their roles in governing and administering the camp. The highest-ranking defendants were Josef Kramer (camp commandant), Franz Hössler (compound commandant),46 and Fritz Klein (camp doctor).47 Additionally, sixteen female SS members were also tried, including compound commander Irma Grese.48 The majority of the defendants had held lower-ranking administrative roles. Thirty were found guilty. While some were indicted for specific crimes, many were instead charged with having taken part in the camp’s general operations, which were, in and of themselves, criminal.49

46. Franz Hössler (1906–1945) was a Nazi German SS-Obersturmführer and Schutzhaftlagerführer at the Auschwitz II–Birkenau, Dora-Mittelbau, and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps during World War II. Apprehended by the Allies and charged with crimes against humanity, he was hung at Hameln Prison in 1945. For more information, see Geoffrey P. Megargee, ed., The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, vol. 1: Early Camps, Youth Camps, and Concentration Camps and Subcamps under the SS-Business Administration Main Office (WVHA) (Bloomington: Indiana University Press in association with the USHMM, 2009), 970. 47. Fritz Klein (1888–1945), a doctor at the Bergen-Belsen camp who previously served at Auschwitz II–Birkenau, was sentenced to death by hanging at the Hameln Prison in 1945. For more information, see William I. Hitchcock, The Bitter Road to Freedom: A New History of the Liberation of Europe (New York: Free Press, 2008), 358–60. 48. Irma Grese (1923–1945) was a female guard at Ravensbrück and later Auschwitz from 1943 to 1945. She ended her career as head of the women’s section at Bergen-Belsen in 1945. Prosecuted in the Bergen-Belsen trials, Grese was the youngest woman sentenced to death under British law. She was hung in 1945. For more information, see Wendy Lower, Hitler’s Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing, 2013), 10, 151, 257. 49. Tomaz Jardim, The Mathausen Trial: American Military Justice in Nuremberg (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 36–37. For more on Easterman’s observations on the trial, see Hitchcock, The Bitter Road to Freedom, 359–60.

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Document 8-7 presents the observations of Alex Easterman,50 the political secretary of the London office of the World Jewish Congress (WJC). As the official WJC observer, he describes the trial in both hyperbolic and, at the same time, distinctly Jewish terms. Indeed, for Easterman the trial serves as nothing short of a secular “Day of Atonement” and “Day of Judgment”—language drawn from Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. While Easterman continues to note the significance of the trial for the rest of world Jewry, his overtly Jewish language evaporates quickly as the remainder of the report describes the defendants in withering detail. DOCUMENT 8-7: Report by Alex Easterman on the Lüneburg trial of Josef Kramer and other Nazis responsible for crimes at Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz, Lüneburg, September 17, 1945, USHMMA RG 68.045M, reel 18, file 140.

REPORT BY MR. A.L. EASTERMAN AT TRIAL OF BELSEN MURDERERS Lüneburg, September 17, 1945 The Jewish people, through the World Jewish Congress, took their place this morning among the accusers before whom were arraigned the first batch of criminals of Hitler’s Third Reich. On this Jewish Day of Atonement and Day of Judgment, and in the very heart of Germany among the ruins of the Nazi devil State, the drama of retribution for “one of the blackest crimes in all history” began. This is the trial of 46 beasts in human form who, at the infamous murder and torture camps of Belsen and Auschwitz, encompassed the death, by diabolic and deliberate means inconceivable to the normal human mind, of hundreds of thousands of innocent Jewish men, women, and children and untold numbers of non-Jewish nationals of lands overrun by the bestial hordes of Germany at war. 50. Alexander L. Easterman (1890–1983), a prominent Scottish-born journalist and Zionist, became foreign editor of the Daily Express and chief foreign correspondent of London’s Daily Herald in the 1930s. He worked for the World Jewish Congress from approximately 1944 to 1949. A member of the WJC delegation to the United Nations’ inaugural conference in 1945 and the 1946 Paris Peace Conference, Easterman also represented the WJC at the Nuremberg trials. See obituary, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, September 7, 1983.

Punishing the Perpetrators The trial takes the form nominally of the proceedings of a British Military Court. The five Judges are high-ranking British Army Officers, with a Major General as President. The Prosecutor is a British Colonel, and the Defending Counsel are British Officers of varying ranks. But the whole character of the atmosphere of this solemn Tribunal far transcends that of a British Military Court and, translated into true significance, denotes the unfolding of one of the grimmest pages of world history. For none is this historic event more significant than for the Jewish people whom Hitler swore to destroy and erase from the records of his world. On a raised dais which forms the seat of judgment and immediately behind the Military Judges, sit representatives of the Allied Nations whose people were victims of Belsen and Auschwitz. The seats of those representatives are marked, respectively, with large cards in black printed letters bearing the names—Czechoslovakia, Poland, France, Holland, Soviet Russia, Greece, Luxembourg, Yugoslavia, and “World Jewish Congress.” Thus, at this significantly dramatic moment in the history of civilization, recognition has been given for all to witness that the Jewish people have their appropriate place among the nations and that they have a rightful equal seat with the others, great and small, at the Judgment Seat when the violators of the laws of humanity are brought to justice, to answer for their iniquities. It is, at long last, recognition too that the crimes committed by Nazi Germany against the Jews of Europe bear their own distinctive significance, in character, in purpose and in scope. It is with a deep sense of humility, and pride that it has fallen to my lot to represent my people who have survived to see Hitler laid low in the dust of his Empire, that I took my place this morning in the seat allotted to the World Jewish Congress. Technically, my colleagues and I of the Allied Nations are designated “Observers”; in actual historic content, we form the international Tribunal which sits in judgment upon the perpetrators of savageries committed against our peoples and which have befouled civilized mankind. When, with the Judges, we took our places on the Judgment Dais, the prisoners—46 of Hitler’s “beloved Volkgenossen,” 26 males and 20 females, marched into the Court in single file under Military Police Escort to take their seats in the dock, consisting of three tiers, one above the

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Chapter 8 other. There they sit, facing us across the wide Courtroom, brilliantly lit by great electric arc-lamps, the representatives of “The Master Race,” the Aryan supermen who were to bring the Nordic New Order to fruition and domination and to enslave mankind to their will. Loathing and revulsion inadequately describe the impression given by these animals in human shape. Their faces are writ large with cruelty and cunning. Their features are twisted and heavy with brutality. Their eyes are cold and beastly and sharp with blood-lust. Their cheeks are uniformly square-jawed and the corners of their mouths are turned deep down in hard, brutal lines. Most of them are former members of the SS, while the others are former [illegible] turned murderers. Many other “Kapos” are hardened and habitual criminals. There has surely never been such a gallery of human beastliness exposed in the sight of man. Some are of the simple criminal type of the worst character—some have marks of intelligence and awareness which serve to accentuate the cold brutishness of their acts. Each bears a white cloth, tied on the chest, showing a large black number. No. 1 is the infamous Josef Kramer, the SS Commandant of Belsen and Auschwitz whom the world already knows as the Beast of Belsen. He sits, swarthy and sinister, heavy-jowled and beadyeyed, but perfectly calm, as he listens to the Prosecutor’s long catalogue of horrors, mass-murders, mass starvation, mass cremation, beating of the sick and dying and numberless unbelievable tortures of helpless human beings which, as the Prosecutor said, words cannot describe and which Kramer ordered, organized and perpetrated by his own hand. Next to Kramer sits Fritz Klein, Romanian member of the SS, a fair-haired Nordic intellectual and the best looking of the gang, cold and callous—a typical product of German “Kultur.” He has admitted his personal part in devising and supervising the scientific killing of thousands of victims. One shudders to glance at him. The females in the dock are, if anything, more horrific in appearance and delivery than the males. Most terrifyingly brutal is Irma Grese (she cannot be more than 25),51 ashen-blonde and completely Aryan. Hitler would undoubtedly have hailed her proudly as “The Ideal Nazi Woman.”

51. Irma Grese was twenty-two at the time.

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The attention of all in Court has been riveted on her from the moment when she took her place in the front row amongst her accomplices. Heavy featured and with a certain savage beauty, she has the cruelest eyes and [most] tightly-drawn mouth ever seen in a woman. When the Prosecutor described her as “the worst woman in the Camp,” he confirmed the general impression her appearance made on her entrance and before any word was known of the charges against her or her share in the atrocities. On her right sits dark, gnarled, middle-aged Hilde Lohbauer,52 of the vilest criminal type. The Prosecutor stated that she and Grese indulged in a special form of amusement. They set savage dogs on helpless victims to tear them to pieces until they died. They also played a prominent part in killing victims in gas chambers, then destroying their bodies in crematoria. The other female monsters are charged with playing similar parts in the foul deeds enumerated at length and with growing horror by the Prosecutor. The cumulative effect of what I have narrated was by no means evident during the early part of the proceedings. [. . .] From the Jewish viewpoint, it is a grievous disappointment in that there is a complete absence in the indictment of the slightest suggestion of the colossal crime against the Jews resulting in the annihilation of six million souls. The word “Jew” is not mentioned once in the preliminary formal proceedings. The whole atmosphere changed dramatically, however, in the afternoon when the Prosecutor delivered the opening address, narrating in simple, direct, unadorned terms, the entire drama of perfidy of which the prisoners are accused. He described the offences as violations of the laws and usages of war and of humanity, with complete disregard to the sanctity of human life and of human suffering, and as “the deliberate killing of tens of thousands, possibly millions.” He spoke of “a criminal gang working together to commit individual crimes and as part of a general plan of mass-murder.” He said that no words could describe the conditions at Belsen Camp when it was liberated by the British Army, in April, who found a “dense mass of human scarecrows and skeletons living, dying, dead—all lying around in heaps.” He said that the British found thirteen 52. Hilde Lohbauer (1918–?), a political prisoner in the Auschwitz II–Birkenau camp, became Dr. Fritz Klein’s assistant. She resided at Auschwitz from March 1943 to February 1945, after which time she was transferred to Ravensbrück, then to Bergen-Belsen. In November 1945, Lohbauer was convicted of war crimes and sentenced to ten years in prison.

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Chapter 8 thousand unburied corpses, and thirteen thousand more died within a few days of liberation and despite treatment. They were beyond any possibility of being restored to life. The average life of a Belsen internee was ten days after arrival in the Camp. Death was mainly by planned starvation, shooting and beating to death. The emaciated and diseased inmates, barely alive, were forced at pistol point and club to work fourteen hours a day, dragging corpses to the burial pits. Any one of the miserable wretches faltering on the way, was instantly clubbed to death or shot on the spot, so that at every yard, there was a mass of new corpses. The Prosecutor said that the Court would see a film of the scene when the British arrived at Belsen, showing “the degradation to which the human mind could descend.” He told in gruesome terms, how starved, emaciated inmates, scrambled like animals among the rubbish-heaps, searching for scraps of refuse and bones to appease their desperate hunger—then [were] shot while doing so. A shudder went round the Court as the Prosecutor described how inmates were driven to cannibalism by cutting flesh from dead bodies and eating it. The Prosecutor described similar horrors at Auschwitz, which became the biggest horror-camp, in Nazi-controlled Europe. Here, five gas-chambers destroyed four million people.53 By May, 1944, gassings was so extensive that the crematoria could not maintain the consumption of human bodies. As an example of the extent of the horrors, the Prosecutor cited the case of 45,000 Greek Jews deported to Auschwitz of whom only 60 individuals remained alive. This incredibly grim story of human savagery and suffering ended the first day of the Belsen Trial. Soldiers and civilians alike in the courtroom are physically sick and mentally appalled. Alex Easterman, Lüneberg, 17th September 1945

53. Unlike Auschwitz II–Birkenau, Bergen-Belsen was not a death camp and therefore did not have a gas chamber. Crematoria did in fact exist, which may be what the author here refers to. For more information on the liberation of Bergen-Belsen, see Hagit Lavsky, “The Day After: Bergen-Belsen from Concentration Camp to the Centre of the Jewish Survivors in Germany,” German History 11, no. 1 (1993): 36–59.

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JUSTICE ON THE LOCAL LEVEL: CLAIMS AND ACCUSATIONS While “crimes against humanity” were being adjudicated on an international stage, daily justice was meted out on the local level according to local laws. The documents in this section illuminate these types of actions in the French context, where Jews found a largely inhospitable legal system to address their concerns. On August 26, 1944, Charles de Gaulle entered Paris, and on September 2, 1944, France was fully liberated, with a new Provisional Government presiding over the republic. France, however, was on tenuous ground; nearly 1 million French POWs were still detained in Germany, along with 800,000 volunteers/conscripts in the Forced Labor Service. Bombings had also destroyed nearly 1 million buildings, and food shortages were rampant.54 In August 1944, the new French government declared that “all acts establishing or applying any discrimination whatsoever based on the fact that a person was a Jew” were to be abolished. Practice, however, did not follow suit. While high-level leadership had been replaced, lower-level bureaucrats often remained from the Vichy regime or the Nazi occupation. Moreover, as returning Jews sought to reclaim their property, those who now occupied their former apartments or had taken advantage of the plunder of Jewish property began to form associations to defend their acquisition of Jewish homes and goods.55 These organizations claimed, among other things, that the profit from and/ or use of Jewish goods had contributed to the French Resistance, and therefore they should not be returned. Moreover, Jews were urged to consider themselves as part of the larger population of “French victims” of war rather than as a special group deserving particular and different consideration. To reclaim their property, these organizations claimed, would be to evict a French “war victim.”56 On November 14, 1944, two ordinances ordering property returned to previous Jewish owners were finally issued. However, even these laws contained several loopholes: war victims, evacuees, and refugees and their families could not be expelled; nor could POWs or conscripted forced laborers. Those reclaiming their homes also had to prove that they had in fact been evicted. As a result of these restrictions and other appeals on the local level, as late as 1951 only half

54. Renée Poznanski, Jews in France during World War II (Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press in association with the USHMM, 2001), 463. 55. Poznanski, Jews in France, 464. 56. For examples of these statements, see Poznanski, Jews in France, 463–65.

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of returning Parisian Jews had reoccupied their former homes.57 France was certainly not the only country to actively or passively block the Jewish recovery of property. According to reports of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, the Netherlands, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and other European countries had similar policies.58 The case of Dr. Nathan Salczberger, sketched out in document 8-8, demonstrates this locally driven yet transnational legal landscape. According to the reports, Dr. Nathan Salczberger served in the French army in 1939 and was interned in a German POW camp until late 1942.59 Upon his return to France, he fled to the unoccupied zone in the south, leaving his brother, sister-in-law, and an uninhabited apartment in Paris. Salczberger accused the building concierge, Amélie Lavergne,60 and her daughter, Georgette, of capitalizing on the Salczberger family’s toils. According to him, Amélie and Georgette gave up his sister-in-law, Helene, who was hiding in the attic, to the Gestapo.61 Furthermore, Salczberger accused Lavergne and her family of stealing his belongings and professed that they had close ties to Gestapo agents during the war. Salczberger even claimed that Georgette, who was interned at Drancy (for unspecified reasons), became the lover of Erich Kahnt, a German soldier stationed in Paris.62 57. Poznanski, Jews in France, 466. 58. For the situation in the Netherlands, see Gerhardus Hendrik Aalders, A Disgrace? Postwar Restitution of Looted Jewish Property in the Netherlands (Leiden: Brill, 2001); for information on Jewish property restoration in Romania, see Martin Dean, Robbing the Jews: The Confiscation of Jewish Property in the Holocaust, 1933–1945 (New York: Cambridge University Press in association with the USHMM, 2008), 325–34; for information on Czechoslovakia, see USHMMA RG 68.066M, reels 12 and 14. 59. Born in 1901 in Sighet (Romania), Salczberger (also Salezberger, Salez-berger) had become a naturalized citizen in 1928. He received treatment in a military hospital in Toulouse between the time of his release and his demobilization in November 1944. 60. Amélie Lavergne (née Cavanès) was born in 1887. 61. Helene Salczberger (née Geró) was born in 1906 in Nyiregyháza. Her fate is unknown. She and her husband, Melchior, born 1897 in Máramarossziget, both appeared on a list of Hungarian Jews living in Paris. See USHMM ITS Collection Data Base Central Name Index. 62. Kahnt (alias Emile Lafargues) was born in Hohenmölsen, Germany, and met Georgette a month after he arrived in Paris in mid-1940. Women who had affairs with German soldiers or officials during the war were punished harshly in the immediate postwar period. Referred to as femmes tondues (shorn women), they had their heads shaved and were marched through town squares in acts of public shaming. For more information on these women and the state of women in postliberation France more generally, see K. H. Adler, Jews and Gender in Liberation France (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

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While the outcome is unknown, the Salczberger case demonstrates the struggle—on a daily and local level—of Jews seeking justice in the immediate postwar period. Indeed, to those involved, these smaller cases (rather than international trials) became important for daily survival and the establishment of a future life and livelihood. DOCUMENT 8-8: Deposition of Dr. Nathan Salczberger to the Police Quarter of the Fourth District, Paris, December 19, 1944, USHMMA Acc. 2008.174 Dr. Nathan Salczberger collection (translated from French).

Paris, December 19, 1944 Monsieur Public Prosecutor of the Republic The undersigned Nathan Salczberger, doctor of medicine of the Paris faculty, at present under arms, in charge of the French Medical Mission of the US army (Med. Captain 12th US Army Group GSAFC 655) has the honor to present to you that in 1939 he practiced his profession in an apartment he rented at 16 Blvd. Sebastopol in Paris. After the armistice, his apartment had been taken over by the German authorities of occupation while he, an Army doctor, was imprisoned as a prisoner of war. The German confiscation services took possession of his furniture or more accurately of all that remained. In fact, he learned that others took advantage of the information they had about the German confiscation arrangements to take some furniture before the confiscation was completed. The latter might have thought that their [the furniture’s] disappearance would appear unnoticed or would be blamed on the Germans themselves. In this respect, it would be particularly interesting to interrogate the old concierge at Blvd. Sebastopol, Madame Lavergne and her daughter, Georgette Lavergne, who previously had been interned in Drancy and who had just recently reoccupied her apartment at 24 Rue Raymond Poincare in Paris, where she was living during the occupation with [a] German called EHRICH, a Gestapo agent. During a search in her apartment, they discovered among other things an ophthalmology kit belonging to the doctor. Also, Dr. Salczberger’s brother, Melchior Salczberger, resident at 31 Rue de la Harpe, Paris, gave the aforementioned concierge in November 1942

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Chapter 8 a suitcase that contained an assortment of clothes (including a blue suit, a blue gabardine overcoat, three shirts, three pairs of long underwear, five pairs of socks, two pairs of shoes, six ties, one scarf, twelve collars, and a hat) to send to the undersigned [Dr. Salczberger], who had taken refuge in the South after coming back home sick from Germany. When the suitcase arrived, he was surprised to find in the suitcase turnips and carrots and a used suit with a label from a Berlin tailor “Unter den Linden” instead of the contents that he had expected. This theft-by-substitution possibly demonstrates the cordial relationship of Georgette Lavergne with the already mentioned Gestapo agent. Under these circumstances, the undersigned is opening a complaint against X for the charge of theft. I am kindly requesting you to act on this matter. Respectfully, Monsieur le Procureur de la Republic Doctor Salez-Berger N. 16 Blvd. de Sebastopol Paris 4 Dear friend, I have the honor to send you copies of reports of the investigations conducted by the Civic Guards of the 4th arrondissement of Paris, where this case took place. In short, the first complaint was filed at the police station of quarter St. Merri of the 4th district on October 30, 1944, under No. 1424 and has been transferred to the Judiciary Police. Second complaint: at the police station of the quarter of Sorbonne of the 5th district on January 17th, 1945, No. 105, forwarded to the prosecution under No. 129048. These complaints are against the Lavergne family (father, mother, and daughter), concierges at the 16 Blvd. Sebastopol, 4th district, where I used to live. My current address is 24 Avenue Raymond Poincarre (quarter of St. Lambert) in Paris.

Punishing the Perpetrators I accuse Mrs. Lavergne Amelie Susanne (born Cavanes in April 1883 in Creteuille la Magdeleine), concierge of the building at 16 Blvd. Sebastopol, Paris 4th. And Mademoiselle Lavergne Georgette (at that time living with her mother at the same address). For the following facts: they maintained a close relationship with a (Gestapo agent) German soldier named Erich Kahnt (born January 27, 1910, in Hohenmoalsen), who became the lover of the daughter, Georgette Lavergne. In order to rent my apartment for a sum of money, they reported me for being a Jew to the Gestapo, and as [I was] a prisoner of war in Germany my apartment was plundered completely and rented. In order to get rid of troubling witnesses they reported my brother and his wife, who were hiding on the 6th floor of the same building. Subsequent to this, my sister-in-law was deported and has not yet returned. (Witness: Madame La Col. Dem. in the building). They participated in the robbery of my apartment, proven by written documents and objects found in their apartment. They stole a suitcase sent by my brother in Lyon in November 1942 when I returned from captivity. In that suitcase one can find a suit made in Berlin (theft by substitution). They removed my diploma of medicine in the entrance of my door. I also open a complaint against the resident Mr. George Lavergne (father) who took some objects that were found at his place during a search conducted in his room on the 6th floor by an inspector of the St. Merri quarter. 2. He transferred a check of 1000fr via telegram that was deposited with him (with Mademoiselle Sorel), which was the charge for bringing me to Toulouse. (Pere) Lavergne—arrested for black marketeering and thievery Has participated in robbing my apartment. During a police raid they found in his room on the 6th floor:

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Chapter 8 1 sleep sofa with bedding 1 glass case with instruments 1 carpet He extorted 1000fr by mail, as payment to take me to Toulouse, which he then deposited. Witness Ms. Sorel, dom. Rue Brasly, Gennivilliere (Seine) To sublet a room (#13) he sacrificed the lives of two people (my brother and his wife) Georgette Lavergne (at Drancy) The lover of the German Gestapo officer who had an abortion and lived with him at Rue Poincarre and gave my belongings to this German to facilitate his flight. Lavergne (mother) Accomplice of her daughter in the demolition of my apartment. Kept company with the Germans and made a profit from it. She pointed out the room where Mr. and Mrs. Salczberger were hiding, and the latter was deported.

Document 8-9 illustrates a different, somewhat contentious form of local justice: Jews prosecuting Jews in their own legal system. The status of so-called Jewish collaborators was a difficult topic in the immediate postwar period and remains so to this day. Whether members of Jewish councils, Jewish ghetto police, or Jewish kapos could be held responsible for their actions, when ultimately they held only the illusion of power in such situations, is a loaded question.63 Indeed, during the war as well, these “collaborators” were often the first targets of resistance groups. On October 8, 1946, the Central Jewish Committee in Poland established a “civic tribunal for former collaborators with the Germans.” On October 18, 1946, an article appeared in Dos naye lebn (published in Łódź) decrying the “turncoats and traitors” among the surviving Polish Jews. The unknown author (writing under the pseudonym Cincinnatus) demanded action from the Central Jewish Historical Commission to investigate former Judenrat members, ghetto policemen, informants, profiteers, and so forth, and bring them to trial publically. An announcement of the committee’s tribunal 63. For a full discussion of the complexities of the Judenräte, see Isaiah Trunk, Judenrat: The Jewish Councils in Eastern Europe under Nazi Occupation (New York: Macmillan, 1972).

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ran in the same issue of the paper as Cincinnatus’s call.64 A general court to try wartime collaboration had already been established by the Polish Committee of National Liberation on September 12, 1944. This court had prosecuted these so-called Jewish collaborators alongside other non-Jewish collaborators. However, the acquittal of accused Jewish “collaborator” Michał Weichert by the Polish courts prompted some in the Jewish community to demand a separate trial and separate, Jewish judges.65 The Central Jewish Committee in Poland was not the only group to hold such collaboration trials. Trials also took place in the DP camps in Allied-occupied Germany.66 By the fall of 1945, Jewish-run court systems existed in Deggendorf, Landsberg, and Föhrenwald. In Bergen-Belsen, a court operated for a brief period in the summer of 1946. By February 1946, the Central Committee of Liberated Jews in the American Zone had created a Judicial Division to draft regulations and handle cases in a variety of contexts, including external affairs like commercial issues and discrimination against Jews, as well as the Central Court of Honor, which engaged in trials of Jewish “collaborators.” By June 1946, all of the major Jewish DP camps had such courts; regional appellate courts also existed, and a Central Court of Honor was established in Munich.67 The jurisdiction of these courts, however, was quite limited in scope. Indeed, their primary power rested in their ability to exile “collaborators” from the Jewish DP community. Document 8-9 features the story of Chaim Chajet, accused of being a wartime profiteer and a liar.68 The file contains a collection of testimonies, accusations, and the final judgment by the court of the Central Committee of Polish Jews. The full proceedings took three years (from 1946 to 1949) before Chajet’s name was cleared after charges appeared in the Yiddish newspaper Dos naye lebn. 64. David Engel, “Who Is a Collaborator? The Trials of Michał Weichert,” in The Jews in Poland, ed. Sławomir Kapralski (Krakόw: Kraków Judaica Foundation Center for Jewish Culture, 1999), 2, 339–40. 65. Weichert (1890–1967) became a notable director of a Yiddish theater in Warsaw in the interwar years. He headed the Nazi-controlled Kraków-based Jewish Social Self-Help aid organization in the Generalgouvernement during the war. He was tried as a Nazi collaborator in Poland after the war. For a full discussion of his specific case, see Engel, “Who Is a Collaborator?,” 339–70. 66. For an in-depth examination of one case in the DP court system and a comparison with the Israeli trials of collaborators in the 1950s, see Rivka Brot, “Julius Siegel: A Kapo in Four (Judicial) Acts,” Daphim: Studies on the Shoah 25 (2011): 1–63. 67. Feinstein, Holocaust Survivors in Postwar Germany, 239–40. 68. This man was most likely Chaim Chajet, born in Vilna in 1891, a survivor of the Vilna ghetto and the Kailis, Kaiserwald, Stutthof, and Burggraben camps. He was liberated in March 1945. He eventually immigrated to Israel after the war. See Care and Maintenance (CM/1) form for Chaim Chajet, 3.2.1.1/78990632/ITS Digital Archive, USHMM.

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The case hinges on Chajet’s (false) identification as a member of the Vilna Judenrat, a position that had become synonymous with the aforementioned crimes.69 When it is proven that Chajet’s accuser was mistaken on this detail, the remainder of the case begins to fall apart. Ultimately, Chajet is proven innocent based on the good word of his fellow Jews, who speak to his character and his experiences. DOCUMENT 8-9: Extracts from the file of Chaim Chajet, Central Committee of Polish Jews, USHMMA, RG 15.189M Central Committee of Jews in Poland, People’s Courts Collection, SYG 313, file 14 (translated from Polish).

Letter sent by the undersigned from Katowice on 9 September 1946 to the Central Committee of Polish Jews (CKŻP) in Warsaw: Wiktor Chelem, Engr. (11 Batory St., Bytom); M. Vogelbaum, Engr. (director of cable and wire factory in Będzin, 56 Kościuszko St.); and Michał Prużan, Engr. (15/25 Gdańsk St., Łódź, “Ażet” chemical factory)70 We, the undersigned, as former inhabitants of the city of Wilno71 resident in the prewar period and during the German occupation of Wilno, hereby affirm in relation to the report on the conference of Leaders of Jewish Committees placed in issue 31 of the journal Dos naye lebn on 6 September 1946 that the accusations raised by citizen Haber, secretary of the Jewish Voivodeship Committee in Katowice, are in respect to citizen Chaim Chajet, head of the Economic Central department in Katowice, fully fabricated and baseless and bear the marks of libel. We are thoroughly familiar with citizen Chaim Chajet, his conduct, and his activities both before the war and during the occupation, and on this basis we affirm that he was not a member of the Jewish Council, he always conducted himself beyond reproach, and was considered and is considered an upstanding person whose activities did not conflict with the law. We hold that the interests of the Jewish community demand that the person who in such a shameless manner libeled his confrere, who underwent 69. For more information on the debates surrounding the Vilna Judenrat, see Dina Porat, “The Jewish Councils of the Main Ghettos of Lithuania: A Comparison,” Modern Judaism 13, no. 2 (May 1993): 149–63. 70. The author was unable to find further information on these people. 71. Although it is known today as Vilnius in Lithuania, the writers use the Polish name for the city.

Punishing the Perpetrators all the torments of the German executioners’ concentration camps, be called to account and that the aggrieved party be granted redress. [Letter from Chaim Chajet in Bytom to the editors of Dos naye lebn in Łódź, September 10, 1946] On the basis of article 32 of the press codex in connection with the placement in issue 31 of the journal from 6 September 1946 of a report from the conference of Leaders of Jewish Committees regarding a speech given by citizen Haber, a member of the Voivodeship Committee in Katowice, I request the following rectification to be placed in the next issue of your journal. The accusation directed at me by citizen Haber, seeking to blacken my unblemished past and intended to degrade public opinion of me by accusing me of behavior contrary to legal principles and principles of honesty, bears the marks of libel, an investigation of which I am directing against citizen Haber along the appropriate legal channels. I am firmly convinced that the judicial authorities will mete out to the perpetrator a fitting punishment for the wrong done to me. [Letter from Chaim Chajet in Katowice to the administration of the Economic Central “Solidarność” in Warsaw, September 11, 1946] In issue 31 of the Jewish journal Dos naye lebn from 6 September 1946 in a report on the conference of Leaders of Jewish Committees, there appeared a notice with the following content: “Citizen Haber, a member of the Jewish Voivodeship Committee in Katowice, demands the unmasking of a number of harmful and criminal elements that have infiltrated Jewish civic institutions. He tells of a certain Chajet, who worked in an authoritative position in the Economic Central and who turned out to be a collaborator of the Judenrat and a common speculator and con man.” Insofar as citizen Haber’s utterances are libelous and mendacious, I request that you defend me against these accusations, that you facilitate [Haber’s] being called to account via the Central Committee of Polish Jews in

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Chapter 8 Warsaw, and that you demand citizen Haber immediately prove the substance of the accusations raised against my person. Considering citizen Haber’s position as secretary of the Voivodeship Committee, a civic position that requires corresponding ethical qualifications, I demand that the consequences of citizen Haber’s unworthy behavior, compromising the committee, Jewish institutions, and their leadership, be drawn. [Transcript of Emanuel Haber’s testimony, given before the court secretary of the Central Committee of Polish Jews in Warsaw, November 13, 1946] I got to know Chajet when he worked in the Voivodeship Committee in Katowice in the Economic Central. I did not know him prior to this. That Chajet was a member of the Judenrat in Wilno, I heard from citizen Groll, whom I have summoned as a witness. During the occupation, I was in the Soviet Union. One time in a conversation with me [and] in the presence of engineer Rostal,72 chairman of our committee, and Aychenbaum, an official of the economic department, Chajet boasted that he had sold several carloads of yeast brought in from Berlin a few months prior (our conversation took place in September of this year).73 It is my belief that a transaction of this sort constitutes speculation and disqualifies the person in question from conducting authoritative work at a civic post. Immediately after the events in Kielce,74 while among several people (approximately ten) at the committee’s meeting place, Chajet said that the Jewish yishuv in Poland is being liquidated and several million złoty are going into the pockets of individual members of the presidium of the Central Committee [of Polish Jews]. At the moment I don’t remember who the people were in whose presence Chajet expressed himself in this way. At the

72. The author was unable to find further information about these people. 73. Here the writer blends accusations of both wartime black market activities and postwar profiteering. 74. This refers to outburst of mob-like violence against Jews residing in a community building on 7 Planty Street in the city of Kielce on July 4, 1946. It stemmed directly from rumors of the kidnapping of an eight-year-old boy, Henryk Błaszczyk, by the town’s Jews for use in a ritual murder (blood libel). The event was the biggest such pogrom in postwar Poland, resulting in forty-two deaths and the wounding of dozens of others. See also Kielce Pogrom. It was preceded by similar acts of collective violence in other cities and led to a wave of Jewish emigration from Poland. For more information, see Jan T. Gross, Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz: An Essay in Historical Interpretation (New York: Random House, 2007).

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conference of responsible secretaries, I made a statement along the lines that it is my belief that persons such as Chajet cannot hold authoritative positions in our civic organization, and I cited the two aforementioned cases. I did not claim at the conference that Chajet was a member of the Judenrat. [Verdict of the Court of First Instance in Warsaw on libel charges brought by Chajet against Haber,75 presiding judge J. Szląskiewicz, December 11, 1946]76 [. . .] This statement [Haber’s accusations at the conference of Leaders of Jewish Committees that Chajet was a member of the Judenrat in Wilno and a common speculator and con man]77 was summarized and appeared in print in the journal Dos naye lebn, a statement which may subject Chaim Chajet to a loss of the confidence required for his position and lower public opinion of him, an action addressed in article 255 of the Criminal Codex. Verdict: Emanuel Haber is found guilty of the act of which he is accused and will be punished in accord with articles 255 and 61 of the Criminal Codex with one month of arrest and a fine 75. The author was unable to find further information about those people giving depositions on Chajet’s behalf. 76. On September 6, 1946, Das naje leben published Haber’s accusation against Chajet. On September 9, the engineers from Katowice stated that Haber’s accusation was tantamount to libel. On the next day, Chajet followed suit by writing a letter to the editors. On September 10, Chajet requested protection from the “Solidarity” Economic Management Board in the face of the libel charges. “Solidarity” requested that a Citizen’s Court affiliated with the Jewish Central Committee take up the issue on September 18. On November 7, Haber wrote to the same court, stating that he was not the author of the original statement. Nonetheless, Haber was called to court as a witness on November 14. On November 30, the Jewish Committee of Katowice called on the Citizen’s Court to bring Haber to the non-Jewish Magistrate Court of Warsaw, this time as the accused (by Chajet). Thus, the case was adjudicated before two courts simultaneously, which probably explains the delay. On December 4, Haber requested that the committee withdraw the accusation submitted to the Magistrate Court, which is beyond the former’s jurisdiction. On December 9, witnesses appeared before the Citizen’s Court. Finally, on December 11, 1946, the Magistrate Court issued its verdict, finding Haber guilty, sentencing him to one month’s incarceration, and fining him one thousand złotys. This is the only document from the magistrate case in the file. 77. Although the accusation of profiteering and fraud leveled at Chajet are lumped with membership in the Wilno Judenrat, all charges against him on grounds of profiteering and fraud appear only to refer to the immediate postwar period, specifically Chajet’s alleged activities in the Bytom and Katowice regions. This is reflected in the testimonies of Edward Rostal and Emanuel Haber.

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Chapter 8 of 1,000 złoty with suspended implementation of the jail sentence for a period of three years. One hundred forty złoty are to be collected from the convicted as a court fee, and the convicted is adjudged [responsible] for reimbursement of the costs of conducting the proceedings. [Statement given by Teofil Groll before the Jewish Committee of Bytom, January 7, 1947] I did not know citizen Chajet at all before encountering him in the committee here, which occurred in March of 1946. As head of the Repatriation Department, I was chairman of the Civic Committee whose task it was to collect funds from Jews in Bytom for repatriates arriving from the Soviet Union. And citizen Chajet was also a member of the Civic Committee. When Perłow, a member of our administration, at one point saw Chajet at a meeting, he stated to me that he ought to be eliminated from the Civic Committee because he had been a member of the Judenrat in Wilno, and, as such, citizen Chajet should not have a place among the leaders of Jewry. These utterances were also heard by other members of our committee, including citizen Trauner and others. I [would] note that citizen Perłow presently resides abroad. [Statement given by manager Artur Trauner in Bytom, February 1, 1947] I’ve known citizen Chajet since 1945, when I encountered him during my tenure with the Jewish Committee of Bytom. In March 1946 the Civic Committee was formed in Bytom, which had the goal of collecting funds from among Jews for newly arriving repatriates from the Soviet Union. Citizen Chajet was also one of the members of this committee. When Perłow, a member of our administration, at one point saw Chajet at a meeting, he stated to me and comrade Groll that he ought to be eliminated from the Civic Committee because he had been a member of the Judenrat in Wilno. Aside from this, I have no other information, whereby I [would] note that citizen Perłow is presently abroad. If I should find the address of citizen Perłow, I will send it on to the Civic Court immediately. [Testimony given by engineer Wiktor Chelem before the Jewish Voivodeship Committee in Katowice, April 26, 1947]

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I’ve known Chaim Chajet since before the war. During the German occupation we both resided in Wilno, more specifically, in the Wilno ghetto from September 1941 to September 1943. At first, Chajet worked in the territory of the ghetto, then he transferred over to the work camp “Kajlis 2,” which was located outside the ghetto. During that time, Chajet worked as an ordinary worker. Although I don’t believe that the activities of the Wilno Judenrat were harmful to the interests of the Jewish community as a whole or of individual Jews, I, when expressly questioned, nevertheless affirm that Chaim Chajet was not a member of the Wilno Judenrat. Chaim Chajet’s behavior was fully consistent with the honor of a Jew, and I cannot make any accusations whatsoever against Chajet. I did not know anything about Chajet purportedly collaborating with the occupier in any way at all. In October 1943 I was compelled to go into hiding, as a result of which I fled the work camp and lost all contact with Chajet, whom I previously had seen from time to time. In June 1945 I encountered Chaim Chajet in Łódź shortly after his return from the camp in Stutthof. The state of health and material state of both Chajet and his son were pitiful. For a period of time Chajet was engaged in trading in Łódź, then after a few months he left for Bytom, where he has resided until now. [Ruling of the Presidium of the Civic Court of the Central Committee of Polish Jews in Warsaw, August 27, 1949] In closed session on the day of August 27, 1949, following examination of the motion entered by the prosecutor in the case of Chaim Chajet, resident in Bytom, Batory Street 11, for cessation of action due to a lack of evidence proving guilt and [lack of ] grounds for issuing an indictment on the basis of article 2 p.a. of the regulations of the court, [the Presidium] has decided to acknowledge the motion of the prosecutor as justified. [. . .]

Overall, these courts and the “crimes” and “criminals” they tried expose complicated definitions of “collaborator” and “victim.” Determining the guilt of a “collaborator” was not always a straightforward matter. Was the act of serving on a Jewish council in the later stages of the war “aiding” the Germans in the task of deportation, or was it a small position of control in an otherwise

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uncontrollable situation? Were all ghetto policemen or concentration camp kapos guilty of abetting the German administration, or was holding these positions a form of opportunistic, but not criminal, survival? How much did these trials adjudicate the circumstances of the time, and how much did they judge using the hindsight that came with full knowledge of genocide? These questions do not come with easy answers; the debate continued well into the 1960s with political theorist and commentator Hannah Arendt’s now infamously harsh (and, as many historians would later say, misguided) assessment of the Jewish councils in her account of the trial of Adolf Eichmann.78 These unique postwar trials do, however, illustrate that in this early postwar period Jewish matters were ultimately to be settled—and understood—by Jewish courts.

78. See Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, 5th ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 2006), 117–18. Arendt’s exact words (which garnered much criticism almost immediately upon original publication in 1963) were, “To a Jew this role of the Jewish leaders in the destruction of their own people is undoubtedly the darkest chapter of the whole dark story. It had been known about before, but it has now been exposed for the first time in all its pathetic and sordid detail by Raul Hilberg, whose standard work The Destruction of the European Jews I mentioned before.” For a critique of Arendt’s perspective and the historical accuracy of her claims, see Deborah E. Lipstadt, The Eichmann Trial (New York: Schocken Books, 2011), 148–87. Adolf Eichmann (1906–1962), originally from Linz, became a major force behind many policies organized by the Reichssicherheitshauptamt that resulted in the deportation and murder of Europe’s Jews. The Israeli secret service abducted him from his hiding place in Argentina in May 1960; he was put on trial in Jerusalem, sentenced to death, and hanged in 1962.

CHAPTER 9

Reclaiming Possessions

T

HE CONVERSATION about reparations for Jewish homes, property, and assets began well before the end of the war. For German Jews, the process of “Aryanization” and immigration posed inherent difficulties: Had their property and businesses been seized or “voluntarily” surrendered? What was the property’s value, and how was that assessment made? How could property and assets be returned to those who no longer resided in Germany and had no intention of returning?1 For Jews from occupied countries, another question emerged: To whom could one apply for reparations—Germany, the occupier, or the country in which property or other assets were seized? This issue became all the more complex in collaborationist states in which the actions of the occupier and the antisemitic laws of the state became increasingly blurred. In 1945, the Office of Military Government, United States (OMGUS) began collecting restitution claims. By April of the following year, a special committee had been established in Stuttgart. Not surprisingly, the German government was quite concerned with widespread claims pouring in from Jews and other “non-Aryans” from around the world. Various German business associations immediately raised concerns regarding the possibility of what they called 1. For a detailed account of the history of German-Jewish reparations, see Menachem Rosensaft and Joana D. Rosensaft, “The Early History of German-Jewish Reparations,” Fordham International Law Journal 25 (2001): 1–45.

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“unrestrained restitution.”2 At the same time, Jewish organizations advocated on their own behalf both publically and behind closed doors. Numerous concerns arose regarding the evolution of the restitution question. Would Jews be recognized as a separate legal group eligible for particular types of claims? To whom would such monies be paid—to individuals directly or to a larger Jewish organization? If an institutional body was to dole out funds, which group should assume that responsibility? Would funds directed toward the support of Jewish immigration to Palestine receive priority? What was the purpose of reparations payments: to serve as recompense for lost property or, more broadly, for Nazi crimes? There were no easy answers to these questions in the immediate postwar years, only more and more legal and social complexities. The documents in this chapter explore the many aspects of the fight for postwar reparations, from community debates to individual claims, in a variety of localities. Together, these sources depict both the evolving discussion around reparations and the many bureaucratic obstacles to their realization. The reparations debate would continue long past 1946. In November 1947, the US Military Government (together with the prime ministers of German states), enacted the Restitution of Identifiable Assets Act, which mandated that all who were in possession of any property obtained by force must return such assets to their rightful owners. Later, the Luxembourg Agreement of September 1952 defined German reparations to Israel in the amount of 3.45 billion marks in the form of goods and services. About 450 million marks were earmarked for the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany (established in 1951) for the purpose of aiding and supporting Jewish survivors and their families.3 Today, the subject of reparations still remains at the forefront. From Nazi looted artwork hanging in major museums throughout the world, to restitution for former forced laborers, to lawsuits against Swiss banks for the return of Jewish funds, the call for monetary redress for unspeakable wrongs remains strong. In the end, of course, no amount of money can replace a community lost or a family destroyed. Nevertheless, the practice of, as it is referred to in German, Wiedergutmachung (“to make good again”)4 not only became a means 2. Constantin Goschler, “Jewish Property and the Politics of Restitution in Germany after 1945,” in Robbery and Restitution: The Conflict over Jewish Property in Europe, ed. Martin Dean, Constantin Goschler, and Phillip Ther (New York: Berghahn Books in association with the USHMM, 2007), 118–19. 3. Michael R. Marrus, Some Measure of Justice: The Holocaust Era Restitution Campaign of the 1990s (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009), 71. 4. For an exploration of this term and its changing historical and metaphorical meaning in Germany and beyond, see Hans Günter Hockerts, “Wiedergutmachung in Germany: Balancing Historical Accounts, 1945–2000,” in Restitution and Memory: Material Restoration in Europe, ed. Dan Diner and Gotthart Wunberg (New York: Berghahn Books, 2007), 323–61.

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of financial remuneration and political integration but also ensured that the memory of the Holocaust remained present and current. This chapter explores how that conversation began.

RESTITUTION IN THEORY AND PRACTICE: LEGAL CONSIDERATIONS One of the first challenges to establishing a restitution policy remained defining the term—and determining to whom it referred—as the war entered its final years. Moreover, the difference between “restitution” and “reparations” further reflected the divergence in opinion embedded within the very terms of the conversation. While restitution sought to compensate for actual lost property, goods, or other valuables, reparations intended to serve as recompense for greater injustice. Indeed, reparations discussions often took place as part of high-level governmental negotiations. Thus, the theoretical underpinnings of the discussion dramatically changed depending on which word was used. In either case, money became a means of dispensing justice—a concept that remains loaded to this day.5 Documents 9-1 and 9-2 explore this question as it was emerging in the international, legal, and Jewish communal discourse of 1944. Various Jewish groups—including, but not limited to, the World Jewish Congress, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (AJJDC), and the Board of Deputies of British Jews—argued for a distinctive place for Jewish victims in the context of reparations and restitution. How that status might be achieved and legally justified became a complicated matter in its own right. Regarding the question of whether claims should be treated on an individual or communal level, Nehemiah Robinson, director of the Institute for Jewish Affairs in New York, advocated a dual approach that included both aspects of reparations payments.6 In Document 9-1, which excerpts the preface to his three-hundred page book on the subject published in 1944, Robinson makes the case for Jewish specificity based on the nature and intention of Nazi crimes. At the same time, his expectations were modest in terms of actual monetary remuneration. Reparations in this context become less about an actual mon5. For a conversation about the concepts of restitution and reparation and the possibilities and problems of monetary justice, see Dan Diner and Gotthart Wunberg, eds., Restitution and Memory: Material Restoration in Europe (New York: Berghahn Books, 2007). 6. Nehemiah Robinson (1898–1964) was born in Vištytis (now in Lithuania), studied law in Germany, and practiced in Kaunas/Kovno until he fled to the United States in 1940. He began working for the World Jewish Congress in 1941. See Dr. Nehemiah Robinson: 1898–1964 (New York: World Jewish Congress, 1964); obituary, New York Times, January 12, 1968, 92.

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etary amount and far more about the tangible, if necessarily imperfect, redress of past wrongs. DOCUMENT 9-1: Preface to Nehemiah Robinson, Indemnification and Reparations: Jewish Aspects (New York: Institute of Jewish Affairs of the American Jewish Congress and World Jewish Congress, 1944), 7–8.

When the war ends, the victorious Allies will be confronted with a multitude of problems demanding immediate action. Among them the liquidation of the consequences of war, occupation, and totalitarianism will take a prominent place. One of the most urgent questions of this kind will be the economic and social reconstruction of the belligerent nations where hundreds of thousands of persons have lost their former economic positions and social status, many having been forcibly removed from the place of their residence and work. Thousands of enterprises were closed down through mobilization or deportation of the owners, and many others because of the lack of raw materials and merchandise, or because these activities did not fit into the new scheme enforced by the Germans. The same reasons were responsible for the loss of independent positions (employees, workers, etc.). In addition, wealth was lost through war activities, scorched earth policy, occupation, exactions by the Germans, outright robbery, seizure, one-way traffic of goods, and similar measures. In the case of certain groups, notably the Jews, discriminatory measures were the primary cause of damage. Political, social and economic reconstruction and stability can never be achieved if the innocent victims of aggression and discrimination remain uprooted and despoiled, while other peoples enjoy the fruits of victory and liberation. Clearly, indemnification for losses suffered in consequence of war and persecution is not only a requirement of justice, but also the only sound policy for the United Nations and the individual states to pursue if peace and order are to be reestablished nationally and internationally. The present study is concerned with the situation of the Jewish people and their needs. Its aim is to show what can and ought to be done to rehabilitate the Jews in the countries where they were persecuted and despoiled. The general problems of indemnification are identical for all cases where losses have been incurred, regardless of race or creed (even as is the damage and its consequences). But the Jews were singled out

Reclaiming Possessions by the Nazis and their followers for total extermination and total spoliation. Other national groups were destined to meet the same fate at a later date or on a smaller scale: degradation and extermination of “lower” races were prominent aspects of totalitarian policies everywhere. Thus there is a certain resemblance between the fate of Jews and that of other nations in that the losses indicated above were suffered by Jews and Gentiles alike. But those of the latter were, so to speak, incidental, where the losses suffered by Jews were comprehensive and total. That is, almost all Jews were despoiled, while only a part of the Gentile population suffered this fate. Another factor which renders the position of the Jews far more miserable is the wholesale slaughter to which they were subjected. These differences make Jewish rehabilitation much more difficult and much more complex than that of the Gentiles, who can almost always find help and support from other members of their family. The complexity of the problem in the case of the Jews demands specific measures and even certain “privileges” which may sometimes lead to the impression that excessive demands are being made for the redressal of Jewish suffering. But however extensive and far-reaching certain proposals may appear, nothing will ever repay even in part the losses suffered by the Jews in life and health, or even in wealth, during the terrible years of Nazi horror. For years the world refused to recognize the world-wide threat of Nazi antiSemitism and persecution. There may now be the danger of failing to recognize the necessity of rehabilitating the damage inflicted upon the Jews; in this case not only the Jews but other peoples as well might suffer greatly. This is the second volume in the Institute series, From War to Peace. It appears at a moment when some occupied countries are already liberated, Axis satellites are changing horses, and total liberation appears near. Clearly, this course of events affects practically every question dealt with in the following pages. Almost every day new events develop and new plans and decisions are made, which solve some of the problems, but create new ones. This fluid state of affairs is not very favorable for a balance sheet of achievements and definitive plans for the future. Nevertheless, the general problems relating to indemnification and reparation of damage will remain virtually the same for a considerable period to come. The Soviet Union is not included in the scope of this study on account of the specific economic and social conditions prevailing there.

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Writing contemporaneously with Robinson, Siegfried Moses, a German Jewish émigré to Tel Aviv, published his 1944 study on Jewish postwar claims in Palestine in both German and English. Moses saw the future success of reparations claims as the responsibility of the victims rather than dependent on the mercy of the victors. Jewish organizations, united in a common cause, would need to advocate on their behalf. Whereas Robinson’s preface focuses on making the case for the uniqueness of Jewish victims, Moses explores the questions and problems posed by reparations as a whole. He raises several key issues: How will Jewish demands and interests factor into the peace agreements themselves? Who will file claims on behalf of individual Jews or Jewish communities that no longer reside in their country of origin? Moses’s background impacts the central points of his report; as a German Jew who settled in Palestine in 1937, he is primarily concerned with this population. A prominent lawyer before the war, Moses would later become chairman of the Advisory Committee of the United Restitution Organization in Israel, as well as president of Irgun Olej Merkaz Europa (the Association of Settlers from Central Europe).7 Ultimately, he argues, the success or failure of the reparations debate will hinge on “the intensity of our efforts, and the circumspection and courage of our campaign.” DOCUMENT 9-2: Selection from Siegfried Moses, Jewish Postwar Claims (Tel Aviv: Irgun Olej Merkaz Europa, 1944), 3–6. (Reprinted in Wolf-Dieter Barz, ed., Jewish Postwar Claims [Tel Aviv 1944] [Hamburg: LIT, 2001].)

THE TASK BEFORE US We are gradually beginning to envisage the day on which this war comes to an end. And when doing so, the thought that Germany will have to pay 7. Siegfried Moses (Lauterburg, East Prussia, 1887–Tel Aviv, 1974) grew up in an assimilated Jewish household in Berlin and became active in Zionist organizations as a student, emerging as one of the leading German Zionists in the interwar years. He immigrated to Palestine in 1937 after working for decades as a lawyer in Berlin, where he had also served as a vice president of the Reich Representation of German Jews. He was instrumental in forging the Ha’avara Agreement to facilitate transfer of some assets of German Jewish émigrés heading to Palestine in the 1930s; during the war he worked on creating postwar Jewish restitution claims. He long served as state comptroller after the founding of Israel. See Rachel Heuberger, “Bio-biographische Würdigung,” in Die jüdischen Nachkriegsforderungen (Tel Aviv 1944), ed. Siegfried Moses and Wolf-Dieter Barz (Münster: LIT, 1998), xi–xxiv.

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compensation after losing the war is certainly not the first one to come to one’s mind. Yet for us, it is a consideration that is of necessity associated with the end of the war; and it is an understandable, natural and legitimate association. However, as soon as we make an attempt to picture restitution in any concrete fashion we find ourselves face to face with numerous misgivings and doubts. In fact, the problems appear so varied and complicated that we begin to ask ourselves whether the idea of restitution and reparation, striking and obvious though it may be, will not prove to be something beyond all realisation. That any restitution which assumes the form of money can satisfy only a minute fraction of the misfortune and unhappiness brought upon the Jewish people by Nazi Germany is clear from the start. Beyond that point, however, we must ask ourselves: Following their experience with the Treaty of Versailles,8 are the United Nations at all likely to wish to impose upon Germany the duty of making restitution and reparations? Will Germany be in a position to pay compensation on any scale worthy to mention? Will the Jewish post-war demands be among those claims for which provision will be made in the peace terms (if, that is, there is in general any kind of provision for compensation)? Who is to submit the Jewish demands for compensation (particularly as so large a part of the Jewish People have had to leave, and have left, their former countries of residence without having finally succeeded in finding themselves new homelands)? Should it be considered likely that the claims of Jews who have emigrated from Germany stand any chance of failing as a result of the fact that they are made against the state of which those Jews were former citizens? 8. Drafted by the victors in World War I and signed by German officials amid widespread protests in June 1919, the Versailles Treaty laid out the conditions of the German defeat. The treaty imposed harsh financial sanctions, territorial demands, and military limitations on Germany, which fueled the völkisch movement that undermined the troubled democratic Weimar Republic. Many blamed the treaty’s provisions for having provided the essential precondition for the Nazi Party’s success, but other domestic factors also proved critical in contributing to the demise of Germany’s democracy. See Conan Fisher and Alan Sharp, After the Versailles Treaty: Enforcement, Compliance, Contested Identities (London: Routledge, 2008).

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Chapter 9 Will there be a collective claim on the part of the Jewish People? And if so, who is to be the creditor of that collective claim? How will the claims be defined in detail and what will be their justification and legal basis? This at first sight startling list of questions and misgivings, however, should not cause us to lose our courage, nor to renounce the presentation of Jewish post-war demands. The situation of the Jewish People is such that it has no alternative except to follow up even a slender likelihood. In actual fact what is in question here is only a chance; yet that chance is one which not only may but actually must be taken seriously. Whether anything can be made of it depends in no small degree on the intensity of our efforts, and the circumspection and courage of our campaign. Those who will have to decide as to what ought to be the conditions of peace must be shown and made to realize what the provisions for restitution and reparation must be if the Jewish People and its members are to receive at least some degree of compensation for the damage inflicted upon them. [. . .]

THE CONVERSATION AMONG JEWISH COMMUNAL ORGANIZATIONS Just as legal minds were debating the juridical possibilities for restitution, Jewish community leaders in the United States, Europe, and Palestine also disagreed regarding the best way to approach the Allied governments on the subject. In document 9-3, from the Board of Deputies of British Jews in June 1944, the discussion surrounding possible reparations leaves many unanswered questions: How could such remuneration be paid—in money, property, or other assets? What was the difference between a Jew and a “non-Aryan” in terms of payment priorities? How would Jewish property be “de-Aryanized,” and to whom could it be returned? From what date should restituted claims be processed—the start of the war, the anti-Jewish laws of the 1930s, or another date entirely? Should a “global sum” be paid to “the Jewish community,” however defined, or was such a request unreasonable? For the Board of Deputies of British Jews, another issue also arose concerning the Zionists in Palestine who were actively engaged in guerilla warfare against the British forces currently in control of the country. The board sought, at all costs, to avoid any pretense of monetary support for this group, referred to

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as the Hagganah.9 At the same time, Palestine—and its burgeoning European Jewish refugee population—would play a key role in any future reparations discussions or negotiations. In this document, these complications inform but do not dominate the concerns outlined. Nevertheless, Jewish organizations found themselves walking a tightrope between the possible, the practical, and, above all, the ethical responsibilities to a now decimated European Jewish population. DOCUMENT 9-3: Consultation on Restitution and Compensation, Board of Deputies of British Jews, London, June 27, 1944, Board of Deputies of British Jews Records, USHMMA RG 59.023, reel 33.

CONSULTATION OF RESTITUTION AND COMPENSATION held on June 27, 1944, at the Board of Deputies. There were present: Mr. H. Sacher,10 Chairman of Sub-Committee “C” of the FAC [Foreign Affairs Committee] Mr. E.F.Q. Henriques11 Mr. A.G. Brotman12 Dr. D. Mowshowitch13 Mr. Henriques, in his private capacity, but with the knowledge and concurrence of the Department of the Board of Trade with which he is connected, expressed his readiness to give advice on the problems with which the Sub-Committee “C” was concerned. His particular department, and indeed all Government departments, fully appreciated the injustice inflicted upon the Jewish population of Europe by the enemy, and they 9. For a full history of the British Jewish community during the war, see Richard Bolchover, British Jewry and the Holocaust (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). 10. Harry Sacher, a British Zionist intellectual whose work includes Harry Sacher, ed., Zionism and the Jewish Future (New York: Macmillan, 1916). 11. Henriques was a Portuguese Jew who also served as the treasury supervisor of the Department of Trade with the Enemy. See Meier Sompolinsky, Britain and the Holocaust: The Failure of Anglo-Jewish Leadership? (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 1999), 51. 12. Secretary of the Board of Deputies of British Jews. 13. Foreign secretary of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Mowshowitch was a Russian Jew who had immigrated to London in 1915. He served as an intermediary between the Joint Foreign Committee and its eastern European constituents and was also very active in the London YIVO Committee.

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Chapter 9 were anxious to help in putting things right as much as possible. The difficulties were enormous and, in addition to the complications which had accumulated during a long period of years of oppression and discrimination, there were also difficulties inherent in the fact that so many Allied governments were concerned in this problem, that not all probably would be equally considerate in matters of justice for the Jewish victims, that the British government would find it exceedingly inconvenient, if not impossible, to intervene with any of the Allied governments in matters of this kind, and that the various groups of Jews, as Jew is defined by the Germans, could not be treated in the same way. It must be borne in mind that the terms “Jew” and “non-Aryan” do not coincide, and that it might be difficult for Jews to include in their scheme of restitution and compensation some of the non-Aryans who were treated by the Germans as if they were Jews, though, according to the Jewish point of view, they were not Jews.14 The settlement of the whole question of restitution and compensation was naturally a long process, but it was necessary that already at the start of liberation of any country, certain steps should be taken at once, and in this respect the special knowledge of the Board’s office of the position from the Jewish point of view in the various countries might be of considerable use to the government in dealing appropriately with the problems as far as Jews may be concerned. In a general way the branch of the Commander-in-Chief ’s office in charge of civil affairs has already been informed of the views of the civil authorities. The points which are under consideration in connection with the position in the liberated countries are more or less as follows: The abrogation of anti-Jewish legislation, which is a general political measure, involved in the sphere of restitution and compensation: The de-Aryanization of property which has been Aryanized. This in itself raises a host of questions concerning the kinds of property immediately affected, of businesses, of other interests of a financial character, and the question of Jew and Aryan. For the gradual solution of this question, a detailed code of rules will have to be worked out in due course. To begin

14. This statement refers to those German Jews who had converted to Christianity or to persons of mixed origins (Mischlinge) regarded as Jews by the Nazi regime.

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with, it would not be feasible to expect the civil branch of the army to solve all the problems. The principal items of their work should be to sort out the kinds of property which could be identified as having belonged to Jews and restored to them. For the final solution of the problem, there should be set up some international authority, most likely a branch or department of the future international body, which will have to deal with a large number of other financial questions and with the particular question of German loot. This international body might have a section dealing with the looted Jewish property in view of the particularly difficult character of this part of the problem of restitution. Generally speaking, the problems of international settlement as arising out of the war refer only to the official period of the war, i.e. the period from September 1, 1939. Owing to the insistence of the Czechoslovak government, for matters of this kind concerning Czechoslovakia the period was extended to cover also the beginning of the occupation of parts of that country, i.e. to September 1938. It is very doubtful whether it would be possible to obtain the adoption of the principle that as regards Jews of Germany, liability for the expropriation of Jewish property should cover the period from January 1933. However wrong the attitude and the acts of the German government might have been, diplomatic and “friendly” relations were maintained with it by the present Allies, and decisions of the courts upholding the decrees of the Nazi government were recognized. Moreover, even acts with regard to citizens of Allied states, though disapproved, were not considered important enough to involve a principle for the asserting of which it was thought necessary to break off diplomatic relations. However, some modified decision may be obtained, and for such a decision history—true somewhat ancient history—offers a precedent (the Huguenots).15 It might be possible to get the future government of Germany, if it is of a satisfactory nature, to recognize as illegal the acts of the Nazi government and set up an Internal Department (within the German government itself ) which might settle the claims of German Jews for restitution and compensation. Jewish organizations might ask for it now, but it would probably be extremely inconvenient for a British Government department, in view of the above considerations, to raise the question separately from the other Allied governments. 15. After the mass exodus of the Huguenots (French Protestants) following the official adoption of Catholicism in France in the sixteenth century, many Huguenots settled in Germany, where they received safe haven.

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Chapter 9 The de-freezing of all Jewish accounts, now in control of the Nazis. This represents considerable difficulties as the financial institutions of Germany have been reorganized on several occasions during the years of the war, and it is not known which department of the German machinery of state is in control of these blocked accounts, and how it could be found. The ramifications of these Nazi departments and their connections in neutral countries are very numerous and well disguised, and every assistance the Board could give in finding out the present position of the blocked accounts would be useful. These frozen Jewish holdings should be accounted for and the assets handed over to the owners or to some appropriate authority—possibly to some Jewish body set up in Germany. This Jewish body might be able to trace the surviving owners of the properties, and should be given authority to administer the fund thus created and to make grants. The payment of pensions to German Jews who have been deprived of them should be resumed. There still are such pensioners in Germany itself and quite a number in other countries, more particularly in Palestine. This question represents particular difficulties insofar as problems of foreign exchange and remittances from Germany to other countries may be involved. A practical solution would bring relief to a large number of surviving middle-aged and old pensioners. The Jewish body to be set up in Germany should be so constituted as to be authorized to adjudicate on personal claims and to prepare schemes for the requirements of the Jewish community in Germany, to make grants to meet those requirements, and eventually to close the fund when its work is completed. For dealing with the interests of Jews in other countries, a special welfare organization should be set up (possibly in the form of a special body of Jewish Trustees, as suggested by Sub-Committee “C” in paragraph IV). The funds required for this purpose should be provided partly by an annual budgetary contribution by the German government, by the confiscation of Nazi Party funds, by the confiscation of the property of individual Nazis, and possibly by an enrichment tax imposed on those people in Germany and occupied countries who during the whole period of Nazi rule have enriched themselves through acquiring Jewish property or Jewish businesses. In this connection, it was pointed out that it was assumed that the individual governments of the Allied countries, when presenting their claims for compensation and repatriation, would also bear in mind

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and deal justly with the claims of their Jewish nationals. Mr. Henriques indicated that the British Government had no means for securing such an attitude, but that it was thought that none of the Allied governments would in any way discriminate against their Jews and that the general welfare organization, or trustees organization, might be established for the satisfaction of individual claims that would not be met in the normal way through individual governments. Mr. Sacher explained that the idea of a global sum was suggested because the position of many individual Jewish claimants was exceedingly complicated and made very uncertain by the repeated displacements and by the difficulties of establishing the rights of survivors deprived of identity papers. In any event, it was thought that only a small proportion of the damage suffered would be made good, and the comparatively small sum the sub-committee had in mind was in the neighborhood of 100 million pounds. Mr. Henriques pointed out that it would be unwise, in his opinion, to ask for a global sum, however the Jewish organizations might wish to use it subsequently. In any case this question of reparations, and especially reparations in terms of sterling or dollars, bristled with difficulties involved in the whole monetary policy of the future. One does not know what the currency of Germany will be—Germany is ruined in any case, her gold reserves taken from France, Belgium, and other countries will have to be returned, the stocks and shares of foreign concerns appropriated by her will be taken away. Germany might be able to pay reparations or compensation either in manufactured goods or in services. The whole question of Germany refunding the losses and damages caused by her would be closely bound up with the question of the place of residence of the victims of her robberies and the question of foreign exchange. All this has not yet been thought out in any detail by the Department, and it would be inadvisable to discuss this matter in public at present, as it is not at all certain what arrangements about Germany could be made by the time the war is over. Very much will depend on the views the Russian government will formulate in due course.

While the reparations debate appeared pressing in 1944 in the waning days of the war, by 1945 and 1946 the urgency of the situation had increased exponentially. Indeed, as shown in chapter 5, hundreds of thousands of Jewish

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displaced persons were left destitute and without homes to return to, a situation only exacerbated by immigration roadblocks to enter the United States and Palestine. In the spring of 1946, Allied governments proposed setting aside $25 million collected from the liquidation of German assets in neutral countries for the resettlement of “nonrepatriable victims.” The question of how these funds would be distributed and which groups would control the purse strings, however, remained unsettled. While document 9-3 suggests that individual rather than group claims should have priority, document 9-4, a letter from J. L. Flaiszer of the Board of Deputies of British Jews to Leo Istorik, on the board of directors of the Jewish-owned Anglo-Palestine Bank in Tel Aviv, suggests a different tactic.16 The ultimate agreement as a result of the Paris reparations conference would stipulate that the $25 million be distributed to designated victim groups. In March 1946, it was not at all clear which Jewish organization would represent the interests of survivors and their communities. Flaiszer’s letter sets out what he sees as the problems, limitations, and challenges of various Jewish groups attempting to serve as the conduit for all reparations claims. Indeed, for Flaiszer the issue at hand is one not of ideology but rather of the practical realities of aid work as it evolved on the ground. At its core, however, the letter is a call for unity among Jewish groups, a concept that proved difficult to implement in practice.

16. Jakob Leib Flaiszer probably reinvented himself at some point in the 1940s as Jacob L. Talmon (1916–1980). Talmon, an eminent historian from Rypin (now Poland), had studied at Hebrew University, the London School of Economics, and the Sorbonne. From 1944 to 1947 he served as secretary of foreign affairs for the Palestine Committee of the Board of Deputies of British Jews; in late 1946 he was still traveling internationally under his original name. See Arie M. Dubnov, “Priest or Jester? Jacob L. Talmon (1916–1980) on History and Intellectual Engagement,” History of European Ideas 34, no. 2 (2008): 133–45; obituary, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, June 18, 1980; “Talmon, Jacob Leib,” Encyclopaedia Judaica, ed. Fred Skolnik and Michael Berenbaum, 2nd ed. (Detroit, MI: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007), 19:468–69. Leo (also Lev Ilitch) Istorik (1887?–1971), originally a barrister from the Russian Empire, was a naturalized British citizen. The bank, called the oldest in Palestine and founded at the beginning of the twentieth century, promoted Zionist work and Jewish enterprises there. See “Anglo-Palestine Bank Takes Over Work of Jewish Colonial Trust,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, January 14, 1934, www.jta.org/1934/01/14/archive/anglo-palestine-bank-takes-over-work-of-jewish-colonial-trust (accessed December 17, 2014); London Gazette, January 1931, 141.

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DOCUMENT 9-4: Letter from J. L. Flaiszer of the Board of Deputies of British Jews to Leo Istorik, director, Anglo-Palestine Bank, Tel Aviv, March 22, 1946, Board of Deputies of British Jews Records, USHMMA RG 59.023, reel 55.

22nd March, 1946 L. Istorik, Esq., c/o Director, Anglo-Palestinian Bank Tel-Aviv. Dear Mr. Istorik, I was sorry that you had been unable to keep our appointment at the Jewish Agency some time ago. I tried to contact you yesterday, but was told that you were in Palestine. I decided, therefore, to write to you. It is high time to come to some agreement about the way of tackling the Reparations problem. You are, I know, aware of the Paris Conference decision, which laid down that the twenty-five million dollars, the non-monetary gold and the heirless assets in neutral countries should be placed at the disposal of the Inter-Governmental Committee on Refugees,17 which body “shall have power to carry out the purposes of the fund through appropriate public and private field organizations.” The question is now which Jewish Organizations should approach the Inter-Governmental Committee. What we must at all cost avoid is a multiplicity of Jewish bodies approaching the Inter-Governmental Committee and an atomization of the funds, which are in any case modest, on small scale and dispersed efforts, hardly amounting to Rehabilitation and reconstruction policy. There is the suggestion from the American Jewish Conference and the World Jewish Congress that those two bodies with the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Agency should form a Reconstruction Commission and 17. The Inter-Governmental Committee on Refugees was organized in London in August 1938 on the heels of July’s Evian Conference, at which world governments convened ostensibly to examine the problem of political and religious refugees. After the near total failure of this meeting, the intergovernmental committee was formed to address this issue. The committee lasted until 1947. For more information, see Tommie Sjöberg, The Powers and the Persecuted: The Refugee Problem and the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees (IGCR), 1938–1947, vol. 26 (Lund: Lund University Press, 1991).

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Chapter 9 should appear as the sole claimant for Reparations and Indemnification. This proposal, though prima facie reasonable and attractive, bristles, however, with very serious difficulties. First of all none of the bodies in question, with the exception of the Agency, is a field organization doing Relief and Rehabilitation work. Secondly, the setting up of such a Commission with the composition proposed would immediately give rise to probably more than one rural Commission for the same purpose formed by the A.J.A. and the American Jewish Committee or the O.R.T. and the HIAS, the Agudah, the Association of Jewish Refugees, etc. A way has to be found to establish a Trustee body, consisting of partners acceptable to the whole Jewish world and to all Jewish organizations, and the money must be employed not on hand-to-mouth relief, but for a truly national reconstruction effort. We should like, therefore, to renew our suggestion that the proposed Trustee body should consist of the Jewish Agency, the J.D.C., and if thought advisable also the O.R.T. and the HIAS could be accepted. I believe that this combination would command the approval of all the Jewish Organizations in the world, and in view of close cooperation between the Agency and the J.D.C., there is every reason to believe that the bulk of the funds would be utilized for reconstruction in Palestine. I was a member of the Reparations Committee of the Conference of Jewish Organizations called by the A.J.S. and the American Jewish Conference and I found them quite amenable to this suggestion. They adopted, in fact, a resolution to this effect, in which, without specifying the names, they call upon the main Jewish Bodies engaged in Relief and Rehabilitation activities to come together in this matter. I have discussed the subject with Linton, who showed himself receptive to the idea and immediately communicated the suggestion to Dr. Goldman in America and to Jerusalem.18 No reply has as yet been received from these quarters. It is very important that the initiative in this matter should

18. Joseph I. Linton (1900–1982) served as a staff member of the Jewish Agency in London from 1919 to 1940 and as its political secretary from 1940 to 1948, when he joined Israel’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs. See Who’s Who in Israel and in the Work for Israel Abroad, 1980–81 (Tel Aviv: Bronfman & Cohen, 1981), 207. Nahum Goldmann (1895–1982) was a founder and longtime president of the World Jewish Congress. He represented the Jewish Agency for several years and also served as president of the World Zionist Organization after the war. See Mark A. Raider, ed., Nahum Goldmann: Statesman without a State (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009).

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be taken by the Jewish Agency, because a suggestion coming from the Agency would be acceptable to the American Jewish Conference, while difficult to resist to the W.J.C. Things should not be delayed much more because some bodies have already or are about to approach the Inter-Governmental Committee. On the other hand, I understand that the American Government is prepared to give priority to the Non-repatriable Displaced Persons’ claim. I hope you will take an early opportunity of discussing the whole question with the Jewish Agency people. I enclose, herewith, the relevant documents. [not attached here] Yours very sincerely, J.L. FLAISZER

While the core of the reparations debate centered on restitution for individual property, assets, and goods, Jewish organizations also attempted to reclaim Jewish cultural holdings now scattered in museums and libraries throughout Europe. Stolen artwork that once resided in Jewish homes has received much publicity in the postwar years, with museums throughout the United States and abroad still discovering the somewhat dubious provenance of their collections.19 In addition to these works, however, the contents of the great Jewish libraries of Europe had also been destroyed or scattered from their original homes. Prior to 1939, in eastern Europe alone, it is estimated that over 250 Jewish libraries existed with a total of 1.65 million volumes housed on their shelves. These collections included large repositories such as the famous Strashun Library in Vilna with its thirty-five thousand volumes, the Great Synagogue in Warsaw with over forty thousand books, and the YIVO institute in Vilna, with an estimated eighty-five thousand items.20 The importance of books has a long history in both secular and religious Jewish culture. Indeed, even in ghettos like Vilna and Łódź, small libraries

19. See Marrus, Some Measure of Justice, 36–59. 20. Jacqueline Borin, “Embers of the Soul: The Destruction of Jewish Books and Libraries in Poland during World War II,” Libraries and Culture 28, no. 4 (fall 1993): 445.

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survived, at least for a short while longer.21 At the same time, many of these volumes were burned or the paper recycled as part of an effort to destroy Jewish life, and many thousands were cataloged and sent to Germany as part of an effort spearheaded by Nazi leader Alfred Rosenberg. Rosenberg intended to house these volumes in a future “university” of the National Socialist Party, referred to as the Hohe Schule [High School]. To that end, Rosenberg’s division, the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, forced Jewish intellectuals in the ghettos into service cataloging this material. This practice placed Jews in the position of giving away their own cultural treasures for exploitation, sale, and destruction by the Nazi occupiers. As renowned Yiddish scholar Zelig Kalmanovich wrote in his diary on August 26, 1943, in the Vilna ghetto, “All week I sorted books; several thousand I cast with my own hands onto the rubbish pile. A pile of books is scattered on the floor of the reading room of the YIVO—a cemetery of books, a brother’s grave, books that were hit by the war of Gog and Magog [ancient Biblical enemies of the Jewish people] just like their owners.”22 At the end of the war, these books remained, by and large, housed in German institutions and libraries. As early as 1944, efforts began to bring these works back into Jewish hands. The organizations involved included the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the Commission on European Jewish Cultural Reconstruction, and Jewish Cultural Reconstruction. This raised several questions: To whom, and to where, should these books be returned? Did they belong in Palestine or New York, where the critical mass of survivors was now settling? Or should these volumes remain in situ in Europe as part of an effort to rebuild the now decimated communities from whence they came?23 Document 9-5, an exchange between the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the 21. See Jonathan Rose, ed., The Holocaust and the Book: Destruction and Preservation (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001). 22. Borin, “Embers of the Soul,” 451. Kalmanovich (1885–1944), a scholar, translator, and Hebrew teacher, also served as editor of YIVO’s scholarly journal and on YIVO’s executive board in Vilna beginning in the late 1920s. During the war he was forced into the Vilna ghetto but conscripted to work in a German looting operation, a special task force under the Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg, that used the institution as a central collecting place. He died in 1944 in the Vaivara concentration camp complex (now in Estonia). See Lucy S. Dawidowicz, From That Place and Time: A Memoir, 1938–1947 (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1989), xxv–xxvii. 23. For a discussion of the larger issues surrounding the restoration of Jewish books and libraries, both in the immediate postwar period and beyond, see Markus Kirchhoff, “Looted Texts: Restituting Jewish Libraries,” in Diner and Wunberg, Restitution and Memory, 161–88.

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Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF), speaks to the restoration of these cultural artifacts to the Jewish community. In his letter of June 26, 1945, A. G. Brotman24 notes the urgency of locating and returning these objects, which he fears will otherwise disappear into the chaotic reorganization of the postwar period. The July 5, 1945, response (addressed to Brotman’s superior, Selig Brodetsky,25 president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, but clearly referring to the same issue) reinforces, to a certain extent, Jewish anxiety that time, resources, and funds cannot be properly devoted to this type of restitution effort. DOCUMENT 9-5: Query from A. G. Brotman, secretary of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, to the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, London, June 26, 1945, and reply, July 5, 1945, Board of Deputies of British Jews Records, USHMMA RG 59.023, reel 55.

26th June, 1945 Sir, You will, we are sure, be aware of the problem of the Jewish cultural treasures, libraries, objects of Jewish art and liturgy, looted by the Nazis from all over Europe and brought to Germany to be placed there at the disposal of the various anti-Semitic Research Institutes and other German institutions and individuals. Those objects, apart from their value, represent also the record of Jewish history and culture in Europe. We have every reason 24. Adolph Gedaliah Brotman (1896–1970) was general secretary of the Board of Deputies from 1933 to 1966. Educated in London, he had previously served as education adviser to the Jewish community in Baghdad. He assumed the vice chairmanship of the United Restitution Organization beginning in 1948. See Pamela Shatzkes, Holocaust and Rescue: Impotent or Indifferent? Anglo-Jewry, 1938–1945 (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave, 2002), 15, 43; tribute in AJR Information 25, no. 4 (April 1970): 11 (publication of the Association of Jewish Refugees in Great Britain). 25. Brodetsky (1888–1954) had been a mathematics professor in Bristol and Leeds and was a longtime champion of the Zionist cause. He served as president of the board from 1939 to 1949, the first leader with working-class eastern European immigrant roots and a commitment to Zionism. See Selig Brodetsky, Memoirs: From Ghetto to Israel (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1960); Edgar Williams and Helen Palmer, eds., The Dictionary of National Biography, 1951–1960 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), 143–44.

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Chapter 9 to believe that the Allied authorities will readily return them to their owners, as far as those owners could be found or would come forward and substantiate their claims, and we ask that the objects, whose owners have perished, would be deposited in the Hebrew University Library as the possession of the Jewish people. But until this could happen there is a very serious danger that in the present state of chaos prevailing in Germany, and because of the lack of experts, especially interested in the matter, among the Allied authorities, many of those treasures may disappear or become irretrievably damaged. Moreover, it is also of the greatest importance that the records of Nazi savagery, the anti-semitic literature, [and] documents relating to the persecution of the Jews, should be preserved, in the first instance, as a source of Jewish history. With this in mind, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Board of Deputies has made a request to the appropriate authorities that the Hebrew University of Jerusalem be recognized as a Trustee body for this purpose, and be asked to assemble, preserve, and sort out the books, manuscripts, decrees, documents, and other objects of Jewish interest. A copy of the letter is enclosed herewith [not attached here]. The Board of Deputies has also decided to invite other Jewish Organizations to make a similar request direct [sic]. Our suggestion has the approval of the special Committee, set up by the Conference on Restoration of Continental Jewish Museums, Libraries and Archives, held in London on April 11, 1943. At the request of the Committee, we enclose herewith the resolutions adopted by the Conference [not attached here]. Yours faithfully, A.G. Brotman Secretary Supreme Headquarters ALLIED EXPEDITIONARY FORCE G-5 Division

Reclaiming Possessions 5 July, 1945 Dear Professor Brodetsky, I can readily understand and sympathize with your anxiety as to the fate of the great accumulations of Jewish historical materials brought together by the Germans and as to the important ritual objects seized from Synagogues all over Europe. The Advisor on Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives tells me that examples of both kinds have been uncovered by the Monuments Officers working with the Armies and reported to SHAEF. They have, of course, been treated in exactly the same way as any other valuable historical material or religious treasures. The Germans had evacuated the contents of their Museums and Libraries for safety against air raids in the main either to country houses or, in very many cases, to mines. Where such places are difficult to safeguard or are unsuitable for housing books etc., it is our policy to move their contents into central collecting depots to simplify the task of looking after them. It is a very large task for the amount of material is immense and the number of country houses and mines very large. The moves are always made under the supervision of a specialist officer. The priority of these moves is determined by the nature of the storage place and its contents; e.g. books and M.S.S. [manuscripts] in a damaged country house with a leaky roof would have a high priority as compared with books in a dry salt-mine. I am afraid that the confusion caused by the original evacuation of great German Libraries to scattered storage places and the lack of buildings suitable to accommodate great libraries and reconstitute them, may mean that it will be some years before any systematic search of the German libraries can be undertaken. In the meantime I would like to reassure you that the newspapers talk a great deal about the Goering collection and the looted works of art, the importance of doing all we can for such things as libraries and things of little news value is always present to the Monuments Officers in the field and at SHAEF. This historic patrimony of the Jews is as much their care as any other historical or artistic material. Indeed, the Museum of Jüdische Altertümer appears in this very conservative and select list of important Monuments and collections which are accorded special treatment and, where the building survives, exempted from Military use. As to your interesting suggestion that the Hebrew University at Jerusalem might stand in the position of residuary legatee of Jewish historical materials,

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Chapter 9 my best advice is that you put your view before the Foreign Office, as the ultimate disposal of property stolen or seized by the Germans is not a matter in which the Military Government of Germany has any real voice. I hope this letter will go some way towards reassuring you that the problems you raise are not remote from our minds. Yours truly, A.E. Grasset, Lieutenant General.26 AC0S, 7G5 Division

RESTITUTION ON THE LOCAL LEVEL: CHALLENGES AND ROADBLOCKS While Germany remained at the center of international discussions around restitution, other previously occupied countries were also embroiled in restitution cases of varying circumstances and amounts. Jewish property that had been “Aryanized”—from private homes to factories and businesses—were often held not under German control but instead in the hands of the local population or the state. Both state and private parties were reluctant to relinquish their interests in what had become extremely lucrative enterprises. Moreover, various governments actively employed obstructionist laws that kept Jewish victims from claiming assets that were rightfully theirs. Document 9-6, a report from the AJJDC in Amsterdam to its offices in New York, speaks to the many roadblocks that Jews seeking reparations encountered in postliberation Europe. The occupation government in the Netherlands had actively seized Jewish property during the war. This process began with the forced centralization of Jewish finances in one Amsterdam bank in August 1941, followed by the seizure of these and other assets and valuables less than a year later in May 1942. Following the deportations of Dutch Jews in the summer of 1942, Jewish homes were liquidated and sold.27 After the war, the 26. Canadian-born career officer Lieutenant General Sir Arthur Edward Grasett (1888– 1971)—his name is misspelled here by a typist—had been a commander of British troops in China beginning in 1938. He served in Britain’s War Office during the war and became chief of staff for civil affairs at SHAEF between 1944 and 1945, retiring from his military posts in 1947. See Survey of the Papers of Senior UK Defence Personnel, 1900–1975, Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King’s College London. 27. Gerald Aalders, “A Disgrace? Postwar Restitution of Looted Jewish Property in the Netherlands,” in Dutch Jews as Perceived by Themselves and by Others, ed. Chaya Brasz and Yosef Kaplan (Boston: Brill, 2001), 394–95.

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records of these transactions, presumably held in the Property Management and Interest Institute, were largely lost. Additionally, the Dutch government refused to grant any special standing to surviving Jews and their families and saw no need for restitution of items stolen by Nazi officials.28 As Document 9-6 indicates, the paperwork for such claims remained extensive, confusing, and costly. Ultimately, Esther Haskin, the writer of this letter, holds out little hope for a successful effort on behalf of Dutch Jewry, other than the possibility of a few “lucky breaks,” representing uneven and inconsistent opportunities.29 DOCUMENT 9-6: Report from Esther Haskin of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in Amsterdam to Robert Pilpel30 of the AJJDC in New York outlining the struggle of the Dutch Jewish community to receive reparations payments, May 7, 1946, USHMMA RG 68.066M, reel 49 (Selected Records from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Archives, Jerusalem).

Mr. Robert Pilpel AJDC-NEW YORK From JDC, Holland Dear Mr. Pilpel: Thank you for sending copies of correspondence on above named subject under date of your letter No. 984 of 4.12.1946, from New York to Paris. 28. Aalders, “A Disgrace?,” 397–99. 29. Haskin (1914–1991) was originally from the state of Georgia, the daughter of Russian-born immigrants. She studied social work in New Orleans, writing about the legal aid organization in the city. She began working as a caseworker for the AJJDC and ran the organization’s program in the Netherlands for nearly a year, beginning in March 1946. After returning to the United States in 1947, Haskin became the AJJDC representative in the southwestern United States. She also married an Austrian Jewish survivor in 1951, Arthur Kerdemann. See “Esther Haskin and the Joint,” AJJDC Archives, http://archives.jdc.org/ from-the-archives/index.html (accessed June 26, 2014); Social Security death index. 30. Robert Pilpel (1905–1987) was a lawyer from New York engaged in social welfare work. He joined the AJJDC staff in 1939, working for its Latin America Committee throughout the war and for refugees through its office in Lisbon in 1944 and 1945. He continued working as the Joint’s general counsel and on its executive committee until 1952. See Henry Friedlander and Sybil Milton, eds., Archives of the Holocaust: An International Collection of Selected Documents (New York: Garland, 1995), 10/1:xviii; “Robert Pilpel Joins Staff of J.D.C. in Europe,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, February 23, 1944, www. jta.org/1944/02/23/archive/robert-pilpel-joins-staff-of-j-d-c-in-europe-will-leave-for-lisbonshortly (accessed December 17, 2014); obituary, New York Times, July 9, 1987.

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Chapter 9 Although restitution of property is something that has occupied our efforts for a long time, very little progress has been made in any way other than a few isolated individual cases. For your confidential information a commission has been established partly through the efforts of the “Joodsche Coordinatie Commissie.”31 The name of the commission is “Joodsche Commissie voor Rechtsherstel.” Dr. I.K. Edersheim, outstanding Dutch attorney, is the chairman.32 There are negotiations under way to get this commission recognized by the Government as the official agency for handling restoration of Jewish properties. Although this has been going on for a long time, it is still in the “negotiations” stage. This commission is concentrating its efforts on the law involved in handling restoration of property. Although members of the commission are quite hopeful, I, personally, am not too optimistic. The fee of 50 [guilders] referred to by Mr. Hugo Emmerich,33 New York, is to obtain a “non-enemy declaration.” Without this declaration many civil rights, as well as property rights, cannot be exercised. JDC-Netherlands has approved in principle its willingness to pay this fee for any person, even though we all feel that the fee is entirely exorbitant and unnecessary. As yet, I have not heard of any case in which a non-enemy declaration has been granted, although I know of many applications that have been filed. Recently the Lippmann, Rosenthal and Company Bank—the bank to which all Jewish properties were assigned during the occupation—paid out 1,000 [guilders] on each justifiable claim. This is a token payment only. It is highly questionable if there will be other payments.

31. The Jewish Coordinating Committee, or the successor to the Dutch Jewish council. 32. Haskin probably meant the prominent barrister and Zionist Karel Josef Edersheim (1893–1976), who became heavily involved in restitution affairs after the war and sat on the commission. Edersheim represented the Jewish Agency and Israel in the Netherlands for several years. See obituary, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, June 1, 1976; “Edersheim, Karel Josef 1893–1976,” Database Joods Biografisch Woordenboek, http://www.jodeninnederland.nl/ id/P-327 (accessed July 2, 2014). 33. Hugo Emmerich (1884?–1961) practiced law in Frankfurt am Main, where he was a Zionist and Orthodox leader, before seeking refuge in the Netherlands in 1933 and the United States in 1940. He obtained a US law degree and was active on the executive board of the American Federation of Jews from Central Europe and in other Jewish advocacy groups. See obituaries, New York Times, September 27, 1961, 41; AJR Information 16, no. 11 (November 1961): 13.

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Among other things, the “Joodsche Coordinatie Commissie”—the organization subventioned by us—maintains on its staff a legal advisor to handle claims of individuals. Although the efforts of the legal advisor are admirable, the difficult procedures involved in obtaining back any property defy any real results other than occasional “lucky breaks.” These are the efforts: real and sincere on the part of Dutch Jews; encouraged and stimulated by the “Joint” office; however, I cannot say that any notable progress has been made in the direction of restitution of property of Jews in HOLLAND. ESTHER HASKIN, AJDC NETHERLANDS

Like their Dutch counterparts, French Jews also found themselves in the position of requesting restitution from their own government. From the very beginning of German occupation and the establishment of the collaborationist Vichy government in the summer of 1940, antisemitic laws and ordinances restricted and revoked the rights that French Jews had previously enjoyed. The following year, Jewish property, businesses, and goods were “Aryanized” and seized by the French state. Moreover, Jewish homes, abandoned in haste after flight or deportation, were quickly occupied by German officials, soldiers, and non-Jewish partisan fighters, as well as former friends and neighbors. Immediately following liberation, vacant apartments in Paris also served as offices for the Allied governments.34 With the liberation of France starting in June 1944, Jews who had once called France home attempted to return and reclaim their property and possessions. They discovered, however, a postwar environment that both espoused a desire to make amends while at the same time producing roadblocks to the effort. While various Jewish groups, including the Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine (founded in 1943), called for the support of restitution claims, French laws such as a November 14, 1944, ordnance forbade reclamation of properties that were currently inhabited (particularly by non-Jewish partisans or other real or perceived French victims of fascism). Thus, although thousands of claims were processed between 1944 and 1947, few were fulfilled, and Jewish goods and property largely remained in the hands of those who had seized it during the war. 34. See Leora Auslander, “Coming Home? Jews in Postwar Paris,” Journal of Contemporary History 40 (2005): 243–44.

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The following selection from an article in the Bulletin du Centre israélite d’information (Bulletin of the Center for Jewish Information) from the end of 1946 outlines the many difficulties encountered by Jews attempting to reclaim their homes in postwar Paris. The writer of this piece, reporter Annette Joubert, cites statements from several Jews (identified by first name and initials only) who were denied access to their property upon returning to Paris.35 The physical and immediate needs of French Jews became subsumed within laws and decrees meant to maintain the status quo. Even this article, however, which seeks to expose the injustice meted out in postwar French society, omits the terms israélite and juif;36 instead it uses the generalized idiom déporté (deportee). Indeed, without the larger frame of the Bulletin or the specific difficulties of those profiled, there would be no clue as to the identity of “Mme. L.” or “Therese G.” Ultimately, as this piece shows through both its content and its omissions, justice and recognition for French Jewry would be slow and tedious. DOCUMENT 9-7: “Spoils, Restitution, Reintegration,” Bulletin of the Center for Jewish Information, no. 13 (December 1, 1946): 3, USHMMA RG 68.066M, reel 50 (Selected Records from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Archives, Jerusalem) (translated from French).

[. . .] Bad faith occupants Annette Joubert,37 in the November 28, 1946, Fraternité [Brotherhood], having shown that there are still too many despoiled persons without a 35. For more information on the plight of postwar French Jewish property, see Poznanski, Jews in France, 466. 36. These two terms, both of which refer to French Jews, have a specific cultural context and history, particularly during the wartime period. Israélite refers to the so-called native French Jewish population, many of whose members traced their heritage back to eighteenthcentury France. This population was, by and large, more secular and assimilationist and formed the core leadership of the official French Jewish community during the war. These individuals were also among the last in the occupied zone to be deported. The juif population mainly comprised Eastern European émigrés who had arrived in France between the turn of the century and the 1930s. Members of this primarily Yiddish-speaking group were among the first to be deported. They also formed the core of French Jewish resistance movements. For more information on this divide and how it played out in the wartime period, see Jacques Adler, The Jews of Paris and the Final Solution: Communal Response and Internal Conflicts, 1940–1944 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987). See also Alexandra Garbarini with Emil Kerenji, Jan Lambertz, and Avinoam Patt, Jewish Responses to Persecution, vol. 2: 1938– 1940 (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press in association with the USHMM, 2011), 271–75. 37. The author could not find any further information about this person.

Reclaiming Possessions roof over their heads, turns her attention to the situation, particularly worthy of attention, of Jews who have had the opportunity to assess the shortcomings of justice in their regard. It suffices for the adversary of the despoiled person to be a tactician of the law to succeed in turning to his advantage the circumstances that are legally the least favorable to him. Annette Joubert cites the two following cases: I was going to see Mme. L., Boulevard Magenta, who, as a repatriated deportee and wife of a deportee who has disappeared, appeared to have a right of priority over the tenant of her lodging. “That’s what I thought, myself,” she said, and she told me her story: When I came back from deportation, I brought an action to be able to regain my lodging. At the end of six months, it was announced that I had won but I was forbidden to evict the tenant. The tenant was probably a victim? He had actually succeeded in making that believed, but it was very simple to show that he had made use of the damaged villa of his parents. Now since 1938, he possessed another apartment in the same house, in addition to mine. If he had really been a victim since 1940, as he says, where did he live until 1943, since it’s just at that time that he entered my place. I knew, quite simply, that he had lived in his second lodging. For that matter, he always owned it, but the concierge didn’t want to attest to that. And you yourself, how did you live? For a year and a half now, I have lived with my son and the two children of my brother, whom I have kept with me since the deportation of their father, at my parents’ expense. We live, ten of us, in their three-room apartment. I tried to work as a salesperson in a store, but after I went to the medical examination at the police headquarters, the doctor ordered me to stop, because, since my return from deportation, I am at risk of developing tuberculosis. I ask only one thing, you know, that is to regain at least my four walls. I will never find my furniture and my machines, but I may be able, with the

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Chapter 9 help of some friends, to re-start the fur workshop that we had before, and my son could work there. But have you spoken before the Commission of Rehousing, to get a requisition? Yes, actually. But it’s a rather vague hope. Here is what happened to me recently: I heard one day that a tenant in my house was dead and that his lodging was empty. So I wanted to have it requisitioned for my benefit. But the heirs intervened, saying that the daughter of this woman wanted to move in there. Thus I had to withdraw, and today the lodging has been rented to a tenant who has nothing to do with that family. Mme. L. seemed weary from all this, weary of always finding herself back in the middle of this vicious circle. She will appeal, but her action will not go to court until sometime in 1947. [illegible] . . . she will have to be patient. She will have to wait, always wait. Therese G. has had no luck either. For two years, she has dragged herself from hotel rooms to garrets, the apartment of her parents, who died during deportation, now occupied by a single woman who does not want to give it back. The lawsuit, after a year of maneuvers from agency to agency, just ended like many others: no eviction. Here are the facts, according to Therese G.: This woman, installed in my parents’ lodging, she says, has naturally used all the means in her possession to remain there. She lived there before as the common-law wife of a man who was deported. When that person came back, she declared herself the wife of another deported person, and the lawsuit has proceeded on that basis. As for me, I have had endless difficulty proving that this apartment was that of my parents and that I, a minor at that time, lived there too. The owner of the house, a former collaborator, has never wanted to provide me with an affidavit. Only after numerous investigations have I been able to prove it.

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These examples are taken at random, but how many others could be cited, of human beings whom the war has placed “on the margin of the life of others.”

PERSONAL RESTITUTION CLAIMS While discussions about restitution and reparations were taking place on the level of policy and international debate, individual Jews and their families grappled with the practical implications of these deliberations. In the midst of the larger discussions about the policies, challenges, and roadblocks to restitution claims, it is easy to forget the impact of the regulations handed down on survivors, refugees, and their families. Document 9-8 speaks to the individual claims in progress in the immediate aftermath of the war. Read in isolation, the contents of the document demonstrate the seemingly mundane nature of such restitution claims, enumerating the value of clothing, furniture, or jewelry or of a lost lift van filled with various items. On a more symbolic level, however, restitution claims can serve, as Dan Diner asserts, as a means of memory and one way of keeping the past present, even in the early years after the war.38 The following claims from the Weinmann family serve as an example of a suit brought from the United States some nine years after the original property was lost. Gustave Weinmann and his family resided in Vienna when the Anschluss made Austria part of the German Reich in 1938. During the November Pogrom (“Kristallnacht”) on November 9–10, 1938, Gustave was arrested and sent to the Dachau concentration camp for one month. A year later, in November 1939, he and his wife, Grete, departed for the United States, arriving in late December.39 Their teenage sons, Hans and Ernst, arrived in New York on separate ships a few months later. During this time, the family stored some of their belongings on a lift van with a company in Trieste, Italy. The following correspondence from May and June 1947 speaks to the status of this lift van, whose contents, some nine years later, had yet to be recovered. In a string of letters to the U.S. consulate, the original lift van company, and the Allied Military Government headquarters in Trieste, the Weinmanns attempt to locate 38. See Dan Diner, “Memory and Restitution: World War II as a Foundational Event in a Uniting Europe,” in Diner and Wunberg, Restitution and Memory, 9–26. 39. Gustav Weinmann (1889–1946), a Vienna native, had worked as a clerk before emigrating. He, his wife, Grete Weinmann (1892–1990), a native of Kygov (now in the Czech Republic), and their sons settled in Detroit almost immediately after emigrating. See donor’s file, USHMMA RG 10.135 (Weinmann family papers); ship passenger lists, 1939 and 1940, NARA, RG 85, Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1787–2004.

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their property, once believed to be safely held for their later use. By the end of the correspondence, we learn that the storage unit was most likely seized by the Germans, dumped, and looted during the course of the war. While not making a restitution claim per se, these documents open up a small window onto the challenges of reclaiming possessions from across the ocean. The Weinmanns’ claims are not unique; rather, they represent the efforts of many whose possessions were, for all intents and purposes, held hostage or destroyed in Europe long after their owners had immigrated to and gained citizenship in other countries outside Europe. Finally, as Martin Dean, Constantin Goschler, and Philipp Ther note in their volume about robbery and restitution, “For the period after 1945, the perspective of the Jewish victims, over which the bitter conflicts regarding lost property have cast a dark shadow, cannot simply be integrated within a broader European history of how postwar societies dealt with the legacies of the Nazi past. Rather, this must be contrasted with the story of the reconstruction of Jewish life after the war that took place largely outside of Europe.”40 That reconstruction existed on both the micro and macro levels, negotiated between personal and collective concerns. DOCUMENT 9-8: Restitution case of Grete Weinmann, Detroit, Michigan, Trieste, and Venice, May–June 1947, USHMMA RG 10.135 Weinmann family papers.

9500 Savery Detroit 6, Michigan May 7, 1947. United States Consulate Free City of Trieste Europe. Dear Sir: Before moving to the United States in 1939 my husband, Gustave Weinmann, and I stored our liftvan with “Intercontinentale,” S.A. Di Transporti et Communicazoni, via Nizza Nr. 4, Trieste. It had been our intention to have the liftvan moved to this country later, but the war prevented this. 40. Martin Dean, Constantin Goschler, and Philipp Ther, “Introduction,” in Dean, Goschler, and Ther, Robbery and Restitution, 15.

Reclaiming Possessions In 1945 we learned from the “Intercontinentale” that the German army had removed the liftvan and shipped it to Germany. Our inquiry regarding more details was, however, not answered by “Intercontinentale.” I am now an American citizen and should appreciate it greatly if your consulate would investigate the details concerning the fate of our liftvan and aid me in recovering our property. The liftvan weighed kg 3070 and was identified as G.W. 181. Very truly yours, Mrs. G. Weinmann “JULIA-INTERNTRANS” TRANSPORTI & SPEDIZIONI Trieste, 24 May 1947 Via Milano 18 To: Headquarters—Allied Military Government, Property Control—TRIESTE Dep. 175/F Your ref. VG/AMG/CP/764.A.—js/v Gentlemen, re 1 liftvan kilos 3070 marked G.W. 181 Belonging to Gustave WEINMANN Replying to your favor of the 21st of May, we beg to inform you that the above mentioned liftvan was forfeited and carried off by the German authorities, from which we obtained a receipt, as per copy hereby attached. Yours truly, JULIA-INTERTRANS S.A. Transporti & Spedizioni Sgd: [illegible]

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Chapter 9 HEADQUARTERS ALLIED MILITARY GOVERNMENT VENEZIA GIULIA FINANCE DIVISION Property Control Sect. WGB/j 27 May 1947 Ref.: VG/AMG/CP/764.A SUBJECT: Liftvan belonging to Mr. G. WEINMANN. TO: The Representative of the U.S.POLAD, HQ.,—A.M.G.— VENEZIA GIULIA. Reference is made to your interoffice memo dated 19 MAY 1947 inquiring into the present status of the above property. Enclosed herewith a self-explanatory letter and copies of receipt issued by the German authorities received from “JULIA-INTERTRANS,” TRIESTE. This Forwarding Agent is presently handling property formerly stored in TRIESTE with “INTERCONTINENTALE.” It is however reliably understood that quantities of goods seized by the Germans in TRIESTE and dispatched to Germany on the TRIESTEBERLIN line did not reach their destinations but were off loaded and dumped in and around KLAGENFURT. These dumps were thoroughly looted during the last period of the war and various parcels were broken open and the goods dispersed and intermixed to such an extent as to make identification of ownership of the remnants impossible. It is regretted that no further information is available. Your attachment is returned herewith. W.G. BOARD, MAJOR PROPERTY CONTROL FOR CHIEF FINANCE OFFICER

In addition to individual and communal claims to restitution, large amounts of unclaimed assets, referred to as “heirless property,” emerged throughout Europe. These commodities existed in the form of previously “Aryanized” property, material goods such as artwork, and assets left to surviving family as a result of wills or other legal means. In the years immediately

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following the war, it was not at all clear what to do with such “heirless” assets: To whom should they be bequeathed in the absence of family members to claim them? How thoroughly should one search for these heirs, and what identification requirements could one reasonably expect from survivors and refugees emerging from the ruins of Europe? How long should one wait before declaring these assets the communal property of the state or the Jewish community? Different jurisdictions handled heirless property in a variety of ways. Prior to 1947, policies were generally inconsistent. Within the American Zone, the OMGUS began thinking through the complexities of the restitution process, including with regard to heirless property, but failed to come up with a consistent policy. Indeed, some advocated that such assets should be returned to local Jewish communities in the interest of reestablishing Jewish life in Europe. In contrast, others believed that such efforts were futile (if not insulting and potentially hurtful to the Zionist cause) and insisted that this money and property belonged in the hands of transnational Jewish organizations such as the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the World Jewish Congress, to be distributed to refugee and émigré communities as they saw fit. In some countries, such as France, Jewish heirless property was not actually used to support Jews; instead, it became the general property of the state to sustain the larger population of “war victims.”41 Hidden behind discussions of restitution and reparations, however, another far more profound concern arose: Who, among the heirs to funds, property, or goods, had survived to claim them? Document 9-9, an exchange of letters surrounding the estate of Solly Chideckel, a lieutenant corporal in the British army from South Africa, brings this disturbing question to the fore. Chideckel, killed in the course of the war, left behind an estate of unknown value to the Schtern family. The correspondence featured here, however, focuses instead on the efforts of representatives from the AJJDC and the Board of Deputies of British Jews to locate Chideckel’s heirs. Therein begins a complex process of searching that employs postwar Jewish newspapers, individual testimony, and three Jewish organizations. These letters therefore become consumed with the search for survivors over and above the details of the inheritance itself.

41. For a full discussion of the evolution of these policies, see Goschler, “Jewish Property and the Politics of Restitution,” 113–33.

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DOCUMENT 9-9: Series of letters on the location of the heirs to the estate of S. Chideckel (Shideckel), London and Cape Town, November 1945–May 1946, USHMMA RG 78.001, reel 3, Records of South African Jewish Board of Deputies.

9th November, 1945 The American Joint Distribution Committee. 19, Rue de Teheran. PARIS. Dear Sirs, We have been requested by Mr. A. Geffen, Attorney-at-Law of Stellenbach, Cape, to try to find the whereabouts of the missing legatees of the Estate of the late Mr. S. Shideckel, some of whom are presumed to be in Poland. Would you kindly request Mr. Guzik to print a notice in the following terms in any of the Polish newspapers: “Any person having any information as to the whereabouts of CHAIM SCHTERN (or SZTERN), NAOMI FELDMAN (born SCHTERN or SZTERN) and SARAH SCHTERN (or SZTERN), all believed to have been at one time living in or near Warsaw, is requested to communicate with A. Geffen, Attorney-at-Law, Steelenbach [sic], Cape Province, through David Guzik, Zabkowska, 38M5, Warsaw, as soon as possible.” Should the wording of this notice require modification in terms of Polish law, or should it require more than one insertion, please ask Mr. Guzik to do the necessary. In due course kindly send us copies of the advertisements or advertisements printed, together with a statement of Mr. Guzik’s expenses in this matter. Thanking you in anticipation, Yours faithfully, G. Osrin42 42. Gus Osrin (?1897–1973), an AJJDC official; Edgar Bernstein, “South Africa,” American Jewish Yearbook, 1973, American Jewish Community Archives, www.ajcarchives.org/ AJC_DATA/Files/1973_12_SouthAfrica.pdf (accessed July 3, 2014). The author was unable to locate additional information.

Reclaiming Possessions SOUTH AFRICAN JEWISH WAR APPEAL CONTROLLED BY THE SOUTH AFRICAN BOARD OF DEPUTIES for Jewish Relief and Reconstruction TRANSVAAL COMMITTEE NATIONAL COMMITTEE 130/135 SHAKESPEARE HOUSE COMMISSIONER STREET JOHANNESBURG 15th January, 1946. The Secretary, S.A. Jewish War Appeal, PO Box 2009, CAPETOWN. Dear Sir, Re: ESTATE LATE S. SHIDECKEL Following is the text of a letter dated 14th December, 1945, received today from JDC Paris, in reply to ours of the 9th November, 1945, requesting them to locate the missing members of the Schtern (Sztern) family: “This is to inform you that immediately on receipt of your letter of the 9th [of the last month], we instructed our office in Warsaw to do everything possible to locate the missing members of the Schtern (or Sztern) family, who are legatees of the estate of the late Mr. S. Shideckel of South Africa. We will not fail to communicate with you, as soon as any information comes in.” As soon as a further report comes to hand, we shall advise you. Yours faithfully, G. Osrin Secretary

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Chapter 9 22nd March, 1946 The Secretary, Board of Deputies of British Jews, Woburn House, Upper Woburn Place, LONDON Dear Sir, For some months now the Executor in the Estate of the late S. Chideckel [sic] of this city has been making enquiries with the object of locating certain legatees, viz. Chaim Schtern (or Sztern), Naomi Feldman (born Schtern or Sztern) and Sarah Schtern (or Sztern), all believed to have been at one time living in or near Warsaw. The Executor informs me that recently he received a letter from Messrs. J.L. Freedman & Co., High Holborn House, 52/54 High Holborn, London, W.C.I., on behalf of their client, Lieutenant Corporal Feldman, who claims to be a beneficiary in terms of the Will. The Executor has written to Messrs. Freedman & Co., advising that Feldman is not entitled to share the Estate but has asked them at the same time to ascertain from Feldman whether he can throw any light on the present whereabouts of the missing people. It is possible that Messrs. Freedman and Co. may not be prepared to undertake the task of making the necessary further inquiries, and it will be appreciated if you will be good enough to ask Feldman to call at your office, whenever he can, and to obtain from him such information as he is able to give. His present address is No. 13120130, Lieutenant Corporal S. Feldman, 98 Coy P.C., Section 1, Parsloes Park, Gale Street, Dagenham, Essex, England. I must apologize for burdening you with this problem, but I was emboldened to write to you only at the thought that the money lying here for the missing persons may well bring happiness to more than one family in Europe if it should prove possible to pay it over to the legal claimants. Yours faithfully, A.M. MELAMET SECRETARY

Reclaiming Possessions THE LONDON COMMITTEE OF DEPUTIES OF BRITISH JEWS generally known as THE BOARD OF DEPUTIES OF BRITISH JEWS WOBURN HOUSE, UPPER WOBURN PLACE, LONDON, W.C.1. 15th May, 1946. The Secretary, South African Jewish Board of Deputies, PO Box 2009, Cape Town. Dear Sir, On receipt of your letter of the 22nd March with regard to the estate of the late S. Chideckel [sic], I asked Lieutenant Corporal S. Feldman to call and see me. I have now had the opportunity of discussing with him the contents of your letter as far as it relates to the whereabouts of his relatives and he informs me that Chaim Schtern (or Sztern), his brother, was called up for Military service in Poland at the commencement of the war, and that before he himself managed to escape from Poland an official communication was received from the Polish Military Authorities stating that Chaim Schtern had been killed on active service. As far as Naomi Feldman, his mother, and Sarah Schtern, his Aunt, are concerned, he left them in the town from which he escaped in 1939, since when he has heard no news from or about them. He has made attempts through various channels to try and trace them and had even managed to find a former resident of the same town who managed to survive concentration camps and from whom he received confirmation that all Jewish inhabitants of that town except that one particular individual were killed by the Germans. He also tells me that his brother, Chaim, left a widow and two children who also seem to have been taken away by the Nazis and of whom there is now no trace. He assures me that he is more anxious than the executors of the estate to try and trace any information relating to this mother, brother, and aunt,

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Chapter 9 but unfortunately can receive no confirmation of his worst fears or any hope that they may be alive. Yours faithfully, [illegible signature] Clerk to the Board

PART IV

Framing, Defining, and Remembering the Holocaust

I

N THE EARLY postwar era, memoirs, memorials, and testimony each addressed, in their own way, a familiar yet pressing need surrounding the possibility of conveying the full force of one’s experience. A myriad of concerns emerged with this anxiety. Memoir writers in the postwar period often faced questions of factual accuracy or the ideology of a particular publication project. In some cases, even the simple choice of an appropriate language in which to write became loaded. Should one write in Yiddish, thereby signaling an internal audience, or in the vernacular language of one’s country of origin? Alternatively, was Hebrew or English more appropriate? The very term “Holocaust memoir” remains a complex designation encompassing a number of different genres. The making of memory, however, extends far beyond the definition of a public and published text. Indeed, secular and religious commemorations, newspaper articles, and even burials (or reburials) of family and community remains also constituted forms of memory making during this period. These types of activities did not emerge sui generis. Rather, they built on preexisting Jewish memorial traditions that occurred during the war as well.1 Aside from private efforts, larger public and communal ceremonies in the United States and Palestine also served the dual purpose of memory making and generating 1. In the Łódź ghetto, for example, Anny Feldmann implored the Jewish council for permission to mark her father’s grave in November 1941. See Jürgen Matthäus, with Emil Kerenji, Jan Lambertz, and Leah Wolfson, Jewish Responses to Persecution, vol. 3: 1941–1942 (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press in association with the USHMM, 2013), 370.

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public awareness. Anniversaries of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising often fulfills this function.2 Postwar commemorations thus reflected these wartime concerns but also added the new knowledge and finality of genocide. By 1945 and 1946, it had become evident that not only whole families but indeed entire communities had been murdered.3 The chapters in this part of the book address testimony, memory, and memorial in their various forms. Now defined somewhat vaguely as “survivor accounts” (in ways that sometimes overlap with what we might otherwise categorize as memoir), testimony began in the days of Emanuel Ringelblum’s Oyneg Shabbes Archive as a way to capture the full picture of Jewish persecution in Poland.4 By 1944 and 1945, testimony began to assume a more historical, and to a certain extent juridical, purpose with the active collection of evidence for war crimes trials. At the same time, however, testimony also became the purview of individual Jewish communities and communal organizations seeking to create a record of the Holocaust as they remembered it and as it happened to them. These testimonies became part of a nascent historical narrative of Jewish victim voices that has recently received renewed attention. This section—and indeed this volume—closes with a major turning point in the history of testimony and the historiography of the Holocaust: David Boder’s 1946 survivor interviews. Unlike the many other efforts before his, Boder’s relatively small project (comprised of less than 150 testimonies, which, in addition to Jewish survivor accounts, also include narratives by non-Jewish DPs) is notable not only for its format—Boder conducted the first audio-recorded 2. For more information about the commemoration and memory of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, see Emil Kerenji, Jewish Responses to Persecution, vol. 4: 1942–1943 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield in association with the USHMM, 2014), ch. 5. 3. Many memoirs, memorial services, and testimonial literature actually emerged during the war itself. Yiddish émigré writer Henry Shoskes returned from a clandestine visit to the Warsaw ghetto and published his reflections in New York in 1943. Similarly, while his memoir of escape from the Treblinka death camp was not published until recently, Oskar Strawczynski authored his text in 1944. Numerous literary texts were written during the war and preserved in various forms, then published after the war in Yiddish, Hebrew, Polish, German, French, English, and other languages. Thus, by the postwar period, a genealogy and tradition of “Holocaust literature” already existed, albeit not all in published form. 4. See Samuel D. Kassow, Who Will Write Our History? Emanuel Ringelblum, the Warsaw Ghetto, and the Oyneg Shabes Archive (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), 209–24. It is important to note that the testimony in the Ringelblum Archive includes (for obvious reasons) statements from both individuals who survived the war and others who were ultimately killed. Therefore, it is referenced here as an example of a contemporary wartime testimonial collection effort.

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survivor interviews—but more so for its operating principle. For the first time, survivor voices were solicited almost solely for the purpose of creating memory; “testimony” thus escaped its evidentiary or strictly utilitarian function and became a means of public memory and memorialization all its own.5 Ultimately, the documents in this section demonstrate the fluidity and improvisation of Holocaust memory as it was being formulated. Some tropes— the six million, deportation, and Auschwitz, among others—emerge almost immediately. Yet other documents also show a surprising breadth and flexibility in the definition of what constitutes a “Holocaust experience.” These texts, photographs, and other images compel us as readers to question our own assumptions about survivor writing, its audience, and its reach during this early period. Indeed, if nothing else, these documents shift our lens from an examination of whether Jewish survivors reflected, refracted, and remembered their experiences to a probing of how such writing and commemorative practices occurred.

5. For more information on David Boder’s project, see David Boder, I Did Not Interview the Dead (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1949). It is important to note, however, that even as Boder’s stated purpose entailed illuminating survivor voices to assess the degree of traumatization, he was not completely unaware of practical realities. Indeed, Boder knew that his interviews had the potential to help his subjects gain the legal status necessary to enter the United States. See document 12-7 for details.

CHAPTER 10

Making Memory EARLY MEMOIRS AND REFLECTIONS

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HE TERM “Holocaust memoir” typically connotes a very specific type of document: a single-author book published by a survivor about a horrific experience. Indeed, some of the best-known and most lauded pieces of Holocaust literature fit this definition: Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz (1947), Elie Wiesel’s Night (1958), Gerda Weissmann-Klein’s All But My Life (1957), and Ruth Klüger’s Still Alive (2001), to name only a few. This definition, however, narrows the scope of what is, in actuality, a large and diverse field. If we consider other forms of survivor writing and reflection, this genre becomes far more complex and varied. Indeed, by including immediate postwar histories by survivors, memorial books, and literary responses, we begin to see the multiplicity of ways in which survivors with vastly different experiences and worldviews began to process and understand their personal histories in the context of larger narratives in the process of being formed. In April 1943 in Paris, Isaac Schneersohn formed the first Jewish historical commission, the Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation (Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine, CDJC), while the war and deportations still raged throughout Europe.1 In 1944 in Lublin, Poland, Jewish 1. For more information about the CDJC, see Laura Jockusch, Collect and Record! Jewish Holocaust Documentation in Early Postwar Europe, 1945–1957 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 46–83.

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historian and survivor Filip (Philip) Friedman founded a similar effort. His group of Jewish historians was already beginning to assemble questionnaires and define methodologies for collecting and recording survival testimony. One year later, Friedman began writing and researching a preliminary history of Auschwitz for the Polish government commission investigating German crimes. Simultaneously, the Central Jewish Historical Commission (CJHC) in Lublin (and later in Łódź) had begun its memoir collection and competition efforts as a way to encourage survivors to record their experiences. To that end, journals such as Fun letstn churbn from the Central Historical Commission in Munich (formed in 1945 by disciples of Friedman) published the more polished results of this material for distribution among the Jewish population in the DP camps and beyond. Simultaneously, individual memoirs were being published in Paris, the United States, Germany, Buenos Aires, Palestine, and elsewhere. A broad diversity of writing and responses survive. Each is mediated by the form, perspective, and frame of its writer, editor, or publisher. A memoir written for a historical commission contest—as many were—will undoubtedly reflect the stated or implicit requirements and values of that competition. A literary piece written for an audience of fellow Jewish DPs may incorporate internal, coded language or slang that eludes an outside reader. Even a historical narrative is composed with a particular audience in mind (e.g., Polish, English, or Yiddish speakers) and thereby emphasizes some aspects of the emerging Holocaust narrative over others. None of these pieces reflects a uniform, monolithic portrait of “the Holocaust”; instead, each presents different aspects of a whole that was still very much being shaped. This chapter addresses the many forms that “memoirs” took in this early period. While the documents reproduced here cannot fully represent such a vast field, they nevertheless compel us to consider the many ways in which Holocaust memory and narrative were actively evolving. For example, how might we interpret the centrality of Auschwitz in many early survivor histories of the Holocaust? Does it indicate merely an availability of sources or a deliberate emphasis on the concentration camp experience? As memorial books began to emerge in 1945 and 1946, how did the émigré perspective influence their authors’ views of prewar and postwar life? How did their own sense of futurity and the emerging expectations of what a “Holocaust narrative” should look like impact these authors? Overall, the documents in this chapter push us to consider the diversity of memory in the immediate postwar period and the plethora of ways in which that memory was framed and expressed for different audiences and expectations.

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EARLY HISTORIES OF THE HOLOCAUST: AN EMERGING FIELD As several recent studies have illuminated, rather than the so-called silence about the Holocaust in the immediate postwar years, there was in fact a steady flow of voices from a variety of perspectives.2 Chief contributors were the early historians—many of them survivors—who wrote exhaustive histories of the ghettos and camps. These works assumed many forms, from travelogues of destroyed communities to cumulative histories based on documents and testimony (many times sponsored by major Jewish agencies such as the American Jewish Committee or World Jewish Congress). Often originally written in a variety of languages (Yiddish, German, Polish, French, and Hebrew, to name a few), many times these reports were simultaneously translated and available in English as well for American and British audiences. In recording and analyzing the events of the Holocaust, these amateur and professional historians inscribed themselves into a larger Jewish tradition of “destruction research,” or khurbn forshung, which dates back to the pogroms of the early part of the century throughout eastern Europe.3 Now, after the war, scholars and lay historians alike assumed responsibility for telling their own stories. Document 10-1 is from survivor historian Filip Friedman’s study on Auschwitz, one of the first landmark postwar studies on the now iconic concentration and death camp complex. Friedman, a professional historian during the war and an instrumental figure in its aftermath, became a pivotal figure in the genre of postwar histories of the Jewish response to and experience of the Holocaust. In 1944, the Jewish Central Committee in Poland appointed Friedman the first director of the Central Jewish Historical Commission in Lublin, responsible for collecting testimonies and documentary evidence of the murder of European Jewry. One year later, the committee transferred him to Łódź, where he continued this work.4 2. See Hasia R. Diner, We Remember with Reverence and Love: American Jews and the Myth of Silence after the Holocaust, 1945–1962 (New York: New York University Press, 2009); David Cesarani and Eric J. Sundquist, eds., After the Holocaust: Challenging the Myth of Silence (New York: Routledge, 2012). 3. For a history of such “disaster research,” see Laura Jockusch, “Chroniclers of Catastrophe: History Writing as a Jewish Response to Persecution before and after the Holocaust,” in Holocaust Historiography in Context: Emergence, Challenges, Polemics and Achievements, ed. David Bankier and Dan Michman (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2008), 135–66. 4. For a full consideration of the importance of Friedman’s work, see Roni Stauber, “Philip Friedman and the Beginning of Holocaust Studies,” in Bankier and Michman, Holocaust Historiography in Context, 83–102.

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Document 10-1 excerpts one of the first of Friedman’s publications stemming from his work with the commission. Originally published in Yiddish, this study of Auschwitz was also simultaneously translated into Polish and English (in abridged format). Friedman’s English preface (translated from the original Yiddish) establishes the centrality of Auschwitz while also outlining the various forms of evidence used to formulate the core of the report. The introduction to this edition, authored by the United Jewish Appeal in London, however, casts a somewhat different purpose to the document: as the basis of fund-raising and relief efforts. Meanwhile, a Polish introduction (not featured here) published concurrently, though similar in tone, further elaborates on the myriad of sources used to create this much longer version of the report. It is important that the Polish-language edition makes no reference to Jewish victims whatsoever. While Friedman does not explicitly say so, many of the sources on which he draws for this edition (newspapers, interviews, and other materials) are Polish non-Jewish sources, which, in short, a general Polish audience could read, understand, and sympathize with. In fact, just one year earlier, during a press conference in March 1945, as part of a greater effort to stake a claim in what would become the communist Polish state, Friedman publically framed the Jewish tragedy within the larger context of the crimes of fascism.5 Finally, Friedman places as much emphasis on the “living documents”—the living witnesses, such as himself—as on the many legal manuscripts on which he relied for much of his work. This credence given to testimony during the early period of publications would fade as time passed; indeed, some historians came to regard survivor and witness voices with suspicion at best. DOCUMENT 10-1: Selection from Dr. Filip Friedman, This Was Oświęcim: The Story of a Murder Camp (London: United Jewish Appeal, 1946), 5–7 (translated from Yiddish).

Author’s Preface I have written this book because it is important that the world should know of the terrible sufferings inflicted by the Germans upon millions of peoples, mostly Jews, in the death factory which they established at Oświęcim.6 Oświęcim devoured most of the Jewish victims—millions of them. The death camps in the eastern parts of Poland, Treblinka, Sobibor, Majdanek 5. Jockusch, Collect and Record!, 111. 6. Please note that the original text utilizes the Polish name for Auschwitz. This distinction has been retained in the translation.

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and Bełżec, were primarily for the liquidation of Polish Jews. Only a small number of Jews were sent there from other countries. But Oświęcim was an international slaughter camp, and in addition to Polish Jews, hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered there who were brought from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, France, Holland, Belgium, Italy, Yugoslavia, Greece and Norway. I was a member of the Polish State Commission for Investigating the German Crimes in Poland,7 and I attended the meetings of the Commission which heard the evidence about what was done in Oświęcim. I also spoke privately to the witnesses, and received a great deal of additional material, personal memories, diaries, statistics, etc. I also obtained material through the Central Jewish Historical Commission in Poland, of which I am the Director. The Central Jewish Historical Commission in Poland has a large collection of original documents issued by the German Central Administration in Berlin for Concentration Camps,8 the Chief Security Office in Berlin,9 the Economic Administration in Berlin, the Concentration Camp Office, and the German Administration in Oświęcim, and other official German sources. All these materials are not in the archives of the Central Jewish Historical Commission in Poland. This is the first attempt to make a systematic survey of what happened in Oświęcim camp. The Central Jewish Historical Commission considers it a modest beginning. Another fuller work is now being prepared for publication about the other death camps, especially Treblinka, Chełmno, Stutthof, Majdanek, and the Yanovska [ Janowska] camp in Lemberg.10 7. A commission formed by the Polish State that began operation in 1945 and investigated war crimes in Auschwitz and Chełmno. Friedman served on the commission from 1945 to 1946. 8. Refers to the SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt (SS-WVHA, Business Administration Main Office), the SS Economic and Administrative Department, and the Nazi concentration camps. 9. Refers to the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, the Reich Main Security Office. 10. A subcamp in the Lublin district that existed from January to July 1944. A forced labor camp for Jews was also located at Lemberg from 1941 to 1943. It held between 100,000 and 120,000 Polish and Soviet Jews. All were murdered. This was also the site of the Sonderkommando 1005 operation charged with disposing of and destroying dead bodies on-site. For more information, see Geoffrey P. Megargee, ed., The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, vol. 1: Early Camps, Youth Camps, and Concentration Camps and Subcamps under the SS-Business Administration Main Office (WVHA) (Bloomington: Indiana University Press in association with the USHMM, 2009), 884–85.

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Chapter 10 (Dr.) Filip Friedman Director, Central Jewish Historical Commission in Poland Łódź, November, 1945 A Word of Introduction The manuscript of this book was brought back from Poland by the representative of the United Jewish Relief Appeal when he visited Poland in October, 1945. It is a scientific work written by Dr. Filip Friedman, the Director of the very active Jewish Historical Commission in Poland. Dr. Friedman and his collaborators have taken great pains to collect all available material and evidence, and the results of their labours are presented here. This book may therefore be regarded as the standard work on history’s greatest murder machine. Oświęcim is not a single camp or incident; it is the lowest place on the earth’s surface—the “Dead Sea” of humanity’s achievement. “Oświęcim” is published not only as a record of what was and a warning of what humanity—“cultured humanity”—is capable of, but also as a memorial to those millions of innocent people who met their death in this vortex. We believe that they did not die in vain. If the hills of ashes and corpses produce some realisation of the horror of the evil in man, then all who have contributed their earthly remains to these heaps served a purpose by their living and their dying. Thus, to do good among suffering mankind—which is the object of the United Jewish Relief Appeal—is the fitting cause to which such a project as this book should be devoted. It is hoped that all who read these pages will wish to associate themselves with the work of relief and succor among those who have—by God’s mercy—survived.

Filip Friedman writes from the perspective of a professional historian, survivor, and refugee. Joseph Nehama,11 author of the account of the Jewish com11. Joseph Nehama (1880–1971), son of a rabbi in Salonika, had trained as a teacher in Paris. In addition to his writing, Jewish community work, and role as a headmaster, he became a prominent banker. After the war he also published important works on the Ladino language. See Yitzchak Kerem, “Nehama, Joseph,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica, ed. Fred Skolnik and Michael Berenbaum, 2nd ed. (Detroit: Macmillan USA, 2007), 15:59.

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munity of Salonika excerpted in document 10-2, has a different relationship to the history about which he writes. Overall, the Nazis and their collaborators murdered over 90 percent of the Jewish population of Salonika—once a major center of Sephardic Jewry in the former Ottoman lands.12 This multilingual community was proficient in Greek (the language of the newly formed Greek state), French (the language of culture and education), Judeo-Espagnol or Judeo-Spanish (the local Jewish vernacular), and often Turkish (the language of the previous rulers). Nehama was an amateur historian, community leader, and head of the local Alliance Israélite Universelle School, which encouraged the propagation of French languages and culture. He went into hiding in Athens with his wife, but they were discovered in 1944 and deported to the Bergen-Belsen camp. Both survived the war and returned to Salonika.13 Nehama went on to author three volumes of history about the community before, during, and after the war (part of a larger seven-volume work). The earliest of these books, In Memoriam: Homage to the Jewish Victims of the Nazis in Greece, was published in 1948 in French, the earliest such memorial to the Greek Jewish community. As scholar of Greek Jewry Steven Bowman notes, this history is necessarily incomplete and tinged with the perspective of the survivor.14 The excerpt in document 10-2 highlights the subjectivity of the text as it describes the immediate aftermath of the war and its impact on Greek Jews—Jews who, like Nehama, had attempted to return “home.” As a result, the text has a distinctly emotive tone; while Nehama still tells the general story of Greek Jewry, it is marked by a highly personal, reverential (and at times ironic) tone for those who survived what Nehama sees as the singular horror of the concentration camps.

12. For a history of Salonikan Jewry during the Holocaust, see Steven Bowman and Isaac Benmayor, The Holocaust in Salonika: Eyewitness Accounts (New York: Bloch Publishing Company, 2002); Bea Lewkowicz, The Jewish Community of Salonika: History, Memory, Identity (Portland, OR: Vallentine Mitchell, 2006); Kerenji, Jewish Responses to Persecution, 4: 244–51. 13. His wife was named Mairy or Mery Nehama (née Ezratti; b. 1887). On their wartime travails, see T/D files 199257 for Josef Nehama (or Serrano) and 199258 for Josef Nehama (or Serrano), 6.3.3.2/88112330_0_1/ ITS Digital Archive, USHMM; and T/D file for Mery Nehama (or Ezratty), 6.3.3.2/88112347_0_1/ITS Digital Archive, USHMM. 14. Steven B. Bowman, The Agony of Greek Jews, 1940–1945 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 8.

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DOCUMENT 10-2: Selection from Joseph Nehama, In memoriam: Hommage aux victims juives des Nazis en Grèce (Salonika: N. Nicolaidès, 1948), 148–63 (translated from French).

[. . .] Chapter 11 Return to Life October 1944. The Germans have admitted defeat at last. They can no longer hold out in Greece. Hastily, they carry out a retreat. They empty the prisons. The commander of Athens frees those prisoners who were left behind for him to deal with. All available vehicles are mobilized. Piled into them are files, weapons, provisions, pillaged spoils everywhere, such as expensive furniture, radios, linens, curtains, silverware. Bearing their loot, the crestfallen heroes escape like thieves with the police on their heels, though not without giving free rein to their destructive instincts, blowing up buildings, bridges, and roads in their wake. [. . .] Fugitives, hunted men, all kinds of people in hiding, irregular combatants [ francs-tireurs], and members of the resistance movement are flowing back in again. Beginning on October 6, the Jews hidden in the villages, camping in remote rural areas, wandering in the middle of nowhere, or perched on inaccessible rocks have abandoned their refuges. Mysterious trapdoors have been lifted, freeing people living in seclusion. People rush down mountains; people emerge from forests and caves. All the Jews who, in the cities, the hamlets, and the solitary places, were able to steer clear of the racial frenzy have come back, without fear, into the towns of the Epirus region, to Patras. They are very few in number at Jannina [Ioannina], Preveza, Arta, Agrinio, a few rare young people who can be counted on one’s fingers. It is not the same at Patras: Six-sevenths of the Jews were able to slip away in time. In the same way, in Rhodes and in Chania, a few individuals timidly appear. At Zakynthos [Zante], that miraculous place, everyone comes back. At Corfu, a few dozen survivors, mainly women, reappear. [. . .] The Jews come out of their rat holes. They come running up from everywhere. In less than a week, there are thousands of them, and they seem more numerous than ever. They go up and down the central streets;

Making Memory they are jubilant, drunk with freedom. They find each other again, happily recognize each other, and mutually congratulate each other. Is it true that people are out of danger? At last, they can go about with their faces uncovered, and they no longer have to conceal themselves with borrowed identities. They can breathe deeply, lift their heads, and look people in the face. The death that can snatch them at any moment is no longer present. The armies of Satan are put to rout. Now it is the turn of the Nazis who lingered behind, their stragglers, to hide in the shadows. [. . .] The mirage. But everywhere there is a return to life. The entire population shares in the rejoicing. These are shipwrecked persons, saved by a great miracle, who are overjoyed to set foot on dry land again, after the most appalling storm. One sees only the survivors. People do not yet stop to count the disappeared, to take stock of the cataclysm. For the moment, people yield completely to the joy of having gotten through. The old world has sunk in the abyss of a gigantic maelstrom. It will be pleasant, from now on, to lead one’s life in a new land, under renewed skies. Thus the companions of Noah must have seen the plain, still wet from the Deluge, when the Ark stopped atop Mount Ararat. All these Jews who rushed out of their hiding places to take their place again among men are expecting a wealth of solicitude. Who suffered as much as they? Is there any distress greater than theirs? But who will take care of them? Duly appointed authorities do not yet exist. Things are in complete chaos. Political and administrative frameworks are in pieces. As the invader withdraws, the francs-tireurs of yesterday, faced with the absence of a government, set about gathering power by the methods of audacity and violence. Terror reigns. People fight in the streets. Barricades are erected; people cut one another’s throats. On October 17, 1944, the national government, which abroad had maintained the flag of free Greece, returns. It finds itself confronting formidable problems. The lives and property of citizens are in danger. Who can be concerned about the handful of returning Jews when everything is going downhill and the very foundations of social order are threatening to collapse? Of course, people surround the survivors, question them with curiosity. Everyone tells himself that these people are the favorites of the whole earth after the sufferings they have just endured. They are the rich, the strong of tomorrow, of very soon. No one doubts that they all are destined for a

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Chapter 10 choice fate. There are also those who approach them with fear; these are the profiteers, the immense cohort of usurpers who have gathered up, more or less cleverly, the estates of deported persons and fugitives; they have plundered the goods of Jews, their houses, their furniture, their jewelry, their savings, their stores, their workshops, their merchandise, their machines, their tools. Will the large group of people stripped of their belongings take it into their heads to reemerge from the nothingness that had swallowed them? Is it possible that they will come back from their place among the dead? Will people come to deprive [the usurpers] of these gifts from heaven, which they thought they had acquired irrevocably? They anxiously watch these importunate people who can, from one moment to the next, demand accountings and restitutions. Wherever there were Jewish clusters, at Salonika, Jannina, Corfu, Kavala, in 20 different places, an atmosphere of suspicion and hostility surrounds the returning Jews. These unhappy Jews have lived as best they could during the period when they had to hide to escape death. Most of them have exhausted whatever reserves they might have possessed. More than one of them was able to survive thanks to loans, thanks to the assistance of villagers and distributions made by the good offices of the resistance movement. And now that life is beginning again, what are these people to do? They all have fake identity cards that are not registered anywhere. Bread and foodstuffs are rationed, and they cannot take part to receive any benefit. The black market is unchecked and widespread. The prices are beyond reach; yet it is the only source of fresh supplies. What are they to do? They no longer have anything. The International Red Cross comes to relieve their distress somewhat. It distributes canned meat and vegetables, flour. For many, it is salvation. But in this country in ruins, the Red Cross has an immense task. It cannot do everything. The survivors cannot get by on its benefits alone, and the black market is inaccessible to them. [. . .] The friends of Jews, the brave souls who had given their assistance to the hunted, however disinterested and stripped of any calculation their act may have been, nonetheless watch for the time when their generous acts may provoke palpable evidence of gratitude and just compensation. They had torn the king’s sons from Hades. And the sons of kings understand noblesse oblige. Gifts should come to prove it, gifts commensurate with their good deeds and the risks they incurred in carrying out their exploits as heroic rescuers. And yet nothing, nothing came. The king’s sons had nothing to eat; they did not even have a lowly pallet on which to rest their bruised bones.

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BETWEEN NOSTALGIA AND DESTRUCTION: THE ROLE OF YITZKOR MEMORIAL BOOKS While early histories sought to, in the words of the historical commissions, “collect and record,”15 the task of preserving memory and the act of memorializing remained a central obsession for many Jews from the eastern European tradition. Yitzkor, or memorial, books, constituted one of the earliest and most common means of commemorating the dead. Written between 1945 through the 1990s and even later, these books were spearheaded by Landsmanschaftn that consisted of surviving members who hailed from the same region, city, town, or village. Now living outside their original hometowns, these survivors or expatriates collectively authored and published these books (typically written in Hebrew or Yiddish) in North America, Israel, South America, and elsewhere as a means of memorializing a lost community. The books’ format usually consists of a brief (often idealized) history of the city, town, or village; an accounting of the destruction wrought during the Holocaust (oftentimes written by a number of individuals); a list of the dead from that town or region; salvaged family photographs; and, finally, a promise of the renewal of the Jewish community on European soil or elsewhere. The genre existed prior to the Holocaust in response to the pogroms that emerged after the end of World War I and into the 1920s.16 After 1945, however, the production of these memorial books explodes among survivor groups living on European soil and elsewhere. Yitzkor books, stemming from communities as large as Łódź as well as from small towns and villages throughout Poland and Ukraine, were often written from specific political or religious perspectives: Zionist or anti-Zionist, Bundist or communist, secular or religious, and everything in between. Thus, these commemorations were local, personal, and particular to the communities that produced them.17 As a literary genre, then, yitzkor books are an example of a “communal memoir”; they become the “official” narrative of a place and its inhabitants. Additionally, they serve a practical function as well: yitzkor books provide the material necessary for an annual memorial service. Indeed, this was the primary 15. See Jockusch, Collect and Record! 16. The earliest example of one of these books commemorated the pogrom in Poskurov and was published in 1924 as Khurbn Poskurov (New York: Levant Press, 1924). 17. For extensive information on the history, development, and use of yitzkor books, see Jack Kugelmass and Jonathan Boyarin, From a Ruined Garden: The Memorial Books of Polish Jewry (Bloomington: Indiana University Press in association with the USHMM, 1998); Rosemary Horowitz, ed., Memorial Books of Eastern European Jewry: Essays on the History and Meanings of Yizker Volumes (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2011); Jonathan Rose, ed., The Holocaust and the Book: Destruction and Preservation (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001).

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way in which these texts were used among the Landsmanschaftn organizations. Ultimately, as Jack Kugelmass notes, yitzkor books become their own “paper cemetery” in the absence of a physical burial site.18 Document 10-3, a selection from the yitzkor book of the Plotsk Jewish community (in present-day Poland), situates the history of the town within the landscape of remembrance and khurbn forshung. The Plotsk yitzkor book is written as a collective document that paints a nostalgic picture of this small community about 97 kilometers (60 miles) northwest of Warsaw. The unidentified authors collected historical and literary material about their former home while at the same time creating new documents to add to the unfolding story of Plotsk and its destruction. The “Płockers” who remain reside in Argentina, which has a robust Ashkenazi diaspora community. Ultimately, the book asks a simple yet inevitably loaded question: “Our spirits have been drenched in blood, and with tortuous disquiet we ceaselessly ask: Do any of our people in Płock still live?” DOCUMENT 10-3: Selection from Plotsḳ: Bleṭlekh geshikhṭe fun yidishn lebn in der alṭer heym, Aroysgegebn fun Plotsḳer landsleyṭ fareyn in Argenṭine, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1945 (translated from Yiddish).

A Few Words One year ago, at the fifth anniversary meeting of the Płock Landsleyt [L.L.] Fareyn in Argentina, a plan was formulated to publish an almanac. We did not want to put out merely a fareyn [organization] almanac, we rather set ourselves the goal of gathering together anything and everything on Jewish Płock we could find: scholarly treatises, documents, memories, memoirs from our compatriots, and pictures of the city. We also wanted to be sure that at least some of the works written by Jewish authors from Płock were included in the book. The leadership of the fareyn, together with the anniversary committee, encountered many difficulties. Yet the task was completed. 18. Kugelmass further notes that yitzkor books “emerged as a genuinely collective response to the search for an appropriate means of commemorating the Holocaust. So compelling was the urge to participate in this collective voice—to make sure that one’s town would be included in the ‘giant paper cemetery,’ that many contributors wrote for the first time in their lives.” See Kugelmass and Boyarin, From a Ruined Garden, 38.

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Today, on the sixth anniversary of our L. L. fareyn, the book Płock is being released, present pages from the history of Jewish life in the old home. While preparing the book, we did not forget for one second that Jewish life in Poland has become a mountain of ash and that our old home has been transformed into a massive cemetery. Our spirits have been drenched in blood, and with tortuous disquiet we ceaselessly ask: Do any of our people in Płock still live? On the eve of the war in September 1939, the Jews in Poland were preparing to celebrate 700 hundred years of life for the Jewish community of Płock. To this end, the historical division of the Jewish Scientific Institute [YIVO] in Wilno published the book History of the Jews in Płock, which was published in Warsaw in 1939. Yet the war ruined everything. We, Płockers in Argentina, consequently took upon ourselves the duty to record pages, even if only a few, from the history of Jews in Płock, which should, to a certain extent, reflect Jewish life and accomplishments in the course of centuries. The book numbers 264 pages and is accompanied by a series of images. And if a picture of Jewish life in Płock is conveyed to the reader, even in miniature, we will have fulfilled our goal. On this occasion, we express our most heartfelt thanks to all those who contributed to the publication of this book. The Anniversary Committee Buenos Aires, January 1945

Yitzkor books are primarily considered a phenomenon unique to Ashkenazi Jews. Document 10-4, a selection from the Tunisian Jewish community, however, contains several stylistic similarities to its Ashkenazi counterparts, as

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well as some important differences. Like the Sephardic Greek Jewry discussed earlier, the Jewish population in Tunisia was multicultural and multilingual.19 Tunisia was the only French colony in North Africa to be fully occupied by the Germans during an approximately nine-month period from November 1942 until May 1943. The Germans introduced the yellow star in the city of Sfax, intending to extend the ordinance to the rest of the country. Tunisian Jewish men were also conscripted into forced labor in the sub-Saharan desert. According to the statistics of the Claims Conference: The Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany, approximately 104 German, French, and Italian forced labor camps existed in Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco.20 Although only one camp, Berguent in Morocco, was specifically designated as a “punishment camp” for Jews and other military and political prisoners, the other camps were no less harsh than their European counterparts. They involved building the trans-Saharan railway, clearing away bomb fields, and both building and working in German- or Italian-run factories. These camps were located in remote desert locations where temperatures reached between 60 and 66 degrees Celsius [140 and 150 degrees Fahrenheit]. In all, about five thousand Tunisian Jewish men were sent to forced labor camps in the North African desert. It is estimated that about 2,575 Tunisian Jews died as a result of brutal forced labor.21 19. For example, Algerian Jews had, since 1870, enjoyed full French citizenship under the Crémieux Decree. Vichy retracted this citizenship, thereby making all Algerian Jews “foreigners” in their own country. Like that in mainland France, the French government in Algeria also established a Jewish council, called the Union Générale des Israélites d’Algérie, to carry out Vichy’s anti-Jewish measures. On the other hand, Morocco and Tunisia (until its German occupation in November 1942) were French protectorates rather than full-fledged colonies and hence retained slightly more autonomy. Many North African Jews had deep roots in the region and could trace their heritage back to Jewish traders from the ninth and tenth centuries, to Sephardic Jews who fled Spain in the wake of the Inquisition in 1492, and to Jews whose history reached back to the Italian trading city of Livorno. North African Jews spoke Judeo-Espagnol (a combination of Spanish and Hebrew, often written in Hebrew characters), Judeo-Arabic, and, in some regions, Judeo-Berber. In terms of education and governance, however, French dominated the cultural and linguistic landscapes of these colonial regions. During the war, the fate of North African Jews resided largely with the policies of Vichy France but varied based on the circumstances of individual countries. 20. This statistic approximately reflects the number of camps discovered as part of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos book project, which found twenty-eight work camps for Jews run by the Germans in Tunisia, as well as ninety-three Vichy (French) and Italian camps. 21. For more information, see Michel Abitbol, The Jews of North Africa during the Second World War (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1989); Michael M. Laskier, North African Jewry in the Twentieth Century: The Jews of Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria (New York: New York University Press, 1994); Jacques Sabille, Les juifs de Tunisie sous Vichy et l’occupation (Paris: Éditions du Centre, 1954).

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Gaston Guez,22 a member of the Tunisian Jewish community, took it upon himself to create a memorial book that specifically memorializes those Tunisian men who died or were killed as a result of forced labor. The book is separated into several parts, in both French and Judeo-Arabic. The French section includes a brief description of the phenomenon of Jewish forced labor in Tunisia during the war, an explanation of the editor’s motives in creating the book, and extensive lists of the dead and how they died. Guez also includes lists of the forced labor camps that existed in Tunisia during the Nazi occupation. Diary and letter transcriptions that speak to the Tunisian experience are included, along with an ashkavah service, a Sephardic memorial service. The two sections featured in document 10-4 consist of the opening and conclusion of the book, which establishes its primary purpose. However, Guez’s book does not simply memorialize the deaths of his countrymen; nor does it call for a radical revision of the French narrative of resistance. Guez’s narrative instead walks a fine line between rage and restraint. The book bears the mark of the French censor and must, to a certain degree, avoid offending the postwar government, which in 1946 was still run by wartime antisemitic Vichy officials. DOCUMENT 10-4: Selection from Gaston Guez, ed., Nos martyrs sous la botte Allemande. Où les ex-travailleurs juifs de Tunisie racontent leurs souffrances (Tunis: TypoLitho, July 15, 1946) (translated from French).

[Opening] This work has been undertaken following the loss of my poor brother at the Jewish Forced Labor Camp of El-Aouina and particularly traces the life of the Jewish forced laborers under the German Occupation of Tunisia. As a result of the appeals of many of my coreligionists and, most particularly, the parents of certain Jewish forced laborers who died at the camp, I have gathered the photos of these poor martyrs and have continued in Judeo-Arabic rather than in French since it is the daily language of the laborers. I believe that I have thus contributed to relieving the parents of the murder [victims] belonging to the Tunisian Ghetto and who read predominantly in Judeo-Arabic.

22. The author was unable to find further information on Guez’s history.

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Chapter 10 Preface This work entitled, “Our Martyrs under the German Boot,” is not a defense presented by an abettor, nor a revelation of certain glorious facts, but a living story of a life, during the German occupation of Tunisia, of my brothers, the “Jewish ex–forced laborers” in different German camps. The loss of the flower of the age to the abominable suffering of my brother Simon-Chalom, forced laborer in El-Aouina,23 prompted me to write the present work. Many were like him, underwent the same thing, and had to suffer not only injustice, cynicism, and German tyranny but also a horrific death as a result of their forced labor. While feeling the pain of the loss so dear of my brother and understanding that families are tried by the same grief, I have faithfully retraced in this work the journeys experienced by many among us. Then compare our readers here, the serious misconduct by some, the unqualified egoism of many others, and the combined prejudicial nature of many rogues, to the heroism and devotion of many of our coreligionists. In the memory of the poor fallen martyrs of the front, in their youth, health, and vigor, Pray for the peace of their souls, Amen. F. H. G. Guez, mohel24 [. . .] Conclusive moral of “the work”: We can observe that the worst with which we were overwhelmed lasted only a little while and cannot be compared with the countries of Europe.

23. A photo and short description of the late Simon-Chalom Guez appeared in the book. He died on February 24, 1943, from injuries sustained in a bombing of El-Aouina. 24. A mohel performs the required ritual circumcision ceremony for Jewish boys.

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Each of us has a duty to God, and every believer must love God and emulate His example of justice. One must adore him for he gives grace and protection to us. Please pray now for his assistance in these hours of distress, for our numerous needs. We must have a sense of recognition of a boundless God who, under His protection, the people [of ] Israel escaped slavery in Egypt,25 Babylon,26 and the extermination of the race under the “German boot,” and who have survived all the overwhelming pain and oppression through the centuries. But we will not forget that this point is essential: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”27 What does this mean? Next, listen to us, everyone, of every origin, race, or religion. As it is prescribed in the “oral law,”28 take part in the future life of justice for all the nations. We must impose upon ourselves the necessity of justice and charity. Our religion recommends particular love and respect for all who are superior in “wisdom, experience, and virtue.” A particular pity to the wounded, the infirm, the orphans, the widows. This remains the great duty, the duty to our mother, the homeland.

25. Refers to the Exodus from Egypt. 26. Refers to the Babylonian exile, in which the Babylonians subjugated the Jews of ancient Judea. 27. Refers to Leviticus 19:18. 28. Refers to the Mishnah, or the “oral law” of Judaism, which captures rabbinic interpretation and codification of Jewish law dating to the third century CE.

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Chapter 10 The homeland is the country where one is born, where one lives under its protection, and where one rests upon death. All Israelites must love their homeland, France, contribute to its material and moral prosperity, subordinate themselves to the interests of their country. Also, one must defend his homeland, at risk to his life, against all aggressors. As it is said in Jeremiah XXIX29 Contribute to the salvation of the State from which I have been transported . . . Pray God for its [France’s] happiness, because your prosperity depends on her. Amen. The Last Hour To those who were kind enough to respond to my call: In response to my call released on the 11 and the 15 of June, given a delay to the 20 of June 1946, many relatives of the dead wanted to write me. I thank them and take note. To my great regret I cannot include their communications in my work: The work is finished, their letters were received after the delay indicated. Concerning only the Jewish ex–forced laborers, I cannot, in fact, speak about deportees assassinated nor those who disappeared. All of them are also our martyrs, but given the multitude of these cases, the work

29. Refers to Jeremiah 29:7, Jeremiah’s letter to the exiles, in which God implores the people of Israel living in Babylon, “Seek the welfare of the city to which I have exiled you and pray to the Lord in its behalf; for in its prosperity you shall prosper” (Jewish Publication Society translation).

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would have been delayed and could not, moreover, represent the sense set out in the preface.

EARLY POSTWAR MEMOIRS AND LITERARY REFLECTIONS Like yitzkor books, memoirs and literary works created immediately after the war also straddle the dual poles of history and memory, albeit in somewhat different ways. What we now term “Holocaust literature” typically encompasses memoir, poetry, and fictional works created long after the war. However, as recent scholarship highlights, these later works build upon a significant corpus published immediately after—and in some cases during—the war: Olga Lengyel’s Five Chimneys in 1945, Seweryna Szmaglewska’s Smoke over Birkenau and Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning in 1946, and Elie Wiesel’s Yiddish version of Night in 1954, to name only a few. In addition to these now famous writings, numerous works by unknown authors were published by small presses; others appeared through the support of Jewish organizations or were self-published. This activity attests to the rapid and ample response of Jewish professional and amateur writers to their own plight. Indeed, the early postwar years represented the opening of the proverbial floodgates in a variety of languages: Yiddish, Hebrew, French, German, Polish, Hungarian, Romanian, and others. Many of these works also appeared in English simultaneously or shortly following their original publication.30 These responses, moreover, were expressed in a variety of forms, from fairly traditional memoirs to poetry, song, and satire. Documents 10-5 and 10-6 explore the range of these types of compositions. In analyzing and contextualizing these memoirs—in whatever form they take—we must consider a number of internal and external factors that impact both content and reception. The particular circumstances and experiences that a writer witnessed constitute part of the story but not its entirety. A number of questions surrounding the work impact its creation and interpretation: Where did the writer ultimately settle, and how were his or her observations during the war colored by these postwar experiences? Who published the memoir—an institutional press with a specific agenda, a small press in a former concentration or DP camp, or a larger press with an extensive budget—and how does this determine the intended audience? 30. For a more complete history of the emergence of memoir writing in the postwar era, see David Cesarani, “Challenging the Myth of ‘Silence’: Postwar Responses to the Destruction of European Jewry,” in Cesarani and Sundquist, After the Holocaust, 15–38.

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What is the language of the memoir, and how does this choice also determine the readership and range of the work? If the memoir was translated into one or more languages—as several indeed were in the early postwar years—does the preface or introduction seek to frame the book in a particular manner? The small selection featured here cannot encompass the enormous diversity of languages and voices that emerged in this period; however, the following documents do demonstrate the multiple layers of meaning within memoir writing and the complex interplay at work within and around the texts themselves. An examination of these early memoirs raises several questions: Who was reading them, what was their circulation, and what type of reception did they receive? Some of these documents consist of small pamphlet-type publications written by survivors for a specific survivor or a local community of survivors. For these authors, publication primarily served as means of contributing to a set of insular discussions never meant for the wider world. For other publications translated into multiple languages, the potential reach is much clearer. Particularly for those works appearing in English, the English-speaking world—and often times specifically the American Jewish community—was an important audience to capture. In the end, we cannot truly know the degree to which particular publications impacted specific or broader communities. We can surmise from their existence, however, a counternarrative to the traditional assumption of silence. Renya Kulkielko’s31 memoir, Bi-nedudim uva-maḥteret in Hebrew, translated as Escape from the Pit in its English edition, serves as an example of a memoir that appeared in its original language and in English translation simultaneously. Kulkielko was a courier for the Zionist underground in Poland who took part in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and later immigrated to Palestine.32 Her memoir is a somewhat flowery account of her wartime years and participation in the revolt. The Hebrew version was published in 1944 by Hakibbutz Hameyuchad, a prominent publishing house in Palestine that exists in Israel today. The book garnered some attention in the world of Jewish education in the late 1940s and early 1950s as part of a growing corpus of postwar writing

31. Kulkielko wrote that she was born in 1924 near Kielce, daughter of a small businessman, and that she left school as a teenager, working for a time as a typist. Two of her six siblings survived the war, and Kulkielko was smuggled across a series of borders in late 1943, eventually making her way to Palestine by land, arriving in March 1944, and settling on a kibbutz. See Renya Kulkielko, Escape from the Pit (New York: Sharon Books, 1947). 32. David Cesarani, “How Post-War Britain Reflected on the Nazi Persecution and Mass Murder of Europe’s Jews: A Reassessment of Early Responses,” Jewish Culture and History 12, no. 1–2 (2012): 95–130.

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by survivors deemed appropriate reading for young people.33 Ludwig Lewisohn’s preface to the English edition (document 10-5) frames the memoir in largely heroic terms. Indeed, Lewisohn, himself a prominent American Zionist writer, casts Kulkielko’s work as part of a “new literature of martyrdom.” Moreover, the “vast heroism of herself and her comrades” is overtly framed as a reason to continue the struggle for a Jewish national homeland in Palestine. The original Hebrew version of the book, excerpted in document 10-6, contains no such preamble. Instead, Kulkielko’s text is presented without commentary and without prior analysis. The section featured here excerpts the last several pages of the memoir in which Kulkielko describes her escape from hiding and her route to Palestine. While hopeful, Kulkielko is also ambivalent about the future that awaits her. The English version does not elide or delete these sections of the text, but Lewisohn’s introduction has already set forth a certain interpretation. Thus, by examining both a small section of the original Hebrew and the introduction to the English edition, we can begin to understand not only the many shades of meaning within the text itself but how it was “translated”—literally and figuratively—for English-speaking audiences. DOCUMENT 10-5: Preface by Ludwig Lewisohn to Renya Kulkielko, Escape from the Pit (New York: Sharon Books, 1947), ix–x.

Jewish literature is not poor in the chronicles of martyrs. We have the memorial books of the First Crusade; we have the Scourge of Judah, the Shevet Yehudah of Shlomo ibn Verga and we have Joseph Ha-Cohen’s Emek Habakha, The Valley of Tears. These chronicles pierce the heart and cry out their necessary implicit accusation against Christendom. But the subjective note they strike is one of passive suffering and their conclusion is always akin to Joseph Ha-Cohen’s: “Behold, O my God, and consider and sustain their cause!” The enlightenment came and the emancipation and, except by a few scholars, these books were forgotten. It was thought, for a decade or two at least, that a great change had come over the world. But soon—as history goes—the change was seen to be in its essence no change at all and at the very height of what the fools of time and circumstance regarded as an age of progress, the old, old martyrdom of scattered Israel set in again with fiercer horrors and more scorching shame for its perpetrators than any known in the long roll of history. 33. Diner, We Remember with Reverence and Love, 134.

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Chapter 10 It was not strange, then, that a new literature of martyrdom should arise. But this new literature, despite the enormity of the sufferings and the crimes it chronicled, was different from the old. It was, it is, an heroic literature; it is the literature of a people that has a great, a burning, a triumphant will to survive—to survive not only in the body, but by its survival to cause goodness and justice and the free spirit of man to triumph over all the foul fury of the powers and principalities of earth. The books of this literature are written not by writers, by artists. They are written by young men and women, by boys and girls who, from the depths of mankind’s degradation, saved themselves and as many of their fellows as they could and who, by what they are and suffered and survived, vindicated—they alone of all the people of this age—the immortal spirit of man. They are ours, ours first and foremost. But unless civilization slides wholly back into the jungle they will also become exemplars and symbols of the heroic life in the spirit to world generations that are yet unborn. Such is that girl named Renya Kulkielko who wrote in her artless but searing fashion this “ESCAPE FROM THE PIT.” She was fathoms deep in that pit; she is now in the land of our redemption; she tells of the unimaginable bridge between that pit and that land. There is no comment to be made that is or can be worthy of that telling. The tribute we can pay to her and her comrades is one and one only; to read her story; to let it penetrate us to the marrow; to let it change all Jewish lives that have not yet undergone the great and cleaving change; to see to it that the sufferings and the vast heroism of herself and her comrades bear the right fruit of the total dedication of all Israel to its redemption in the land that is its own.

DOCUMENT 10-6: Selection from Renya Kulkielko, Bi-nedudim uva-maḥteret (Tel Aviv: Ha-Kibbutz Ha-meyuchad, 1944), 214–18 (translated from Hebrew).

[. . .]34 at midnight someone knocks on the door. We all jump up from our sleep; what could it possibly be? Perhaps the police? A few moments of nervous tension; the door opens, and Chav’ke comes in. 34. Up to this point in the text, Kulkielko has been discussing her escape from the Warsaw ghetto and the details of her hiding. Here, the text transitions into preparations for the long journey to Palestine in 1944 and 1945.

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In a manner not in the least expected she tells me that I am to prepare for the road. This time eight of them are leaving, she and I among them. I do not agree to this. It’s been about two weeks since I’ve seen Sarah, and I don’t want to travel without her knowledge and without taking leave of her. After all she is my sister, and it was she who endangered her life during my escape from the camp in Mysłowice.35 I cannot travel without her agreement. We rack our brains to no end, trying to decide what we must do. My heart does not allow me to travel. Chav’ke and Aliza try to persuade me in various ways. The Gestapo is looking for me; it is best, therefore, if I leave as quickly as possible, Sarah will certainly forgive me. And is it not true that in a short time she will also leave. For the time being, Sarah and Aliza are not agreeing to leave because they don’t want to leave the children from the kibbutz “Future” [‘Atid] here to themselves; they are dispersed among the homes of German farmers. [. . .] The escape of all of the children together must be planned well, with much consideration, so that not one of them falls into the hands of the police. After a conversation that lasts a full night, I yield to their pressure. Aliza promises me that she, too, will come to Slovakia with the next convoy, together with Sarah and the children. [. . .; on the escape across the mountains and arrival in Slovakia] One day we are informed that Khaike K. and I are about to be sent immediately to the Land of Israel. There is no end to our happiness. Our dreams of so many years are about to be fulfilled. I couldn’t sleep even a minute all night from great excitement. We had already sent our photographs to Hungary. I sent one last letter to Poland. In it, I informed Sarah and Aliza that there is the possibility of immigration to Israel.36 It is desirable, therefore, that they hurry as quickly as possible to come here with the children. 35. Most likely refers to the Fürstengrube camp. See document 7-4, note 19. 36. For more information on the challenges and complications of immigration to Israel at this time, see chapter 6.

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Chapter 10 But on the day we left for Hungary, a letter arrived, through a smuggler, that informed us it was not possible now to cross the border between Poland and Slovakia. The snow reached up to the waist. From that moment, I lost contact with Aliza and Sarah. [. . .; on the trip to Hungary, arrival in Budapest, and registration with the Israel office and Polish consulate] Through V., we had constant contact with Turkey. News from the Land [of Israel] cheered our spirits. This was the central point, a goal we all aspired to. The most intense dream of each one of us. There we would be received with open arms, like a mother welcomes her sons. We still had never seen the “Homeland” with our own eyes, only in dreams, or through the eyes of our rich imagination. And nevertheless, the “Homeland” seemed so warm, close, and familiar to us. Wonderful yearnings assailed us during the day and night. There—was the wellspring of the cure to all of the plagues that plagued us; there—the source of comfort. There the constant terror would finally disappear, the feeling that the earth was cracking open under our feet, and that we were lost to the depths forever. But would our brothers living there understand our disposition, those who did not know all the terrors we suffered and who did not see all these horrors? And we, would we be capable of living an everyday life as they did? [. . .] The day we looked forward to finally arrived. One group had already set out on its way several days before. We were traveling in three days. Everyone is envious of me. But I have no joy in my heart. The remembrance of the millions who perished, the remembrance of the friends who sanctified their lives for the Land of Israel, and fell before they reached the yearned-for objective—this does not diminish. I also cannot imagine how I will be able to bring to the Land the terrible news I have to speak. [. . .] Here we are already in the [train] station. [. . .] My ears pick up calls of crying and laughter. Calls of happiness and farewell blessings. And at the same time, images of the deported Jews pass

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before my eyes, as they were being sent to the site of extermination. A shudder passes through me, as I am reminded of that moment when they were pushed with force into the train. [. . .] The train begins slowly to move. The people run several paces behind it. It is hard for them to separate from us. For a long hour I am still occupied with the impression of these last moments. I so much want to rejoice, but my heart is heavy, and nothing makes me happy. The whole time I don’t stop thinking about Sarah, Aliza, and the children who remained in Poland. I am as in shock. The pleasant weather does not pull at my heart, not even the invigorating landscape. [. . .] [On arrival in Istanbul] We look at the Jews, who go about here in a free manner; no one is chasing them, and no one points fingers at them, and this matter arouses wonder in our hearts. Our eyes are not yet accustomed to such things. [. . .] On the sixth day of March [1944] we arrived in Haifa. On this day our wanderings came to an end. But the burdensome oppression still weighs on our souls, and the idea of all those who were robbed from us does not diminish. We have the feeling that we are small and weak from all those who assail us, and that our merit to life is much poorer and lesser than their merits.

Kulkielko’s memoir conforms to the traditional definition of a singleauthor text about an autobiographical experience. Document 10-7 pushes the boundaries of what a “memoir” looks like and, thus, the purpose it might serve. This document and others like it reveal a vibrant, active, and evolving analysis of the very personal events that each author experienced, recast on the collective level. Moreover, it deploys a distinctly Jewish framework that stems from a deep understanding of and conversation with the larger Jewish literature of catastrophe. As David Roskies has argued, Jewish writers have, since the time of the fall of the First and Second Temples, referenced their past as a way to

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understand their present.37 As a result, a “memoir” of collective experience emerges, couched in the language and archetypes used for generations. In document 10-7, Samson Först38 creates this type of reflection about an experience traditionally on the margins of the Holocaust: the account of the Jews of the Transnistria region. The statistics for this region are grim: of the 210,000 indigenous Jews in the area, approximately 185,000 were killed through mass shootings, ghettoization, and general deprivation. From September 1941 to October 1943, Romanian authorities deported 150,000 Jews from Bessarabia and Bukovina to Transnistria; 90,000 died.39 Jews interned in this area were conversant in a number of different languages. Some considered themselves culturally German; others conducted daily affairs in Yiddish; still others used Romanian. Document 10-7 features a unique pamphlet that combines Yiddish with Romanian script, diacritics, and vocabulary. The result is a hybrid text, published in Bucharest but written in an unnamed concentration camp in Transnistria, that creates its own somewhat cryptic and extremely specific linguistic universe that reflects the unique nature of the experience in this region. The author speaks to his experience by utilizing a common trope in Jewish literature and liturgy: the purimspiel. As discussed in chapter 5, this parody of the traditional Purim story often served as a means of responding to tragedy through satire. Först’s pamphlet fits squarely into this tradition; indeed, his pamphlet is, in his words, “full of satire on Hitler’s carcass.” This piece therefore reflects the general satiric tone of such purimspiels and the specific circumstances of Romanian Jews. “A Great Purim Sensation: How 37. David G. Roskies, ed., The Literature of Destruction: Jewish Responses to Catastrophe (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1988), 4. 38. Först, born in Novoselitsa, Bukovina, in 1888, died in Bucharest in 1968. He published two works in addition to this one: Geklibene lider (Czernowitz, 1922) and Truvadurishe lider (Bucharest, 1962). One of his song-parodies appears with music in the anthology 15 cântece idis popularizatee (Bucharest, 1946). Additionally, Först was celebrated as a folk poet and performer in his day. 39. The area referred to as Transnistria was located between the Dniester and Bug rivers in modern-day Ukraine. In 1933, most of this region belonged to the Soviet Union. By June 28, 1940, the USSR, with the support of Nazi Germany, had annexed this territory even further and claimed land as far west as the Prut river (Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina). However, upon the German and Romanian invasion of the Soviet Union, this region reverted to Romanian control. This area between the Dniester and Bug became known as Transnistria under Romanian authority in the summer of 1941. Those who survived large-scale massacres (including in the Bessarabia and Bukovina regions) were herded into ghettos and forced labor camps; in October 1941, those who had not died of starvation and disease were relocated to ghettos and camps in Transnistria. Jews in this area fell victim to vicious massacres by Romanian authorities, oftentimes aided by Ukrainians. See Radu Ioanid, The Holocaust in Romania: The Destruction of Jews and Gypsies under the Antonescu Regime, 1940–1944 (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee in association with the USHMM, 2000), 289.

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Haman Had an Audience with God” playfully imagines a meeting between one of the great enemies of the Jewish people and the Divine personage. In this short scene, Haman, the biblical villain of Purim whose attempts to annihilate the Jews of Persia are referred to as a drunken and idle threat, now cordially asks to be removed from his position of disgrace and replaced by Hitler. This example of a literary, communal response presents more than a memorial to the victims of genocide. Indeed, it reclaims the narrative of the Holocaust through literary language and the tropes of the Jewish tradition. DOCUMENT 10-7: Samson Först, Der Grager. Gesriben in Lager (Bucharest, 1947), USHMMA Acc. 2010.343 (original in Yiddish with Romanian diacritics).

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Chapter 10 Samson Först The Grager40 written in the Camp For Purim, a brochure Full of satire On Hitler’s carcass And his great strength Bucharest, 1947 The Grager wishes our friends Mr. Ari Benador and Mr. Cristian a happy Purim41 For the Purim holiday, a brochure With nothing but satire For Jews, a compromise: On Hitler’s carcass And his great strength, It’s the GRAGER From inside a former camp42 [. . .] A Great Purim Sensation How Haman had an audience with God. According to the latest radio reports on Rosh Chodesh Adar,43 the following Purim sensation is reported specially for our Purim Grager: We draw the attention of our Grager readers to the fact that everyone ought to read this article attentively and ought not to think that this is simply a fabricated Purim tale to entertain the people a bit during Purim season. Two weeks before Purim, a grandson of the famous Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore,44 the famous fakir and spiritualist Ordmulz Tagos, came

40. A grager is a traditional Purim noisemaker. 41. The author has been unable to identify these men. 42. Although the writer does not specify which camp he means, it was most likely one in the Transnistria region. 43. The first day of the month of Adar, which in 1947 corresponded to February 21. 44. Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941), a famous Indian poet, was the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913.

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from India to Schischam-Haborn. As soon as he checked into the Karmalecho Hotel, he found a waiter who was a great medium. When the great spiritualists there became aware of this medium, the spiritualist association invited him to a séance. And here we present every word the spirit of Haman the Evil said to the medium: “Spiritualists, my friends, you ought to know the spirit that speaks to you from the other world is I, the renowned Haman the Evil, the former prime minister of the historic King Ahasuerus,45 who lives together with his beloved wife, Ester-Hamalku,46 and his dear father, the Zadik Mordeciai,47 in Gan Eden.48 I can only tell you that all three are, baruch hashem,49 healthy and living a princely life and prospering. They convey greetings to all the Jews and all say amen. Perhaps you’d like to ask me when I, the renowned Haman, suddenly turned into a zadik in a fur coat50 who bestows greetings upon the Jews. Have a bit of patience as I’ll tell you how my hellish life was transformed after so many years of broiling and baking in hell thanks to the Hitleriade with its fascist Hamans who are now in hell and are occupying all the sections until more chambers can be built. We, the old Haman prisoner-villains, like Titus,51 Pare,52 Bilem,53 Bulok, 54 Nero, 55 and from modern times Lueger, 56 Purishkewich, 57

45. King of Persia, as noted in the Book of Esther. King Ahasuerus marries Esther (Hadassah) and begins the narrative of the Purim story. 46. Literally, “Esther the Queen”; this phrase is an honorific that refers to Esther’s role as the savior of the Jewish people in the Purim narrative. 47. Literally, “Mordechai the Wise”; this phrase is an honorific that refers to Mordechai’s role as Esther’s uncle, guardian, and counsel. His refusal to bow down to Haman inflames the latter’s anger toward the Jewish people. 48. Hebrew reference to the Garden of Eden; it is a common reference to the “world to come,” the reward of the righteous. 49. Literally, “blessed be the Name”; this is a common Hebrew reference to God. 50. The image of a wise scholar. 51. Roman emperor Titus (39–81 CE), who raided and conquered the city of Jerusalem and was responsible for the sacking of the Holy Temple in 70 CE. 52. Yiddishized spelling for Pharaoh. 53. Meaning Balaam, Biblical enemy of the Jewish people 54. Balak, Biblical enemy of the Jewish people 55. Roman emperor Nero (37–68 CE). 56. Refers to Karl Lueger (1844–1910), Austrian politician and founder of the antisemitic Austrian Christian Social Party. 57. Vladimir Purishkevich (1870–1920), antisemitic Russian politician in the years prior to the Bolshevik Revolution.

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Chapter 10 Krujewan, Petlura,58 Codreanu,59 Totu, Cuza, Goga, Antonescu,60 etc., etc., whose names the devil may know.61 But as soon as I rested a little from such a long period of torment in hell and recovered a bit, I got up several weeks ago and went to my friend Mordecai and asked him to urge Paul62 to grant me an audience at the Beit Din Shel Maalah63 because I had a brand new Purim project. Mordecai received me in a very friendly manner and explained to me he was very pleased that after such a long time I hadn’t forgotten that a nation of Israel exists. And after so much hell. I even wanted to present a project to God to expand and beautify their Purim. It didn’t take long to convince Mordecai, and he left with me for Gan Eden Street and introduced me to the king that stands before the gate of the Beit Din Shel Maalah with his fiery sword. Mordecai displayed his business card, [and] we were immediately led into a corridor full of diamonds. The king there, Gavril,64 instructed us to sit on two diamond chairs, demanded for us a roll of parchment, and asked us to write down what sort of a request we had. After a few minutes, we were led into a large chamber where a council of kings and zadiks65 sat. One of the kings said to me in a very friendly tone: ‘Do not fear, my child, and say what you request.’ And I introduced myself: I am Haman and I suffered for so many years in the hellish camp for nothing, only because one Purim I got drunk and had an incident with our friend Mordecai—here he stands before you, heavenly lords! Let him say it. Did I even touch him with my hand? It’s only because I felt insulted as minister when my friend Mordecai saw me on my way to the royal court and didn’t greet me. And this is why I gave the order that all the Jews from throughout the country should leave for Eretz Israel. And what the consequences were, o my lords, you certainly read in the Book of Esther, and how I suffered a bitter defeat. And thanks to my defeat, the Jews got a holiday, our dear, beloved Purim. And every year when the

58. Symon Petliura (1879–1926), Ukrainian nationalist and politician known for his antisemitic views. 59. Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938), leader and founder of the Romanian Iron Guard, a nationalist, antisemitic, and local fascist party that briefly staged a coup in 1941. 60. Ion Antonescu (1882–1946), the authoritarian leader of Romania during World War II, perpetrated his own version of anti-Jewish laws, actions, pogroms, and killings. 61. Several of these names refer to local Romanian officials familiar to the writer of this piece. 62. Refers ironically to Paul the Apostle, who was known to have loosened rabbinic law and prohibitions. 63. Literally, “the heavenly house of justice.” 64. Refers to Gabriel, the archangel, who serves as the messenger of God. 65. Wise men.

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Jews read the Book of Esther and when my name Haman is mentioned, I really hear it from the Jews, partly with gragers,66 partly by tapping feet, and my head becomes so confused that I don’t know what sort of world it is I’m in. And this is indeed why I want to ask God to forgive me my sins against his people Israel. I now want to convert to Judaism and to change my name from Haman the Evil to Haman HaZadik, and the entire Book of Esther starting with the current Purim should be changed to the Book of Hitler, and instead of Hamantaschen67 with three points, Hitlertaschen with 12 points should be made,68 and Purim should not be in the middle of Adar but rather on the day the Red Army strolled into Berlin and destroyed Hitler, the Haman of the world, together with his SS bandits. And now we all have a happy Purim. Your grateful friend, Haman HaZadik”69

UNPUBLISHED DIARIES AND MEMOIRS IN THE IMMEDIATE POSTWAR PERIOD In addition to published memoirs and literary pieces, a wealth of unpublished material was created during the early postwar period with an eye toward public collection or consumption. These range from postwar “diaries” created in the immediate aftermath of the war,70 to essays solicited by Jewish historical commissions in Poland, Germany, the DP camps, and elsewhere, to material collected via questionnaires and interviews. While it would be tempting to label these sources as more “raw” or “authentic” than their published counterparts, they too show evidence of mediation as a result of the evolving historical narrative surrounding them. For example, recent scholarly work on children’s testimonies collected by the Central Jewish Historical Commission in Munich 66. Noisemakers meant to blot out the name of Haman during the recitation of the Scroll of Esther on Purim. 67. Triangular cookie eaten on Purim that mimics the three-cornered hat of Haman. 68. A double six-pointed star, to represent the forced emblem of the Mogen David. 69. The signatory, “Haman HaZadik,” translates to “Haman the Wise.” The title “Zadik” is an honorific typically reserved for learned rabbis. Therefore, the writer uses this tongue-incheek title to reverse Haman’s status from pariah to wise rabbinic scholar. 70. This genre of writing resembles diary writing in form but might be better characterized as memoir. While sometimes containing individually dated entries, these “diaries” often display evidence of having been written in a single sitting (i.e., same handwriting, pen, etc.). Various historical commissions often solicited these types of “diaries,” which were sometimes (although not always) based on original wartime diaries or other notes since destroyed.

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reveals the heavy hand of interviewer interventions and interpretations.71 In Poland and other parts of Soviet-controlled Europe, the emerging communist landscape and its narrative of universal suffering could also color the tone of collected memoir and testimony projects.72 Ultimately, these sources remind us to consider the breadth of unpublished memoir material and the issues that they raise, including problems of perspective and accuracy and a shifting selfidentity from “victim” to “survivor.” One such example is the “diary” of Michal Kraus, featured in chapter 2. Kraus kept a diary during the war that was subsequently seized and destroyed. Upon his liberation, he “rewrote” the diary in three volumes of notebooks with illustrations, maps, and handwritten text. While the format of his diary and its exhaustiveness are unique, the effort itself is not; indeed, survivors made many such attempts in the immediate postwar period to document what they had endured.73 In document 10-8, both the preamble and introduction directly address the status of the text as a “reconstruction” of events. Kraus, who was fifteen in 1945, demonstrates an awareness of both the importance of his memoir and its shortcomings. He readily admits to his own failures of memory, his attempts at reconstructing events, and, perhaps most striking, his doubts that his story can be properly understood at all. Above all, the memoir shows Kraus’s remarkable understanding of his story as part of a larger whole and as a part of an unprecedented event that demanded documentation and remembrance, no matter how imperfect the results. DOCUMENT 10-8: Preamble and introduction to postwar “diary” of Michal Kraus, 1942–1945, notebook dated 1945, 1–7, USHMMA Acc. 2006.51 Michael J. Kraus collection (translated from Czech).

PREAMBLE Most people—say those here in Nachod74—did not live through as much suffering and disappointment during the seven years of occupation, as 71. See Boaz Cohen, “The Children’s Voice: Postwar Collection of Testimonies from Child Survivors of the Holocaust,” H&GS 21, no. 1 (spring 2007): 73–95. 72. See Jockusch, Collect and Record!, 84–120. 73. For a discussion of the definition of Holocaust diaries and diary writing, see Alexandra Garbarini, Numbered Days: Diaries and the Holocaust (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006), 1–21. 74. A town in Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic) 151 kilometers (94 miles) east of Prague.

Making Memory we, the ten or twelve of us who survived the hell of Nazi occupation and returned home, alive, but not healthy because many returned with serious illnesses. I saw and heard so much during my years of persecution that I would like to write down succinctly what I remember. Last year, when I started to write the first part [of this diary] I still had many details etched into my memory, but today, two years later, what I want to write about, I recall less, even though every day would provide a good author with an abundance of rewarding material. I shall note only what remained in my memory, the most important events of my life during the war. Before ending this preamble, I would like to pay homage to those who did not survive the Nazi concentration camps. There were many of them, terribly many. They suffered unbearably. They perished under indescribable circumstances. And their sacrifices must not escape our consciousness; they must keep admonishing us: beware of Nazism, Fascism and all unlawful authority. INTRODUCTION It is now three years since I started to write my first diary. Already then we were preparing ourselves for Terezín, so there was no shortage of news or interesting things to report. I spent a lot of time on this diary, as well as on several of my own writings and poems. In Terezín this activity continued more intensively because the children’s house in which I was placed issued a weekly newspaper on which I also collaborated. In December 1943, I left for Oświęcim, where everything was forbidden. My beloved books and notebooks were taken from me and burned. So no written memories of those horrible times remain. That is why I will start anew and briefly recount that which I experienced during the six years of German domination. It is impossible to describe the horrors of the KZ75 as they really were, because no mere words can accurately describe the reality of the hardships 75. “KZ” stands for Konzentrationslager, or “concentration camp.”

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Chapter 10 and horrors. Surely nobody can believe the SS methods if he did not feel them on his own skin. Who can feel with us? Who can understand us? And believe me, even if physical suffering was unbearable and many succumbed, the psychological suffering was worse than the physical one. And when I now recall what was, I don’t want—I don’t want to—remember the horror: that I lost my father, my mother and lived with the expectation of death, that I miraculously escaped. On the other hand, I want to record all that I experienced during the supremacy of National Socialism, retain it so that my progeny will not forget to hate the Germanic hordes. I use the term “hordes” because it is impossible, in the 20th century, to use the term “nation” for a highly cultured and civilized people that conducted its affairs with medieval methods that were used by people 700 years ago. I call these writings “Diary” although I am sure that anybody who reads this will realize that the title “Diary” is incorrect. But they are my experiences, written after the fact and that is why I chose to retain the title “Diary,” though it is not completely correct. I don’t intend to elaborate. In this diary I merely wish to describe the worst days under the supremacy of the Hitler hegemony.

In addition to individuals who independently created diaries and memoirs, larger institutions solicited compositions about the occupation years. Among the largest collections of these essays is that of the aforementioned Central Jewish Historical Commission in Lublin, Poland. Like other historical commissions in Munich and Paris (and the wartime efforts of Emanuel Ringelblum and others), the CJHC called upon Jews to write their own histories. It sought to collect a variety of materials: diaries, memoirs, short stories, ghetto songs and folklore, literary works, and other forms of victim response. In addition to soliciting this work, the CJHC also conducted interviews with surviving Jews and wrote up the results in order to add to the historical record. Document 10-9 stems from the CJHC collection of essay contest entries. These contests called for writers of all ages and levels to record their experiences during the war.76 76. For an overview of the CJHC contests and others, see Beate Müller, “Trauma, Historiography and Polyphony: Adult Voices in the CJHC’s Early Postwar Child Holocaust Testimonies,” History and Memory 24, no. 2 (fall/winter 2012): 157–95.

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However, what constituted a life story and how that story was told remained the purview of the individual authors. Document 10-9, written by Estera Gesundheit, presents a psychologically inflected life history that serves as one type of result from this general essay contest. Gesundheit writes in language heavily inflected by grief and disbelief. The Polish original contains a partial rhyming pattern that indicates a certain literary sensibility.77 This single piece cannot, of course, stand in for such a vast and complex collection of work. As part of a much larger archival effort begun in the aftermath of the war, however, Gesundheit’s writing contributes to our understanding of the many ways in which Jews and Jewish organizations sought to understand what has in subsequent years been labeled an incomprehensible event. DOCUMENT 10-9: Estera Gesundheit, Łódź, “How I Survived the German Occupation” (1945), USHMMA RG 02.208M (ŻIH 302/57) (translated from Polish).

Estera Gesundheit Łódź Aleja 1. Maja 28/19 Entry in Essay Competition Label: anger.78 “How I Survived the German Occupation” I survived the German occupation. This is how. There are miracles, after all. I remember how during Hanukah a year ago I spent the entire night sitting in a bomb shelter,79 where I was hiding from the Germans. I had fled from work. I was so scared at the time. In the early morning I had a dream that I will never forget. But they didn’t get me. A Hanukah miracle took place. I fought through to the morning. 77. For a brief mention of this text, see Robert Moses Shapiro, ed., Holocaust Chronicles: Individualizing the Holocaust through Diaries and Other Contemporaneous Personal Accounts (Hoboken, NJ: KTAV Publishing House, 1999), 260. Gesundheit was born in 1919(?) in Pabianice, Poland; after leaving the Łódź ghetto, she was sent to Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, and a subcamp of Buchenwald before being liberated. In 1946 she immigrated illegally to Palestine. See T/D file 383460 for Ester Kleinmann (nee Gesundheit), 6.3.3.2/98944277_0_1/ITS Digital Archive, USHMM. USHMMA RG 68.067M. 78. This typed note appears at the top of the piece and was most likely added by the staff to indicate the author’s tone. 79. She uses the German Luftschutzraum here.

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Chapter 10 That night, and many similar nights, passed. The days, as they passed, were cruel. Everything on Earth gradually fades Both memories of happiness and things that hurt Everything on Earth seeks a purpose Only memories remain, oblivion Forgetting. Every moment that wasn’t a dream, wasn’t an apparition, is forgotten . . . the cruel reality. The terrible truth. In that monotony, in that hell, in that darkness, I had one ray of light, as bright as the sun—my sister. Hanka—my everything, my angel, my sweet caretaker. Unfortunately, they took my dearest treasure, they took my wonderful, my noble Hanka . . . they took her . . . We survived the Łódź ghetto together. We passed through hell in Oświęcim [Auschwitz]. We lay in the shanties of Bergen-Belsen. Amid taxing struggles and adventures we got to a work camp (in Elsing near Dachau).80 This is what Hanka said at 3 in the morning, before roll-call: Ester, stay strong; Ester, it won’t go on for much longer now; Ester, drink some hot coffee; Ester, hurry up, everybody is already lined up. Hanka fortified herself internally several times in the course of a day. At 6, she admonished: Ester, don’t start with them. Be patient . . . after all, one’s nerves aren’t made of iron, and certainly one’s heart isn’t either. In constant anguish, fear, hunger’s torment, the days dragged on. Days gone by certainly will not return. Weeks passed, months passed, seemingly without change. People only moved sluggishly, more similar to corpses. The poet who might be able to provide a depiction of that accursed life is yet to be born. Like Mickiewicz, each of us could say about herself:81

80. She is unlikely to have been near Dachau. She was last in a forced labor subcamp of Buchenwald called Elsnig in the Saxony region of Germany, working in a chemical factory that made TNT and other explosives. See T/D file 383460 for Ester Kleinmann (nee Gesundheit), 6.3.3.2/98944277_0_1 and 98944281_0_1/ITS Digital Archive, USHMM. 81. The following is based on an excerpt from Mickiewicz’s Dziady.

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My name is million, because for millions I bear and suffer agonies. Despite all this, I am unbroken since I had hope, I had a strong belief that it would pass. It passed. Well, my sister didn’t make it!82 . . . Our sweet dreams didn’t come true . . . Why? Why? Even now, I still see her clearly as she lies dead among the rubble, and all around flames flare up. But I feel nothing. I can’t cry . . . this emptiness . . . such horrible emptiness! . . . This is how it was. Before the Russians intervened, our “beloved” boss took us out of the camp. In sealed train cars we wiled among the forests in Sedina.83 There is nowhere to go. The humidity, I’d like to have something to drink. The legs kicking in the night, the curses. Something terrible. A deathly silence falls upon everyone. This was on Friday, April 20. We sat in disorder, waiting for bread. I wasn’t thinking about anything. I no longer had the strength. Suddenly like a bolt from the blue, a bomb falls on the car. I close my eyes, I feel like I’m falling. I’m staggered, I’m flipped over. I’m simply dancing. What a mad dance. . . . I hear my sister’s voice, I hear her suffocating. I lose consciousness. . . . I wake up . . . Where’s Hanka? Everywhere is fire, fire, fire!! My head is still in one piece, my legs too. I can even walk, but where am I? Where’s Hanka? What’s going on?

82. She may have been Chana Gesundheit (b. 1923). See USHMM ITS Collection Data Base Central Name Index. 83. The location is not clear.

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Chapter 10 Nearly everyone fled in a panic. In the distance, people were signaling to me. I sat down next to my sister’s corpse with the firm intention not to leave that spot. Did it really happen?! . . . Is she really dead? God! I huddled close to her. She was as beautiful as a dream. In her open eyes there was an expression of terror and a silent accusation. The smoke was suffocating . . . My clothes began to burn . . . and I left. I left, leaving my sister in the flames. I entered a new life, a free life, a peaceful life, but a life that was somehow empty and pointless. I didn’t imagine that things would be like this after the war, oh no! Out of my entire family (6 persons), I’m the only one who’s left.84 I know that I cannot lament my fate. I know it all. But my nerves aren’t made of iron, after all, and my heart certainly isn’t either. I still see Hanka’s sweet face . . . her death. Find solace and will power somewhere. From them, draw strength and the will to live. I don’t want to die either. Perhaps there will be [illegible] and everything will turn out like daddy said? It seems as if it were all a dream. Could it be that one’s entire life is actually just a dream?

84. The author has not been able to identify other family members. Estera married a man named Kleinmann at some point soon after the war ended.

CHAPTER 11

Commemorating the Victims MEMORIALIZING THE HOLOCAUST

P

OLISH-BORN American Yiddish poet Kadia Molodowsky laments in her 1945 Holocaust poem “God of Mercy,” “The earth lacks the space for tombstones/there are no more lamentations.”1 Indeed, for many survivors, the European continent had become both a vast graveyard and a space of memory in which tombstones and lamentations were required. Thus, the act of commemorating the victims assumed a prominent role in Jewish communities throughout Europe, Palestine, the United States, and beyond. These commemorations were wide-ranging, from public ceremonies to small, local acts that remembered a single community. These memorials assumed many forms: physical edifices, burials or reburials, religious or secular ceremonies, publications (both inside and outside Europe, in Hebrew, Yiddish, and other languages), and commemorative ceremonies in situ or far from the locus of genocide. As we examine these different types of memorials, we will ask what form memory takes and examine the function it serves in different contexts. Indeed, behind the practice of memorial and commemoration often lurks the specter of various interests, be they national, communal, or individual. A memorial ceremony in Palestine, for example, holds very different implications than local Landsmanschaftn activities in the United States or South America. Liturgical activities 1. David G. Roskies, ed., The Literature of Destruction: Jewish Responses to Catastrophe (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1988), 570. For collected poems and a full biography, see Kathryn Hellerstein, ed., Paper Bridges: Selected Poems of Kadya Molodowsky (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1999).

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in DP camps contain valences that are not identical to a family attempting to exhume and rebury remains in their hometown in Europe. Each of these activities has its own meaning that exists not in isolation but against the backdrop of larger ideological or personal narratives of memory and memorial.

MARKING GRAVES: COMMEMORATING THE DEAD IN SITU Among the chief responsibilities for many surviving Jews in Europe remained the proper identification and burial of the dead. With mass graves and desecrated cemeteries throughout the continent, the Nazis and their collaborators had not only murdered their victims but humiliated them and destroyed their memory. However, as Jews returned to the sites of ghettos, cemeteries, and mass shootings—particularly in Poland and other areas of eastern Europe—many survivors viewed it as their responsibility to erect small communal monuments or memorial stones (matseyve, in Yiddish) to honor their fellow townspeople or family members. This often involved far more than simply locating the site of a mass burial; in some cases, surviving Jews actually exhumed and reburied the remains of family and community members in order to provide a proper Jewish burial. These rituals did not necessarily indicate the return of Jewish life in Poland—far from it. Rather, the practice instead demonstrates the importance of the obligation to provide a Jewish funeral, no matter the circumstances.2 The series of photos in documents 11-1 through 11-3, from Sokołów Podlaski (northeast of Warsaw), Biała Podlaska (north of Lublin), and the Fürth DP camp (northern Bavaria), illustrate this practice on multiple levels. Document 11-1 shows the Kawer family reburying what they believe to be their relatives’ remains in the Jewish cemetery of Sokołów Podlaski.3 The photograph features 2. For a detailed account of this practice and to see more photos like those featured here, see Gabriel Finder and Judith Cohen, “Memento Mori: Photographs from the Grave,” Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, vol. 20: Making Holocaust Memory, ed. Gabriel Finder et al. (Portland, OR: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2008), 55–73. 3. The man pictured in high boots was probably Hyman (Chaim) Kawer, born in 1918 in Sokołów Podlaski, Poland. He left an Austrian DP camp in 1949 with his wife and two young children for the United States. See USHMM ITS Collection Data Base Central Name Index; NARA, ship passenger records for USAT General Blatchford, December 1949; USHMMA RG 50.738*0001, interview with Hyman Kawer, November 30, 1986. The precise locaton of the gravesite is not clear.

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unidentified family members, and the photographer’s relationship to the subject is not known. This photograph is part of a series of shots that record this final obligation to the deceased of the Kawer family. In the next photograph, document 11-2, a community rather than an individual family is being mourned. The survivors of the community of Biała Podlaska gather at the site of a mass shooting. The Yiddish sign in the photograph reads, “Exhumation of the Jewish martyrs who were murdered by the bestial Hitlerite murderers Biała Podlaska April 25, 1946.” Here, the bodily remains are left unidentified but are in the process of being exhumed for a communal burial of the dead. The photograph, which features the memorial plaque, may have been taken for the purpose of a yitzkor book or a community ceremony. The final document in this series, document 11-3, depicts the reburial of remains at the Fürth DP camp. Here, the remains are not interred in situ but instead are moved to the now temporary home of a specific (but here unnamed) prewar community. The Fürth DP camp contained approximately seven hundred Jews and operated until 1949. The camp was known to have a particularly active religious life, owing, at least in part, to the presence of Rabbi David Kahana Spiro, a major leader of Polish interwar Jewry.4 Together, these three photographs demonstrate a particular type of postwar memorial: the marking and reburial of the dead. Locating mass graves and killing sites continues today through the work of Father Patrick Desbois and others.5 Ultimately, these somewhat grisly photos serve as their own type of “gravestone”; they became a monument not only to the act of burial but to the type of impersonal death implemented by the perpetrators. Graphic though they may be, these photographs exist as a record of a community or a family attempting to fulfill the most sacred of Jewish obligations: respect for the dead.

4. See “ORT and the Displace Person Camps,” ORT, http://dpcamps.ort.org/camps/ germany/us-zone/us-zone-iv (accessed July 10, 2014); Michael Brenner, After the Holocaust: Rebuilding Jewish Lives in Postwar Germany (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 70. 5. See Patrick Desbois, The Holocaust by Bullets (New York: Palgrave Macmillan with the support of the USHMM, 2008).

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DOCUMENT 11-1: Survivors of the Kawer family rebury the remains of family members killed by the Nazis in the Jewish cemetery, Sokołów Podlaski, 1946, USHMMPA WS# 24175.

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DOCUMENT 11-2: Jewish survivors stand in an opened mass grave among the exhumed bodies of the victims of a mass shooting in Biała Podlaska, Poland, May 2, 1946, USHMMPA WS# 30857.

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DOCUMENT 11-3: A Polish rabbi delivers the address at a reburial at the Fürth DP camp, Germany, just before earth is thrown over the casket, August 31, 1945, USHMMPA WS# 15764.6

6. The rabbi pictured may be David Spiro.

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LOCAL MEMORIES, LOCAL MEMORIALS: MEMORIALIZING INDIVIDUAL COMMUNITIES Locating (and, in some circumstances, relocating) bodily remains served as a physical reminder of, as the sign from Biała Podlaska phrased it, the “bestial Hitlerite murders.” Commemoration ceremonies, publications, and in some cases exhibitions filled a similar function in a different manner: local communities remembered their dead not through burial but instead through public ritual. Through these smaller events, what we think of as the Holocaust is broken down into individual remembrances of communities. While today the image of Auschwitz has become the ultimate representation of the Holocaust, in the immediate postwar period, the local rather than the transnational often dominated commemorations and memorials. The newspaper article in document 11-4, from the American Ladino newspaper La vara (The Voice), commemorates what was, for this Sephardic diaspora community, the ultimate tragedy of the war: the first deportations of the Jewish community of Salonika, Greece, in March 1943. During these actions from March through August, approximately forty-five thousand Salonikan Jews were deported to Auschwitz; most were immediately gassed.7 With this massive genocidal event, the historic Sephardic Judeo-Spanish speaking community was nearly entirely decimated. La vara, an American weekly newspaper in Judeo-Spanish based in New York, viewed this anniversary as of paramount importance. The story commemorates the deportation and loss of the Salonika community ten months before the liberation of Auschwitz and over a year before Germany’s surrender. For the Salonikan Diaspora community, the loss of family, culture, and homeland was profound and demonstrated the final blow for the Sephardic culture that had once thrived in the former Ottoman lands. In subsequent years, the Holocaust in eastern and central Europe would become the normative history—one that largely wrote out the legacy of Sephardic Jews.8 Indeed, the very language of this Jewish community became scarce; La vara, the last bastion of Judeo-Spanish

7. For a detailed account of the deportations from Salonika, see Mark Mazower, Salonica: City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims, and Jews, 1430–1950 (New York: Vintage Books, 2004), 392–412. See also Emil Kerenji, Jewish Responses to Persecution, vol. 4: 1942–1943 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield in association with the USHMM, 2014), 244–50. 8. See Aron Rodrigue, “Sephardim and the Holocaust” (Ina Levine Annual Lecture, USHMM, Washington, DC, February 19, 2004), http://www.ushmm.org/m/ pdfs/20050803-rodrigue.pdf (accessed December 17, 2014).

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weekly newspapers published in Hebrew script, shuttered its doors in 1948.9 In these early years (and, in this case, during the war itself ), the scope and impact of the Holocaust was being formulated by its victims long before the final body count. Precisely whose tragedy was encompassed within the event—and how that tragedy was being framed—remained an open-ended discussion rather than a closed narrative in these early years. DOCUMENT 11-4: “First Anniversary of the ‘Tragedy,’” La vara, March 10, 1944, 2 (translated from Judeo-Spanish).

The second week of March will always be a week of mourning for every Sephardic Jew, particularly for those from the city of Salonika, since it was on the day of March 10, 1943, that the national tragedy of the Jewish community of Salonika began—a tragedy that ended, regrettably, with the total annihilation of that community, once named the Zion of the Balkans. It was in the middle of February of last year when the fatal and infamous Rosenberg commission10 arrived in Salonika—this accursed committee, which had been charged by Hitler with the extermination of all of European Jewry. In Salonika, the commission arrived along with a regiment of killers, who specialized in civilian populations. The Rosenberg commission asked for and obtained the complete lists of all the Jews in Salonika with Greek citizenship. Those few Jews with Italian or Spanish citizenship were exempted from the lists. 9. For a history of Salonikan Jews in America in the modern era, see Devin Naar, “From the Jerusalem of the Balkans to the Goldene Medina: Jewish Immigration from Salonika to the United States,” American Jewish History 93, no. 4 (December 2007): 435–73. 10. A reference to the “Rosenberg Sonderkommando,” named for Alfred Rosenberg, a key Nazi official. Tasked with gathering artifacts for the proposed Library for the Exploration of the Jewish Question to be located in Frankfurt, Germany, this commission arrived in Salonika on the heels of the German occupation on April 9, 1941, and confiscated historic community documents. Furthermore, it collected extensive information about the community that was later used in deportation efforts. For more information, see K. E. Fleming, Greece: A Jewish History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), 114.

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In the first week of March, messengers shouted throughout the Jewish neighborhoods, ordering each individual—man, woman, and child of at least three years [of age]—to present themselves at the office of the Jewish community. Here from the morning until midnight, Gestapo agents registered every Jewish soul who thus received his registration number and the “yellow star of David,” which from then on they had to wear on their chests. On March 10, all Jewish families were ordered to abandon their homes and go to live within special ghettos, in quarters designated by Nazis. Four days were given for the completion of the general relocation. If it weren’t for the enormity of the calamities that would later befall the unfortunate Jewish community of Salonika, this relocation of an entire population, from their homes to ghettos, would have been itself a historic tragedy. The relocation occurred amid scenes of confusion, cruelty, and suffering. To make matters worse, during these four days, it rained without end, and the weather was particularly inclement. The Nazis allowed Jewish families to carry only the most essential belongings. The rest—furniture, clothing, household goods, jewelry, etc.—was confiscated by the Nazis and sent to Germany. From testimony of certain Greek officials, it is learned that for many consecutive days, lines of military trucks filled with Jewish belongings did not cease to exit the city at all hours of the day heading toward Germany. Detachments of “Storm Troopers” were dispatched to all of the villages of Macedonia, of Greece at large, and of the islands, capturing each Jew from all corners of the country, to concentrate them in Salonika. The city was divided into five ghettos, the barracks of the de HIRSCH11 ghetto being the worst of the five. This center was converted into a true concentration camp, surrounded by barbed wire, guards at every end, and at night, powerful lights illuminating the area. 11. A Jewish neighborhood in the western part of Salonika established by funds contributed by Baron Maurice de Hirsch in the 1890s.

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Chapter 11 Later, the unfortunate Jewish community was to learn that the HIRSCH ghetto was the last stop between their native city, their repose, and exile, their very probable death. Toward the end of the month of March, the tragedy that began on the 10th began its final chapters. On a certain day—the exact date is not known—the first train of expelled12 Jews left from the city. Three thousand souls, indiscriminately taken from among the residents of the de Hirsch ghetto, the first contingent, were thrown like animals into cargo trains. Seventy of them in each train car. Each individual was permitted to take with him only what he was wearing, one kilo of bread, and a little canteen of water. Among those expelled were cripples, pregnant women and the ill; the Nazis made no exceptions. As soon as one contingent [was deported], hundreds of others from various ghettos received the order to relocate to the de Hirsch ghetto. Since the de Hirsch barracks were near the train station, the deportations were accomplished without disturbing the city’s [general] population. The deportations thus continued through the month of April, the month of May, until June 10th. Of a population of sixty thousand in the community, more than fifty thousand disappeared; to where, God knows. The strongest were subjected to cruel torture to make them confess where they had hidden their gold, their jewels, or other valuables. The only Jews to remain in Salonika were those who, with the help of Greek workers’ organizations [communists], succeeded in obtaining false identification papers with Greek names. Also, hundreds of children of a tender age were left behind by Jewish families with Greek families, who adopted the children as their own.

12. In the sense here of “deported.”

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It is also known that four to five thousand youths, whose companies had seen [military] action against the Italians in Albania, fled to the mountains to constitute themselves into bands of guerrillas. This is the history of the downfall of the Jewish community of Salonika, which we give here intentionally with utmost sobriety, so as to not break the hearts of our public too much. This week is the anniversary of this tragedy.

The La vara article demonstrates a local commemoration whose audience includes the diaspora community of Salonikan Jews. Commemorative efforts also took place from within the devastated communities themselves. Document 11-5 presents the visceral reality of life and death in the ghetto to those who experienced its very horrors. The document depicts what might be called the very first representation of the Holocaust in photography, consisting of a series of photographs taken by George Kadish13 in the Kovno ghetto. In late March 1944, Kadish escaped the ghetto and went into hiding. In his final wartime photography cycle, he photographed the burning of the ghetto from the “Aryan side.” Following the liberation, he returned to the ghetto area and photographed its remains; he also dug up prints and negatives that he had buried in milk cans beneath his house. These photographs were later displayed in various DP camps, including Landsberg. This photograph consists of a panel of George Kadish’s exhibition on the Kovno ghetto that took place in the Landsberg DP camp in 1946. The photographs are tacked up to exhibition boards with captions in Yiddish. Ultimately, this exhibition demonstrates the ways in which the Holocaust was not only documented but also displayed by those who knew its events from the inside. Far from an exhibit of Nazi photographs or documentation, Kadish’s work highlights the images and occurrences in Kovno that he, as a ghetto insider, deemed important and relevant to display to the world. 13. George Kadish (Hirsh Kadushin) taught science at a Hebrew high school in Kovno before the war. With the first violent attacks against Kovno’s Jews in June and July 1941, Kadish, an avid amateur photographer, sought to document the unfolding events. He secretly took over one thousand images of ghetto life, sometimes even snapping pictures with a hidden camera through the buttonhole of his overcoat. In the X-ray department of the hospital where he was assigned to work, he bartered for film and developed his negatives. He then smuggled them out in a set of crutches. USHMM Photo Archives 20196 and 20197.

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DOCUMENT 11-5: Panel by George Kadish based on his photographs of the Kovno ghetto and its destruction, titled “So We Lived,” at the Munich or Landsberg DP camp, 1946, USHMMPA WS# 66301.

Kadish’s photographs brought a visual, public memorial of the Kovno ghetto to the diverse DP population at Landsberg. The elegy and photograph in document 11-6 turn inward and present a private memorial ceremony for the Landsmanschaftn of Chełm, or Khelme, sixty-nine kilometers (forty-three miles) east of Lublin, Poland. Chełm is best known for the famous stories about the somewhat bumbling members of the shtetl written by American Jewish author Isaac Bashevis Singer and others.14 On the eve of the war, Chełm had approximately fifteen thousand Jews (about 50 percent of the total population of the town), two Yiddish weekly newspapers, and various Jewish institutions, including an orphanage, yeshiva, and secondary school. On October 9, 1939, the Germans occupied Chełm. By October 30, 1939, a ghetto was established. On 14. See Isaac Bashevis Singer, Stories for Children (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1985).

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November 30, 1939, the Germans initiated a death march in which over two thousand Jewish men were killed in mass shootings or for attempts to “escape.” Chełm Jews were deployed for forced labor to various construction projects as well as to civilian and military authorities. Chełm was greatly impacted by the deportations of the spring and summer of 1942; in June and July alone, some five thousand Jews, mostly children and the elderly, were deported to their deaths in Sobibór. Between November 5 and 9, 1942, the ghetto was liquidated, and the remaining ghetto residents were deported to Sobibór, where they were shot or sent for forced labor. Approximately sixty Jewish residents of Chełm survived the war.15 The elegy and photograph in document 11-6 most likely originated from a gathering of Chełm survivors that took place in 1947. The elegy by Y. Mitlpunkt,16 probably read at the gathering, mourns the profound loss of a community that had existed since the twelfth century. Framed as a prayer for Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the elegy vividly recalls the vibrant Jewish life in Chełm that has all but disappeared. The photo too commemorates the “fallen martyrs,” as the banner states: “We bow our heads in deep sorrow for the fallen martyrs. Honor for the 18,000 murdered martyrs.” DOCUMENT 11-6: Y. Mitlpunkt, elegy commemorating the fifth anniversary of the destruction of Chełm (Lublin region) of Poland, March 3, 1947, USHMMPA WS# 28265 (translated from Yiddish).

May God remember the souls of the martyrs and pure ones who perished for the Sanctification of the Name at the hands of the fascist evil one in the town of Chełm (Lublin County). Tehi Nafsho Tsrura Bitsror Hakhayim—May Their Souls Be Bound in the Scroll of Life. March 3, 1947 Once There Was a Jewish Town. . . . Dedicated to the memory of the former Jewish Chełm in Lublin County. by Y. Mitlpunkt 15. See Laura Crago, “Chełm,” in The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, vol. 2: Ghettos in German-Occupied Eastern Europe, ed. Martin Dean (Bloomington: Indiana University Press in association with the USHMM, 2012), 623–26. 16. The author was unable to find further information about the elegist.

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Chapter 11 In the twilight of Hitler’s regime In the age of bayonets and barbed wire, When death, fear, and consternation reigned, Chełm, the legendary town, was obliterated. With people’s last breath and strength, A prayer tore itself from hearts, To the cloudy Heavens, high, high. . . . A prayer from Yom-Kippur Eve and Ne’ilah.17 “May our supplication rise from evening!” “Open Heaven’s gates!”18 It reverberated in endless space, “And open for us Your good treasure!” Was heard barely, barely. . . . The last prayer was interrupted By fire, rifle, and sword. The destroyer of slaughter, burning, shooting Dominated the earth. . . . ----No more “Naye Tsayl,”19 the Jewish street. No more Jewish craftsmen, no more Jewish luster. Ruins angrily cast silent glances At today’s demon-dance. The synagogue and Torah scrolls burned, The House of Study left orphaned. For generations the destruction of Chełm Will be written down with rivers of blood. Orphaned looks the beautiful forest, That leads to the road to Hrubyeshov, At the ruins, ashes, bones, At the sum total of those days . . . No more Rivkelekh, Shloymelekh,20 The little boys and girls, In little cloth caftans, checkered little dresses. There no longer walk home at night

17. The closing service of the Yom Kippur liturgy. 18. Text from the Yom Kippur liturgy. 19. Meaning “new row.” 20. Diminutive of the names Rivka and Shllymel, here meant to signify all female and male Jewish children.

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Cheyder boys21 with lanterns. A cruel regime has Flung them into brother-graves . . . Left lonesome, I gaze on heaven and earth My brain feels as if bored by a drill. There hover shadows of the hangman’s sword. Black clusters of crematorium smoke. My thoughts turn over, Without limit, without measure. I await a response— For what sins, why? . . . Sometime generations will read A little story of bayonets and barbed wire That Chełm was at one time— A genuine Jewish town. DOCUMENT 11-7: Group portrait of survivors from Chełm attending a memorial reunion on the anniversary of the destruction of the Jewish community in Chełm, circa 1946–1947, USHMMPA WS# 28264.

21. Young boys studying at the Jewish house of study, or cheder.

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RESPONDING RELIGIOUSLY: THE FORMATION OF POST-HOLOCAUST THEOLOGIES While the previously examined memorials often contain language or references to Jewish history and thought, they do not represent explicitly theological responses to the Holocaust. The documents in this section present early attempts to reformulate Jewish ritual or theological practices in response to the genocide of European Jewry. Even during the war, rabbis had begun to theorize theological explanations for catastrophe.22 On the eve of the “Great Deportation” of the summer and fall of 1942, in which three hundred thousand Jews were deported from the Warsaw ghetto to Treblinka, Rabbi Kalonymus Shapira attempted to parse the difference between suffering for sin and suffering in the sanctification of God’s name. In his writings on Parsha Mattot (Numbers 30:3– 32:42) dated July 11, 1942, he asks, “How can we tell if the sufferings are only on account of our sins, or whether they are to sanctify His name? By [noticing] whether the enemies torment only us, or whether their hatred is basically for the Torah, and as a consequence they torment us as well.”23 In a similar vein, in his sermon delivered on January 3, 1942, Rabbi Shlomoh Zalman Unsdorfer of Bratislava, Slovakia, bemoans the sins of the Jewish people while at the same time admonishing God for God’s uncommonly harsh punishment: “Lord of the universe, we have sinned greatly and have been evil. All justice is with You, and there is no injustice to the just and the righteous. [. . .] However, have we sinned so much before You, that [You] judge old men and women to flames and to panic?”24 Following the war, rabbis and other religious leaders attempted to think religiously about both how to commemorate the victims and how to explain their deaths. These attempts ranged from addressing practical questions, like how to pinpoint a yahrzeit (memorial) date for a loved one, to larger theological questions, like how to integrate an event of this magnitude into—or separate it out from—the larger Jewish narrative of suffering. Was the Holocaust the 22. See Kerenji, Jewish Responses to Persecution, 4:441–78. 23. Roskies, The Literature of Destruction, 509. Kalonymus Kalmish Shapira (1889–1943) founded one of the largest Hassidic yeshivot in Warsaw. He became an important spiritual presence in the Warsaw ghetto, and his teachings written during this time were published after the war. 24. Steven T. Katz, Shlomo Biderman, and Gershon Greenberg, eds., Wrestling with God: Jewish Theological Responses during and after the Holocaust (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 55. On Unsdorfer (b. 1888), who was murdered in Auschwitz, see Gershon Greenberg, “The Suffering of the Righteous According to Shlomo Zalman Unsdorfer of Bratislava, 1939–1944,” in Remembering for the Future: The Holocaust in an Age of Genocide, ed. John K. Roth and Elisabeth Maxwell (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave, 2001), 1:422–38.

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newest in a long line of Jewish catastrophes, or did it exist as a separate and unique event? How does one commemorate the unprecedented in a theological framework that stresses continuity? Where is the new center of Jewish memory and Jewish life—in Europe, in Palestine, or elsewhere? Document 11-8 is an example of a particularly fertile liturgy for postwar rewriting and reworking: the Passover Haggadah. As a story that enacts the move from slavery to liberation, the Haggadah appears well suited for the condition of postwar survivors. In the hands of survivors, affected communities, and even Diaspora interpretations, Passover assumes a new, profound, and vastly varied meaning. Among the most famous of these interpretations is the “survivor’s Haggadah,” compiled by a Lithuanian Jew, Yosef Dov Sheinson. Sheinson’s work, published by Zionist organizations in Munich, was reprinted, distributed, and used by the US Third Army in Munich as the Haggadah for its Passover seder on April 15–16, 1946. That Haggadah reimagined the Exodus story according to the needs of Jewish DPs: the Egyptians are synonymous with the Germans, the exile becomes the resident of the DP camp, and perhaps most radically, the hand that lifts the people Israel out of the wilderness is not the Divine presence but the Allies. The traditional dayenu, a song meant to thank God for each of God’s actions that “would have been enough,” is transformed into an accusation for centuries of persecution.25 The “survivors’ Haggadah” is not alone in its retelling; Haggadot from Palestine, the United States, South America, and Europe make similar gestures in the immediate postwar years. Indeed, Haggadot containing Holocaust themes are common today, with versions written by survivor Elie Wiesel, as well as noted Jewish authors Jonathan Safron Foer and Nathan Englander, to name only a few.26 The Haggadah featured in document 11-8 appeared in Yiddish in 1946– 1947, printed by a small publishing house in Buenos Aires, where a significant number of refugee Jews had fled before the war. The Haggadah itself originates with this diaspora community whose primary threat was not annihilation but assimilation. To that end, the Haggadah frames the Holocaust as the ultimate example of assimilation gone wrong. Indeed, the author rewrites the prayers and players in the Passover story: Europe is the new Egypt; the Promised Land is the hope of Jewish renewal in Palestine, and so forth. Even more profoundly, throughout the document, the perceived complacency of the Argentine Jewish 25. For the full Haggadah with commentary, see Yosef Dov Sheinson, A Survivor’s Haggadah (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2000). On Sheinson (1907–1990), see Saul Touster’s introduction to this Haggadah, xxvi–xxvii. 26. For a survey of Passover Haggadot containing Holocaust themes published in the United States, see Liora Gubkin, You Shall Tell Your Children: Holocaust Memory in American Passover Ritual (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007).

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community is highlighted and commented upon. This Haggadah is separated into fifteen different sections, including many links between the traditional Passover story and the Nazi period. To name only a few examples: the pharaoh’s decree to cast Jewish boys into the Nile is compared to sterilization. The traditional four children (wise, wicked, simple, and silent) become historically specific examples: for example, the wise child asks why Jews did not purchase land in Palestine, the wicked child is the assimilated Jew, the simple child is told about antisemitic demonstrations against German Jews who immigrated to Bolivia. The selections in document 11-8 constitute a sample of this unique hybrid document that blends Jewish ritual with contemporaneous history and Zionist thought. In so doing, the Haggadah makes a claim for reworking Jewish practice to serve a new reality. This rewriting becomes both a memorial to the dead and a memory enacted for the living; ultimately, tragedy, disappointment, and hope “for the present times” transform the age-old celebration of liberation. DOCUMENT 11-8: Naum Birenzweig, Hagada de pesaj del presente, 1933–1945 (Buenos Aires: Birentsvayg [Birenzweig], 1947) (translated from Yiddish).27

With this I come to welcome you to the celebration of our holiday of liberation, Passover, and wish you, together with your distinguished family, to live to celebrate together with our brothers and sisters and relatives who still remain alive, and generally with our Remnants of Israel from the other side of the ocean, [. . .] precisely in the days when we are celebrating our liberation holiday from Egyptian slavery, Passover, we should be witnesses and spectators to the repetition of history—the redemption process: the Exodus from Europe! The liberation once again of our people, from our present enemies, murderers, Stürm-ists,28 and Schutzstaffel.29 . . . [. . .] The wise child, what does he say?30 Why did you not buy up and redeem the entire terrain of the Land of Israel when you still owned [the 27. The author was unable to locate further information on the writer, Naum (Nachum) Birenzweig. His Haggadah was republished several times. 28. Refers to the Sturmabteilung (SA), or Brownshirts, the original paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party prior to their purge in 1934. 29. The full name of the German SS. 30. This section is a modified version of the four-children section of the Haggadah, which highlights the four “types” of children, their questions, and the appropriate answers: the wise, the wicked, the simple, and the one who does not know how to ask. The questions here and answers are significantly modified from the traditional text.

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land], and you still had your holdings of gold marks and gold franks and gold crowns and guldens, before Hitler-Himmler robbed you of all of your possessions? The wicked son, what does he say? For what purposes and why do you need so much campaigning and donating so much money—sent to Argentina Village,31 United Israel Appeal [Keren Hayesod],32 the Jewish National Fund [Keren Kayemet].33 To you and not to him, and since he excludes himself from the community He is after all a German or American of the Mosaic faith;34 indeed he wants with all strengths and means to mix in and be dissolved in the melting pot.35 [. . .] Me and not him, if he were there, he would not have been redeemed. . . He would never have emerged from the concentration camp because Hitler after all makes no difference between a Jew and an assimilator, or even a converted Jew! [. . .] And you shall tell your child: And we must mobilize all of our strengths and make an immediate effort to prepare our children so that they are capable of taking over our spiritual, religious, and cultural institutions and administering them and managing them. [. . .] And you should tell your child: And you should tell and relate to your children and your children’s children that precisely on Passover in the year 1943, of God’s wrath! before the second Seder, when our brothers, sisters, relatives in the Warsaw ghetto were preparing to celebrate the Seder, shivering and shaking in the broken grave-like homes, fearing the arrival of the Stürm-ists, and Schutzstaffel, and with broken hearts they begin the Seder, full with the lament 31. An early settlement in Palestine founded by Argentine immigrants. 32. Founded in 1920, Karen Hayesod, or the United Israel Appeal, raised funds for Jewish refugees to settle in what was then Palestine. 33. The Jewish National Fund, Karen Kayemet, was founded in 1901 at the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, by Theodor Herzl, the pioneer of the Zionist movement. Its goal was to purchase land for eventual Jewish settlement, which became the bedrock of the modern state of Israel. 34. Term used for assimilated Jews. 35. The redactor, Birenzweig, writes “melting pot” phonetically in Yiddish lettering and then translates the English into the Yiddish language in parentheses.

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Chapter 11 of bloody tears, and bitter herbs are flowing from the walls! And filling the empty cups and the empty plates on the naked tables with tears, filling them full with tears. [. . .] The shadows of people are running through [the ghetto], the living dead; skeletons in the form of human figures! And they mutter to each other and yell out: Jews! The order has come from Hitler-Frank:36 Destroy everyone!37 And instantly, swiftly, the despairing but mighty outcry comes from our heroes and martyrs of the Warsaw ghetto: Let me die with the Philistines!38 And with the exclamation: “All for one and one for all,” and with our eternal Jewish slogan of Hear O’ Israel on their lips, grim, full with fervor, they threw themselves into the horrible, indescribable, and unequal struggle against our sadistic tormentors and children murderers. [. . .] [. . .] And the fresh blood, not yet dried, of our dear, beloved little Jewish children and babies, who lie covered under the white coat of snow, and the fresh blood from the little children cries out from behind the covering of white snow—What did you want from us? Why did you shoot us in this way? All we wanted was to play with nuts. . . .39 [. . .] In every generation, we are obligated to regard ourselves as if we had come out of Egypt. Are we such wise men? That we saved our lives in the American lands. God forbid, the same thing could have happened with us as with our brothers, relatives in Europe. If we were saved by good fate, we must now save what is left yet to be saved and help once again to build up our people. [. . .]

36. Hans Frank, the governor of the Generalgouvernement territory in German-occupied Poland. 37. La-’akor: literally, “uproot.” Refers to the section of the Haggadah that compares Lavan the Aramean to Pharaoh: “Pharaoh only decreed against the males, but Lavan sought to uproot everyone.” The “Passover Haggadah: The Present, 1933–1945” will return once again to this theme, comparing Lavan to “Hitler-Himmler.” 38. Judges 16:30: “I will take revenge on my enemies, even as I fall with them.” 39. Playing with nuts, a traditional form of entertainment for children before and during Passover.

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And I said to you, “With your blood live”40 That we will not only give our labor and sweat but also our blood, when it is necessary, in the fight for the liberation once again and the revival once again of our nation in our land. Long live Jewish national unity! Our power lies in our solidarity and unity! Because our weakness is after all the result of divisions among ourselves. [. . .] And our united and mighty and fighting people’s voice and our impetuous and furious outcry should echo in the ears of all the nations of the whole world— that we are a nation equal to all others and [have] our national demands and aspirations of our undisputable right to our holy and eternal land; of our national freedom and independence and the immediate creation and setting up of the Jewish Common State—the free, democratic commonwealth [republic] in the Land of Israel.

Memorial services and the reformulation of Jewish holidays provided a way to perform evolving theological beliefs and practices. However, rabbinic guidance was also needed to solve some of the most basic problems associated with mass murder: determining the date of a loved one’s death. Jewish tradition requires this information in order to observe the yahrzeit, or memorial, for a loved one. For those murdered in the death camps, however, such precision became next to impossible to provide. Indeed, how were surviving Jews to determine the appropriate day on which to observe the death of a relative? In document 11-9, the Autonomous Orthodox Israelites of Hungary attempted to address this question: using knowledge of the date of deportation, the rabbis would assign a date a few days later that could be used for all Jews on that train. The implication was clear: nearly all Jews on these transports met their deaths in the gas chambers. This document recognizes both the large-scale nature of the crimes of the Holocaust and their deadly pace, robbing survivors of even the simple solace of a day on which to mourn.

40. This quote from Yehezkel 16:6 appears much earlier in the standard Haggadah text, during the recitation of the story of the Exodus from Egypt (“And numerous, as it is said . . .”). The author of “The Passover Haggadah: The Present, 1933–1945” moves the quote to the end of the Haggadah, following the section of Shfokh Hamatkha, which asks God to pour out his wrath on the enemies of the Jews.

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DOCUMENT 11-9: Selichot, Budapest, June 11, 1946, USHMMPA WS# 48665, 48666, 48667, and 48668 (translated from Hebrew).

Selichot, June 11, 1946, Budapest, Hungary Title Page Selichot for the 20th day of Sivan [June 11] that were fixed by the honorable scholars [gaonim] and holy men, may their merits protect us, following the massacres of 1648 in the land of Poland;41 and now their publication has been renewed with these changes for the state of Hungary. Edited and published with the agreement of the honorable rabbinic scholars, shelita,42 by the Central Bureau of the God-Fearing Communities of our state, on the killing of our brothers the Sons of Israel, the sons of our country, from the year 1941 and on, and specifically in the years 1944 and 1945, may God avenge their blood, and on the destruction of the synagogues and houses of study and the annihilation of Torah scrolls and the rest of the holy books. May God have mercy, and he said, “Stay your hand.”43 1946. Published by the Gevirts brothers publishing house, Budapest, 1711. Laws for yortsayt44 and the recitation of Hazkarat Neshamot45 He who knows the day when his father, mother, and the rest of his relatives arrived at Auschwitz, and there are grounds for belief that they were placed among those ready to be killed, he should put aside this day as the 41. The Khmel’nitsky massacres of 1648, a revolt of Cossacks and peasants that resulted in significant Jewish casualties and was consequently fixed in the collective Jewish memory as an era of Jewish tragedy. 42. “They should merit a long and happy life, amen.” 43. II Samuel 24:16: “And [God] said to the angel, ‘stay your hand.’” The verse is quoted in other selichot services and rabbinic statements from the Holocaust era. 44. The ritual observance of the anniversary of the death of an immediate relative. Please note that this variant spelling reflects the introduction of a Yiddish term. 45. Literally, “mentioning of the souls,” the Jewish memorial service. Recited on Yom Kippur and the three main Jewish holidays.

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yortsayt, and if they came to Auschwitz in the evening, he should use the day following as the yortsayt, in all of the issues that are customary over the course of the yortsayt. He who does not know the day in which his father, mother, and the rest of his relatives arrived at Auschwitz, or if they died or were killed afterwards, or if they died or were killed in other places, and he does not know the day of their death, he should choose the twentieth of Sivan as the yortsayt for everything that is customary over the course of the yortsayt. All those whom the wicked ones, may their names be obliterated,46 transported, and who have not returned as of the present, and after searching and investigation, nothing is heard of them—they should be mentioned in the Hazkarat Neshamot prayer along with the rest of the dead who are known to have died. The above points are valid only when the matter in question is not a woman who is an agunah47 from the special rabbinic court set up for the revision of the agunah question; she is forbidden from saying kaddish48 for [her husband], or to mention his name in the memorial prayer, or other things that are customarily done for the dead—until she has been granted release from her agunah restrictions. It is correct to do all that is possible so that the six books of the Mishnah should be divided up and studied over the course of the year following the elevation of the souls of the holy, and the celebratory conclusion [siyum] of this study should be on the twentieth of Sivan, and if the community is small, it should join with the neighboring communities.49 [. . .] B’H50 46. This common biblical phrase plays on the ultimate act of obliterating memory while at the same time ensuring that those to whom the phrase refers are, in fact, remembered. For a full meditation on this practice and on the larger uses and implications of memory within the Jewish tradition more generally, see Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1982). 47. Agunah (pl. agunot), a married woman who cannot leave the marriage due to the inability or unwillingness of her husband to issue her the ritual divorce papers. In the case of the Holocaust, the unknown status of men who were deported or otherwise missing left their wives as agunot, and a special rabbinic court was therefore established for legal revision of the issue given the circumstances. See also document 7-11. 48. Memorial prayer recited after the loss of a relative. 49. It is customary to study the Mishnah to elevate the souls of the deceased in the first week, month, and up to a year after death. Many complete their study of a tractate of the Mishnah before the day of the yahrzeit, upon which they engage in an obligatory ritual celebration of their study. 50. With God’s help.

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Chapter 11 We say this introduction with a broken heart. Our brothers the sons of Israel of our country who fear and tremble before the word of God, and at their head, the honorable rabbis [gaonim] and community leaders, each man in accordance with his praise, may God be with them.51 We are obliged by duty to establish a communal fast for the eternal memory of the great tragedy that happened to the House of Israel, the killing and burning of thousands and tens of thousands of our brothers the Sons of Israel, and among them the rabbis, the honorable and holy scholars, and community leaders, from the year 1941 and on, and specifically in the years 1944 and 1945, may God avenge their blood, and the destruction of the smaller temples,52 that is, the synagogues and houses of study, and the loss of the Torah scrolls and the other holy books upon which the entire House of Israel depends. And we have chosen the day of the twentieth of Sivan [for the fast] because most of the killings took place in this month, and also because this day has already been fixed and publicized as a communal fast in the land of Poland, as is explained in the Taz53 and Magen Avraham54 of the Orah Hayim,55 sim.56 566, 580, and as in Mo’ed Katan.57 This day was fixed for the whole country to fast, as is detailed below, and to say selichot [penitential prayers] and prayers as are arranged in this pamphlet in the order of the day. And it is correct to give sermons on this day, before the people, and to say things that have been pent up, things that come out of the heart and enter the hearts of our brothers the Sons of Israel, may God revive and

51. This Hebrew abbreviation used in the original text (m’ay) and translated here as “may God be with them” may also derive from a quotation from Isaiah 38:16: “Concerning [them] you said, ‘They shall live.’” 52. Mikdash me’at: literally, “small sanctuary.” In this case, the destruction of current holy places is reminiscent of the destruction of the two temples in Jerusalem. 53. A commentary on the Shulhan Arukh (the Jewish legal code) titled Turei Zahav (Rows of Gold), or Taz. 54. Commentary on the Orah Hayim section of the Shulhan Arukh (Jewish legal code). 55. Section of the Shulhan Arukh (Jewish legal code) dealing with the Jewish calendar and including laws of communal fast days. 56. Siman, meaning “paragraph” or “section.” The basic unit of the Shulhan Arukh (Jewish legal code). 57. Tractate in the Talmud dealing, among others subjects, with the laws of mourning.

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strengthen them, to improve their souls, so that they may return in full repentance. Efforts should be made so that all the people, men, women, and children, should come to the gathering, in order to awaken their hearts and to improve their ways, perhaps [God] will have mercy and spare the nation of poor and orphans,58 and he who said enough to the world should say enough to our tribulations,59 and we should merit to see the repairing of the world [tikun ‘olam], the Guardian of Israel will guard the remnant of Israel60 in the gathering of the scattered of Israel, in the coming of the righteous redeemer [the Messiah] quickly in our days, and this day and all of the fast days should be turned into joy and happiness, Amen, may it be God’s will. Fixed in the month of Iyar 1946. The Central Bureau of the Orthodox61 communities In the name of the rabbis, the honorable scholars, shelita, in the state of Hungary.

EMERGING CENTERS OF JEWISH HISTORY AND DOCUMENTATION While personal and communal remembrance continued throughout this period, historical commissions looked to establish an official “historical memory” of the Holocaust. As outlined in chapter 10, the seeds of Jewish historical commissions had been planted before the war in Europe ended; indeed, by 1944 the germs of centers in both Poland and France had sprouted through the initiative of Jewish historians like Filip Friedman and Isaac Schneersohn, a French Jew. Not until after liberation, however, could these organizations truly begin their work. The clarion call to “collect and record” reached from east to west and 58. Possibly from the liturgical poem found in the penitential (selichot) service: “Malakhe rahamim mesharte elyon” (Angels of mercy who serve on high). 59. Expression of sorrow and tragedy; its origins lie in the homiletic tradition quoted in the Rashi commentary of Genesis 23:14. The first half of the verse is often explained as God placing a limit on the expansion of the world in the initial stages of creation. 60. A reference to the liturgical poem “Shomer Yisrael” (Guardian of Israel), recited in the penitential (selichot) service, as well as in everyday prayers. 61. Literally, “God fearing.”

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became a massive organized effort with help from Jewish organizations both in situ and abroad. These various organizations, however, framed their mission to their fellow survivors somewhat differently. Document 11-10 asks of the Central Historical Commission (CHC) in Munich, “Why do we need a historical commission?” In the opening article of the first issue of the periodical Fun letstn churbn, CHC director Moshe Yosef Feigenbaum, himself a survivor of two ghettos in eastern Poland and deportation to Treblinka, implores, “We, the survivors, the living witnesses, must lay the foundation for the historians, which they will use to create a clear picture of what happened among us and what happened to us.”62 The CHC in Munich, working with a skeleton staff, alone collected twenty-five hundred testimonies between 1946 and 1948. These testimonies—in Yiddish, German, Polish, and Hebrew—were based on extensive interviews and questionnaires and, with the work of the Historical Commission in Lublin (and later in Łódź), Poland, constituted the first such efforts of their kind.63 Feigenbaum’s comments place the authority of the survivor at the center of historical scholarship—a position that would become more and more complicated in the years to come. DOCUMENT 11-10: Moshe Yosef Feigenbaum, “Why Do We Need a Historical Commission?” Fun letstn churbn 1, no. 1 (August 1946): 2 (translated from Yiddish).

M. J. Feigenboym64 Head of the Historical Commission Why a Historical Commission? Many among us ask: Why do we need the Historical Commission? Is the Nuremberg trial not inundated with a deluge of documents on the Jews? What can we Jews, to put it delicately, contribute? Have the great powers not compiled a huge amount of material on the Nazi era? Given this, what 62. Feigenbaum (1908–1986) was born in Biała Podlaska (now Poland) and worked as an accountant before the war. After escaping from a transport to Treblinka in 1943, he went into hiding in his home city. Initially attached to the historical commission in Lublin, he moved to the American Zone in Germany in 1945 and eventually immigrated to Israel. See Laura Jockusch, Collect and Record! Jewish Holocaust Documentation in Early Postwar Europe, 1945–1957 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), esp. 210–11. 63. For a complete history of these commissions, see Jockusch, Collect and Record!, esp. 210–11. 64. Yiddish transliteration of “Feigenbaum.”

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sort of an impact could a modest book of documents of the sort we seek to collect have? Indeed, during the Hitlerite occupation we certainly never dreamed of occupying ourselves with such work, so difficult was it to imagine that we would even survive. Those who would like to write the history of our tragic days, we believed, would not be constrained in their work. Among the nations in countries where we were persecuted, there would be a sufficient number of witnesses to the atrocities the brown murderers inflicted upon the Jews in such a public fashion. With complete objectivity, they would convey for the historical record our tragic experiences from those days and the destruction we faced. This was our understanding of the matter. But soon after taking the first steps we were disappointed. It became clear that not only are our neighbors unwilling to provide objective accounts, facts, and impressions, but also—on the contrary—they strive to diminish the Jewish tragedy, to whitewash it, and even—where possible—to denigrate it. And we do not have to go very far to find this. We do not need to refer to facts from a Pole, for instance. It is sufficient simply to cite the declaration from former prime minister Churchill before the English Parliament in February 1945, when Churchill declared that the Nazis, “as people were saying,” had supposedly murdered upward of three million Polish Jews. This was said by the prime minister of an empire that holds the entire world tight in the grasp of its spy services and that knows of even the smallest occurrence in the world. This was said by a statesman at a time when Poland up to the Vistula had been free for seven months . . . The Jewish Central Committee in Poland must first have the honor of calling it to Churchill’s esteemed attention that it was not just “as people were saying,” but unfortunately it is a sad truth that the Nazis killed 3,250,000 Polish Jews.65 65. This statistic is roughly comparable with what historian Raul Hilberg assesses in his landmark work, The Destruction of the European Jews. For a full history of this number and an explanation of its accuracy, see Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 3rd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 3:1308–13.

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Chapter 11 This fact alone communicates enough, rendering reference to further examples superfluous. The great powers have indeed compiled a huge amount of material. Yet they did not have the Jewish problem in mind, far from it. They have, first and foremost, their own interests in mind. We do not at all know whether the secret documents will remain secret. Doubt is certainly not out of place as to whether a Jewish historian will enjoy access to them. Many documents that directly pertain to us Jews are not at all being compiled by the great powers, and whose responsibility is it to do so? Let us simply presume that they are collecting all the documents and the Jewish researcher will also have access to them. But what do the documents actually consist of? All these documents make up only a fragment of our tragedy. They only show how the murderers dealt with us, how they treated us, and what they did with us. Did our life in those nightmarish days consist only in such fragments? Upon which foundation will the historian be able to create a picture of what took place in the ghettos? How will he be able to fix in place our life, full of suffering and pain? From whom will he be able to learn about our heroic deeds and how will he be able to discern our relationship with our tormentors? Before the war, in order to fix in place Jewish life, the historian had at his disposal the Jewish press, popular creative output, record books, literature, archival material, pictures, etc. Yet today all this has disappeared. We, the survivors, the surviving witnesses, must create for the historian documentation that will take the place of the aforementioned sources so that he may create for himself a clear picture of what happened to us and among us. Therefore, the testimony of every surviving Jew is of immense value for us. Every song from the Nazi area, every proverb, every anecdote and joke, every photograph, every creative work, whether in the realm of literature or art. In short, anything that can in the slightest illuminate the martyrdom of our tragic generation.

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It is clear that we Jews must document this bloody era ourselves. This is why the Historical Commission is needed. The Historical Commission, however, is not only a site for compiling materials for the scholar and the researcher but also an instrument that must be used by our Jewish organizations that fight for our tomorrow in the international arena. The Historical Commission holds materials that can be used by Jewish organizations as a weapon on behalf of our interests. It is the duty of every Jew who tore himself away from the murderous grasp of the Hitlerites to make himself available to the Historical Commission whenever he may be asked to do so.

The early work of the Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation (Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine, CDJC) began in 1943 in Grenoble, France, on the initiative of Isaac Schneersohn, a traditionally educated Ukrainian Jewish émigré who was also a part of the Lubavitch Hassidic66 dynasty of the same name. As early as 1942, Schneersohn began collecting material while living in Vichy-controlled Grenoble. The CDJC’s stated goals in 1943 covered many different aspects of the tragedy of European Jewry still raging at the time. Schneersohn and his colleagues wished to create a “Great Book of Martyrdom” that would document a myriad of Jewish concerns, including the effects of anti-Jewish laws in both northern and southern France, lists of stolen property, accounts of suffering and resistance, and records of public opinion and other aspects of the Holocaust as it unfolded in that country. As a report from April 1943 attests, “In short, we deem it necessary to bring to light—in a strictly objective manner—everything having favorable or unfavorable effect 66. This branch of Hassidism was founded in the nineteenth century in Lyubavichi in what is now Russia. It is known by its acronym, Chabad, the Hebrew letters of which stand for wisdom, understanding, and knowledge. Its founder, Shneur Zalman of Liady (1745– 1812), emulated the teachings of the Baal Shem Tov. Shneur Zalman’s grandson, Menachem Mendel Schneersohn (1789–1866), continued the dynasty. Yosef Yitzhak Schneersohn (1880–1950), the sixth rebbe in the dynasty, then passed the reins to his son-in-law, Menachem Mendel Schneersohn (1904–1994), who became the seventh rebbe of this spiritual movement and its last rabbi to this day. Isaac Schneersohn was Menachem Mendel’s cousin. For a full explanation of Lubovitch Hassidism, see Naftali Loewenthal, “Lubavitch Hasidism,” YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/ article.aspx/Lubavitch_Hasidism (accessed September 30, 2014).

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on the Jewish world of France. Second, there is reason to prepare [. . .] a file of claims of the Jews of France, foreign Jews as well as French. Thus, the goal we propose is to work together to compile this vast documentation [and] draw conclusions from it.”67 The CDJC aimed not only to construct a proper history of French Jewry during the period but also to collect material with an eye toward a postwar reckoning that everyone hoped was just over the horizon. One year later, Schneersohn and his colleagues relocated to Paris after its liberation on August 25, 1944. With the emerging nationalist postwar attitudes in France, the center’s approach became far more fraught and complex. As the government (headed by national hero Charles de Gaulle) crafted a universal narrative of national suffering and resistance, the CDJC questioned the judiciousness of insisting on a unique “racial” campaign against European Jews. Further questions arose as well: How much should the center focus on the collaborationist role of a nation in which many Jews wished to live and resettle? Could the center take note of those Jews who stood alongside French resistance fighters—or formed resistance groups of their own—and how might the public receive them?68 Ultimately, the CDJC chose to undertake the effort of collecting “objective evidence” in many different forms, from German and French documents to survivor testimonies and other sources. Document 11-11 reflects this mission while also subtly underscoring the political environment of postwar France. The article appeared in the first issue of the Bulletin of the Center for Jewish Information after it had relocated to Paris. The document establishes a genealogy for the center itself, thereby writing it into the larger history of Jewish documentation during and after the war. DOCUMENT 11-11: “Why a Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation?” Bulletin du Centre israélite d’information, no. 1 (April 1945): 10 (translated from French).

Why a Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation? The world in general and the Jews in particular are beginning to foresee in the near future the end of the war, the end of one of the most terrible periods of their long history. Numerous and gigantic tasks will occupy them on all sides.

67. Jockusch, Collect and Record!, 52. 68. For a detailed account of the center’s history and work, see ibid., 46–83.

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Jews in France will have their share of the work, both in France and at the international level, where the future of Judaism will be debated. Vast propaganda campaigns and very hard work will no doubt be necessary. It is to this undertaking that the Documentation Center intends to contribute. First of all, it proposes to help establish the history of four years of war and occupation endured by the Jewish population on the soil of France. This is meant as much for future generations of Jews as for international and even French public opinion, insufficiently enlightened about what has happened, in spite of everything. . . . But there is not only the historical work to be done. Qualified representatives of Jewry will soon be led to formulate the claims of the Jewish world. There, documents, precise numbers, statistics, claims based on irrefutable facts must be presented, supported, defended. A source of documentation conceived scientifically, objectively, will be the basis for all serious work. This is the goal that the Documentation Center is setting for itself. Not propaganda in the literal sense, but rather material placed at the disposal of those who will have something to say, a Jewish thesis to defend. Some works, reflections of this documentation, must also be published to present the martyrology of the Jews. We do not have a monopoly on this work, but we are not just starting today. During the Occupation, large representative organizations already were working to bring together a documentation of Jewish life. This was the case with the Jewish Consistory, the Federation of Jewish Societies of France, and still others . . . Outstanding figures in the Jewish world also brought together an important body of documentation. We are thinking of Chief Rabbi Hirschler,69 69. Marseille native Rabbi Rene Hirschler (1905–1944), an early supporter of the CDJC in Grenoble, had served as chief rabbi of Strasbourg before the war. After the occupation he set up a number of Jewish welfare initiatives but was arrested and deported with his wife, Simone (née Levy; b. 1911). She was murdered in Auschwitz, and he died in the Ebensee camp. See Jockusch, Collect and Record!, esp. 213–14; USHMM ITS Collection Data Base Central Name Index.

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Chapter 11 Mr. Hermann,70 and Mr. Léonce Bernheim,71 representative of French Zionism, all deported. It is precisely by uniting almost all the Jewish organizations that functioned under the occupation, as well as well-known figures in the Jewish world, that we created a Documentation Center in Grenoble in 1943. This Center, if we may say so—by virtue of the reputation it quickly acquired, the prestige and competence of the personalities it succeeded in bringing together around itself, the unanimous support it gained from the Jewish organizations, and the quality of the works also being prepared by its commissions—marks an important date in Jewish life and resistance during the war. It is in the wake of the path already traced that we want to continue our work. And it is for the pursuit of the task thus begun that we are seeking the support of all.

MEMORIAL AS NATIONAL IDENTITY: THE HOLOCAUST AND PRE-STATE ISRAEL As local memorials, religious institutions, and historical centers grappled with ways to memorialize the Holocaust, the great tragedy of European Jewry became a founding cornerstone of the emerging identity of postwar Palestine. Indeed, throughout the war, members of the Jewish community in British Mandate pre-state Israel took steps to aid Diaspora Jews while at the same time remaining geographically distant from their European brethren. As discussed in chapter 2, the Jewish Brigade maintained an active presence within the British army. The yishuv community itself, despite its limited resources, also provided monetary aid and became involved in the rescue attempts of various organizations as they attempted to funnel Jews through neutral countries to Palestine

70. Nahm Hermann (1899–1944) was a journalist and Zionist activist from Shagorod (today Ukraine). He had also helped found the Grenoble documentation center. See Jockusch, Collect and Record!, esp. 213. 71. A French lawyer and Zionist activist, Léonce Bernheim (1886–1944) helped found the Grenoble documentation center. He was deported to Auschwitz in December 1943, where he died. See Jockusch, Collect and Record!, esp. 209; USHMM ITS Collection Data Base Central Name Index.

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and other safe havens.72 Postwar, Palestine’s role in the refugee crisis became pivotal, particularly among displaced persons who could not return to their countries of origin. Thus, the Holocaust emerged as a central preoccupation of the yishuv during this period. After the war, the near destruction of European Jewry entwined the historical trajectory of Diaspora Jewry more tightly with the yishuv than ever before. This involvement did not begin with the postwar period but was made manifest in the many conversations about post-Holocaust memorialization in pre-state Israel. As early as September 1942, kibbutz members and left-wing Zionists in Palestine suggested erecting a memorial to murdered European Jewry that would incorporate a hall of memory and a hall of heroism. The monument was to be called “Yad Vashem” (literally, “a monument and a name”), from Isaiah 56:5, in which God declares to the people of Israel, “I will give them in My House and within My walls, a monument and a name.” The proposal, published in May 1945, was titled “Yad Vashem: A Memorial to the Destroyed Diaspora.” This schema separated victims into different categories: soldiers (halalim), who fought or resisted the Nazis; victims (korbanot, a Hebrew term that connotes a biblical sacrifice); and martyrs (kedoshim, literally, “holy ones”). These groups already establish a clear hierarchy of victimhood. As discussions regarding a specific remembrance day began to unfold, the Hebraism for what we now call the Holocaust—Shoah v’gevurah, meaning “the catastrophe and the heroism”—only reinforced this structure. It would take decades for this superstructure to be challenged; indeed, not until the trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961 would victimhood truly be heard and understood outside this construct.73 The Zionist emphasis on resistance permeated memorial documents and ceremonies in the DP camps throughout Europe, as did the redemptive nature of a potential State of Israel. Document 11-12 serves as one example of a memorial booklet that frames the one-year anniversary of liberation in heavily Zionist-inflected language. This document remains part of a larger pattern of memory and memorial established in the DP camps immediately following 72. For more information about the actions of the yishuv during the Holocaust, see Dina Porat, The Blue and the Yellow Stars of David: The Zionist Leadership in Palestine and the Holocaust, 1939–1945 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990). 73. For more information on the evolution of Holocaust memory in pre-state Israel, see Dalia Ofer, “Linguistic Conceptualization of the Holocaust in Palestine and Israel, 1942– 53,” Journal of Contemporary History 31, no. 3 (July 1996): 567–95; also see Dalia Ofer, “The Strength of Remembrance: Commemorating the Holocaust during the First Decade of Israel,” Jewish Social Studies 6, no. 2 (winter 2000): 24–55.

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the end of the war. For example, in May 1945 in Landsberg, DP leader Samuel Gringauz74 framed his remarks in terms of explicitly Zionist aspirations. His Yom Kippur service called upon the survivors to abandon their former homes in blood-stained Europe and instead “to sanctify the nation” in a new homeland yet to be created.75 The booklet in document 11-12, from the St. Ottilien DP camp, delivers a similar message. It presents poetry, stories, essays, and short remembrances by both inmates and noted Jewish authors, all of whom espouse an ardent hope for a future state. Published on the one-year anniversary of liberation, the text asserts that, in fact, no liberation is possible without the establishment of “a free homeland in Eretz Israel.” The publication roughly coincided with the May 5, 1946, meeting of the Central Committee of Liberated Jews in Germany, at which a “Unified Day of Remembrance and Liberation” was discussed. Attendees hotly debated the true meaning of a “celebration” of liberation. Prominent Russianborn Yiddish poet H. Leivick (whose work was featured in chapter 5) contended that liberation was anything but a joyous occasion; rather, it marked a moment to mourn those who were lost and the homeland that was not yet achieved. By contrast, Samuel Gringauz argued for a positive view of liberation as a moment of ultimate renewal and an opportunity to energize the Zionist youth movements to promulgate their cause. Throughout the DP world, both perspectives survived, at times simultaneously.76 This document (which features the work of Leivick as well as St. Ottilien DP leader A. Akselrod) integrates both perspectives into a strong Zionist worldview that framed the victims as “holy martyrs” whose blood can only truly be avenged through the establishment of a Jewish homeland.77 Seen as the ultimate justice and the ultimate goal, then, that true “liberation” is yet to come. Thus, the memory of victimhood becomes intimately tied to the aspirations of the survivors to claim a place in the family of nations and, in Akselrod’s 74. Dr. Samuel Gringauz (also Greengous; 1900?–1975) was a Lithuanian Jew born in East Prussia. He became a lawyer and during the war survived several years in the Kaunas/ Kowno/Kovno ghetto and the Dachau concentration camp. He remained in the Landsberg am Lech DP camp until the autumn of 1947, when he permanently immigrated to the United States. See NARA, passenger ship records, SS Marine Flasher, September–October 1947and T/D file 512407 for Samuel Gringauz, 6.3.3.2/101332252_0_1/ITS Digital Archive, USHMM. 75. Margarete Myers Feinstein, Holocaust Survivors in Postwar Germany, 1945–1957 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 102–5. 76. For more information about DP memorials and their Zionist inflections, see Zeev W. Mankowitz, Life between Memory and Hope: The Survivors of the Holocaust in Occupied Germany (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 192–225. 77. The author could not find further information about Akselrod.

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words, to “raise high the WHITE AND BLUE flag against all enemies of the Jewish people as we struggle for our Jewish, national justice.” DOCUMENT 11-12: “St. Ottiliener Sztime”: A Onetime Edition on the Anniversary of Our Liberation, Wednesday, May 1, 1946, edited by A. Akselrod (translated from Yiddish).

Remember! We shall never forget the fallen sons and daughters of the Jewish people, the holy martyrs of our eternal soul. On the anniversary of our liberation and the collapse of bloody Hitlerism, we bow our heads for all the departed heroes who sacrificed their lives at the altar of Jewish and general human redemption. We swear to join the spilled blood of our innocent brothers and sisters with the eternal ideals of the Jewish people by creating a free homeland in Eretz Israel. The blood that has been spilled will not gain redress until the Jewish people are back on their feet, until compensation has been made for this thousandfold abuse. On the Anniversary of Our Liberation A great amount of paper has been expended on that, for us, hallowed subject which is always treated, by us, with such care due to the number of victims put upon the gallows of true liberation. A year ago, when the first guards—in American or English uniforms—took post at the gates of the concentration camp, we Jews understood that we no longer had to fear that we would be gassed or burnt in the crematoria that had been prepared for us. It was then that Jewish national aspirations began to crystallize in our minds, aspirations that were recognized even by the assimilationist and “leftist” circles of the remaining Jews as the single correct path forward for us in the new situation that had come about. We firmly believed that the world, and particularly the states whose lips do not cease to preach democracy and equal rights, would acknowledge

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flag against all enemies of the Jewish people as we struggle for our Jewish, national justice. A. A. A. Akselrod

The memorial booklet sought to strengthen and propagate the Zionist ideal. Other organizations utilized the memory of the Holocaust as a way to physically build and fortify the land itself. Document 11-13 shows a poster from the Jewish National Fund that urges its audience to “plant a tree in memory of [. . .] martyred victims.” Conceived in 1945 by the Jewish National Fund and completed in 1951, the forest of pine, carob, and eucalyptus trees stands on the outskirts of Jerusalem. Today, the site also features three additional memorials: a statue by Nathan Rapoport (who also designed the Polish memorial of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising), titled Scroll of Fire, commemorating both the Holocaust and the 1967 Six-Day War; a “Martyr’s Cave”; and a memorial to Anne Frank.78 This announcement, written in Yiddish, calls for a collective memorial on soil outside Europe. In addition to its memorial function, the forest also served a larger purpose as part of the agricultural effort to “make the desert bloom.” This engineered landscape sought to make farming and agriculture possible, an effort that began on privately owned lands in the late nineteenth century.79 Thus, the memory of the Holocaust becomes entwined with the evolving vision of the state both as a physical space and as a Jewish homeland.

78. Nathan (Natan) Rapoport (1911–1987) was born in Warsaw and spent most of the war in the Soviet Union. He immigrated to the United States in 1959 after living in Paris and Israel. His monument to the heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, unveiled in Warsaw in 1948, remains his most famous work. See obituary, New York Times, June 6, 1987, 36. 79. For a survey of agriculture in pre-state Israel through the 1990s, See Alon Tal, “To Make a Desert Bloom: The Israeli Agricultural Adventure and the Quest for Sustainability,” Agricultural History 81, no. 2 (spring 2007): 228–57.

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DOCUMENT 11-13: Poster: “The Martyr’s Forest: A Memorial for the 6,000,000,” Jewish National Fund, 1945, Central Zionist Archive, USHMMPA WS# 08334 (translated from Hebrew).

CHAPTER 12

The Survivors Speak COLLECTING AND DEFINING POSTWAR TESTIMONY

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HE WORD “testimony” remains one of the most ubiquitous and yet illdefined terms in Holocaust research. Does it refer to the transcripts of trial testimonies collected for juridical purposes of prosecution? Should it include postwar interviews with Jewish survivors, whose words were later composed into a coherent narrative? Are survivor memoirs also forms of testimony, either despite or because of their constructed nature? Or does testimony only emerge with the advent of recording technology that allows for the transparency of the interrogative process? Literary theorists, psychologists, and sociologists have been utilizing—and defining—testimonies for a number of years. Lawrence Langer’s landmark Holocaust Testimony: The Ruins of Memory utilized the Fortunoff Video Archive at Yale University and closely identified with its narratological, psychologically inflected project. Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub’s analysis, Testimony: Crisis of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History, also took the Fortunoff interviews as its object, in addition to French literary and philosophical thinkers whose work the authors defined as “testimonial.” Psychologist Henry Greenspan’s On Listening to Holocaust Survivors: Beyond Testimony argues that the very term “testimony” creates a static, polished, stale narrative that does not include the rich dialogic, evolutionary, and creative nature that interviews with Holocaust survivors have to offer. Alan Rosen’s investigation of David Boder’s postwar interview project, The Wonder of Their Voices: The 1946 Holocaust Interviews of David Boder, explores the implications and impact of Boder’s bold experiment with sound interviews in the immediate aftermath

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of the war. Beyond these studies, survivor testimonies as a source base for historical research are only now being seriously reconsidered.1 The historians discussed above are representative of a larger cohort of Holocaust researchers who are willing to grapple with and rigorously analyze survivor testimonies despite their possible factual inaccuracies, hindsight, and other potential limitations. This chapter, however, asks what we can glean not only from survivor testimonies but also from the historical, cultural, and narrative construction of the testimony projects themselves. As historian Annette Wieviorka notes, “Testimonies, particularly when they are produced as part of a larger cultural movement, express the discourse or discourses valued by society at the moment witnesses tell their stories as much as they render an individual experience.”2 This chapter examines the rich variety of postwar “testimony” interviews and documents with Wieviorka’s injunction in mind. How was a given testimony created and under what conditions? How does the context in which it is given—to a historical commission in a DP camp, or in the same building as refugee aid, or before an American émigré academic on a couch with a wire recorder—impact the product? What type of product is received—preserved interview dialogue, coherent narrative, poor-quality sound recording, or ethnographic interview—and how can we analyze it as a source? Ultimately, what is the level of mediation in any given testimony, and how does this impact the ways in which we treat the results?

INTERVIEWING THE VICTIMS: JEWISH HISTORICAL COMMISSIONS As previously discussed, the historical commissions in Lublin and Munich were among the first large-scale testimony projects of the postwar era. On August 29, 1944, a small group of five survivors met in Lublin (then the temporary capital of a newly liberated Poland) to establish the Central Jewish Historical Commission. Joined by historian and survivor Filip Friedman, the commission first met on December 28, 1944, and set as its primary goal the collection and dissemination of survivor testimony.3 Friedman’s project thus sought to document—and, in the process, created—a history of the Holocaust from the ground up. To that 1. See Christopher R. Browning, Remembering Survival: Inside a Nazi Slave-Labor Camp (New York: W. W. Norton, 2011); Omer Bartov, Erased: Vanishing Traces of Jewish Galicia in Present-Day Ukraine (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007); Jürgen Matthäus, Approaching an Auschwitz Survivor: Holocaust Testimony and Its Transformations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). 2. Annette Wieviorka, The Era of the Witness (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006), xii. 3. Laura Jockusch, Collect and Record! Jewish Holocaust Documentation in Early Postwar Europe, 1945–1957 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 89–91.

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end, in a 1946 essay detailing the commission’s work as multifaceted, he noted, “We did not approach the research work merely as ‘objective’ scholars. In addition to the scientific and theoretical interest, we had other motives as well. We set to the work in order to discover information, but not only information as such, but also information to serve as a monument to our fathers, our mothers, our brothers and sisters. We wanted to perpetuate the memory of our massacred parents, our siblings, our children, and our fallen heroes.”4 In this framework, scholarship and testimony served a historiographical, memorial, and juridical purpose. The Central Historical Commission (CHC) of the Central Committee of Liberated Jews was founded on November 28, 1945, in the Munich DP camp in the US Zone of Germany. The effort was spearheaded by Israel Kaplan and Moshe Yosef Feigenbaum. Feigenbaum had previously been affiliated with the Central Historical Commission of Polish Jewry under Friedman.5 Kaplan was a former journalist and writer from Kovno.6 Overall, the CHC in Munich assumed a more populist rather than historical approach. Indeed, CHC questionnaires were based on the eight-page questionnaire that served as interviewer guidelines for the Central Commission in Poland. Here, survivors or employees of the CHC filled out the questionnaires, which included information on the dates of specific events, statistical and ethnographic information, and notes about particular Jewish heroism. Wherever possible, survivors were also asked to identify the specific names and crimes of perpetrators. Current conditions of the DP camps were also included.7 With Munich as its central hub, the commission supervised about sixty centers in DP camps throughout Germany. In sum, between 80 and 160 people worked for the commission over the course of its life from 1945 to 1949.8 In addition to the testimonies taken by the commission, Kaplan and Feigenbaum also sought to encourage survivors to write histories and memoirs themselves. The CHC journal, Fun letstn churbn (From the Last Extermination), was intended to provide a forum for precisely these kinds of stories. The magazine published ten issues and circulated from one to eight thousand copies in total. It focused exclusively on eastern European Jewry. The testimonies in the journal were heavily edited to a degree that Friedman felt interfered with the 4. Cited in Roni Stauber, “Laying the Foundations for Holocaust Research: The Impact of Philip Friedman,” Search and Research: Lectures and Papers 15 (2009): 7–60. 5. On Feigenbaum, see chapter 11, note 62. 6. Israel Kaplan (1902 or 1906–2003), born in Volozhin (then in the Russian Empire), survived the Kovno/Kaunas ghetto, labor camps in Riga and Poniewież, a subcamp of Dachau, and a forced march at the end of the war. He also helped to found the postwar Yiddish newspaper Unzer veg and continued his work as a journalist before immigrating to Israel in 1949. See Jockusch, Collect and Record!, esp. 215, 263n135 and T/D file 60307 for Israel Kaplan, 6.3.3.2/91705115_0_1/ITS Digital Archive, USHMM. 7. Jockusch, Collect and Record!, 133. 8. Ibid., 131.

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integrity of the original.9 The CHC also appealed directly to the DP survivor population to record their experiences and turn them over to the commission, often invoking the Holocaust as part of a long line of injustices inflicted on the Jewish people dating back to the pharaohs of Egypt and the expulsion from the Jewish homeland. Ultimately, the archive was an attempt to write the history of the Holocaust in the language of the survivors themselves. The testimony in document 12-1 represents an example from the initial group of approximately twenty-five hundred testimonies collected by the commission. The testimony of Asher Zisman10 focuses in large part on his experiences with an indictment of SS General Friedrich Rohde for various actions in Brest-on-the-Bug. This CHC testimony serves as a kind of unofficial deposition rather than a free-flowing narrative. DOCUMENT 12-1: Testimony of Asher Zisman, April 3, 1946, Central Historical Commission of the Central Committee of Liberated Jews, Munich, USHMMA RG 68.095M, reel 1, images 532–534, file 158, Yad Vashem Testimonies (M.1.E) (translated from Yiddish).

Testimony. Taken in the Historical Commission at the Central Committee in Munich, April 3, 1946, from Asher Zisman. Born in 1905 in Brest-on-the-Bug. Taking the protocol: Volf Gliksman. Regarding the S.S. General Rohde, who was the commander of the ghetto in Brest-on-the-Bug11 from the year 1941 to the liquidation in October 1942. 9. Ibid., 139. 10. The author could not find further information about this person. 11. Also known as Brześć, located 346 kilometers (215 miles) southwest of Minsk in what is today Belarus, in which 21,653 Jews resided in 1937. The Germans entered the city on September 15, 1939, followed by the Russians on September 22. On June 22, 1941, the city was occupied a second time by German forces. From July 6 to July 8, 1941, 4,435 people, 4,000 of them Jewish men, were shot by the 307th Police Battalion. The document most likely describes this incident despite the slightly different date and number of dead. In August 1941, a Jewish council was formed, and a full census of the Jewish population took place in November; concurrently, the ghetto was constructed. By December 15, 1941, the ghetto was sealed; forced labor began in the summer of 1942. The liquidation of the ghetto began in October 1942, when 16,000 of the 16,934 Jews in the ghetto were killed over the course of two days, from October 15 to 17. For more information, see Alexander Kruglov and Martin Dean, “Brześć,” in The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, vol. 2: Ghettos in German-Occupied Eastern Europe, ed. Martin Dean (Bloomington: Indiana University Press in association with the USHMM, 2012), 1337–39.

The Survivors Speak When the Germans came into Brest-on-the-Bug on June 22, 1941, they caught Jews in the street, led them away to Kostełne, a suburb of Brest-onthe-Bug, ordered them to undress completely, and then shot them. Several hundred Jewish men perished at that time. On July 12, 1941, the Wehrmacht, under the direction of the S.S. and Gestapo, encircled the whole city, and with the pretext that they would take Jewish men for labor, they searched through almost all Jewish apartments and took 4870 (four thousand eight hundred and seventy) Jewish men, according to the registration of the local Jewish community. These persons were led out to the outskirts of Kostełne to the brick factories, and there they were ordered to undress completely and were shot. At the execution, they had [. . .] wolf dogs for help, which bit into the throat of every Jew who wanted to save himself by running away, and pushed him right into the grave. (This) according to the accounts of the peasants who lived in that area, they found out that only the Jews in the first rows were shot, while those in the back rows of the grave, whom the bullets did not succeed in hitting and killing, were buried alive. As the peasants relate further, the ground over the graves heaved for three days. In order to efface the traces of the crime, the Germans let three Jews live of the 4870, drove them in cars through the Jewish quarter, and forced them to shout out loud “that all those who were taken away are healthy, are living and working.” But the evidence that the Jews were murdered was that later, the clothing of those who had perished was brought to the city warehouses on [. . .] street, and later the worse things were sold to peasants through auction and the better ones sent to Germany. At the end of the year 1941, a ghetto was created, and Rohde decreed that closed Jewish workshops should be created there for Jewish tradesmen. And in order to divert attention of the Jews (who found out about the slaughters of Jews that took place in our parts of eastern White Russia) from running away to the Jewish partisans or procuring arms in the ghetto, Rohde decreed that all Jewish tradesmen who were employed in the workshops would receive special identification cards with his (Rohdes’s) stamp. And all the Jewish craftsmen who possessed such a card with his stamp would survive the war and would not be subject to any anti-Jewish actions. Rohde also created an empty square in the ghetto in Brest-on-the-Bug, between the streets Długa and Dąbrowskiego, and ordered a Jewish furnace

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Chapter 12 maker to make a large pit on that square and also to erect a brick fence that would embrace the locked artisan workshops and the pit that had been dug. At the same time, Rohde affirmed that the Jews who would work on the so-called Rohde-Platz would be eliminated from every anti-Jewish action. Rohde also distinguished himself with his cruel acts against Jews, at the smallest instance, as he viewed it, of not properly fulfilling his orders. So, for example, whipping of bare skin until death. Heavy contributions of valuable items, gold, furs, jewelry, which for the most part went into his own pocket. Rohde himself shot many Jews, driving around with his car in the villages surrounding Brest-on-the-Bug. On the night of the 15th to 16th October 1942, the Gestapo and the local S.S. police under his order encircled the ghetto, led all the Jews out to Broni-Góra [Belarusian: Bronnaia Gora; Polish: Bronna Góra], and murdered them there, explaining through the local Brest radio (loudspeaker) that Brest-on-the-Bug had been finally liberated from the Jewish pestilence and was now free of Jews. Even the Jews who worked in the workshops, whom Rohde had assured would be eliminated from every action, were also shot. The witness [Zisman] was hidden in a basement not far from the so-called Rohde-Platz for about three months, and over the course of that time, he could observe that the Jews who had hid before the slaughter, and were later discovered by the Germans, were led to the pit and shot there. Near the so-called Rohde pit was a small stall, in which every Jew had to undress completely before he was shot. Beautiful Jewish women, who had to undress completely there at the order of the German hangmen, were raped by the wild German beasts before they were shot. The witness lived in Brest-on-the-Bug before and during the war. He was there until its liquidation and hid in the ghetto. From the Brest community, which numbered 27,000 persons before the war, fourteen persons were miraculously saved. The witness is a son-in-law of Rabbi Lipe Klepfish, of blessed memory.12

While the above CHC testimony assumes the format of a polished narrative, document 12-2 consists of testimony in its raw form—as presented in answer to a questionnaire. Filip Friedman and the Central Historical 12. This note was added by the interviewer.

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Commission of Polish Jewry had used questionnaires extensively. The ten-part document reproduced here asked for information on a wide range of experiences throughout the war, including the demographics of a community, initial German decrees, ghetto life, economic conditions, political and cultural life, and camp life, to name only a few categories. Whereas adults filled out these questionnaires themselves, children generally did not—a key difference noted by recent researchers like Beate Müller and Boaz Cohen.13 Questionnaires like the one featured in document 12-2 assume a somewhat different form and purpose. These forms from the CHC in Munich were meant to establish each child’s history for the purpose of aid work and immigration. Thus, we face a question: Given the lack of coherent narrative, are such documents themselves “testimonies” or witness accounts? To the extent that they resulted from an interview and relate specific information about an “unaccompanied child” (usually an orphan) and his or her experience, do these questionnaires present testimony in its raw, unpolished form? This particular questionnaire outlines the personal experiences of Josef Munzer, age seventeen on the date of his interview on May 28, 1946. In his interview with CHC officials, he speaks of his time in the Łόdź ghetto and the Auschwitz and Gleiwitz concentration camps. His languages, extent of schooling, and knowledge of family members are also recorded. Munzer further notes his desire to come to the United States. At that point his interviewer (N. A. Fryer, according to the form) inserts his voice, saying that that boy is “good looking, well-bred, [and] intelligent” and therefore should be considered a reasonable candidate for immigration. Thus, whether we consider these questionnaires a formal means of “testimony” or not, they do speak to the multilayered process of documentation and both the transparent and the invisible ways in which interviewers played a role in that process.

13. See Beate Müller, “Trauma, Historiography and Polyphony: Adult Voices in the CJHC’s Early Postwar Child Holocaust Testimonies,” History and Memory 24, no. 2 (fall/ winter 2012): 157–94; Boaz Cohen, “The Children’s Voice: Postwar Collection of Testimonies from Child Survivors of the Holocaust,” H&GS 21, no. 1 (spring 2007): 73–95.

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DOCUMENT 12-2: Unaccompanied child record of Josef Munzer, May 28, 1946, children’s questionnaires of the Central Historical Commission of the Central Committee of Liberated Jews, Munich, USHMMA RG 68.098M, folder 1, images 78–79.

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Unlike the previous document, document 12-3 constitutes a child’s testimony in its finished and, in the end, highly edited form. While historical commissions solicited testimonies from survivors from all walks of life and a variety of circumstances, Israel Kaplan put a particular focus on children’s testimonies during his work at the Central Historical Commission. Of several hundred taken, eight were chosen for publication in Fun letstn churbn. Boaz Cohen has extensively examined the selections themselves and the degree to which Kaplan and other members of his staff intervened in their creation. Here, we examine one such testimony analyzed in Cohen’s work, that of Arieh Milch.14 14. See Boaz Cohen, “Representing the Experiences of Children in the Holocaust: Children’s Survivor Testimonies Published in Fun letstn churbn, Munich, 1946–1949,” in “We Are Here”: New Approaches to Jewish Displaced Persons in Postwar Germany, ed. Avinoam J. Patt and Michael Berkowitz (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2010), 74–97.

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Kaplan’s overall interview methods with children differed significantly from his approach with adults; with children, he focused much more on recording their psychological state rather than attempting to capture the facts of their experience. Cohen speculates that Kaplan’s interest in children’s testimonies, however, was not merely historical. Rather, he suggests, Kaplan also saw in these children an opportunity to learn more about the estrangement he now felt from his own son, who survived the war in hiding. Kaplan’s son (his wife and daughter were killed in Kovno) immigrated to Palestine in 1949.15 Arieh Milch’s testimony was the first of the eight to be published in Fun letstn churbn. Born in 1932 in Podhajce, Galicia (now Pidhaitsi, Ukraine), he was fourteen at the time of his interview. Milch’s mother was killed four days after the German occupation of his town in July 1941; his father, a member of the Judenrat, was murdered in 1942. In 1943, just before the liquidation of the ghetto, Milch, his brother, and an uncle went into hiding in the house of a nearby gentile, where they were liberated in March 1944. Milch’s original testimony was taken at Aschau bei Kraiburg, a United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) transit camp known as the kinder lager. Indeed, these testimonies are some of the first to be recorded by the CHC. UNRRA Team 154 took the twenty testimonies from the teenagers. Some, although not all, of those whose testimonies were collected were a part of kibbutz movements or Zionist youth organizations. According to Cohen, Kaplan often rewrote each child’s essay before publication in the guise of “polishing it up.” Indeed, the following selection states that it is “published with only the most necessary editorial improvements.” Ultimately, these testimonies represent the symbolic importance of children to these historical commissions and to the postwar Jewish world as a whole. DOCUMENT 12-3: Arieh Milch, “My Experiences during the War” (from the series of children’s reports), Fun letstn churbn 3 (November 1946): 65–67 (translated from Yiddish).

Arieh Milch, From the Children’s Reports, My Experiences During the War (The pieces in this series are published with only the most necessary editorial improvements—the editor)16

15. Ibid., 78–80. 16. All parenthetical statements in this document are footnotes in the original text.

The Survivors Speak My father’s name was Abraham, my mother’s name was Etl, née Lerer. I was born on June 25, 1932, in the city of Podhajce, near Tarnopol. Due to the start of the world war, I wasn’t able to complete more than three grades, two Ukrainian and one Yiddish. When the Russians came in 1939, we resettled in the city of Mikulińce.17 We lived there until the Germans came. The Germans came on July 4, 1941, and they killed my mother on July 8. After my mother’s death, we lived for a short time with a close acquaintance, and then we returned to our city. When we arrived, we learned that the Germans had already created a Judenrat, which was to serve as the link between the Germans and the Jews. The people from the city forced father to join the Judenrat. They created a Jewish police force that was called the “order service.” More than once, the order service was used as a will-less instrument by the Germans to carry out various atrocities against the Jews. Then came the so-called period of the so-called lapankes (seizures), during which the Ukrainian police and Volksdeutsche (Poles)18 seized the most. The men were in danger. Hiding spots were constructed. Early on Yom Kippur, September 21, 1942, the Gestapo and SS men came and carried out a pogrom. At the last minute, I took a look out the window, which was in front, and I saw SS men with rifles on their shoulders standing guard over a group of people who had already been rounded up. On the side, two SS men were moving about with revolvers in their hands. I immediately went into a bunker. The pogrom lasted an entire day, in the course of which 1,500 persons died. We choked through the entire day in the bunker without water and without air. In the evening, we left the bunker. The city was deserted; people had been taken to Bełżec. Life went on, but with the difference that orphaned children remained. On October 30, 1942, the second pogrom in our city took place. On that day, 1,500 Jews were killed. My father was among the 1,500. After the pogrom, we stayed with our uncle. After the second pogrom, the Germans rounded up people in the area and created a ghetto in the city. Terrible want reigned in the ghetto. Ten persons lived in a small room. Typhus spread, with which my brother, too, fell ill. The entire ghetto was overcome with panicked fear (As is known, the Germans typically killed the entire ghetto in the case of epidemics— the editor). Night after night, people would stand by the windows and look out to see whether the German murderers would come once again.

17. Current-day Mykulyntsi in Ukraine. 18. Referring to linguistic and cultural Germans living in Poland.

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Chapter 12 On April 17, 1943, in the night, I left the ghetto together with my brother and my uncle and we went to hide at a gentile’s. Initially, things were good for us there, but then it got worse. The gentile supplied us with newspapers. We read that the Red Army was advancing. We began to have hope. Early on June 6, 1943, the gentile came to us and told us that the ghetto had been surrounded. The final pogrom of annihilation took place. The Germans rounded everyone up, took them outside the city, and shot them. They told the human remnant who had held out that they should bring their most important belongings and that they would be transferred to the ghetto in Tarnopol (In order to fool the remaining Jews, the Gestapo would solemnly proclaim that no further actions would take place. The Jews who voluntarily reported would only be sent to work. See Fun letstn [c]hurbn vol. 2, “The Nazis’ Word of Honor”—the editor). After they left the city, the Gestapo jumped out from among the grain [wheat fields]. There, graves had been prepared, and the people were shot. The city became “Jew-free.”19 They then began to break into homes and loot them. We shed a tear and continued to live in hope. The Red Army was advancing. City after city was captured. Its divisions were already fighting in Tarnopol, 70 kilometers [43.5 miles] away from us. The gentile wanted to hand us over to the German murderers. But since the reds were already in our city, he let us live. The glorious hour finally came. The Reds’ advance guards were in our city. It was March 28, 1944. After 52 weeks of being locked up in a cellar, we left our dark pit for the first time and drew into our thirsty lungs the air that, with its freshness, ensured and promised us that we were finally free. We paid for this with the distinction of being one of the miniscule number of Polish Jewry’s orphan survivors.

LOCAL TESTIMONY EFFORTS: INTERVIEWING SURVIVORS IN THEIR FORMER HOMES The CHC testimony project included interviews with survivors during a transitive state: inside DP camps. Neither at home nor resettled, these survivors found themselves caught in an unrelenting state of liminality. Other projects met survivors upon their attempted (and often unsuccessful) return “home.” The Deportáltakat Gondozó Országos Bizottság (DEGOB, National Committee for Attending Deportees) project in Budapest, Hungary, was one of these efforts. DEGOB was founded by the Jewish 19. Yudn-frey used in the original, not judenrein, or its Yiddish equivalent.

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community of Pest in Budapest, Hungary, in March 1945 for the purpose of aiding returning deportees with a variety of services. It focused on repatriation, relief and welfare services, and documentation. Its documentation activities sought to provide an accurate statistical count of survivors, names of survivors, and protocols for survivor testimonies. DEGOB received funding from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (AJJDC), the Hungarian office of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, and the World Jewish Congress.20 Thus, DEGOB served the dual purpose of assisting with aid and documentation and often took advantage of that position. When survivors came to DEGOB for aid, they were also asked to offer their testimony. Upon entering the DEGOB office, survivors were asked to fill out two forms: (1) name and information about survivors still living abroad, and (2) inquiries regarding those who were killed. The Jewish Agency assumed responsibility for the Information Department, while the National Jewish Relief Committee took over social issues. Testimonies began as early as November 1944 at the Glass House in Budapest, where Swiss diplomat Carl Lutz and Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg had famously headquartered their efforts to save the Hungarian Jews of the city.21 By June 1946, when the World Jewish Congress took over the documentation section of DEGOB, forty-six hundred testimonies had already been taken. However, unlike with the CHC testimonies, the interview and collection process for DEGOB is somewhat unclear. DEGOB frequently assessed whom it deemed to be valuable witnesses of the Holocaust in Hungary and aimed to interview these people for the purpose of illuminating the details of events as they unfolded. On the whole, interviewers were interested in the larger mechanisms and operating actors of history rather than personal experiences per se. Like the CHC, DEGOB conducted both individual and group interviews. The DEGOB form contained several hundred questions; however, each interviewer chose to focus on particular aspects such that each testimony is somewhat different. Most testimonies shared the following attributes: personal data of the interviewee, status of the interviewee’s former place of residence (i.e., still standing or not), and descriptions of ghetto conditions, deportation, arrival at camp, and camp life. The interviews also usually covered topics such 20. See DEGOB (www.degob.org). 21. Carl Lutz (1895–1975) led the Foreign Interests Department of the Swiss embassy in Budapest from 1942 and was one of the architects of the system of diplomatic protection given to many Jews in the city during the last year of the war. See Theo Tschuy, Dangerous Diplomacy: The Story of Carl Lutz, Rescuer of 62,000 Hungarian Jews (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2000).

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as “evacuation,” liberation, and postwar life. While fairly detailed with regard to the Hungarian experience, these testimonies indicate only a basic knowledge on the interviewee’s part (if indeed any at all) of the overarching nature of the genocidal crimes. They were, however, meant to be both understood by and disseminated to the wider public. Hungarian originals were transcribed and translated into both English and German for future use.22 The testimony in document 12-4 displays this pattern by outlining the experience of Mirjam Perl, a survivor of Auschwitz originally from Szatmárnémeti. In it, she describes antisemitic measures, ghettoization, and her time in Auschwitz. Perl concludes with her desire to immigrate to Palestine, saying that she no longer belongs in Hungary. This text is a DEGOB-authorized English translation of the Hungarian original—a common type of document found in this collection. As with many of these testimonies, we are not privy to the interview questions that made this document possible; nor do we have access to the Hungarian shorthand notes that were taken. Here we see the edited copy of a story whose rough edges have been all but erased in the name of producing and supporting a larger historical narrative, as well as the ultimate immigration desires of the speaker herself. DOCUMENT 12-4: Testimony of Mirjam Perl, June 24, 1945, DEGOB, Joint/Jewish Agency, Budapest, USHMMA RG 68.101 Collection of testimonies relating to Hungary, Yad Vashem O15E, accretion file, file 133, #03038528 (Hungarian, English).23

GÖRLITZ. PROTOCOL

Number: 13.191 tattooed

Put down in Budapest in the National Relief Committee for Deportee’s Home/Degob, Erssébet Nóiskola, Ajtósi Dürer sor 37/, on the 24th June 1945. Name: Mirjam Perl Born: 13th October, 1923, Sz. németi/Szaplonca/ 22. For a detailed history of DEGOB, see Rita Horváth, “A Jewish Historical Commission in Budapest: The Place of the National Relief Committee for Deportees in Hungary among the Other Large-Scale Historical-Memorial Projects of the She’erit Hapleatah after the Holocaust (1945–1948),” in Holocaust Historiography in Context: Emergence, Challenges, Polemics and Achievements, ed. David Bankier and Dan Michman (New York: Berghahn Books, 2008), 475–96. 23. Since this document appears in the archival record as a translated and transcribed English text from the time, typos and misspellings have been retained in the interest of faithfulness to the source.

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Occupation: /household/ Last residence: Szatmárnémeti Concentration: “ ghetto Camps: Auschwitz, from May to October 1944 Görlitz, from October 1944 till May 8, 1945 Above-named reports the following: About 60,000 families lived at Szatmárnémeti. They were occupied/ of Jewish faith in trade lines, but there were also physicians and lawyers among them. There were very rich and very poor people, the latter being rather from the surroundings. My parents having died and I being without any means I lived with my aunt. In 1940 antisemitic measures were taken. Shops, trade licences and fortunes were taken away. These measures were taken by the mayor, Dr. L. Csóka. A great antisemitic about the town was Dr. B. Sárközi beat the Jews for any trifle. We called him Hitler II. Without any higher order to do so he and the detectives sent a great many people to Galicia, on his own disposition only. Nobody could do anything for it. There were lots of fascists /nyilas/,24 antisemitism was raging and Jews were envied for working diligently and thus having everything they needed. The members of the Jewish Council always kept an eye on our interests and helped where they possibly could. Their president was the president of the Jewish Congregation named Davidovits. On the decree of the Police-councillor Dr. B. Sárközi we went into the ghetto on about the 15th of April. Our being secluded was carried out by the detectives and the gendarmerie. On our leaving our flat, the Hungarian gendarmes sealed everything; since then we did not hear anything about the whereabouts of our things. The ghetto was in the centre of the town; that is where the gendarmes herded us together. When they had come for us they took away money, silver candle-sticks, and other values. My uncle was deprived of his wine too. Into the ghetto we were allowed to take linen, clothes, victuals, bedclothes and mattresses. The other things remained in the flat. 24. Refers to the Nyilaskeresztes Párt, or the Arrow Cross Hungarian fascist party that assumed power from October 1944 through March 1945. Led by Ferenc Szálasi, the Arrow Cross was responsible for roundups, ghettoiziation, and mass brutality. For more information, see Zoltán Vági, László Csősz, and Gábor Kádár, The Holocaust in Hungary: Evolution of a Genocide (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press in association with the USHMM, 2013), 147–76.

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Chapter 12 The ghetto was closed up and guarded inside and outside by police and gendarmerie, Jewish policemen keeping up order inside. All the Jews of the surrounding were there; I don’t know how many there were but we were quite a lot. In one street there lived 20,000. We were formidably crowded together, in one small room sleeping about 15. One could not cross the room nor put up a bed or a wardrobe, so many people were lying on the floor. The congregation provided us with food. As to ourselves we had some small reserve still; the poor got food from the common kitchen. Boys and girls were [put] to work. We were very much excited, knowing that we should be carried off and put to death. The gendarmes did not lose a word about where they would take us. We all tried to escape but failed; almost all were brought back and punished. The Jews being in the jails were brought, too. Escape was doomed to failure, as we were enclosed roundabout and guarded. There were cases of suicides committed chiefly by physicians. Besides there were casualties, but no plundering. The decree of deportation was issued by the captain of the gendarmerie. We were to be taken to the slaughterhouse, they said. The rest of the population did not say anything when we were being dragged along. We took food and clothes along. In the waggon [sic] we were 95, with children and parcels jammed together like herrings so that we could not move. There were waggons more crowded even, but others where there were fewer people. Not being given either water or a pail for the necessities, we procured those, later. On our urgent entreat we got at last some water by the German soldiers at Kassa. The 30 waggons being started at once were padlocked. Sick people were together with healthy ones, but there were no casualties on the way. The Hungarians who had escorted us as far as Kassa took away the golden things, money and all that still being on us, declaring that we should be shot dead, as it was. We did not try to escape anymore as there was no chance of success. The transport arrived at Auschwitz on May 8. We were received by German officers who unlocked the doors; we had to leave all our luggage there. Men, women and children were separated from each other. Older prisoners shouted us to yield the children to elderly women. I saw Dr. Mengele25 standing there and selecting, holding a stick in his hand and

25. Refers to Dr. Josef Mengele (1911–1979), the notorious Nazi doctor responsible for medical experimentation at Auschwitz. Mengele looms large in survivor memories as the doctor primarily responsible for the selection process, although many erroneously identify him as the man responsible for their specific selection. Mengele was present at Auschwitz from 1943 to 1945. For more information, see Israel Gutman, ed., Encyclopedia of the Holocaust (New York: Macmillan, 1990), 3:971–72.

The Survivors Speak hinting a soldier with it where to direct the people. The young went left, the old right. Those going right were taken to the crematory. After being disinfected we were led to a block/barrack/; we had only a roof over our heads and lay on the bare floor, there not being any sleeping accommodation whatsoever. For two days we did not get any food so that we/fainted with hunger. /all but/ In the bathroom we were stripped of all of our clothes, shorn and out of mockery given clothes that did not suit us; the lean got wide ones and the thick/tight ones. On the back of the dress a cross marked from quite far our being prisoners. At first we had not to work. Our work consisted in getting up at half past one at night and going outside into the cold, the mist in one single dress, and stand there “Apell.”26 We stood there till seven or eight o’clock in the morning in wooden shoes which had been given us instead of our own ones. We had to stand there legs close together; if somebody moved a little she was sure to be punished. If the Apell was not as it should be or somebody was missing, the whole camp, 30,000 people had to kneel down on behalf of the one. When somebody who had hidden then came forth of her hiding-place she had to kiss the guard’s hands and feet in order to avoid being shot. This guard, a woman, was crazy. It often happened that we had to stand in the greatest heat till two o’clock; the many that fainted were not given any water. It was not allowed to move and sometimes we stood there still nine o’clock in the evening. Afterwards we went back into the block and, after getting some bread and margarine we lay down on the wooden boards. We had to undress and lie down without anything to cover with. We had hardly closed our eyes when we were awakened again and sent out to stand Apell. At seven o’clock in the morning we went in again to sleep a little; at eight o’clock we had to place ourselves to another Apell. At such times the feeble were selected and taken off. For putting a cloth on one’s head one had to expect 25 strokes with a stick. There was another selection when we had to stand there undressed; we then went to the bathing room to be disinfected and were led to the camp B/2. This was in June; here we were somewhat better off. We were tattooed and set to carrying bricks. On the first day we got double Zulage/food supplement, consisting of kind of meat, margarine and marmalade resp./. Later on food was the same as in the preceding camp. When possible we sometimes stole one or two potatoes.

26. Meaning “roll call.”

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Chapter 12 One day a lot of Poles were brought into the camp, the more there came the longer lasted the Apell. 4 weeks later we were selected again and transported to Görlitz for work in an ammunition factory. We lived there in a camp surrounded by barbed-wire enclosure and were not permitted to talk to anybody. There were French, Belgians, Dutch, and Russians, and she who was caught at talking to one was cut off her hair. The same happened for stealing a potato. Our Lagerältester/senior of the camp/, named Cseh, killed a lot of men. For stealing a carrot he dealt the culprit 25 strokes which was as much as having killed him. Out of the 1,500 men not 150 remained. They perished in masses also on behalf of their being louse-infested. When someone wanted to speak to her sister and was caught at that in the B camp she was shot dead. In the C camp there was a girl named Ella Treiber together with her mother. On the opportunity of a selection they were separated; the girl once went to the wire fence in order to tell her mother something. She was remarked by a guard in the watch-tower and shot before her mother’s eyes. The same occurred in the case of two sisters. We worked in Görlitz aeroplane and ammunition factory till our liberation, in/shifts of twelve hours, taking them in weekly turns. The /day and night/ manufactory work was dangerous because of the many explosions always claiming a lot of casualties. We were never let into the shelters on the approach of Russian aeroplanes causing atmospheric pressure through bombing. The rest of us, those of different nationality, were allowed to take refuge to the shelters; it’s only us that had to stay and go on working. In Auschwitz there was a selection every day. The food consisted of nothing but grass and weed which scratched even our teeth. We could not eat it and gave it to the Czech Jews, who were happy to get it not having so much either. Between us there was charged wire, but we helped them. The whole day we were busy with dragging corpses into the dead house. There were 40–60 casualties daily. The selected were carried away, we could not tell where. The younger men and women of the Czech camp were taken to work. The old and children one night were thrown on a car, naked as they were. The children were crying, screaming, but not helped by anybody and carried off to the crematory. We clearly saw it and were afterwards transferred to that camp. Unfortunately many of us were full of lice. At the time of our liberation the Lagerführer27 made a speech stating that we were free and might tear our numbers off our dresses; that we

27. The author was not able to identify this man.

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might go wherever we wanted to, but only after them. On May 8 we were liberated by the Russians, who treated and fed us well. I want to go to Palestine; I think that’s where I belong to. Perl Mirjam m.p. Protocol was put down by K. Kandel m.p. Translated by M. Weinz28 We hereby certify that the translation complies with the original text: [Seal] [Signature]

The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee also aided with or spearheaded several testimonial collection projects in the immediate aftermath of the war.29 Document 12-5 originates from the AJJDC office in Bucharest, Romania. The scope of this project includes accounts from German Jews, Polish Jews, and Jews from the former Soviet Union. The bulk of these testimonies, however, also stem from Hungarian Jews. Like the DEGOB material, these testimonies present varied perspectives on somewhat similar experiences. Despite the location of this specific office in Bucharest, most of the Jews interviewed were not in fact Romanian; nor did they speak to the Romanian Jewish experience during the war. Document 12-5 is indicative of the breadth and depth of this collection. Maria Gara’s testimony depicts her role as part of a rescue group attempting to flee Hungary through Romania. She was eventually caught and deported to Auschwitz. Like the previous testimonies, these examples are available only in their final, polished, narrative form. As with the DEGOB documents, English and German translations of Hungarian original testimonies or notes (many of which are not available in the archive) present an additional challenge to researchers. Thus, with both the DEGOB testimonies and the Joint collection from Bucharest, we are left to ask, Whose words do we actually read on the page—those of the survivor or of the interviewer/interpreter? How was the interview conducted, and what types of questions were asked? While these considerations are rendered invisible in the final product, we must consider their impact on what we are able to read.

28. The author was unable to identify these two individuals. 29. For more information on the activities of the AJJDC during the war, see Yehuda Bauer, American Jewry and the Holocaust: The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, 1939–1945 (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1981).

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DOCUMENT 12-5: Testimony of Maria Gara, May 21, 1945, testimonies of the Joint in Bucharest, Romania, from the Lavon Institute—Labor Movement Archives (file no. VII-123-4, 308), USHMMA Acc. 2007.138, folder 4, image #06471405.

Statement No. 411 Made in the House of Refugees at 128, Calea Mosilor, Bucharest, on May 21st 1945, with Miss Maria GARA Born September 22nd 1924 in Budapest, who was deported to Thorn (No. 67,560), and who, appearing before us, declared the following: During the spring and the beginning of summer 1944 I was working in an organization which provided Jews escaping from Hungary to Roumania with forged Christian documents. Many groups have been passed across the frontier this way, guided by smugglers. It was rather difficult and dangerous to organize this, as it was risky even to carry Christian papers in the interior of the country, and still more to travel with them. One of my collaborators was caught and the Gestapo started searching me. I had to change my address. I took a new room where they suspected me. They investigated the address I gave in a false registration form as my previous one, and of course I was not known there. I had to move suddenly from my new room, too. By this time I was afraid to take a room and I was sleeping in the hills of Budapest for almost a week. These were difficult days, during the day I felt hot, but in the night I was freezing cold, and I could not wash. Thus I decided to pass over to Roumania with the next transport, but by accident I missed the group and went back to Budapest. With great difficulties I managed to organize a new transport but had no time to give them exact instructions before we started. This was my misfortune because I had to give them instructions for crossing the frontier when we were already on the train. All the men were dispersed in the train and I had to walk along it several times. Hereby I draw the attention of the conductor upon myself, who told a plain clothes policeman to watch me. I felt that somebody is observing me and just had time to tell some people of the transport that they should by no means get off the train together with me. It came as I thought, when I wanted to get off in Nagyvarad the detective arrested me and told me he would shoot me if I try to run away. He took me to the police station where my documents were examined. They almost accepted them for being correct but when

The Survivors Speak they inspected my handbag they found too much money for a seamstress (I stated this as my profession) and besides there were some objects of gold there, which belonged to the group and remained in my bag. Until then I denied everything but when they said they would investigate in Budapest who I am, I saw that it is useless to go on lying, and admitted to being a Jewess. They locked me up in prison. During the questioning I told them my frank opinion about the then ruling system and I am astonished they did not shoot me. I told, among other things, that the Hungarian State should be ashamed to force honest people to forge documents, that it is ridiculous to imprison people just because they are defending their lives without having committed any crime. The police captain said I was right but he could not release me. Then I was conducted to the prison. For a day I did not get anything to eat, they did not even let me go to the W.C., and took away all I had. When they took me again to be questioned, I told them my opinion again which seems to have impressed the police captain for the treatment changed. I never got frightened and perhaps this was what saved me from many things. After 4 days I was transferred to Budapest, where I got back 700 pengös and my Christian documents. In Budapest I went to the prison, then to the internment camp of Jávar and from there I have been deported. The whole lot of people who were still gay in Sárvár, became quite melancholy in Auschwitz. We suddenly felt what it was like to be pushed back to the state of beasts. It is depressing when one’s hair is shaved, to dress in those rags and be dirty. It was so humiliating and shameful. The best example is that we were never called by name, just by our numbers. It was a characteristic feature of German methods to deprive the prisoners of everything that might recall human life. We could not keep a toothbrush, instead of human dwellings we had to live in dirty huts, our simple clean clothes were replaced by dirty rags, etc. Later, when we were taken to work, we got a piece of linen. We were quite happy about it. At home I never took so much pleasure in a piece of beautiful and costly clothing as in this plain cloth which at least was not ragged. I think there are some advantages in having lived in deportation, at least for those who did not perish. We have become modest and have learned to appreciate kindness and goodness better than before. We are looking at people from a new angle. We expect from them, and want to give them, warmth. Besides, there was a certain movement around us in the camp. Everything had to

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Chapter 12 be done with speed. For instance, we were allowed to bathe for 2 minutes only. This of course is not enough to wash properly, but in any case, I am doing now everything much faster, for I have somehow brought along a sort of army spirit which was predominant in the camp. The most depressing thing in Auschwitz was that the camp has been surrounded by a high-tension fence. We almost got mad when we looked out and saw the shining wires. We knew we are prisoners but this fence never allowed us to forget what was waiting for us. Thorn camp was better insofar as there was no longer such a terrible electric fence. Nevertheless, it was impossible to escape. We did not speak the language, and with our hair shaved or very short everybody would have realized at once from where we are coming. Thus the Germans were sure we could stay. In spite of this, 2 girls once escaped. Of course they were soon caught. Had they not turned up, the camp would have been decimated. I was block commander but finally I was deposed from this “post of honor” as I was not energetic enough. After this I worked for a short time, but the Russians approached rapidly, the Germans evacuated the camp and carried us on to Bromberg. Here the ground again became hot for them and in a night they just disappeared, leaving us behind. The next morning the Russians arrived and we were free. Now I am waiting here in Bucharest for a chance to emigrate to Palestine. This was always the aim of my life which I hope will be realized soon. I must find a home country and a home to end all the vicissitudes I had to go through. (She states 13 names of survivors) (signed) Maria Gara We certify the above to be a true translation of the original. Translated from Hungarian Original by George Tolnai30

Traditionally, testimony often takes the form of a constructed narrative or an interview. Document 12-6, presenting the experiences of Transnistria’s Jews during the war in the forced labor camps of the region, broadens our concept to include ethnographic research. M. I. Beregovskii collected this

30. The author was unable to learn more about his role in the project.

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testimony as ethnography on the heels of liberation of the region.31 The song featured here, “In Those Days,” speaks both generally and specifically to the conditions in the ghettos and concentration camps in this still understudied area. It depicts the conditions and corruption present in Balta, the region’s capital, and Bershad,32 one of its major ghettos. The young survivor who relates this song, Genie Soyfer,33 takes great pains to describe the secretary of the Bershad Jewish community as a heartless and scheming predator. The author notes that this man (whom the song names only as “Perlmuter”) is a Jew from Bukovina; he is therefore most likely German speaking and German acculturated. Soyfer, who hails from the Yiddish-speaking population, may thus be enacting age-old rivalries and prejudices between these two populations. Ultimately, this song serves as an example of a “testimony” in a different form, while also modeling a different purpose: the preservation of a traumatic yet important cultural artifact.

31. Moisei (also Moishe) Iakovlecih Beregovskii (1892–1961) was a noted Jewish folklorist and ethnomusicologist before the war. Beregovskii thus followed in the footsteps of other Jewish ethnographic researchers, including S. Y. Ansky, whose famous attempts to record what he believed was a vanishing Jewish rural life at the turn of the century resulted in his celebrated play The Dybbuk. During the war, Beregovskii resided in Ufa, Bashkiria, with other staff from the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, where he continued his research in the Bashkiria region. After the end of the war in the Ukraine, Beregovskii received his PhD at the Moscow Conservatory in Jewish instrumental folk music (1944). During this time he returned to former Jewish ghettos in the Czernowitz and Vinnitsa regions of what was postwar Ukraine, though they had been under Romanian and German control between 1941 and 1943. As part of a project to preserve Jewish folklore traditions, he collected and recorded songs in Yiddish from those remaining in the region. For more details on Beregovskii’s life and work, see Mark Slobin, ed., Old Jewish Folk Music: The Collections and Writing of Moshe Beregovski (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000). 32. The Germans occupied Bershad on July 29, 1941; the ghetto was established in September of that same year. In December, a typhus epidemic erupted, claiming eight thousand of the ghetto’s twenty thousand Jews from Bukovina, Bessarabia, Odessa, Balta, and Peschanaia. Between 1942 and 1944, a resistance group also operated in the ghetto, led by Iosif Blinder. For more information, see Aleksander Kruglov and Ovidiu Creangă, “Bershad,” in The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, vol. 3: Camps and Ghettos under European Regimes Aligned with Nazi Germany, ed. Joseph White (Bloomington: Indiana University Press in association with the USHMM, 2016). 33. The author was unable to find further information about this person.

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DOCUMENT 12-6: Genie Soyfer, “In Those Days,” August 7, 1945, Beregovskii Archive of the Vernadsky Library, Kiev, Ukraine (translated from Yiddish).

In those days [In di teg] In those days, in the winter I was taken off to Balte [Balta]34 I ran away from there alone They met me when I got home. Just as I get home, back here I am caught by the plutaner35 I turn about, this way and there I am soon caught by a gendarmer. They took my things away from me Sent me to the forest of Savran36 And so from there, too, I flee They met me when I got home. I hear—they’re knocking at the door Here come the policemen—four From the bed-o in secret-o There’s a fright and great big scare-o Out cries Perlmuter, secretary,37 “Jews, give a bribe of money.” Vilnits38 is so proud, so smug In Preture he chops wood.39 The pug-nosed Perlmuter Now carries in Balte a pail of water You did indeed take the bribe And now in Balte you must reside.40 (Transcribed by Genie Soyfer, 18 years old, learned in 1942. Bershad, August 19, 1945) 34. The capital of Transnistria. Following this first note, all footnotes appear as in the original text according to the 1944 redactor of the Beregovskii project. 35. Chief of Gendarmes (Romanian). 36. A Jewish shtetl near Bershad. 37. Secretary of the Bershad community, one of those who had arrived from Bukovina. 38. An individual from Bukovina—who dealt illegally in foreign currency. 39. Pretor—Chief of Economy and Population. 40. Their punishment for taking bribes.

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“I DID NOT INTERVIEW THE DEAD”: DAVID BODER AND THE FIRST RECORDED TESTIMONY In the summer of 1946, sociologist David Boder began arguably the first audiotestimony project that sought primarily, as its agenda, to record memory. Amid the numerous other testimony projects outlined here, David Boder’s efforts stand out in several ways. First, while Boder was certainly not the first person to interview these survivors, as this chapter has shown, he was the first to audiorecord their words. Thus, unlike the written testimonies, Boder’s recordings captured the process of the interview itself. Second, Boder’s interviews were among the first psychologically inflected projects. Unlike CHC, DEGOB, the testimony projects of the AJJDC, and others, Boder relied on the so-called trauma index41 developed for displaced persons rather than soliciting questions for evidentiary purposes. Finally, Boder spoke to and interviewed survivors in the language of their choice instead of mediating their words through an interpreter. Through this method and process, Boder preserved the interchange between interviewer and interviewee. As a result, we receive—for the first time—testimony as it evolves rather than as a finished product. David Boder was himself a refugee, born in Libau (Liepaja) in 1886 in what is now Latvia. He studied in Vilna, Leipzig, Chicago, and St. Petersburg, where he earned a degree in psychology from the Vladimir Bekhterev’s Psychoneurological Institute. Boder fought in the Russian army during World War I and subsequently fled the Russian Revolution for Japan, Mexico, and eventually the United States, where he received a master’s from the University of Chicago and a doctorate from Northwestern University. During and after the war, Boder worked at Lewis University (now the Illinois Institute of Technology).42 He arrived at what he called the “happy idea” of interviewing Jewish displaced persons immediately upon the end of the war in May 1945. Although he had hoped to gain entrance to Germany in the coming months, obtaining the necessary approvals delayed his trip by a year. In the end, Boder visited DP camps, Organization for Rehabilitation through Training (ORT) facilities, children’s homes, and AJJDC sites in Paris, Geneva, Munich, Italy, and Wiesbaden, where he interviewed approximately 130 Jewish DPs.43 41. For more information on Boder’s use of the “trauma index,” see David Boder, I Did Not Interview the Dead (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1949), xvii–xix. 42. For a discussion of Boder’s biography and how it relates to his testimony project, see Alan Rosen, The Wonder of Their Voices: The 1946 Holocaust Interviews of David Boder (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 25–49. 43. See Alan Rosen, “Early Postwar Voices: David Boder’s Life and Work,” Voices of the Holocaust, http://voices.iit.edu/david_boder (accessed January 23, 2013).

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Boder’s first interviews took place on July 29, 1946, at the ORT Training School in Paris. He describes the experience of initiating these interviews in his book I Did Not Interview the Dead (1949): I would meet a colony of DPs in a particular shelter house for lunch or dinner. After the meal I would ask them to sing and, with their knowledge, I recorded the songs. When I played these back, the wonder of hearing their own voices recorded was boundless. Then I would explain my project and ask for volunteers. [. . .] When the selected individual appeared for the interview I would say, “We know very little in America about the things that happened to you in concentration camps. If you want to help us out by contributing information about the fate of the displaced persons, tell your own story.”44

The interviews themselves were conducted in a psychoanalytic setting one person at a time: Boder would sit behind the speaker, and no prepared notes were permitted. When Boder translated the interviews, he did so orally, with a stenographer who wrote down his words. Boder did all of his own translations.45 Boder’s interviews were, for all intents, the first to treat survivors as victims of trauma with their own individual stories to tell that were valuable in and of themselves. In addition to this psychological purpose, Boder also strove to raise awareness among the American public regarding the plight of the Jewish displaced persons in Europe. Ultimately, his interviews aimed to, in his words, “gather personal reports in the form of wire recordings for future psychological and anthropological study.” At the same time, he recognized that the stories he gathered were not, in the end, “the grimmest stories that could be told—I did not interview the dead.”46 Document 12-7, which excerpts Boder’s interview with Polia Bisenhaus47— among the first he conducted on July 29, 1946—exemplifies many aspects of his interview method and the subsequent product. From the very beginning, we notice the interaction with technology and the interviewee’s reticence with its use. We also note the relative free association of the interview; Bisenhaus floats between her present challenges, her time in a concentration camp, and other circumstances. She has a fluid relationship with the timeline of her experiences 44. Boder, I Did Not Interview the Dead, xii. 45. Ibid., xiii. 46. Ibid., xiv, xix. 47. The author was unable to locate any further details about this person beyond what is provided in the testimony itself.

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and mischaracterizes some of the particulars of Bergen-Belsen. This early audio testimony, then, serves as a case study in the challenges, complications, and complexities involved in the type of conversation that Boder attempted to solicit and capture. Ultimately, the Boder interviews mark the transition from eyewitness accounts taken for the purpose of augmenting the historical record or pursuing juridical indictment to those taken for the sake of the survivors themselves— in the name of individual memory, traumatic representation, or the preservation and study of narrative qua narrative. Accounts like this would eventually become a part of what historians like Annette Wieviorka have called “the era of testimony.”48 That Boder’s effort emerged as part of a genealogy of testimony makes it both inheritor of and innovator within these somewhat familiar efforts. This final document also marks a distinct change within the nature of Holocaust memory. For the first time, Holocaust memory emerges as a history to be recorded and preserved for its own sake and presented to the general public. This turning point marks a shift in attitudes toward the value of Jewish voices in this early period. In the end, it is this valuing of survivors—and survival—that emerges and endures. DOCUMENT 12-7: Oral history interview of Polia Bisenhaus, conducted by David P. Boder, ORT School, Paris, July 29, 1946, Voices of the Holocaust Project, Paul V. Galvin Library, Illinois Institute of Technology, USHMMA RG 50.472*0002 (translated from Yiddish and German).49

BODER: You talk into this. BISENHAUS: What do I talk? BODER: I will tell you. Tell me please, Polia. What is your full name? BIESENHAUS: Excuse me? BODER: What is your name? [Repeats the question in English.] BISENHAUS: My name? Polia Bisenhaus. BODER: Can you repeat that? BODER: [English] Polia what? BISENHAUS: Polia Bisenhaus. BODER: Bisenhaus? 48. Wieviorka, The Era of the Witness. 49. Accessed through the Voices of the Holocaust website; see “Polia Bisenhaus,” Voices of the Holocaust, http://voices.iit.edu/interviewee?doc=bisenhausP (accessed on January 24, 2013).

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Chapter 12 BISENHAUS: Bisenhaus. BODER: Bisenhaus. BISENHAUS: [French] Yes. BODER: Where are you from? BISENHAUS: I’m from Poland. BODER: You are from Poland. What city in Poland? BISENHAUS: Staszów. BODER: Staszów. What is that, Russian Poland? BISENHAUS: It used to be Russian Poland there. BODER: Come a little closer. It was Russian Poland? BISENHAUS: Russian Poland [. . .] before the war, and now it is also Russian Poland. BODER: Right. But during the war, were the Russians there, or . . . ? BISENHAUS: The Russians. BODER: The Russians were there. Alright. Now tell me, then when did the Russians leave, and when did the Germans come? Tell me the whole story. [. . .]50 BODER: So in what sort of a camp were you in? Where were you in a camp? BISENHAUS: I was in a camp in Poland, in a labor camp, and in Germany I was in an extermination camp. BODER: An extermination camp? BISENHAUS: [French] Yes. BODER: Alright. Tell me about the labor camp. BISENHAUS: Well, we worked twelve hours a day, the whole day, and one week during the day, one week at night. BODER: What work did you do? BISENHAUS: Ammunitions. That is, well, ammunitions. BODER: Ah, it was a factory. BISENHAUS: [. . .] factory. [French] Yes. BODER: Now then, and when you . . . what did they give you to eat? BISENHAUS: Well, in Poland it wasn’t bad, in Poland they gave us pretty good food . . . some days in the week it was meat, and in Germany it was very bad. BODER: Aha. But that was in Poland. And [in English] how long . . . [in German] How long did you work in Poland? BISENHAUS: In Poland, three years. BODER: Three years? And why were you taken from there?

50. Bisenhaus describes liberation by the Russians.

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BISENHAUS: When the Russians got close, they . . . in Kielce, they sent us to Częstochowa, and then, when they got close to Częstochowa, they sent us to Germany. BODER: To Germany? BISENHAUS: [Not clear.] BODER: Aha. Why did you say you were in an extermination camp? What camp was that? BISENHAUS: Bergen-Belsen. BODER: Bergen-Belsen? BISENHAUS: [In French] Yes. BODER: Ohhh. And what did you do there? BISENHAUS: We did nothing there, we sat around and didn’t get any food. Ten deca[grams] of bread per day, but some days no bread, either [. . .] said that we stole from the stores of bread, so they didn’t give us any food, and when the SS came and asked, “why have you not received food today?”—they told the SS that we should say: we stole. BODER: So, you should say . . . BISENHAUS: Yes, we should say that we stole, and therefore today we get, we have a food punishment. BODER: Aha. BISENHAUS: And therefore they didn’t give us any food. That happened many times during the week. BODER: And how did you sleep, tell me [. . .]. BISENHAUS: We slept on the ground, it was—we sat on the ground the whole day, on the same, it was straw, and afterwards, at night, we slept in the same place. It was very dirty there, many died from the filth that was there. BODER: What did the Germans say: why were you held there? BISENHAUS: They told us nothing about why they were holding us there. They didn’t tell us, but we knew, they were holding us because they wanted to exterminate us. But they didn’t succeed. BODER: All right. Did they exterminate other people there [. . .]? BISENHAUS: Yes, very many. When the people become weaker, because from day to day the people became weaker, because they didn’t get any food, they took us, exterminated. It was a chamber there, where they gassed, and after that burned, and this is well known after all, what the Germans did. BODER: How do you mean, it is known? In America they know very little. BISENHAUS: Ah, in America they know everything! Because the journals have already written much [. . .]. Don’t you know?

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Chapter 12 BODER: Yes. Some people know, some don’t know. This is why I want—do you have relatives in America? [. . .]51 BODER: How many weeks, how many months were you in Bergen-Belsen? BISENHAUS: In Belsen I was . . . three months in Belsen. BODER: Three months? BISENHAUS: Three months. BODER: Were many people exterminated there? BISENHAUS: Yes, very many died because we, at roll-call—do you know what roll-call is? BODER: Yes. BISENHAUS: They called out people, they went completely naked, nothing on, this was— BODER: Why did they have nothing on? BISENHAUS: They took from us everything we had from home, all of our clothes, and they gave us these, with the stripes [. . .], without clothes, without stockings, and this is how we went in the greatest—January, in the greatest cold, January, February, this is the greatest cold, we went around completely naked, and that’s why many died. Without food, not having slept, not having washed, and that’s why many died. BODER: Did the Nazis violate the women, did they— BISENHAUS: Beat them? BODER: No, I mean, were they indecent with the women? BISENHAUS: Well of course, that’s understood. BODER: What do you mean, “it’s understood.” BISENHAUS: Well, they treated the women very badly. And they beat them many times, when we weren’t standing up straight at the roll-call, because we [. . .], when it was cold, we would lean on each other, so they beat us, over our heads, and like this [. . .] BODER: Well, say for example: what did you do the whole day in Belsen? Let’s say, you woke up in the morning—at what time? BISENHAUS: In the morning there was a roll-call to get up, at four o’clock, three o’ clock, five o’ clock. BODER: And? BISENHAUS: So we went to wash, and “washing” was a room, very small, cold water. Completely cold, and we went in completely naked, and many

51. Bisenhaus and Boder discuss her two uncles in the United States and Boder’s desire to interview them.

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caught cold, very many [pause] And the organism is weak, you don’t eat, you wash with cold water— BODER: Were there men or women, that [. . .] BISENHAUS: Women [. . .]. These were— BODER: No, no, I mean the Nazis. BISENHAUS: The Nazis? These were women and men, but the women were much worse, they were much worse to us than the men were. BODER: How come? BISENHAUS: Well, the women beat us, very, just terribly. They beat us, they permitted, there were many Jews, Turkish and Romanian, who were the camp leaders, camp elders [Lagerälteste]. And they were much worse than the Nazis. BODER: You mean that there were Jewish camp leaders? BISENHAUS: Yes. BODER: And— BISENHAUS: And the Jews were very bad to us. Very bad. BODER: So the Jews were camp leaders, and they— BISENHAUS: Yes, yes, they treated us very poorly. BODER: To the other Jews. BISENHAUS: Yes, very poorly. BODER: Well, tell me: you got up at three, four in the morning, and you went to wash—then what. BISENHAUS: Yes, afterwards they brought coffee, black coffee, many times we didn’t get this either, and without bread. BODER: Without bread. Alright. BISENHAUS: Afterwards, twelve o’clock, eleven thirty, eleven o’clock, however it turned out, it was lunchtime. Lunchtime was: a little soup, three-quarters of a liter, sometimes a half liter, sometimes not even a half liter, and it was with turnips. If you found three pieces of turnip, that was very good, that was already a good soup. And afterwards, five o’clock, four o’clock, sometimes six o’clock, there was bread. One piece of bread, this was a long bread, divided among ten people, twelve people. It came out to about eight deca[grams] of bread, ten deca[grams] a day. That was the food. BODER: And then in the evening? And then, after eating, what did you do? BIDENHAUS: Well, afterwards, we sat some more. Like the rest of the day. [. . .] lunch was after the roll-call. The roll-call was every day. BODER: What do you call the roll-call? What was the roll-call? BISENHAUS: The roll-call is to count, whether anyone has escaped, or if anyone has died. This is so they would know exactly how many there are to

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Chapter 12 give over further, how many are in the camp. How many women, men, it was, many times the roll-call lasted four, five hours. And many people fell at the roll-call, because they were—from the cold and fatigue, hunger— BODER: And what was done with them? BISENHAUS: Well, afterwards, we went, many times after the roll-call—after five hours of standing outside—they took us for work. The work was to carry sticks, various sorts of wood, from one place to another. That was— the work was nothing, but they beat us many times, when we couldn’t run so fast, and so on. BODER: Now tell me, was there a doctor there [. . .]? BISENHAUS: Yes, there was a doctor, a dentist [. . .]. BODER: A dentist? Did he do anything to the prisoners, did he do anything? BISENHAUS: Well, he just took out teeth, tore them out, if someone had a toothache he would take out teeth. BODER: Was it a German doctor? BISENHAUS: Well, there was a German doctor and there was a Jewish doctor. BODER: A Jewish doctor? BISENHAUS: A Jewish one. BODER: And tell me, how were you liberated? BISENHAUS: I was liberated at Dachau, by the Americans. BODER: Why, were you sent from Belsen? BISENHAUS: From Belsen, and after that I was in three camps. BODER: Tell me, which— BISENHAUS: From Belsen I was in Burgau, after that in Turkenheim [Turckheim]. I was in Burgau for three weeks, or four weeks. After that, I was in Turkenheim for two weeks. Afterwards, they led us, when the Americans had already gotten close, they led us to Dachau. And we were liberated there. On the 30th— BODER: How were you taken from one camp to the other? By train, truck, what. BISENHAUS: Yes, from Bergen-Belsen to Burgau, we went in a railway car. BODER: In railway cars? BISENHAUS: Railway car, yes. BODER: How long did that take? BISENHAUS: It took a whole eight days. The trip took eight days. We didn’t get any food on the way, and there were bombardments, and very many were killed by the bombs. [. . .]52

52. Bisenhaus and Boder discuss the journey to Dachau and the conditions there.

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BISENHAUS: In Dachau, I was three weeks, after the liberation. After that— BODER: But before the liberation—how long were you— BISENHAUS: Well, I was two days— BODER: Only two days in Dachau. BISENHAUS: Yes, two days. BODER: And then came the liberation. BISENHAUS: Yes, then the liberation came, and we were liberated by the Americans, and it was good already. BODER: Yes. Were many SS arrested there, when the Americans came? BISENHAUS: Yes, they arrested many, but the Americans did not do anything to them. When an SS was recognized who had caused much harm to the Jews, the Americans did not allow anything to be done to him. BODER: The Americans? BISENHAUS: They did not allow anything to be done. BODER: They did not allow— BISENHAUS: No, they did not allow. BODER: —anything to be done to them. BISENHAUS: [French] No. BODER: So where did the Jews get the rifles [. . .]? BISENHAUS: They didn’t get them, they took them away from the Nazis themselves, when they threw away the rifles. They took them themselves! BODER: Aha. And how, and why did you come to Paris? BISENHAUS: To Paris? My uncle and aunt brought me here.53 BODER: From where, in Paris? BISENHAUS: From—yes, they live here. BODER: Oh, they lived here in Paris? BISENHAUS: Yes, in Paris [. . .]. BODER: Did you have their address? BISENHAUS: No, I didn’t have their address, but they found out from a [. . .], from a list. That was sent from the camp, so they found out in America. My uncle made inquiries [. . .] in Paris, who this is, Bisenhaus Polia, that they saw on the list. They didn’t know because they didn’t know me, because I was very young when I went left. Afterwards they— BODER: [. . .] BISENHAUS: Afterwards they found out and brought me here. BODER: They brought you to Paris. And how long have you been in Paris? BISENHAUS: I’ve been in Paris six months. BODER: Six months. And you want to go to Palestine? 53. The author has been unable to identify Bisenhaus’s relatives in Paris.

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Chapter 12 BISENHAUS: Hmm. BODER: More than America. BISENHAUS: More than America. [. . .]54 BODER: Aha. I’d like to ask you for something else. BISENHAUS: Yes? BODER: When I . . . I am a professor, and I study these things, do you understand? But I want to see, if you will give the address of your uncle, and from the— BISENHAUS: But I don’t have the [. . .] address, only— BODER: [. . .] BISENHAUS: I have it at home. BODER: Ah, [in English and Yiddish] I will be here tomorrow and the day after, and so on. BISENHAUS: Yes, yes. Will you be here in the morning, too? BODER: Yes. BISENHAUS: I will bring my address. My uncle’s [address], yes? BODER: Yes. And I will then visit your uncle. BISENHAUS: Yes. That is very interesting, and you will send greetings from me, that you saw me in ORT55— BODER: Yes, he will be very happy. BISENHAUS: Well yes, naturally. BODER: [. . .]56 [in German/Yiddish and English] This is a picture from a famous artist. From the last three years that you experienced, what do you think this picture means? BISENHAUS: Well, this is a picture of a woman who, I believe, was deported and lost everything, and she is despairing, she is thinking of what to do, she has no way out. BODER: And what do you think this picture is? BISENHAUS: This is picture, this is also about the war, this is [. . .] the war, no? BODER: Yes, go on. BISENHAUS: This is, it must be [. . .]

54. Boder and Bisenhaus discuss her desire to immigrate to Palestine. 55. Translator’s note: Vocational schools for Holocaust survivors, funded by the Organization for Rehabilitation through Training (ORT). 56. Boder’s note: “Here I showed her one of the TAT cards” (translator’s note: a psychological test used widely following World War II, especially with subjects who had undergone great trauma; responses were evaluated as reflections of the subject’s emotional state).

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BODER: And what do you think happened to him? BISENHAUS: Well, the same as before, he lost everything, his whole family, has been left alone, just like me, I am also the only one remaining from my whole family. BODER: What is this? BISENHAUS: Well, that is, I think—I don’t know if this is right. BODER: Yes, but naturally. What do you think? BISENHAUS: I think he is crying for his wife, she has died, or it is his daughter, I don’t know for sure [. . .] BODER: And what do you think this is? BISENHAUS: This? [. . .] BODER: Speak louder. BISENHAUS: [. . .] to run away, where to hide, and he has nothing. BODER: And what do you think [in English] is this? BISENHAUS: This, well, work, they’re working in the field. BODER: Where do you think this is? BISENHAUS: Well, is it not Palestine? Perhaps, perhaps it is Palestine. Yes, this is very nice. He’s working, yes? A haluts [pioneer] is working in the field. Yes, this is very nice. BODER: Tell me, do you have a father and mother? BISENHAUS: Well, my father and mother were deported, the whole family was deported. BODER: When were they deported? BISENHAUS: ’42. BODER: When you were still in Kielce? BISENHAUS: Yes, when I was in Kielce. I was still at home. But I was sent from Kielce, they [. . .] us from our town to a . . . it was called a “shop,” that is, of all trades. Well, I went into such a shop, paid money, I was accepted, and afterwards, after eight days, I was in the shop, afterwards they sent me to Kielce. And my family was deported—I don’t know where they are. BODER: When was your family deported? BISENHAUS: ’42. That is, well, [. . .]— BODER: No, but I mean: how long after the Germans came did they deport your family? BISENHAUS: Oh, the Germans came in ’39. ’39. And my parents were deported in ’42. BODER: Your parents were deported in ’42. BISENHAUS: Yes, ’42.

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Chapter 12 BODER: Were you at home when they were deported? BISENHAUS: No, I wasn’t at home at all. BODER: You were in Kielce. Did you have, do you have brothers and sisters? BISENHAUS: I had [. . .], today I have no [. . .] six of the whole family. BODER: How many brothers and sisters did you have? BISENHAUS: I had two brothers and three sisters. BODER: And where are they? BISENHAUS: Deported! My two brothers were in Skarżysko57 and are no more. They were probably murdered in Skarżysko. [. . .] BODER: What should I tell your uncle in Chicago? BISENHAUS: Well, whatever you want to say. Well, you have— BODER: Are you happy here? BISENHAUS: Well yes, I have it good, at my aunt’s, at my uncle’s. BODER: Aha. And you are studying here, you’re learning at ORT. BISENHAUS: Yes, I’m learning in ORT to make soutien gorge [French: brassieres]. BODER: What is that? BISENHAUS: I’m learning to make soutien gorge. BODER: What is that? BISENHAUS: It is corsets, and well, soutien gorge, for—for women. BODER: And what do you do during the day? [Boder’s note: The interview took place at an ORT night school.] BISENHAUS: Well, during the day I don’t do anything, today I’m not doing anything. BODER: You don’t work? BISENHAUS: No, I don’t work, I am with my aunt. [Boder’s note: It was hard for DPs to get work permits in Paris.] BODER: [In English.] This is a record of Polia Bisenhaus taken at the ORT school, evening course, on July 29th, in Paris, 1946.

57. Translator’s note: a labor camp not far from Kielce. Skarżysko-Kamienna was located 120 kilometers (75 miles) southwest of Lublin on the Kamienna river. Immediately on German occupation, Jews were conscripted into forced labor. In fact, by August 1940, 90 percent of the Jewish male population had been drafted for this purpose. The ghetto was formally established in May 1941. For more information, see Evelyn Zegenhagen, “SkarżyskoKamienna,” in The USHMM Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 2:308–11.

List of Documents

Part I: The “Final Solution” and the End of the War 1: The End of the War and the Last Throes of Genocide Document 1-1: Letters from Zivia Lubetkin and Yitzhak Zuckerman on the “Aryan side” of Warsaw to members in the Hashomer Hatzair movement in Slovakia, January 6, 1944, USHMMA RG 68.112M (Selected Records from the Ghetto Fighter’s House), reel 33, file 2001 (translated from Hebrew). Document 1-2: Notre Voix, underground newspaper, Paris, September 1944, 3–6 (translated from Yiddish). Document 1-3: Visa for Isaak and Berta Herzberg to enter the Republic of El Salvador, January 11, 1944, USHMMPA WS# 05794 (translated from French). Document 1-4: Report of the Interim Committee and the Commission on Rescue, Commission on Palestine, Commission on Post-War, to the delegates of the American Jewish Conference, November 1, 1944 (New York: American Jewish Conference, 1944), 53–57. Document 1-5: Memoir of Meilach Lubocki of Kovno, Lithuania, written in Landsberg DP camp, September 20, 1945, 40–51 (translated from Yiddish). Document 1-6: Letter from Luigi Zappelli, president of the Colonia Libera Italiana, to Max Huber, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Lausanne, Switzerland, July 28, 1944, USHMMA RG 68.045M, reel 16, file 126 (translated from French). Document 1-7: Diary of Lilly Klein in the Sömmerda slave labor camp, February–March 1945, USHMMA Acc. 2009.109.2 Lilly Isaacs collection (translated from Hungarian).

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List of Documents

Document 1-8: Eyewitness description of life in the Kratzau concentration camp, November 1945, USHMMA RG 68.045M, reel 7, file 58 (translated from French). Document 1-9: “Diary” of Lajos Ornstein en route to Mauthausen, June 1944–May 1945, USHMMA Acc. 2006.102 Paul and Anna Ornstein collection (translated from Hungarian). Document 1-10: Memoir of Michal Kraus, 1947, 63–65, USHMMA Acc. 2006.51 Michael J. Kraus collection (translated from Czech). Document 1-11: Journal of Philip D. Vock, August 1945, USHMMA Acc. 1997.11 Philip D. Vock papers (translated from French).

2: Experiencing “Liberation” Document 2-1: Letter by Irving P. Eisner, Buchenwald, May 15, 1945, USHMMA Acc. 2012.16.1 Irving P. Eisner collection. Document 2-2: Letter from Joseph W. Eaton to “My dear brothers,” January 16, 1945, USHMMA Acc. 2009.401 Joseph W. Eaton collection. Document 2-3: Chaplain Abraham Klausner, “Soon after the Liberation,” Fun letstn churbn (Munich) 1, no. 1 (August 1946): 3 (translated from Yiddish). Document 2-4: Letter from Julius Lewy to his liberators, Linz, Austria, May 30, 1945, USHMMA Acc. 2005.120 J. George Mitnick collection. Document 2-5: Letter from an unidentified Jewish author to his wife upon his return to Vienna, August 9, 1945, USHMMA RG 68.045M, reel 27, file 182 (translated from German). Document 2-6: Diary 11b of Michal Kraus covering events from 1942 to 1945, written between 1945 and 1947, 65–67, 71–77, USHMMA Acc. 2006.51 Michael J. Kraus collection (translated from Czech). Document 2-7: Journal of Philip D. Vock, August 1945, USHMMA Acc. 1997.11 Philip D. Vock papers (translated from French). Document 2-8: Poem “The War Is Finished” by Ruth Szmarag, Brussels, May 8, 1945, USHMMA Acc. 2002.404 Ruth Szmarag collection (translated from French). Document 2-9: Editorial, Unzer sztyme: Organ of the Sharith Hapletah in the British Zone, January 1, 1946, USHMM Library Microfilms, LMO251.

3: Adjusting to Peace, Surviving Survival Document 3-1: Diary of Dora Apsan, May 12, 1945, Schildberg, Germany, USHMMA Acc. 2005.166.1 Dora Apsan collection (translated from Hungarian). Document 3-2: Correspondence between Dr. David L. Filtzer, Baltimore, and Michal Kraus, Ćeské Skalice, Czechoslovakia, October 12 and December 4, 1945, USHMMA Acc. 2004.499 Michael Kraus letters.

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Document 3-3: Diary of Selma Wijnberg, July and August 1944, Chełm, Poland, USHMMA Acc. 2007.69 Saartje (Selma) Wijnberg Engel collection (translated from Dutch). Document 3-4: World Jewish Congress, report on the fate of “Kasztner train” Jews after returning to Cluj, Romania, February 13, 1946, USHMMA RG 68.045M, reel 20, file 148 (translated from German). Document 3-5: Statement from Arthur Gold, Montreux, Switzerland, to Gerhart Riegner, Geneva, on care for Jewish orphans, July 1945, USHMMA RG 68.045M, reel 18, file 137 (translated from German). Document 3-6: Reports by Becky Althoff, psychiatric consultant to the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee at the Föhrenwald DP camp, children’s home, Germany, June 7, 1946, USHMMA RG 10.146 Henry Holland collection. Document 3-7: Intake form of David and Gita Gutman, 1946–1947, Va’ad ha-Hatzalah Children’s Home, Ulm, Germany, USHMMA RG 68.098M, reel 2, file 13.

Part II: Jews on the Move: Finding and Defining “Home” in the Postwar Era 4: Returning “Home”: Emigration and the Search for Postwar Normalcy Document 4-1: Letter from Dr. Heinrich Schur, acting head of the Jewish community of Vienna, to the Housing Office of Vienna, July 27, 1945, USHMMA RG 68.045M (WJC Geneva), reel 4, file 32 (translated from German). Document 4-2: Reflections on the Jewish refugee problem in Switzerland by Otto H. Heim, president of the Swiss Aid Society for Jewish Refugees (Verband Schweizerischer Jüdischer Flüchtlingshilfen), November 1945, USHMMA RG 68.045M, reel 20, file 146 (translated from German). Document 4-3: Statement by Zdenka Fantlová to the Sambetskommittén för Demokratiskt Uppbyggnadsarbete, or the Cooperative Committee for Democratic Reconstruction, Norrköping, Sweden, May 15, 1945, USHMMA Acc. 2004.635 Pia-Kristina Garde collection (translated from German). Document 4-4: Letter from Simon Nordheim to British authorities on behalf of his daughter, Rachel (Chelly) Nordheim, July 12, 1946, cited and reproduced in Moshe Nordheim, From Rebuke to Rejoicing (Victoria, Canada: Trafford Publishing, 2004), 445. Document 4-5: Letter from Rachel (Chelly) Nordheim near Leiden, the Netherlands, to her children in Kfar Hassidim settlement, northern Israel, December 19, 1946, USHMMA Acc. 2007.510.1 Moshe and Chaya Nordheim collection (translated from Dutch). Document 4-6: “677 Jewish Refugees Arrive Here from Europe on First Postwar Immigrant Ship,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, May 21, 1946.

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Document 4-7: Letter from Leopold and Isabel Winnykamien to their son, Frederick Weinstein, in New York, July 3, 1946, USHMMA Acc. 2008.321.1 Frederick Weinstein collection. Document 4-8: Affidavit to the state of New York from Frederick Weinstein on behalf of his parents, Leopold and Isabel Winnykamien, New York City, June 19, 1947, USHMMA Acc. 2008.321.1 Frederick Weinstein collection. Document 4-9: “Windows into the World: Immigration Overseas,” AJR Information (issued by the Association of Jewish Refugees in Great Britain), no. 1 (January 1946): 2. Document 4-10: “Refugees in the Dominions,” AJR Information (issued by the Association of Jewish Refugees in Great Britain), no. 5 (May 1946): 2. Document 4-11: Copy of a report submitted to the Argentine government from the Delegation of Argentine Jewish Associations, Buenos Aires, April 2, 1945, USHMMA RG 72.003 (Selected Records Relating to Jewish Immigration and Settlement in Argentina) (translated from Spanish). Document 4-12: Selections from The Shanghai Almanac, 1946–1947, published by the Shanghai Echo, 37, 80, USHMMA RG 69.005M.001 (Australian Jewish Historical Society). Document 4-13: Case files of the Jewish War Appeal, South African Jewish Board of Refugees, regarding the placement of Irene Kayem, Records of South African Refugees, USHMMA RG 78.001M, reel 3.

5: Jews and Displaced Persons Camps in Postwar Europe Document 5-1: Report on conditions in assembly centers for Jewish displaced persons, Chaplain Judah Nadich, advisor to the theater commander on Jewish activities, October 22, 1945, USHMMA RG 19.036 Rabbi Judah Nadich collection. Document 5-2: Letters from Harry Lerner, Stuttgart DP camp, to his parents in Nebraska, December 21, 1945, and January 11 and February 5, 1946, USHMMA RG 19.029.01 Harry and Clare Lerner collection. Document 5-3: Response by the Board of Deputies of British Jews to the statement of Lieutenant General Frederick Morgan, European head of UNRRA, London, January 3, 1946, Board of Deputies of British Jews Records, USHMMA RG 59.023, reel 28. Document 5-4: Selections from Zamlung fun katset un geto lider, compiled by Sami Feder, Bergen-Belsen DP camp, Germany, January 1946, USHMMA Acc. 1996.80 Henry Hanski papers (translated from Yiddish). Document 5-5: “Ten Railroad Cars ‘UNRRA,’” from Lebedik Amchu, a zamlung lider fun R. Lipszyc-Green (Bergen-Belsen, 1946), YIVO Library collection, 00055468 (translated from Yiddish). Document 5-6: “Dos lid fun yidishn Di-Pi,” music by Meshulam (Sylvain) Lewin with lyrics by H. Leivick (published in Paris, 1947), YIVO Library collection, 1988-Y-12.5 (translated from Yiddish).

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Document 5-7: Selections from the commemorative booklet “A Memory of Good Friendship in Hard Days, Dedicated to Carl Atkin, Director of UNRRA Team 55, Deggendorf, 1st December 1945, the Jewish Community,” USHMMA Acc. 2007.162 Carl Atkin collection. Document 5-8: Jewish DPs dress up one of their own as Adolf Hitler for a Purim masquerade at the Landsberg DP camp, Germany, March 24, 1946, USHMMPA WS# 37376. Document 5-9: Program and synopsis of the play Ich leb, by Moshe Pintschewski, directed by Israel Segall, produced by the Munich Jewish Theater, 1946–1947, USHMMA RG 68.097M, folder 2, image 2186 (original in Yiddish and English).

6: Citizenship, Nationhood, and Homeland: Jewish and Non-Jewish Encounters and the Zionist Ideal Document 6-1: Yiddish-language election poster issued by the Zionist Ichud party in the Landsberg DP camp, Germany, October 1945, USHMMPA WS# 20071 (translated from Yiddish). Document 6-2: Poster, Agudat Israel, February 18, 1947, religious Zionist political posters, DP camp, USHMMA RG 68.097M, folder 1, image 2266 (translated from Yiddish). Document 6-3: Statement by Kupper, representative of the Jewish Labor Bund in Salzburg, Austria, November 11, 1947, to the AJJDC European Headquarters, Paris, USHMMA RG 68.066M, reel 12 (translated from Yiddish). Document 6-4: Booklet given to Major [Lt. Col.] Alexander H. Rosenbaum, Geringshof DP camp, Germany, August 1945, from the Kibbutz Buchenwald, USHMMA Acc. 1996.15 Lt. Col. Alexander H. Rosenbaum collection (original in Hebrew, Yiddish, and English). Document 6-5: Letter from Harry Lerner, Stuttgart DP camp, Germany, to his family in Nebraska, April 4, 1946, describing the riot that occurred there on March 29, 1946, USHMMA RG 19.029.01 Harry and Clare Lerner papers. Document 6-6: Request from the Jewish community of Neunburg vorm Wald to the chief governor of Bavaria, Regensburg, Germany, June 16, 1945, USHMMA Acc. 2009.401 Joseph W. Eaton collection, box 6, file 5 (original in German and English). Document 6-7: Plea for assistance by Josef Gansel against discrimination in postwar Czechoslovakia, August 1945, USHMMA RG 68.045M, reel 30, file 197 (translated from German). Document 6-8: Report on the situation of Jews in the postwar Soviet Union, mid-1945, USHMMA RG 68.045M, reel 5, file 38 (translated from French). Document 6-9: Selection from Jacob Pat, Ashes and Fire (New York: International Universities Press, 1947), 248–54.

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Part III: Taking Stock, Searching for Justice 7: The Search for Relatives Document 7-1: Preface and notes by Abraham Klausner, Sharit Haplatah, vol. 1 (rev.): An Extensive List of Survivors of Nazi Tyranny Published So That the Lost May Be Found and the Dead Brought Back to Life (Dachau Concentration Camp: Central Committee of Liberated Jews, Bavaria, 1946). Document 7-2: Ads searching for relatives in Dos naye lebn, Łódź, Poland, July 17, 1946, and November 6, 1946 (translated from Yiddish). Document 7-3: Letter from the Pressel family, Lyon, France, to Elie Schwerner, New York City, September 28, 1944, USHMMA Acc. 2007.413 Pressel family collection (translated from French). Document 7-4: Letter from an unnamed father in Prague (via the WJC Location Service), June 22, 1945, USHMMA RG 68.045M, World Jewish Congress Geneva Office Records, reel 4, file 29 (translated from German). Document 7-5: Personal letter from a Jewish woman in Vienna (via the WJC Location Service), August 4, 1945, USHMMA RG 68.045M, reel 4, file 32 (translated from German). Document 7-6: Letter from Max Schweitzer, Brăila, Romania, to his sister, Esther Williams, Cleveland, Ohio, October 4, 1945, USHMMA RG 10.374 Schweitzer family papers (translated from Romanian). Document 7-7: Letters from Robert S. and Arno M., Limoges, France, November 11 and August 4, 1945, Children’s Letters and Excerpts, World Jewish Congress series D, subseries 4: Child Care Division, 1942–1953, USHMMA RG 67.011M, box D80, file 10. Document 7-8: Letter from Else Heinrichmeyer to the International Tracing Service regarding the whereabouts of her niece, Edit Neumann, US Army Central Headquarters, Germany, November 4, 1945, 6.3.2.1/84406125_0_1/ITS Digital Archive, USHMM (translated from German). Document 7-9: Letter from Franz Blumenstein, Sosúa, Dominican Republic, to John F. Rich, American Friends Service Committee, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, November 2, 1945, case no. 4276, USHMMA Acc. 2002.296 American Friends Service Committee Refugee Assistance Case Files collection. Document 7-10: Diary of Rachela (Rachel) Bryk, Bergen-Belsen DP camp, September 22, 1945, USHMMA Acc. 2008.390.1 Ray Kaner collection (translated from Polish). Document 7-11: Rabbinic certificate of widowhood issued by the Central Bureau of Orthodox Communities in Budapest, Hungary, to Golda Leitman Weiss, May 14, 1946, USHMMA RG 10.522 (translated from Hebrew).

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8: Punishing the Perpetrators Document 8-1: “W.F.,” confidential report of a conversation with Professor Lawrence Preuss, advisor to the representative of the United Nations War Crimes Commission, London, March 21, 1944, Board of Deputies of British Jews Records, USHMMA RG 59.023M, reel 54. Document 8-2: Interrogation record of Dina Tsenelevna Noll, Lithuania, September 12, 1944, GARF f. 7021 op. 149 d. 35 ll. 56–58, USHMMA RG 22.002M Extraordinary State Commission to Investigate German-Fascist Crimes Committed on Soviet Territory from the USSR (GARF) (translated from Russian). Document 8-3: Dr. Zalman Grinberg, “Nürnberg,” Unzer veg, November 20, 1945, 4, USHMM Library microfilms 0377. Document 8-4: “To Avoid Disaster,” Yedioth HaYom, September 23, 1945, Leo Baeck Institute Archive (New York), fiche 117 (translated from German). Document 8-5: Louis Nizer, “The Nuremberg Verdict: An Appraisal,” reprinted from Record 3, no. 7 (October 1946) (New York, American Jewish Conference). Document 8-6: Sworn statement on his detention in the Jasenovac concentration camp, 1941–1945, by Otto Langfelder, circa 1945, USHMMA RG 68.045M, reel 3, file 17 (translated from German). Document 8-7: Report by Alex Easterman on the Lüneburg trial of Josef Kramer and other Nazis responsible for crimes at Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz, Lüneburg, September 17, 1945, USHMMA RG 68.045M, reel 18, file 140. Document 8-8: Deposition of Dr. Nathan Salczberger to the Police Quarter of the Fourth District, Paris, December 19, 1944, USHMMA Acc. 2008.174 Dr. Nathan Salczberger collection (translated from French). Document 8-9: Extracts from the file of Chaim Chajet, Central Committee of Polish Jews, USHMMA RG 15.189M Central Committee of Jews in Poland, People’s Courts collection, SYG 313, file 14 (translated from Polish).

9: Reclaiming Possessions Document 9-1: Preface to Nehemiah Robinson, Indemnification and Reparations: Jewish Aspects (New York: Institute of Jewish Affairs of the American Jewish Congress and World Jewish Congress, 1944), 7–8. Document 9-2: Selection from Siegfried Moses, Jewish Postwar Claims (Tel Aviv: Irgun Olej Merkaz Europa, 1944), 3–6. (Reprinted in Wolf-Dieter Barz, ed., Jewish Postwar Claims [Tel Aviv 1944] [Hamburg: LIT, 2001].) Document 9-3: Consultation on Restitution and Compensation, Board of Deputies of British Jews, London, June 27, 1944, Board of Deputies of British Jews Records, USHMMA RG 59.023, reel 33.

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Document 9-4: Letter from J. L. Flaiszer of the Board of Deputies of British Jews to Leo Istorik, director, Anglo-Palestine Bank, Tel Aviv, March 22, 1946, Board of Deputies of British Jews Records, USHMMA RG 59.023, reel 55. Document 9-5: Query from A. G. Brotman, secretary of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, to the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, London, June 26, 1945, and reply, July 5, 1945, Board of Deputies of British Jews Records, USHMMA RG 59.023, reel 55. Document 9-6: Report from Esther Haskin of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in Amsterdam to Robert Pilpel of the AJJDC in New York outlining the struggle of the Dutch Jewish community to receive reparations payments, May 7, 1946, USHMMA RG 68.066M, reel 49 (Selected Records from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Archives, Jerusalem). Document 9-7: “Spoils, Restitution, Reintegration,” Bulletin of the Center for Jewish Information, no. 13 (December 1, 1946): 3, USHMMA RG 68.066M, reel 50 (Selected Records from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Archives, Jerusalem) (translated from French). Document 9-8: Restitution case of Grete Weinmann, Detroit, Michigan, Trieste, and Venice, May–June 1947, USHMMA RG 10.135 Weinmann family papers. Document 9-9: Series of letters on the location of the heirs to the estate of S. Chideckel (Shideckel), London and Cape Town, November 1945–May 1946, USHMMA RG 78.001, reel 3, Records of South African Jewish Board of Deputies.

Part IV: Framing, Defining, and Remembering the Holocaust 10: Making Memory: Early Memoirs and Reflections Document 10-1: Selection from Dr. Filip Friedman, This Was Oświęcim: The Story of a Murder Camp (London: United Jewish Appeal, 1946), 5–7 (translated from Yiddish). Document 10-2: Selection from Joseph Nehama, In memoriam: Hommage aux victims juives des Nazis en Grèce (Salonika: N. Nicolaidès, 1948), 148–63 (translated from French). Document 10-3: Selection from Plotsḳ: Bleṭlekh geshikhṭe fun yidishn lebn in der alṭer heym, Aroysgegebn fun Plotsḳer landsleyṭ fareyn in Argenṭine, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1945 (translated from Yiddish). Document 10-4: Selection from Gaston Guez, ed., Nos martyrs sous la botte Allemande. Où les ex-travailleurs juifs de Tunisie racontent leurs souffrances (Tunis: Typo-Litho, July 15, 1946) (translated from French). Document 10-5: Preface by Ludwig Lewisohn to Renya Kulkielko, Escape from the Pit (New York: Sharon Books, 1947), ix–x.

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Document 10-6: Selection from Renya Kulkielko, Bi-nedudim uva-maḥteret (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameyuchad, 1944), 214–18 (translated from Hebrew). Document 10-7: Samson Först, Der Grager. Gesriben in Lager (Bucharest, 1947), USHMMA Acc. 2010.343 (original in Yiddish with Romanian diacritics). Document 10-8: Preamble and introduction to postwar “diary” of Michal Kraus, 1942– 1945, notebook dated 1945, 1–7, USHMMA Acc. 2006.51 Michael J. Kraus collection (translated from Czech). Document 10-9: Estera Gesundheit, Łódź, “How I Survived the German Occupation” (1945), USHMMA RG 02.208M (ŻIH 302/57) (translated from Polish).

11: Commemorating the Victims: Memorializing the Holocaust Document 11-1: Survivors of the Kawer family rebury the remains of family members killed by the Nazis in the Jewish cemetery, Sokołów Podlaski, 1946, USHMMPA WS# 24175. Document 11-2: Jewish survivors stand in an opened mass grave among the exhumed bodies of the victims of a mass shooting in Biała Podlaska, Poland, May 2, 1946, USHMMPA WS# 30857. Document 11-3: A Polish rabbi delivers the address at a reburial at the Fürth DP camp, Germany, just before earth is thrown over the casket, August 31, 1945, USHMMPA WS# 15764. Document 11-4: “First Anniversary of the ‘Tragedy,’” La vara, March 10, 1944, 2 (translated from Judeo-Spanish). Document 11-5: Panel by George Kadish based on his photographs of the Kovno ghetto and its destruction, titled “So We Lived,” at the Munich or Landsberg DP camp, 1946, USHMMPA WS# 66301. Document 11-6: Y. Mitlpunkt, elegy commemorating the fifth anniversary of the destruction of Chełm (Lublin region) of Poland, March 3, 1947, USHMMPA WS# 28265 (translated from Yiddish). Document 11-7: Group portrait of survivors from Chełm attending a memorial reunion on the anniversary of the destruction of the Jewish community in Chełm, circa 1946–1947, USHMMPA WS# 28264. Document 11-8: Naum Birenzweig, Hagada de pesaj del presente, 1933–1945 (Buenos Aires: Birentsvayg [Birenzweig], 1947) (translated from Yiddish). Document 11-9: Selichot, Budapest, June 11, 1946, USHMMPA WS# 48665, 48666, 48667, and 48668 (translated from Hebrew). Document 11-10: Moshe Yosef Feigenbaum, “Why Do We Need a Historical Commission?” Fun letstn churbn 1, no. 1 (August 1946): 2 (translated from Yiddish). Document 11-11: “Why a Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation?” Bulletin du Centre israélite d’information, no. 1 (April 1945): 10 (translated from French).

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Document 11-12: “St. Ottiliener Sztime”: A Onetime Edition on the Anniversary of Our Liberation, Wednesday, May 1, 1946, edited by A. Akselrod (translated from Yiddish). Document 11-13: Poster: “The Martyr’s Forest: A Memorial for the 6,000,000,” Jewish National Fund, 1945, Central Zionist Archive, USHMMPA WS# 08334 (translated from Hebrew).

12: The Survivors Speak: Collecting and Defining Postwar Testimony Document 12-1: Testimony of Asher Zisman, April 3, 1946, Central Historical Commission of the Central Committee of Liberated Jews, Munich, USHMMA RG 68.095M, reel 1, images 532–534, file 158, Yad Vashem Testimonies (M.1.E) (translated from Yiddish). Document 12-2: Unaccompanied child record of Josef Munzer, May 28, 1946, children’s questionnaires of the Central Historical Commission of the Central Committee of Liberated Jews, Munich, USHMMA RG 68.098M, folder 1, images 78–79. Document 12-3: Arieh Milch, “My Experiences during the War” (from the series of children’s reports), Fun letstn churbn 3 (November 1946): 65–67 (translated from Yiddish). Document 12-4: Testimony of Mirjam Perl, June 24, 1945, DEGOB, Joint/Jewish Agency, Budapest, USHMMA RG 68.101 Collection of testimonies relating to Hungary, Yad Vashem O15E, accretion file, file 133, #03038528 (Hungarian, English). Document 12-5: Testimony of Maria Gara, May 21, 1945, testimonies of the Joint in Bucharest, Romania, from the Lavon Institute—Labor Movement Archives (file no. VII123-4, 308), USHMMA Acc. 2007.138, folder 4, image #06471405. Document 12-6: Genie Soyfer, “In Those Days,” August 7, 1945, Beregovskii Archive of the Vernadsky Library, Kiev, Ukraine (translated from Yiddish). Document 12-7: Oral history interview of Polia Bisenhaus, conducted by David P. Boder, ORT School, Paris, July 29, 1946, Voices of the Holocaust Project, Paul V. Galvin Library, Illinois Institute of Technology, USHMMA RG 50.472*0002 (translated from Yiddish and German).

Bibliography

T

HIS SELECTION from a vast and continuously growing number of publications complements the footnote references in the chapters. It is designed to serve as an orientation for further study, not as a compilation of all relevant literature. For more comprehensive listings of recent publications, check the bibliographical sections of H&GS, LBIYB, YVS, and other journals.

MEMORIAL BOOKS, REFERENCE WORKS, AND LISTS OF HOLOCAUST VICTIMS AND SURVIVORS Brocke, Michael, and Julius Carlebach, eds. Biographisches Handbuch der Rabbiner. Vol. 2: Die Rabbiner im Deutschen Reich 1871–1945. Munich: K. G. Saur, 2009. Czech, Danuta. Auschwitz Chronicle, 1939–1945. New York: Henry Holt, 1990. Dean, Martin, ed. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945. Vol. 2: Ghettos in German-Occupied Eastern Europe. Bloomington: Indiana University Press in association with the USHMM, 2012. Digital Monument to the Jewish Community in the Netherlands (www.joodsmonument.nl). Gutman, Israel, ed. Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. 4 vols. New York: Macmillan, 1990. Gutman, Yisrael, and Michael Berenbaum. Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp. Bloomington: Indiana University Press in association with the USHMM, 1998. Heim, Susanne, et al., eds. Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden durch das nationalsozialistische Deutschland 1933–1945. 16 vols. Munich: Oldenbourg, 2008ff.

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Bibliography

Hundert, Gershon David, ed. The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe. 2 vols. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008. Laqueur, Walter, ed. The Holocaust Encyclopedia. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001. Laqueur, Walter, and Richard Breitman. Breaking the Silence: The German Who Exposed the Final Solution. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1994. Megargee, Geoffrey P., ed. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945. Vol. 1: Early Camps, Youth Camps, and Concentration Camps and Subcamps under the SS Business Administration Main Office (WVHA). Bloomington: Indiana University Press in association with the USHMM, 2009. Miron, Guy, and Shlomit Shulhani, eds. The Yad Vashem Encyclopedia of the Ghettos during the Holocaust. 2 vols. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2009. Pinkas ha-kehilot. Polin: Entsiklopedyah shel ha-yishuvim ha-yehudiyim le-min hivasdam ve-ad le-ahar Shoat Milhemet ha-olam ha-sheniyah. 8 vols. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1999. Shapiro, Robert Moses, and Tadeusz Epsztein, eds. The Warsaw Ghetto Oyneg Shabes– Ringelblum Archive: Catalog and Guide. Bloomington and Warsaw: Indiana University Press in association with the USHMM and the Jewish Historical Institute, 2009. Skolnik, Fred, and Michael Berenbaum, eds. Encyclopaedia Judaica. 2nd ed. Detroit, MI: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007. USHMM ITS Collection Data Base Central Name Index. Yad Vashem Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names (www.yadvashem.org).

PUBLISHED PRIMARY SOURCES AND MEMOIRS Ancel, Jean, ed. Documents Concerning the Fate of Romanian Jewry during the Holocaust. 12 vols. New York: Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, 1986. Anders, Freia, Katrin Stoll, and Karsten Wilke, eds. Der Judenrat von Białystok. Dokumente aus dem Archiv des Białystoker Ghettos 1941–1943. Paderborn: Schöningh Verlag, 2010. Angrick, Andrej, Klaus-Michael Mallmann, Jürgen Matthäus, and Martin Cüppers, eds. Deutsche Besatzungsherrschaft in der UdSSR 1941–1945. Dokumente der Einsatzgruppen in der Sowjetunion II. Darmstadt: WBG, 2013. Arad, Yitzhak, Israel Gutman, and Abraham Margaliot, eds. Documents on the Holocaust: Selected Sources on the Destruction of the Jews of Germany and Austria, Poland, and the Soviet Union. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999. Artom, Emanuele. Diari, gennaio 1940–febbraio 1944. Edited by Paola De Benedetti and Eloisa Ravenna. Milan: Centro di Documentazione Ebraica Contemporanea, 1966.

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Asser Pardo, Rozina. 548 Days with Another Name: A Child’s Diary, an Adult’s Memories of the War. New York: Bloch Publishing Co., 2005. Avagliano, Mario, and Marco Palmieri, eds. Gli ebrei sotto la persecuzione in Italia. Diari e lettere 1938–1943. Turin: Einaudi, 2011. Behrend-Rosenfeld, Else, and Siegfried Rosenfeld. Leben in zwei Welten. Tagebücher eines jüdischen Paares in Deutschland und im Exil. Edited by Erich Kasberger and Marita Krauss. Munich: Volk Verlag, 2011. Berg, Mary. The Diary of Mary Berg: Growing Up in the Warsaw Ghetto. Edited by S. L. Shneiderman and Susan Lee Pentlin. Oxford: Oneworld, 2006 (orig. published in 1945 as Warsaw Ghetto: A Diary by Mary Berg). Bergmann, Alexander. Aufzeichnungen eines Untermenschen. Ein Bericht über das Ghetto in Riga und die Konzentrationslager in Deutschland. Bremen: Temmen, 2009. Berr, Hélène. The Journal of Hélène Berr. Edited by David Bellos. New York: Weinstein Books, 2008. Binder, Elza (Eliszewa), and Juliusz Feuerman. Two Diaries of Victims and Witnesses of Extermination of Jews of Stanislawow. Montreal: Polish-Jewish Heritage Foundation of Canada, 2011. Boas, Jacob, ed. We Are Witnesses: Five Diaries of Teenagers Who Died in the Holocaust. New York: Henry Holt, 1995. Bolle, Kees W. Ben’s Story: Holocaust Letters with Selections from the Dutch Underground Press. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2001. Brandon, Edith. Letters from Tomaszow. London: Self-published, 1994. Brodetsky, Selig. Memoirs: From Ghetto to Israel. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1960. Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine, ed. Les enfants de la Guette. Souvenirs et documents (1938–1945). Paris: Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine, 1999. Cohn, Willy. Kein Recht, Nirgends. Tagebuch vom Untergang des Breslauer Judentums 1933–1941. Edited by Norbert Conrads. 2 vols. Cologne: Böhlau, 2007. Cytryn, Abraham. A Youth Writing between the Walls: Notebooks from the Lodz Ghetto. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2005. Dobroszycki, Lucjan. The Chronicle of the Łódź Ghetto, 1941–1944. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984. Elkes, Joel. Values, Belief and Survival: Dr. Elkhanan Elkes and the Kovno Ghetto: A Memoir. London: Vale, 1997. Felsch, Volkmar. Otto Blumenthals Tagebücher. Ein Aachener Mathematikprofessor erleidet die NS-Diktatur in Deutschland, den Niederlanden und Theresienstadt. Edited by Erhard Roy Wiehn. Konstanz: Hartung-Gorre, 2011. Feuchert, Sascha, Erwin Leibfried, and Jörg Riecke, eds. Die Chronik des Gettos Lodz/ Litzmannstadt. 5 vols. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2007. Fischl, Otto. Mon journal: 19 octobre 1943–15 mars 1945. Edited by Tal Bruttmann. Paris: Éditions le Manuscrit, 2009.

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Flinker, Moses. Young Moshe’s Diary: The Spiritual Torment of a Jewish Boy in Nazi Europe. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem and the Board of Jewish Education, 1971. Fraller, Elisabeth, and George Langnas, eds. Mignon. Tagebücher und Briefe einer jüdischen Krankenschwester in Wien 1938–1949. Innsbruck: StudienVerlag, 2010. Frank, Anne. The Diary of Anne Frank. Edited by David Barnouw and Gerrold van der Stroom. Rev. crit. ed. New York: Doubleday, 2003. Freier, Recha. Let the Children Come: The Early History of Youth Aliyah. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1961. Frieder, Emanuel. To Deliver Their Souls: The Struggle of a Young Rabbi during the Holocaust. New York: Holocaust Library, 1991. Friedlander, Henry, and Sybil Milton, eds. Archives of the Holocaust: An International Collection of Selected Documents. 21 vols. New York: Garland Publishing, 1990–1995. Fry, Varian, Assignment: Rescue. An Autobiography. New York: Scholastic, 1990 (orig. published in 1945 as Surrender on Demand). Garbarini, Alexandra, with Emil Kerenji, Jan Lambertz, and Avinoam Patt. Jewish Responses to Persecution. Vol. 2: 1938–1940. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press in association with the USHMM, 2011. Ghez, Paul. Six mois sous la botte. Edited by Claude Nataf. Paris: Éditions le Manuscrit, 2009. Gillis-Carlebach, Miriam, ed. Jewish Everyday Life as Human Resistance, 1939–1941: Chief Rabbi Dr. Joseph Zvi Carlebach and the Hamburg-Altona Jewish Communities. New York: Peter Lang, 2009. Ginz, Petr. Diary of Petr Ginz, 1941–1942. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2007. Grabower, Rolf. Wenn im Amte, arbeite, wenn entlassen, verbirg dich. Prof. Dr. jur. Dr. phil. Rolf Grabower in Zeugnissen aus der Finangeschichtlichen Sammlung der Bundesfinanzakademie. Ein Lesebuch und Materialband. Brühl: Bundesfinanzakademie im Bundesministerium der Finanzen, 2010. Gradowski, Zalmen, Au cœur de l’enfer. Document écrit d’un Sonderkommando d’Auschwitz—1944. Edited by Philippe Mesnard and Carlo Saletti. Paris: Éditions Kimé, 2001. Greif, Gideon. We Wept without Tears: Testimonies of the Jewish Sonderkommando from Auschwitz. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005. Grynberg, Michał, ed. Words to Outlive Us: Eyewitness Accounts from the Warsaw Ghetto. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2002. Handler, Andrew, ed. The Holocaust in Hungary: An Anthology of Jewish Response. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1982. Heberer, Patricia. Children during the Holocaust. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press in association with the USHMM, 2011. Herzbaum [pseud. Hartry], Edward H. Lost between Worlds: A World War II Journey of Survival. Leicester: Matador, 2010.

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Glossary

“Aktion Reinhard” This served as the code name for the Nazi plan to murder the Jews living in the Generalgouvernement. By the spring of 1942, the Germans had established killing sites at Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka for the purpose of murdering large numbers of Jews by gas. Under the pretext of “resettlement,” deportees from the Generalgouvernement and later from elsewhere in Europe were brought in on rail transports beginning in March 1942. Some 1.7 million Jews, as well as thousands of Poles, Roma, and Soviet prisoners of war, had perished by the end of 1943. See Yitzhak Arad, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987). Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU) School In the 1890s, the Alliance Israélite Universelle, a Paris-based international Jewish organization, began to build a network of schools in Jewish communities of the Ottoman Middle East, Iran, and North Africa. With schools in Greece, Bulgaria, Turkey, Serbia, Romania, Tunisia, Beirut, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Palestine, the organization sought to provide formal elementary education and vocational training to Jewish children from low-income families. French language and culture were essential to the AIU educational framework, though in 1942 all branches were cut off from the head office in Paris, corresponding with decentralized and increasingly local administration of schools. AIU schools flourished in Turkey, Tunisia, and Morocco. In Morocco, teachers trained at the École Normale Hébraïque of Casablanca and were sent to each community of between at least three and four hundred Jewish persons—namely, to Marrakesh, Fez, Rabat, and Casablanca. Because AIU schools were

501

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Glossary

placed under the strict control of the national Public Education Department in 1928, they were assured continuous material support, even during and after the war. See Aron Rodrigue, French Jews, Turkish Jews: The Alliance Israélite Universelle and the Politics of Jewish Schooling in Turkey, 1860–1925 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990). American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) Founded in 1917 to provide young Quakers and conscientious objectors the opportunity to perform alternate public service in wartime, this Philadelphia-based organization had some 150,000 members by World War II. The organization maintained a range of relief projects in France in the late 1930s and 1940s: it served refugees from the Spanish Civil War, families of prisoners detained in France, Jewish hidden children, and Jewish refugees in southern internment camps, despite the difficulties posed by the war, occupation, and Vichy government. The AFSC maintained close ties to its British sister organization, the Friends Relief Service, and both worked together with the French Secours Quaker in organizing postwar relief. See Henry Friedlander and Sybil Milton, eds., Archives of the Holocaust: An International Collection of Selected Documents (New York: Garland Publishing, 1995), vol. 2, pt. 2. See also Roger C. Wilson, Quaker Relief: An Account of the Relief Work of the Society of Friends, 1940–1948 (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1952). American Jewish Conference Founded in 1918 as an ad hoc umbrella group for American Jewish interests, the organization initially sought a role in the peace conference following World War I. Constituted by leaders with primarily eastern European roots, it sought to provide an alternative to the self-appointed American Jewish Committee, whose leadership derived from the upper economic stratum and was of German-Jewish origin. Rabbi Stephen S. Wise became its longtime chairman, and the organization established itself on a more permanent basis in the 1920s. Many of its members had pro-Zionist affinities. In the 1930s the conference played a major role in anti-Nazi agitation, rejecting the quiet, behind-the-scenes approach adopted by other groups. It organized boycotts against German products and became a leading force behind the formation of the World Jewish Congress. See Melvin I. Urofsky, A Voice That Spoke for Justice: The Life and Times of Stephen S. Wise (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1982). American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (AJJDC; also JDC, the Joint) Founded in 1914, the AJJDC provided assistance to Jews around the world, particularly in Palestine and eastern Europe. Involved in emigration planning and relief work in Germany after the Nazis took power, the organization extended its relief efforts during the war into countries occupied or controlled by the Reich, often on a clandestine basis. The AJJDC’s efforts continued after the war, when it helped Jewish survivors to rebuild their lives or leave Europe.

Glossary

503

See Yehuda Bauer, American Jewry and the Holocaust: The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, 1939–1945 (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1981). Auschwitz This complex consisted of some forty concentration camps, labor camps, and extermination facilities built and operated by the Germans during the war. Almost 1.3 million people, 90 percent of them Jews, were murdered in Auschwitz. The network revolved around a main camp, Auschwitz I, located outside the town of Oświęcim in German-annexed Poland near the city of Kraków, and included the combined concentration camp and killing center Auschwitz II–Birkenau, Auschwitz III–Monowitz (also known as Buna), and a system of about forty subcamps. On January 27, 1945, the Red Army liberated the most infamous part of the camp, the killing center at Birkenau, in which Jews had been murdered in gas chambers. See Sybille Steinbacher, Auschwitz: A History (New York: Ecco, 2005). Auschwitz protocols (also Vrba-Wetzler Report) Written by two Slovakian Jews, Rudolf Vrba and Alfréd Wetzler, after their escape from Auschwitz in April 1944, the report provided some of the first eyewitness testimonies as to the situation in Auschwitz. The report later made its way to George Mantello, who immediately began to translate it and disseminate copies in order to spread awareness. See Michael Flemming, Auschwitz, the Allies and Censorship of the Holocaust (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014). Ben-Gurion, David (1886–1973) A Polish-born Zionist, Ben-Gurion immigrated to Palestine in 1906. There he became a labor leader and served as head of the Jewish Agency from 1935 until 1948. When Israel achieved statehood in 1948, he became the country’s first prime minister and minister of defense. See Tuvia Friling, Arrows in the Dark: David Ben-Gurion, the Yishuv Leadership, and Rescue Attempts during the Holocaust (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005). Bergen-Belsen Established in 1940 by German military authorities just south of the German towns of Bergen and Belsen, this camp complex included a POW camp, which was operational from 1940 to January 1945, as well as a “residence camp” (Aufenhaltslager) and a “prisoners’ camp” (Häftlingslager), both of which were functional from April 1943 until April 1945. Interned in the camps were Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Roma (Gypsies), political prisoners, POWs, “asocials,” criminals, and homosexuals. Camps for women were also added to the complex beginning in April 1943. Starting in late 1944, the population of the Bergen-Belsen camp complex increased exponentially as it became a collection site for evacuees from other camps located closer to the front; the total number of prisoners rose from seventy-three hundred in July 1944 to over sixty thousand in April 1945. An extreme lack of food and water, poor sanitation, inadequate shelter, and the outbreak of disease caused and intensified by overcrowding led to

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increased deaths. British forces liberated the Bergen-Belsen camp complex on April 15, 1945. Throughout its existence, approximately fifty thousand people died in the camps of Bergen-Belsen; the vast majority of them were Jews. See Joanne Reilly et al., eds., Belsen in History and Memory (London: F. Cass, 1997). Bergen-Belsen DP camp When British military forces liberated Bergen-Belsen on April 15, 1945, there were approximately sixty thousand people in the camp along with thousands of unburied corpses. After its evacuation, British authorities burned the camp to prevent the spread of diseases, which had run rampant and continued to cause thousands of deaths after liberation. In July 1945, British forces set up what became known as the Bergen-Belsen displaced persons (DP) camp. Located in what had been German military barracks not far from the site of the former concentration camp, it became the largest DP camp in Germany. After much effort by the Jewish survivors and conflict with British authorities, a segregated Jewish community was allowed in the camp; it was the only exclusively Jewish DP camp under British control. The Jewish community immediately began to create and rebuild social, political, and cultural life. The DP camp held about twelve thousand survivors in total and was in use until 1951. See Hagit Lavsky, New Beginnings: Holocaust Survivors in Bergen-Belsen and the British Zone in Germany, 1945–1950 (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2002). Bimko, Hadassah (also Ada Bimko, Hadassah Rosensaft) (1912–1997) Originally a dental surgeon from Sosnowiec, Poland, Bimko was the only Auschwitz survivor in her family. She spent the last months of the war in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp caring for Jewish orphans. After liberation she organized medical personnel among the survivors to care for former prisoners and became a leading advocate for liberated Jews in the British Zone of occupied Germany, along with her husband, Josef Rosensaft. See Hadassah Rosensaft, Yesterday: My Story (Washington, DC: USHMM, 2004); Menachem Z. Rosensaft, “Hadassah Rosensaft, 1912–1997,” Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia, March 1, 2009, Jewish Women’s Archive, http:// jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/rosensaft-hadassah (accessed August 22, 2014). Board of Deputies of British Jews This central representative organization of British Jewry was established in 1790 to address Jewish community affairs, including social welfare and education. From the 1930s into World War II, the board’s president, since 1939 Selig Brodetsky, a Zionist, focused on assisting Jewish refugees, opposing British restrictions on immigration, and combating antisemitism. See Todd M. Endelman, The Jews of Britain, 1656 to 2000 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002). Boder, David (1886–1961) A psychologist and professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Boder traveled to Europe in 1946 for nine weeks to undertake a project on

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Holocaust survivor testimony. During his trip he conducted and recorded about 130 interviews with Jewish and non-Jewish survivors living in DP camps. The interviews were recorded in nine different languages, and many were later translated into English. Boder’s displaced persons project is regarded as some of the earliest recorded Holocaust survivor testimony. See Alan Rosen, The Wonder of Their Voices: The 1946 Holocaust Interviews of David Boder (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). Breckinridge Long, Samuel Miller (1881–1958) Appointed as an assistant secretary of state under both Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Breckinridge Long was an ardent advocate for the League of Nations and then the United Nations. A longtime Democrat from a politically prominent family, he twice ran unsuccessfully for the US Senate in Missouri. His diplomatic career included three years as ambassador to fascist Italy beginning in 1933. During his 1940–1944 service in the State Department, he headed the Special War Problems Division, which included supervising the visa division. His new position accorded him power to influence the fate of many Jewish refugees applying to enter the United States. He now came under considerable fire both from within the administration and from the outside for his restrictionist stance. Breckinridge Long remained reluctant to commit the United States to anything beyond “rescue through victory” throughout his term, and many quota slots for European applicants went unfilled. See Richard Breitman and Alan M. Kraut, American Refugee Policy and European Jewry, 1933–1945 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987); Samuel Miller Breckinridge Long, The War Diary of Breckinridge Long: Selections from the Years 1939–1944, ed. Fred L. Israel (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1966). British Mandate In 1923 the League of Nations gave Britain the “British Mandate,” authorizing that country to rule the southern part of former Ottoman Syria. The formal purpose of the mandate was to administer parts of the collapsed Ottoman Empire until a political solution could be found. The territory was divided into Palestine (made up of today’s Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip), which remained under direct British rule with a seat in Jerusalem, and Transjordan (today’s Jordan), an autonomous territory under the rule of the Hashemite dynasty. The British Mandate in Palestine saw increasing rivalry and outright civil war between the Palestinian Arab and Jewish communities. On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly adopted a partition plan that divided Palestine into Arab and Jewish states, with Jerusalem remaining under international control. The partition plan increased tensions between Palestinian Arabs and Jews, and on May 15, 1948, the British formally ended the mandate and withdrew from Palestine completely. On the previous day, the Jewish community had proclaimed an independent State of Israel. A war between Israel and neighboring states followed. See Tom Segev, One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate (New York: Henry Holt, 2000).

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Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation (Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine, CDJC) Founded in April 1943 by Isaac Schneersohn, heir to the Lubavitch rabbinic tradition, the CDJC began collecting material for the purposes of documentation and eventual postwar reckoning. Its work was centralized in Grenoble (occupied by the Italians until September 1943, when the German invasion to the region halted the center’s efforts). At the war’s end, the CDJC began cataloging its efforts and published some of the first books on the French internment camp system. The CDJC also participated in the evidentiary collection of the postwar war crimes trials, from Nuremberg in 1946 through the trial of notorious SS-Hauptsturmführer Klaus Barbie in 1987. The CDJC also formed the cornerstone of what is now the Mémorial de la Shoah, the major Holocaust museum, memorial, and research center in France. See Georges Bensoussan, “The Jewish Contemporary Documentation Center (CDJC) and Holocaust Research in France, 1945–1970,” in Holocaust Historiography in Context: Emergence, Challenges, Polemics and Achievements, ed. David Bankier and Dan Michman (New York and Jerusalem: Berghahn Books and Yad Vashem, 2008). Central Committee of Liberated Jews in Germany Founded on April 18, 1945, in the British Zone on the heels of Bergen-Belsen’s liberation, and on July 1, 1945, at the Feldafing displaced persons camp, the Central Committee of Liberated Jews served as the official governing body of Jewish DPs in the Allied Zone of postwar Germany. Josef Rosensaft (future husband of Hadassah Rosensaft, née Hadassah Bimko) served as its president in the British Zone, with his counterpart, Dr. Zalman Grinberg, in the US Zone. The central committee assumed a number of responsibilities, including assisting with tracing family members and emigration and gathering historical documentation; it also organized and promoted religious and cultural life throughout the DP camps. Additionally the committee attempted to coordinate Zionist activities (somewhat unsuccessfully) among the Jewish DP population. The committee disbanded on December 17, 1950, in Munich, Germany, after the majority of its leadership had immigrated to Israel. See Margarete Myers Feinstein, Holocaust Survivors in Postwar Germany, 1945–1957 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Central Historical Commission (CHC, Munich) A group of survivors established a Jewish historical commission in Munich in late November 1945 on the initiative of camp survivor Israel Kaplan, a former journalist and teacher, and Moshe Yosef Feigenbaum, who had survived the war in hiding. Their objective was to gather records, testimonies, and artifacts documenting Nazi crimes and Jewish lives from other survivors living in the US Zone in occupied Germany and to remember those who perished. In September 1946 the Munich organization became the Central Historical Commission, supervising a network of subcommissions established in DP camps and communities throughout the region; between forty-two and sixty branches had been set up in the zone (and the US sector of Berlin) between 1946 and 1948, with a total of 80 to 160 workers, men and women from diverse backgrounds. The

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projects also collected information on DP living conditions and visions for the future and published a Yiddish-language historical journal, Fun letstn churbn, containing material they had uncovered. The central commission continued its work in Germany until early 1949. See Laura Jockusch, Collect and Record! Jewish Holocaust Documentation in Early Postwar Europe, 1945–1957 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). Central Jewish Historical Commission (CJH, Lublin) A small group of male and female survivors formed this commission in late August 1944 in their newly liberated city. Using a questionnaire, they gathered diverse eyewitness accounts of Jewish fates during the war. Some of the witnesses had experienced ghettos and camps; others had spent the war in hiding or in the Soviet Union. The commission eventually grew to twelve people gathering testimonies in a variety of settings. The group sought to inform the Jewish community in Lublin and elsewhere, as well as the postwar government, of its findings through publications and public readings of testimonies. Professional historians such as Philip Friedman collaborated with the group and helped expand its mission on a national scale at the end of 1944. Survivors who had worked with Emanuel Ringelblum’s clandestine wartime Jewish archives and testimonies project, Oyneg Shabbes, also became active in the commission. The commission’s headquarters moved to Łódź in March 1945, and the project grew into a network of more than twenty branches and many local commissions, all amassing testimonies and documents. See Laura Jockusch, Collect and Record! Jewish Holocaust Documentation in Early Postwar Europe, 1945–1957 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). Chełmno (also Kulmhof ) German officials in the Warthegau established this massmurder site in December 1941 to kill the region’s Jews, particularly the inhabitants of the Łódź ghetto, as well as other groups of “unwanted” people. The SS unit running the site murdered most of its victims by carbon monoxide poisoning and asphyxiation in a sealed truck (“gas van”). Between early December 1941 and mid-July 1944, more than 150,000 people, the vast majority of them Jews, perished at Chełmno. The Germans retreated from the site in January 1945 in the face of the Red Army’s advance. See Shmuel Krakowski, Chełmno: A Small Village in Europe: The First Nazi Mass Extermination Camp (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2009). Dachau Created by the Nazi government in 1933, Dachau is considered the first official concentration camp and remained in use through the duration of the Third Reich. The main camp, located in southern Germany near the town of Dachau, included over thirty satellite camps. More than 188,000 prisoners were interned in Dachau from 1933 to 1945; the total number of deaths in the camp is unknown. American forces liberated Dachau on April 29, 1945, and soon thereafter discovered and liberated the surviving prisoners, whom the Germans had forced on death marches in anticipation of the approaching Allied forces.

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See Harold Marcuse, Legacies of Dachau: The Uses and Abuses of a Concentration Camp, 1933–2001 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). De Gaulle, Charles (1890–1970) Born in Lille to a conservative, Catholic family, de Gaulle became a professional soldier. Decorated in World War I and a young protégé of Marshal Henri-Philippe Pétain, he taught for a time at an army staff college. An obscure brigadier general, de Gaulle escaped to Britain in 1940 and organized the Free French resistance movement and government-in-exile with a handful of volunteers, limited resources, and the backing of Prime Minister Winston Churchill. During the war he rallied fellow citizens through BBC radio broadcasts and oversaw a group of French volunteer fighters stationed in Britain; he later helped liberate sections of northern Africa from German rule. He established his headquarters in Algiers in 1943, assuming the presidency of the French Committee of National Liberation. The Americans and British allowed the general to lead the troops into Paris when the Allies liberated the city in late August 1944. He subsequently headed two successive provisional governments before abruptly resigning in January 1946. He played a significant yet highly controversial role in postwar political life. See Jean Lacouture, De Gaulle: The Rebel, 1890–1944 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1990); Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940–1944 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001). Death marches As Allied forces began to surround and close in on the weakening German military toward the end of World War II, the Germans began to move prisoners from concentration camps located close to the front to more central German-occupied areas, usually to other camps. The Germans moved large numbers of prisoners by train and later by foot, giving rise to the term “death march.” The majority of these death marches took place during the 1944–1945 winter and spring. Prisoners endured freezing temperatures with inadequate clothing and little to no sustenance or rest. Those who could not keep the pace were shot; thousands of others died of exhaustion and exposure. More often than not, prisoners were mass-executed during the death marches or even after reaching the transport destination. See Daniel Blatman, The Death Marches: The Final Phase of Nazi Genocide (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011). Deggendorf This DP camp existed from 1946 to June 1949 in the US Zone of occupied Germany. Many of the approximately two thousand Jewish residents of Deggendorf had survived the Theresienstadt ghetto and concentration camp. The DP camp became a social and cultural center and included a synagogue, a library, two newspapers, multiple schools, a kosher kitchen, and its own currency, the Deggendorf dollar. See Lorrie G. Gardella, The Life and Thought of Louis Lowy: Social Work through the Holocaust (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2011).

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Deportáltakat Gondozó Országos Bizottság (DEGOB, National Committee for Attending Deportees) Established in March 1945 in Budapest, this national relief committee for Hungarian Jewish deportees focused largely on repatriating deportees and providing other relief services. At the same time it collected statistics on Hungary’s remaining Jewish population and helped survivors search for relatives. It also began collecting the accounts of returning deportees at its hospices. Protocols of these testimonies spanned the period from late 1944 through the spring of 1946 and grew to include the personal stories of nearly five thousand Hungarian Holocaust survivors. DEGOB staff sometimes conducted in-depth interviews with survivors who had played an important role in Hungarian Jewish community life during the war. Staff also asked returning labor servicemen and deportees to provide the names of those who had perished and of survivors who had not yet returned to Hungary. In late August 1945 the committee was absorbed, along with a number of other independent groups, into the National Jewish Aid Committee. At that point DEGOB’s documentation work continued under the auspices of the Jewish Agency. See the DEGOB website (http://degob.org); Rita Horváth, “‘A Jewish Historical Commission in Budapest’: The Place of the National Relief Committee for Deportees in Hungary [DEGOB] among the Other Large-Scale HistoricalMemorial Projects of She’erit Hapletah after the Holocaust (1945–1948),” in Holocaust Historiography in Context: Emergence, Challenges, Polemics and Achievements, ed. David Bankier and Dan Michman (New York and Jerusalem: Berghahn Books and Yad Vashem, 2008). Displaced Persons Act (Public Law 80-774) On June 25, 1948, President Harry S. Truman signed into law an act created to help relocate particular European DPs who were victims of Nazi persecution to the United States for permanent residence. In most cases, people granted permission to enter the United States were also allowed to bring their families and given employment. Children under sixteen who were considered orphans could also be granted residency and care in the United States. See Haim Genizi, America’s Fair Share: The Admission and Resettlement of Displaced Persons, 1945–1952 (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1993). Eichmann, Adolf (1906–1962) Raised in the Austrian city of Linz, Eichmann joined the Nazi Party and the SS in Austria in 1932 before he moved to Germany, where he also joined Reinhard Heydrich’s Sicherheitsdienst. Following the Anschluss of Austria, Eichmann assumed a key role as an expert for “Jewish affairs.” After the beginning of the war, he became the chief architect of Nazi anti-Jewish policies organized by the Reichssicherheitshauptamt that led to the deportation and systematic murder of European Jews. After the war, he went into hiding; the Israeli secret service abducted him from Argentina in May 1960, and he was put on trial in Jerusalem. Sentenced to death by the court, he was hanged in June 1962.

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See Hans Safrian, Eichmann’s Men (New York: Cambridge University Press in association with the USHMM, 2010). Eisenhower, General Dwight D. (1890–1969) Eisenhower commanded the Allied forces landing in North Africa in 1942 and became the supreme commander of Allied troops invading France on D-Day in June 1944. In 1951, he became supreme commander of NATO forces. He served as the thirty-fourth president of the United States from 1953 to 1961. Eisenhower played an important role in the dissemination of knowledge about the concentration camps in Europe on their liberation. Together with generals George S. Patton and Omar N. Bradley, Eisenhower arrived at the Ohrdruf concentration camp on April 12, 1945. In his April 15 report to Chief of Staff General George Marshall, he famously wrote, “The things I saw beggar description. . . . The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were . . . overpowering. . . . I made the visit deliberately in order to be in a position to give firsthand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to ‘propaganda.’” Eisenhower also ordered all American units in the immediate vicinity to visit the camp. The photographs and films from this and subsequent visits to German-run concentration camps became the bedrock of newsreel footage released to the American public about German World War II atrocities. See Jean Edward Smith, Eisenhower in War and Peace (New York: Random House, 2012). Extraordinary Commission (Extraordinary State Commission on Reporting and Investigating the Atrocities of the German Fascist Occupiers and Their Henchmen and the Crimes Inflicted by Them onto Citizens, Kolkhozes, Public Organizations, and State Enterprises) Established on November 2, 1942, by Soviet authorities, this commission was responsible for gathering evidence in order to investigate—and eventually adjudicate—crimes against “peaceful Soviet citizens.” This entailed collecting both documentary evidence and individual testimonies given by eyewitnesses to atrocities such as property confiscation, looting, and mass murder. The reports and interviews from this commission provide some of the earliest evidence for the crimes of the Holocaust, but they were also taken in potentially problematic conditions, such as during harsh interrogations and under threat from Soviet authorities. See Kiril Feferman, “Soviet Investigation of Nazi Crimes in the USSR: Documenting the Holocaust,” Journal of Genocide Research 5, no. 4 (2003): 587–602. Eynikeyt (Yiddish: unity) This was the official Yiddish-language newspaper of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAFC), the government-controlled Jewish umbrella organization in the Soviet Union founded in 1942. Edited by Shakhno Epstein, Eynikeyt disseminated information about the Nazi mass murder of Jews. It also sought to rally support for the Soviet war effort among Jews and the general public in the West.

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See Yosef Gorny, The Jewish Press and the Holocaust, 1939–1945: Palestine, Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). Friedman, Filip (Philip) (1901–1960) During the interwar years, this Polish Jewish historian, well versed in secular studies and Jewish languages and history, edited and contributed articles to journals in diverse languages, published high school textbooks, and taught Jewish history in Łódź and Warsaw. He survived the war in hiding in Lwów, but his wife, daughter, mother, and two siblings were killed. At war’s end he became a key figure in the Central Jewish Historical Commission in Lublin and the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, collecting eyewitness accounts from Jewish survivors, recovering what material remained from Jewish cultural institutions, and publishing early pathbreaking studies of the concentration camp system. In 1946 he left for Paris, where he had a research affiliation with the Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation. He then served on an American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee commission working with camp survivors in Munich, in the US Zone of occupied Germany, and eventually immigrated to the United States in 1948. There Friedman continued his work on recent Jewish history, lecturing at Columbia University and directing documentary projects for YIVO and Yad Vashem. See Philip Friedman, Roads to Extinction: Essays on the Holocaust, ed. Ada June Friedman (New York: Conference on Jewish Social Studies and the Jewish Publication Society of America, 1980); Roni Stauber, “Philip Friedman and the Beginning of Holocaust Studies,” in Holocaust Historiography in Context: Emergence, Challenges, Polemics and Achievements, ed. David Bankier and Dan Michman (New York and Jerusalem: Berghahn Books and Yad Vashem, 2008). Gross-Rosen Located near Wrocław, Poland, Gross-Rosen was created in 1940 as a satellite camp of Sachsenhausen and later encompassed a network of at least ninety-seven subcamps. Germans began to evacuate the camps starting in January 1945 as Soviet forces drew near. Many prisoners were forced on death marches or deported to other concentration camps located farther west. Soviet forces liberated the main camp on February 13, 1945. Approximately 120,000 people, including Jews and non-Jews, men and women, were interned throughout the Gross-Rosen concentration camp system’s existence; of those, about 40,000 perished. See Geoffrey P. Megargee, The USHMM Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, vol. 1 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press in association with USHMM, 2009). Hagganah (Hebrew: defense) This Jewish militia organization in the former British Mandate of Palestine existed from 1920 to 1948. Although originally created to defend Jewish communities living in Palestine, following the close of World War II the group created branches in DP camps to organize and train self-defense groups of formerly interned Jews. After the British refusal to allow unlimited Jewish immigration to Palestine, the Haggenah began openly anti-British operations, including aiding illegal

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immigration of European Jews to Palestine. Beginning in 1948, the group became the core of the newly created Israel Defense Forces. See Yehuda Bauer, From Diplomacy to Resistance: A History of Jewish Palestine, 1939– 1945, trans. Alton M. Winters (New York: Atheneum, 1973). Harrison, Earl G. (1900–1955) A respected attorney in Philadelphia, Harrison first joined the government in 1940 as the commissioner of alien registration, implementing new measures to gain oversight of all noncitizens living in the United States. In July 1942 he became commissioner of immigration and naturalization, for which his duties included touring detention facilities for noncitizens judged suspect. In 1944 President Franklin D. Roosevelt subsequently appointed him to succeed Myron C. Taylor as the US representative to the Inter-Governmental Committee on Refugees, an agency created in the wake of the Evian Conference; this role gave him exposure to the international refugee problem that had emerged during the war. Shortly after the end of the conflict and at the request of President Harry S. Truman, Harrison and his collaborators visited over two dozen DP camps to gather facts on the living conditions of stateless and nonrepatriable Jewish DPs. His August 1945 Harrison Report garnered attention for its extremely critical standpoint and resulted in President Truman ordering more sensitive treatment of Jewish survivors in US-Zone DP camps. In 1945 Harrison became dean of the law school at the University of Pennsylvania for three years before returning to his law practice and ongoing civic work. He continued working for more humane immigration laws after this and again sat on a government commission on immigration and naturalization in the 1950s. See Libby Garland, After They Closed the Gates: Jewish Illegal Immigration to the United States (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012); Mae M. Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004). Harrison Report At the request of President Harry S. Truman in June 1945, dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School and former commissioner of immigration Earl G. Harrison conducted an investigation in Europe on the living conditions and possible maltreatment of DPs, especially Jewish DPs, residing in US Army–run DP camps. Harrison and his collaborators inspected over two dozen DP camps in Germany and Austria and made clear in their reports that the conditions found were unsatisfactory for a variety of reasons. The preliminary report, finished in August 1945, included information regarding the conditions in the camps and of the DPs, suggestions for improvements, and the opinions of the possible nonrepatriable people about their situation and future wishes. Upon its release, the report caused widespread controversy and embarrassment for the US military, and it played a major role in policy changes toward DP camps and refugees. See Zeev W. Mankowitz, Life between Memory and Hope: The Survivors of the Holocaust in Occupied Germany (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

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Hashomer Hatzair This Zionist youth movement emerged in Polish Jewish lands just before World War I. Adhering to a blend of Marxist and Zionist ideology, it encouraged Jewish immigration to Palestine (aliyah) and the formation of an independent Jewish state. The movement’s membership expanded in the interwar period. See Rafael Medoff and Chaim I. Waxman, eds., Historical Dictionary of Zionism (New York: Routledge, 2012), 77–78. Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) After the Nazis came to power, HIAS, established in 1881 in New York City to assist the emigration of Jews fleeing czarist Russia, offered important services to Jews trying to escape from Germany and the areas dominated by the Reich. It joined with two other immigration services under the name HICEM to make use of the remaining exit routes. In the postwar period, HIAS joined with an arm of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee to form the Displaced Persons Coordinating Committee and to administer emigration and familyreunification services in hundreds of DP camps. See Valery Bazarov, “HIAS and HICEM in the System of Jewish Relief Organisations in Europe, 1933–41,” East European Jewish Affairs 39, no. 1 (April 2009): 69–78. Horthy, Miklós (1868–1957) A conservative admiral of the Austro-Hungarian navy, Horthy was the Hungarian head of state or regent from 1920 to October 1944 (the socalled Horthy era). His central foreign policy goal became to secure a revision of the Trianon Peace Treaty and recover the lands Hungary lost after World War I. Hungary introduced antisemitic legislation in the interwar period under Horthy. After the German occupation of Hungary began on March 19, 1944, Horthy appointed a government under Döme Sztójay, which introduced further anti-Jewish measures, including mass deportation of Jews from the provinces to their deaths at Auchswitz II-Birkenau. The Germans forced Horthy to hand over power to Arrow Cross leader Ferenc Szálasi on October 15–16, 1944, and jailed him in Bavaria until the US Army freed him. Horthy testified as a witness during the Nuremberg trials and was not held accountable for war crimes. See Zoltán Vági, László Csősz, and Gábor Kádár, The Holocaust in Hungary: Evolution of a Genocide (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press in association with the USHMM, 2013). International Tracing Service (ITS) This is the largest collection of records containing documentation of Nazi persecution. Using the enormous number of discovered Nazi records, the Allied powers created the ITS after World War II to help families find missing relatives. The physical archive is located in Bad Arolson, Germany, and since 2007 it has digitized millions of its documents for international use. See Suzanne Brown-Fleming, Nazi Persecution and Postwar Repercussions: The International Tracing Service Archive and Holocaust Research (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016). Jackson, Robert Houghwout (1892–1954) After brief legal studies, Jackson began practicing law in New York State, where he befriended Franklin D. Roosevelt and

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performed public service while the latter was governor. When Roosevelt became president, Jackson was appointed to a series of government positions, including in the Bureau of Internal Revenue and the Department of Justice. After serving as US attorney general in 1940, he ascended to associate justice of the US Supreme Court, where he served until his death. He went on leave from his post in 1945 to become chief prosecutor for the United States in the international trial of Nazi war criminals in Nuremberg, drawing some criticism for his cross-examinations of defendants. See Robert H. Jackson, The Nürnberg Case (New York: Knopf, 1947). Jasenovac This central and most infamous camp in the Independent State of Croatia was set up in September 1941 and was supervised by the Directorate for Public Order and Security (Ravnateljstvo za Javni Red i Sigurnost, RAVSIGUR), the Ustaša equivalent of the German Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt). Some thirty camps existed in the Independent State of Croatia in 1941 and 1942, the majority of them short-term concentration and transit camps, from which inmates, mostly Serbs and Jews, were transferred to the country or to camps in Germany. Over the four years of Jasenovac’s existence, around one hundred thousand people were killed there, more than half of them Serbs. See Nataša Mataušić, Jasenovac, 1941–1945. Logor smrti i radni (Jasenovac: Javna Ustanova Spomen-Područje Jasenovac, 2003); Jozo Tomasevich, War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941–1945: Occupation and Collaboration (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001). Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAFC) This organization was established by order of Soviet state authorities in the spring of 1942 to foster political and financial support for the Red Army in its fight against Nazi Germany. In addition to fund-raising, the JAFC published a Yiddish newspaper, Eynikeyt, and collected documentation of Jewish suffering and mass murder during the war with the intention of publishing a “black book” of Nazi crimes. After the war, Soviet support for the JAFC ended and was replaced with political oppression and criminalization of its work. See Shimon Redlich, War, Holocaust, and Stalinism: A Documented Study of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in the USSR (Luxembourg: Harwood Academic, 1995). Jewish Fighting Organization (Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa, ŻOB; also Jewish Combat Organization). Members of several Zionist youth groups in the Warsaw ghetto founded this resistance organization in July 1942 under the command of Mordechai Anielewicz. The ŻOB was in limited contact with the Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa) and the Polish communist underground; the group also coordinated its work with another resistance organization, the right-wing Jewish Military Union later in 1942, in the face of renewed deportations. The two organizations took on German forces during a major wave of deportations from the ghetto in January 1943 and again most famously during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which began in mid-April 1943.

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Ghetto fighters and residents battled German troops and police for nearly a month, until on May 8, 1943, German forces succeeded in seizing the ŻOB headquarters. Many resistance commanders may have committed suicide in the end to avoid capture. The uprising was finally crushed on May 16, 1943. See Israel Gutman, The Jews of Warsaw, 1939–1943: Ghetto, Underground, Revolt (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982); Barbara Engelking and Jacek Leociak, The Warsaw Ghetto: A Guide to the Perished City (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009). Joint. See American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. Kasztner, Rudolf (Rezső) (1906–1957) This Hungarian Zionist leader, executive vice director of the Zionist Budapest Relief and Rescue Committee (Va’ad ha-Hatzalah), played a significant role in hiding and helping Jewish refugees from abroad after the war broke out. Following the German occupation, he became involved in negotiations with Adolf Eichmann and Kurt Becher on behalf of the Rescue Committee, facilitating plans for the so-called Kasztner train, which left the country with more than sixteen hundred Jews aboard. After the end of the war, he immigrated to Israel, where he assumed a public role again. His testimony as a witness in a libel suit brought his wartime activities into the public limelight between 1953 and 1955, and Kasztner subsequently found himself facing accusations of collaboration, complicity, and treason. His role in seeking out rescue opportunities for Hungary’s Jews remains controversial up to the present day. See Yehuda Bauer, Jews for Sale? Nazi-Jewish Negotiations, 1933–1945 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994). Katyn Massacre The Soviet secret police, or NKVD, carried out mass executions of approximately fifteen thousand Polish, Ukrainian, and Byelorussian POWs, both Jewish and non-Jewish, many of them Polish army officers and intelligentsia. The executions took place in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk, Russia, during April and May 1940. In 1943, German forces discovered and exhumed thousands of corpses; the Nazi government used the discovery as propaganda against communists and Stalin’s Soviet government. The Red Army later regained control of the area and proceeded to blame the Germans for the mass killings. In 1951 the American government conducted an official investigation, which finally determined that Stalin and the Soviet government were responsible for the Katyn Massacre. See Anna M. Cienciala, N. S. Lebedeva, and Wojciech Materski, Katyn: A Crime without Punishment (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007). Kibbutz The Zionist movement in Palestine in the early twentieth century instigated this type of collective settlement, based on ideas about shared forms of production, education, and ownership popular among reformist circles since the late nineteenth century. With increased numbers of youth making aliyah from Germany, the proportion of German Jews among Kibbutz settlers grew; German émigrés founded some Kibbutzim (such as Givat Brenner or Beit Zear) before or after 1933.

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See Michael Brenner, Zionism: A Brief History (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener, 2003). Kielce Pogrom (July 4, 1946) This was a massacre inflicted by non-Jews on the local Jewish (and primarily survivor) population in the Polish town of Kielce. The attack left approximately forty-two people dead and another forty or so people injured; it was the largest incident of anti-Jewish violence in Poland to occur after World War II. See Jan T. Gross, Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz (New York: Random House, 2006). Kindertransport (German: children’s transport) Following “Kristallnacht,” the British government agreed to permit an unspecified number of children under the age of seventeen to enter Great Britain from Germany and German-annexed territories. Private citizens or organizations had to guarantee financial support for each child’s care, education, and eventual emigration from Britain. The first such transport arrived in Harwich on December 2, 1938, bringing some two hundred children. The last Kindertransport sailed from the Netherlands for Britain on May 14, 1940, the day on which the Dutch army surrendered to German forces. In all, the rescue operation brought roughly ten thousand children from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland to Great Britain. Several child-rescue initiatives and networks emerged elsewhere in Europe, parallel to the Kindertransport operation. See Mark Jonathan Harris and Deborah Oppenheimer, Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000). Klausner, Abraham (1915–2007) A rabbi and US Army chaplain, Klausner arrived at Dachau with the 116th Evacuation Hospital in May 1945, shortly after the camp’s liberation. For the next five years Klausner continued to work with survivors in DP camps in the American Zone of occupied Germany. Among the most prominent advocates for displaced persons, he is credited with helping to better conditions for thousands of people living in DP camps. See Alex Grobman, Rekindling the Flame: American Jewish Chaplains and the Survivors of European Jewry, 1944–1948 (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1993). Kovno (Kaunas) Between 1920 and 1939, Kovno was the largest city and capital of Lithuania; approximately one-quarter of its population was Jewish. The repression and disintegration of Kovno’s Jewish community, as well as a rise in anti-Semitic sentiments within the non-Jewish population of Kovno, began with the occupation by Soviet forces in 1940, followed by German occupation barely a year later. The systematic murder of Kovno’s Jews began in July 1941. It took only about six months for German Einsatzgruppen and Lithuanian auxiliaries to murder approximately half of the Jews in Kovno and the surrounding areas. In 1943, about two years after the ghettoization of Kovno’s Jewry, German SS officers turned the ghetto into the Kauen concentration camp. By the time Soviet forces arrived at Kovno in August 1944, most remaining

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Jews had been deported to concentration camps in Germany, and the ghetto had been burned to the ground. Most of the possible five hundred survivors had eluded capture by hiding in bunkers or the forests surrounding the city. See Martin Dean, The USHMM Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, vol. 2 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press in association wtih USHMM, 2012). “Kristallnacht” (also “Reichskristallnacht,” “Crystal Night,” “Night of Broken Glass,” or November Pogrom). This euphemism refers to the state-coordinated pogroms, arrests, and property destruction targeting Jews that swept through the German Reich on the night of November 9–10, 1938. The Nazi leadership staged the event to express “the German people’s outrage” at the assassination of a German diplomat, Ernst vom Rath, in Paris by seventeen-year-old Herschel Grynszpan, whose parents had been deported from Germany across the Polish border in late October. During this event, many synagogues, as well as shops and apartments owned or occupied by Jews, were destroyed. At least twenty-six thousand Jewish men were arrested and incarcerated in the Dachau, Sachsenhausen, and Buchenwald concentration camps. The official death total of ninety-one represents only a fraction of the actual casualties. After this event, a wave of anti-Jewish regulations swept Germany and forced more German Jews to emigrate. See Alan E. Steinweis, Kristallnacht 1938 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009). Landsmanschaftn These social groups and benevolent organizations formed an important part of modern Jewish immigrant life and were typically named for their members’ hometowns or regions. While nineteenth-century Landsmanschaftn often constituted the basis for religious communities, they increasingly served secular interests and financed relief work, flourishing in the era around World War I. Membership declined after 1930 but saw a temporary increase again after World War II, when the Landsmanschaftn provided a critical social network for many Holocaust survivors who had left Europe. These groups generated support and aid for the new State of Israel and were also often responsible for creating yitzkor books, or memorial books, for local communities decimated by the Holocaust. See Jack Kugelmass, From a Ruined Garden: The Memorial Books of Polish Jewry (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998). Levi, Primo (1919–1987) A native of Turin from a middle-class, assimilated Jewish family, Levi completed his university studies as a chemist in 1941. He experienced difficulties securing employment as a result of Italian anti-Jewish laws. After the German occupation of northern and central Italy in 1943, Levi’s family went into hiding; he joined the Italian resistance movement but was soon caught by a fascist militia. He was sent to the Fossoli internment camp and then deported in February 1944 to Monowitz in the Auschwitz camp system, where he worked as a lab assistant. The Red Army

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liberated him from the camp in January 1945, but he was only able to make his way home by a circuitous route, arriving in October 1945. Levi began writing his memoirs of Auschwitz, survival, and human morality soon after the war, publishing If This Is a Man in Italy in 1947; the book first appeared in English in 1959 and has sometimes appeared under the title Survival in Auschwitz. He continued working as a chemist and factory manager but eventually retired early to write full-time. His novels, autobiographical writings, and essays on the camp system reached a wide audience before his death in 1987, possibly by suicide. His most renowned works include The Periodic Table and The Drowned and the Saved. See Berel Lang, Primo Levi: The Matter of a Life (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013). Majdanek Built in 1941 near the city of Lublin, Majdanek became a concentration camp and killing center under the supervision of SS and Police Leader Odilo Globocnik. The camp housed a diverse population of prisoners, including Poles, Jews, and Soviet POWs. Inmates died from the extremely poor conditions, were murdered in gas chambers constructed in the autumn of 1942, or were shot. Prior to the camp’s liberation by the Red Army on July 23, 1944, the SS had murdered an estimated two hundred thousand people sent to Majdanek. See Geoffrey P. Megargee, The USHMM Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, vol. 1 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press in association with USHMM, 2009). Mantello, George (orig. Mandl or Mandel; 1901–1992) Mantello came from a prosperous Jewish family in the Transylvania region. He joined the Revisionist Zionist movement as a young man and embarked on a series of successful business ventures that took him throughout central Europe before the war. After escaping to Geneva in the early 1940s, he devoted himself to rescue work, using his position as honorary consul to El Salvador to issue Salvadoran citizenship papers to thousands of Jews. Mantello and his brother Josef also played an instrumental role in publicizing the so-called Auschwitz protocols. See David Kranzler, The Man Who Stopped the Trains to Auschwitz: George Mantello, El Salvador, and Switzerland’s Finest Hour (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000). Mauthausen Shortly after annexing Austria in 1938, the Germans created Mauthausen concentration camp near the town of Mauthausen, Austria. The camp was strategically located near granite quarries, and the Nazis intended to use forced prisoner labor to extract the raw materials. From August 1938 until its liberation by US troops on May 5, 1945, about two hundred thousand people were interned in Mauthausen and its hundreds of subcamps. The camp’s prisoners included people of almost all political, social, and religious backgrounds persecuted by the Nazis, as well as both men and women. Approximately half of Mauthausen’s prisoners perished.

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See Geoffrey P. Megargee, The USHMM Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, vol. 1 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press in association with USHMM, 2009). Morgenthau, Henry, Jr. (1891–1967) A longtime secretary of the US Treasury Department under President Franklin D. Roosevelt with a background in farming and agriculture, Morgenthau helped establish a number of the central institutions of the New Deal in the 1930s. He later worked to create a system of war bonds that helped finance US involvement in World War II and made a key contribution to postwar international financial stability as chairman of the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference, which established the International Monetary Fund and the Bank for Reconstruction and Development (the World Bank). In 1944 he proposed the short-lived, so-called Morgenthau plan, which would have deindustrialized postwar Germany and put in its place an agricultural nation unable to wage war; the Western occupation powers ultimately opted to promote economic recovery on all fronts. Morgenthau resigned shortly after President Harry S. Truman took office. See Henry Morgenthau Jr., The Morgenthau Diaries: World War II and Postwar Planning, 1943–1945, comp. Robert E. Lester (Bethesda, MD: LexisNexis UPA Microfilm Collection, 2007). Munich Agreement This agreement, signed in Munich on September 29, 1938, by Nazi Germany, Italy, Britain, and France, traded Nazi German annexation of the Sudetenland for Adolf Hitler’s guarantees of “peace” in Europe. Although directly determining the fate of Czechoslovakia, the negotiations and the final agreement took place without its representatives. By bowing to Hitler’s territorial demands in central Europe (the Anschluss in March 1938, the Munich Agreement in September 1938) in hopes of forestalling a European war, Britain and France followed a policy of appeasement, acquiescing to Hitler’s aggression. In violation of the Munich Agreement, Nazi Germany occupied Bohemia and Moravia on March 15, 1939; Slovakia had proclaimed independence on the previous day. On March 16, Hitler proclaimed the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia from the Prague castle. The policy of appeasement failed, the Munich Agreement proved no more than a worthless piece of paper, and the political career of Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister associated with the appeasement policy, was over. See David Faber, Munich, 1938: Appeasement and World War II (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2008). Nadich, Rabbi Judah (1912–2007) Born to Russian immigrants in Baltimore, Maryland, Judah Nadich was an influential conservative rabbi, chaplain of the US Army, and postwar special advisor to General Dwight D. Eisenhower. After attending City University of New York and Columbia University, he was ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, which additionally awarded him a master’s of Hebrew literature and a doctorate of Hebrew literature and named him a doctor of

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divinity. From 1936 to 1942, he served as rabbi of conservative synagogues in Buffalo and Chicago, after which he enlisted in the US Army. For four years, he served as senior Jewish chaplain to the European theater of operations and as deputy to the theater chaplain. As the Allied forces swept into the first German concentration camps, General Eisenhower appointed Nadich as special advisor on Jewish affairs. In this position, he worked arduously, along with other chaplains, to alleviate the fraught conditions in place for displaced persons. Following active duty, Rabbi Judah Nadich acted as spokesperson for the United Jewish Appeal and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, giving speeches to and on behalf of Jewish communities in the United States and abroad. See Michael Feldberg, “‘The Day Is Short and the Task Is Great’: Reports from Jewish Military Chaplains in Europe, 1945–1947,” American Jewish History 91, no. 3 (2003): 607–625. November Pogrom. See “Kristallnacht.” Office of Military Government, United States (OMGUS) Established on October 1, 1945, this entity served as the military-based government established in the US zones of occupation immediately following the end of World War II. It was administered by General Lucius D. Clay and was responsible for, among other things, the restitution of property and the question of reparations. OMGUS was closed on December 5, 1949. See Anna J. Merritt and Richard L. Merritt, Public Opinion in Occupied Germany: The OMGUS Surveys, 1945–1949 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970). Ohrdruf A subcamp of Buchenwald located close to the German town of Gotha, Ohrdruf was established in November 1944 and by April 1945 had about 11,700 prisoners interned; a few weeks later the majority of those prisoners were forced on death marches toward Buchenwald or immediately killed as the American troops approached. The Fourth Armored Division discovered Ohrdruf on April 4, 1945; it was the first concentration camp liberated by the Americans. The gruesome state of the camp and its remaining prisoners immediately gained the attention of higher-up US military officials. About a week after the camp’s discovery generals George S. Patton, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Omar N. Bradley visited Ohrdruf, followed later by journalists and select politicians so that they could attest to the atrocities committed by the Nazis. See Deborah Dash Moore, GI Jews: How World War II Changed a Generation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009). ORT (Organisation-Reconstruction-Travail; Organization for Rehabilitation through Training) ORT was founded as the Society for the Promotion of Trades and Agriculture among the Jews in Russia in Saint Petersburg in 1880 to assist the mass of Jews in the Pale of Settlement in acquiring the skills necessary to enter the sectors of the Russian economy. In 1921, ORT became the World ORT Union, an international organization

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that subsequently opened branches in Europe and the Americas. Together with other Jewish organizations during World War II, ORT in France organized vocational training for Jewish children and adults to help them adjust to the new, restrictive policies of the Vichy regime, as well as to forge a new morale. Apart from its work in France, ORT played an important part in the daily life of Jews living in ghettos in Nazi-occupied eastern Europe. After the war, ORT provided vocational training for survivors in DP camps. The first of its schools was established in August 1945 at the Landsberg DP camp. By 1947, ORT offered seven hundred courses across various DP camps throughout Europe. See Sarah Kavanaugh, ORT, the Second World War and the Rehabilitation of Holocaust Survivors (London: Valentine Mitchell, 2008). OSE (Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants, Children’s Relief Organization) Originally a Jewish aid organization founded in 1912 in Russia to provide medical care for embattled Jewish populations, the OSE relocated to Berlin and ultimately Paris in 1933, where it focused on aiding children and otherwise helping Jews with medical care. After the fall of France in 1940, its main office moved to Montpellier in the Vichy zone, where it provided medical and social care and created a network of Jewish homes aimed at helping refugees from central Europe, as well as the growing numbers of Jewish children from the occupied zone—orphans and children whose parents were destitute or had been incarcerated. By late 1941, the OSE was taking care of about twelve hundred children. See Renée Poznanski, Jews in France during World War II (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England in association with the USHMM, 2001). Riegner, Gerhart (1911–2002) A lawyer born in Berlin, Riegner left Germany after Hitler’s rise to power and began a long association with the World Jewish Congress (WJC), serving first as a legal officer for the organization, then from 1939 onward as director of its office in Geneva. In that critical location he could obtain extensive information about the plight of Jews in occupied Europe and publicize their persecution. In an August 8, 1942, telegram directed to Jewish leaders—Rabbi Stephen S. Wise in the United States and Sidney Silverman, a British member of Parliament—he drew attention to the Nazi plan for killing millions of Jews in eastern Europe. After the war Riegner worked for human rights under the auspices of various initiatives associated with the United Nations, and he continued his work for the WJC, rising to the post of secretary-general (1965–1983). See Walter Laqueur and Richard Breitman, Breaking the Silence: The German Who Exposed the Final Solution (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1994); Gerhart M. Riegner, Never Despair: Sixty Years in the Service of the Jewish People and the Cause of Human Rights (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2006). Rosenberg, Alfred (1893–1946) Considered one of the main Nazi Party ideologues and author of a plethora of materials promoting anti-Semitic, anti-Bolshevik, and other Nazi

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Party ideologies, Rosenberg was born and raised in the Russian Empire and immigrated to Germany in 1918. He later played a large role in Nazi initiatives that sought to provide evidence of the “Jewish Conspiracy”; in this task he aided in the looting of millions of books, documents, works of art, and other materials from Jewish organizations all over Europe. In July 1941, in anticipation of the attack on and absorption of Soviet lands, Hitler made Rosenberg the Reich minister of the occupied eastern territories; the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” was first implemented within these areas under Rosenberg’s charge. Rosenberg was arrested in 1945 and tried in Nuremberg, where he was found guilty of all charges against him, including war crimes, crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and conspiracy to commit aggressive warfare. He was sentenced to death and hanged on October 16, 1946. See Jürgen Matthäus and Frank Bajohr, eds., The Political Diary of Alfred Rosenberg and the Onset of the Holocaust (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield in association with USHMM, 2016). Rosensaft, Josef (1911–1975) Active in the Polish Zionist labor movement as a youth in Będzin, Poland, Rosensaft survived Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, from which he was liberated at the end of the war. A powerful advocate for Jewish DPs and the right to immigrate to Palestine, he was elected head of the Central Committee of Liberated Jews in the British Zone in occupied Germany, the main advocacy body for the region’s survivors until 1950. Rosensaft married another activist survivor, Hadassah Bimko, and they moved first to Switzerland and then the United States in the 1950s. In later years he remained a public voice for the world community of Bergen-Belsen survivors. See Hagit Lavsky, New Beginnings: Holocaust Survivors in Bergen-Belsen and the British Zone in Germany, 1945–1950 (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2002). She’erit hapletah Literally meaning “surviving remnant,” this term is the self-coined moniker of the Jewish survivors in DP camps. The term itself appears in several incarnations throughout the Bible, most explicitly in Second Kings 19:30–31: “And the survivors of the House of Judah that have escaped shall regenerate its stock below and produce boughs above. For a remnant shall come forth from Jerusalem, survivors from Mount Zion.” Members of this group claimed their status based on an emerging yet diverse survivor identity that included the experiences of everyone from concentration camp inmates to refugees/deportees who lived out the war in the Soviet Union. Many (although not all) of this group identified strongly with Zionism and Zionist ideals. See Avinoam J. Patt and Michael Berkowitz, “We Are Here”: New Approaches to Jewish Displaced Persons in Postwar Germany (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2010). Sobibór Located in a wooded and thinly populated region, the village of Sobibór was the site of the second of the three extermination camps of “Aktion Reinhard.” Constructed in the spring of 1942 with help from former staff of Aktion T-4, Nazi

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Germany’s “euthanasia” program, German SS and police officials conducted mass murder by gassing at Sobibór from May 1942 until the autumn of 1943, when Jewish prisoner revolts there and at Treblinka spurred the liquidation of both killing centers. No new prisoners were sent to Sobibór, and the remaining Jewish prisoners were murdered. At least 167,000 individuals perished at the camp. See Jules Schelvis, Sobibor: A History of a Nazi Death Camp (Oxford: Berg Publishers in association with the USHMM, 2014). St. Louis, MS On May 13, 1939, the MS St. Louis sailed from Hamburg, Germany, bound for Havana, Cuba, with 938 passengers (predominantly German Jews). Most of the Jewish passengers had ultimate visas for the United States. The ship arrived in Havana Harbor on May 27, at which point Cuba admitted twenty-eight passengers (twenty-two of them Jewish). The remaining 734 passengers were denied. The plight of these refugees was well publicized, and frantic efforts ensued to keep them from being returned to Europe. The ship lingered in Cuban waters and then off the coast of Miami until finally sailing back to Europe on June 6, 1939. Great Britain, Belgium, France, and the Netherlands each took in the refugees; their ultimate fates varied widely, depending upon which country took them in. See Sarah A. Ogilvie and Scott Miller, Refuge Denied: The St. Louis Passengers and the Holocaust (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press in association with the USHMM, 2006). Stutthof Located near present-day Gdańsk, Poland, the Nazis originally created Stutthof in 1939 as a forced labor camp for civilian POWs. In 1942 it became the first concentration camp outside Germany and eventually encompassed more than one hundred subcamps. In early 1945, as the Russian army steadily approached, the Germans evacuated Stutthof and forced its prisoners on death marches toward the Baltic Sea and other concentration camps. Thousands died along the way, succumbing to exhaustion or falling victim to mass shootings and forced drownings. Throughout its existence the camp held approximately one hundred thousand prisoners; of these, at least sixty thousand perished. When the Russian military liberated Stutthof in May 9, 1945, only about one hundred prisoners remained; it was the last concentration camp liberated by the Allies. See Geoffrey P. Megargee, The USHMM Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, vol. 1 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press in association with USHMM, 2009). Sutzkever, Avraham (1913–2010) A Yiddish poet from Vilna, Lithuania, Sutzkever was a member of the Yung-Vilne artists and writers group, along with fellow poets Shmerke Kaczerginski, Chaim Grade, and Leyzer Volf. He published his first volume of poetry in 1937 and a second in 1940. Interned inside the Vilna ghetto in June 1941, Sutzkever engaged in arms smuggling and clandestinely hid rare books and manuscripts from the YIVO collection. Sutzkever continued to write poetry while in the ghetto. He escaped in 1943 with the Federated Partisans Organization and joined a Jewish partisan unit under

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Soviet command. In March 1944, the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee airlifted Sutzkever out of the Lithuanian forests. He testified at the Nuremberg trials in 1946. See Benjamin Harshav, A. Sutzkever: Selected Poetry and Prose (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991). Theresienstadt (also Terezín) This former fortress town 63 kilometers (39 miles) north of Prague served as a way station and “camp-ghetto” between November 1941 and the end of the war. It was the destination of numerous deportation transports from the Reich, the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and other European regions. Nazi propagandists portrayed Theresienstadt as a kind of model ghetto community for Jews in order to deceive foreign governments and agencies. Of the roughly 140,000 Jews deported to Theresienstadt, 88,000 were sent on to “the East” to be murdered in Auschwitz, Majdanek, or Treblinka. By war’s end, more than thirty-three thousand people had also died in Theresienstadt itself, victims of starvation, disease, and ill treatment. See H. G. Adler, Theresienstadt, 1941–1945: The Face of a Coerced Community (1955; New York: Cambridge University Press in association with the USHMM, 2014). Transnistria Following the German invasion and occupation of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Romania occupied this region between the Bug and Dniester rivers in August 1941. Of the 210,000 indigenous Jews present on the eve of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, an estimated 185,000 perished through a combination of mass shootings, ghettoization, forced labor, and general privation. From September 1941 until October 1943, Ion Antonescu’s regime deported approximately 150,000 Jews, most from Bessarabia and Bukovina, to camps and ghettos throughout Transnistria; 90,000 of them died. Beginning in December 1943, efforts by Romanian Jewish organizations, led by Wilhelm Filderman, resulted in the repatriation of several thousand deportees, but the majority remained in Transnistria until its liberation by the Soviet army in March 1944. See Radu Ioanid, The Holocaust in Romania: The Destruction of Jews and Gypsies under the Antonescu Regime, 1940–1944 (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee in association with the USHMM, 2000). United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) This international relief organization was founded to provide social and economic aid to the liberated countries of Europe. Active from 1943 to 1947, UNRRA comprised forty-four nations and was governed by the UNRRA Council, which initially included representatives from the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union, and China, which collectively donated 75 percent of the organization’s operating budget. Services—food supplies, medical services, clothing, machines, and materials for agricultural and industrial rehabilitation—amounted to roughly $3 billion in aid. In October 1945, UNRRA also assumed responsibility for the DP population. In 1946, at the height of its activity, UNRRA operated with a staff of 25,000 to care for 850,000 displaced persons. Affiliated voluntary Jewish organizations included the American Jewish Joint

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Distribution Committee and the Jewish Committee for Relief Abroad. In the summer of 1947, UNRRA became inactive; the International Refugee Organization assumed care of DPs. See William I. Hitchcock, The Bitter Road to Freedom: A New History of the Liberation of Europe (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2008). United Nations War Crimes Commission (UNWCC) Established in London through an October 1943 meeting at the British Foreign Office, the commission—with seventeen member countries (the Soviet Union not among them)—first met officially in January 1944. It gathered and evaluated evidence pertaining to alleged war criminals and offered guidance about how to prosecute cases, but it left detention and prosecution of suspects to member governments. The UNWCC continued its work until the spring of 1948. A Far Eastern subcommission also operated from 1944 until March 1947. See Arieh J. Kochavi, Prelude to Nuremberg: Allied War Crimes Policy and the Question of Punishment (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998); United Nations War Crimes Commission, comp., History of the United Nations War Crimes Commission and The Development of the Laws of War (London: HMSO, 1948). Unzer veg (Our Way) This Yiddish-language newspaper, cofounded and coedited by Levi Shalitan (later Shalit), a prewar revisionist and journalist from Shavli (Siuliai), Lithuania, and journalist Israel Kaplan, served as the main organ of the survivors’ community and the Central Committee of Liberated Jews in the US Zone of occupied Germany. It began publication in October 1945 with just a few staff members, a distribution of twenty thousand, an international readership, and only limited access to news from afar. The paper appeared biweekly, entirely in Hebrew characters. Reuven Rubinstein took over the editorship in late 1946, and the paper continued publication until at least 1949. No less than a dozen other Yiddish papers were published for the she’erit hapletah in Germany, mainly during 1946. See Zeev W. Mankowitz, Life between Memory and Hope: The Survivors of the Holocaust in Occupied Germany (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Ustaša/Ustaše (also anglicized as Ustasha) was the Croatian fascist movement that ran the Independent State of Croatia, a satellite state of Nazi Germany, from 1941 to 1945. Under the leadership of Ante Pavelić, the Ustaše persecuted Serbs, Jews, and Roma. By the end of the war, 30,000 Jews and more than 325,000 Serbs had been murdered in the territory of the Independent State of Croatia. See Jozo Tomasevich, War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941–1945: Occupation and Collaboration (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001). Va’ad ha-Hatzalah (Hebrew: rescue committee; Rescue Committee for War Torn Yeshivos; also Vaad Hatzalah) Rabbi Eliezer Silver initiated this rescue effort with leaders

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of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada in November 1943. The New York–based organization originally worked to help rabbis, yeshiva students, and their families who had fled to Vilna after the Nazi and later Soviet invasions of Poland in 1939. The emergency committee raised funds to support them and assist in their immigration to safe havens. Many of these refugees initially made their way to Japan and were later stranded in Shanghai. Nearly one thousand rabbis and students were deported by the Soviets to Soviet Asia, on the Soviet border with Iran, also seeking refuge. The organization focused on raising funds and securing visas for these groups throughout the war, sometimes working with other Jewish aid organizations, sometimes competing with them for funding. In 1944 Va’ad ha-Hatzalah turned to more general rescue work in Europe and at war’s end began working to aid Jewish war orphans. After ongoing conflicts over its direction and goals, the committee concluded its work in the early 1950s. See Efraim Zuroff, The Response of Orthodox Jewry in the United States to the Holocaust: The Activities of the Vaad ha-Hatzala Rescue Committee, 1939-1945 (New York: KTAV Publishing, 2000). Vienna Awards These were German and Italian diplomatic decisions designed to settle territorial disputes between Hungary and its neighbor states. According to the First Vienna Award, on November 2, 1938, Hungary reannexed from Czechoslovakia the southern strip of the Upper Province and part of Carpatho-Ruthenia, which the 1920 Treaty of Trianon had detached from Hungary. On August 30, 1940, the Second Vienna Award returned areas to Hungary that had been under Romanian control since the end of World War I: Northern Transylvania and the Székely Land. See Randoph L. Braham, The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press in association with the USHMM, 2000). Wallenberg, Raoul (1912–1947?) A Swedish architect and businessman, Wallenberg arrived in Hungary in July 1944 as a member of the Swedish diplomatic mission. Following an assignment by the War Refugee Board, a new US government organization, he soon became the major force behind Swedish rescue operations, issuing thousands of protective documents to Jews and putting numerous Budapest buildings that sheltered Jews under Swedish protection. Although his efforts saved large numbers of people during the Arrow Cross regime, Soviet authorities arrested him in January 1945 and took him to Moscow. After long denying involvement in Wallenberg’s disappearance, the Soviet government issued an official statement in 1957 announcing that he had died in prison from heart failure in 1947. See Raoul Wallenberg, Letters and Dispatches (New York: Arcade Publishing in association with the USHMM, 1995).

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War Refugee Board (WRB) President Franklin Delano Roosevelt established the WRB by executive order on January 22, 1944, for the express purpose of rescuing the remaining Jews of Europe (as well as other persecuted groups) from the Nazi threat. It operated until September 15, 1945. Despite the late arrival of the agency in the timeline of the Holocaust, it is credited with saving about two hundred thousand lives. The WRB was formed in response to the pressure of Jewish groups, as well as other individuals from within the federal government, like Head of Foreign Funds Control John Pehle, who would become the first director of the WRB, and Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr.; indeed, most of the WRB staff hailed from the Department of Treasury under Morgenthau. Funded from the President’s Emergency Fund and by private donations, the WRB focused, at this point in the war, primarily (although not exclusively) on the fate of Hungarian Jewry. See Rebecca Erbelding, About Time: The History of the War Refugee Board (Fairfax, VA: George Mason University, forthcoming). Warsaw Ghetto Uprising In the summer months of 1942, approximately three hundred thousand Jews were deported from the Warsaw ghetto to Treblinka and other concentration camps. News of mass murders resulting from the deportations eventually reached the ghetto, sparking the creation of resistance groups within the remaining population. In January 1943, the resistance groups used weapons smuggled into the ghetto to fire upon Germans who were attempting to round up Jews for deportation; in this case, the Germans retreated, and the resistance was considered a success. In April 1943, a full-scale revolt broke out as the Germans began the final capture and deportation of the remaining Jews in the ghetto. An estimated 750 Warsaw ghetto inhabitants fought against the Germans during the uprising. The German soldiers were well trained and better armed; about a month after its start, the uprising ended in May 1943. By its end nearly fifty-six thousand Jews had been captured, the vast majority of whom were sent to Treblinka and other extermination camps; what remained of the Warsaw ghetto was burned to the ground. See Yitzhak Zuckerman, A Surplus of Memory: Chronicle of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, ed. Barbara Hashev (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). Weisswasser (Mährisch-Weisswasser) A forced labor camp for women located in Germany, Weisswasser was considered a subcamp of Gross-Rosen. Run by Vereinigte Lausitzer Glaswerke (United Lausitz Glassworks), the factory produced jars, medicine bottles, cooking utensils, and glass parts for military vehicles. The internees, many of them transferred to Weisswasser from Auschwitz, consisted mainly of Hungarian-Jewish women. See Geoffrey P. Megargee, The USHMM Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, vol. 1 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press in association with USHMM, 2009).

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Weizmann, Chaim (1874–1952) Born in today’s Belarus, Weizmann studied chemistry in Germany and Switzerland. He eventually settled in Britain, where he taught at the University of Manchester. He became important in the Zionist movement and later played a key role in the negotiations around the Balfour Declaration issued in 1917, in which Britain pledged its support for a Jewish “national home” in Palestine. He presided over the World Zionist Organization during the 1920s, then again from 1935 to 1946, and went on to become the first president of Israel. See Walter Laqueur, A History of Zionism: From the French Revolution to the Establishment of the State of Israel (New York: Schocken Books, 2003); Norman Rose, Chaim Weizmann: A Biography (New York: Penguin, 1986). Westerbork Dutch authorities first established Westerbork in a northeastern province of the Netherlands in October 1939 as an internment camp for Jewish refugees. After the German invasion in May 1940, Westerbork was converted to a transit camp for Jewish deportees in 1942. From July 1942 through September 1944, nearly one hundred thousand people passed through the camp on the way to concentration camps and killing centers in central and eastern Europe. The majority of transports went to Auschwitz and Sobibór, where nearly all deportees were murdered upon arrival. Other transports were sent to Bergen-Belsen and Theresienstadt, where prisoners had a slightly better chance of survival. Westerbork remained a transit camp with a significant population until the advance of Allied troops in early 1945, at which time the Germans abandoned it. Canadian forces liberated the several hundred remaining inmates in April 1945. See Jacob Presser, Ashes in the Wind: The Destruction of Dutch Jewry (London: Souvenir Press, 2010). White Paper of 1939 On May 17, 1939, the British government under Neville Chamberlain issued a so-called white paper outlining its new policy on Palestine. Effectively reversing its commitment to a “national home for the Jewish people” there, as stipulated in the 1917 Balfour Declaration, the British now envisioned limiting Jewish immigration and land purchases and establishing a state with majority (Palestinian Arab) rule in the near future. See Benny Morris, Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881–2001 (New York: Vintage, 2001); Walter Laqueur and Barry Rubin, eds., The Israel-Arab Reader: A Documentary History of the Middle East Conflict (New York: Penguin, 2008), 44–50. World Jewish Congress (WJC) Founded in 1936 by Stephen S. Wise (1936–1949) and Nahum Goldmann, the WJC sought to represent Jewish interests internationally. Its headquarters were located in Paris. The WJC’s main objectives under its first president, Rabbi Wise, were to serve as a diplomatic agency representing Jewish interests to Allied governments and organizations in order to combat discriminatory policies,

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provide relief aid, and, later, organize rescue efforts for Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe. With the outbreak of the war, the WJC moved its central office to Geneva, and in 1940 it moved again to New York City. Gerhart Riegner, head of the WJC’s Geneva branch office, played a key role in creating public awareness in Allied countries about Nazi Germany’s extermination policies. The organization continued to lobby Allied governments for diverse assistance and rescue projects throughout the war. After the war, the WJC became very active in efforts to rebuild European Jewish communities. See Monty Noam Penkower, The Jews Were Expendable: Free World Diplomacy and the Holocaust (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983); Richard Breitman and Alan M. Kraut, American Refugee Policy and European Jewry, 1933–1945 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987). YIVO Institute for Jewish Research (Yidisher Visnshaftlekher Institut; Jewish Scientific Institute) Founded in 1925 in Vilna (then in Poland; after 1939, in Lithuania) with an office in Berlin, YIVO has maintained its status as one of the most important Jewish academic institutions up to the present day. YIVO was originally structured like the national academy of a European country, with research divisions for philology, history, economics, statistics, and psychology. Its main goal was the study of eastern European Jewish culture and the establishment of Yiddish as a legitimate language of Jewish scholarship. In addition to its immense publishing activity—over twenty-five hundred items appeared between 1925 and 1941—YIVO gathered significant library and archival collections documenting the history of eastern European Jewry. In 1933, after the Nazi seizure of power, the Berlin office moved to Paris; in 1940, the Vilna headquarters under the leadership of Max Weinreich, one of its founders, moved to New York, where it has continued its work until today. See Cecile Esther Kuznitz, YIVO and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture: Scholarship for the Yiddish Nation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014); David Fishman, The Rise of Modern Yiddish Culture (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005). ŻOB. See Jewish Fighting Organization. Zuckerman, Yitzhak (“Antek”) (1915–1981) Born in Vilna, he joined the Zionist youth movement Hashomer Hatzair in Poland and became one of its leaders. When the war broke out, he organized Jewish underground cells in Soviet-occupied western Ukraine before returning to Warsaw in 1940. There Zuckerman helped build up diverse underground activities in the ghetto and also forged ties with the Polish and Jewish undergrounds in other cities. When mass deportations began, he worked to mobilize Jewish armed resistance and took a leading role in preparing the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. He spent the uprising attempting to secure arms for the ghetto fighters and to rescue surviving fighters. He also took part in the Polish uprising in Warsaw the following year, and he and his wife, Zivia Lubetkin, another ŻOB leader, worked to rebuild

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Poland’s Jewish community after liberation and help survivors leave Europe. Zuckerman immigrated to Palestine in 1947, where he and Lubetkin were among the cofounders of the Ghetto Fighters’ kibbutz. He served as a witness at the 1961 Eichmann Trial in Jerusalem. See Yitzhak Zuckerman, A Surplus of Memory: Chronicle of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, ed. Barbara Harshav (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); Shmuel Spector, “Zuckerman, Yitshak,” in The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, ed. Gershon David Hundert (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 2:2135–36.

Chronology

T

HIS CHRONOLOGY furnishes additional context for the documents presented in this volume (including those mass murders mentioned in the text). Specialized studies of the period, such as those referenced in this volume’s chapters and bibliography, provide more comprehensive discussions of antiJewish measures in Germany and German-dominated Europe between January 1944 through December 1946.1 Most of the casualty figures mentioned here are estimates.

1944 January 4, 1944: In its westward advance, the Red Army crosses the former eastern Polish border. 1. For events from January 1933 to December 1943, see the chronologies in Jürgen Matthäus and Mark Roseman, Jewish Responses to Persecution, vol. 1: 1933–1938 (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press in association with the USHMM, 2010), and Alexandra Garbarini, with Emil Kerenji, Jan Lambertz, and Avinoam Patt, Jewish Responses to Persecution, vol. 2: 1938–1940 (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press in association with the USHMM, 2011); Jürgen Matthäus, with Emil Kerenji, Jan Lambertz, and Leah Wolfson, Jewish Responses to Persecution, vol. 3: 1941–1942 (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press in association with the USHMM, 2013); Emil Kerenji, Jewish Responses to Persecution, vol. 4: 1942–1943 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield in association with the USHMM, 2014). Events on Hungary in 1944, from Kerenji, Jewish Responses to Persecution, vol. 4: 1942–1943.

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Chronology

January 22, 1944: Allied troops land at Anzio, close to Rome, but their advance is arrested for months. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt establishes the War Refugee Board, the US government agency tasked with aiding the victims of Nazi persecution. January 27, 1944: The Soviets break the 872-day German siege of Leningrad. Hundreds of thousands of Soviet soldiers and civilians have died. March 19, 1944: The German army invades Hungary. Adolf Eichmann and his deportation experts (the Sondereinsatzkommando) arrive in Budapest. March 21, 1944: German authorities order the creation of the Central Council of Hungarian Jews. Its leader is Samu Stern, president of the Pest Israelite Congregation. March 22, 1944: Former Hungarian ambassador in Berlin, Döme Sztójay, forms the new collaborationist cabinet. Jews are soon forced to wear the yellow star, and the government decides to segregate them. March 24, 1944: The Gestapo lures about eight hundred Athenian Jews to a synagogue, allegedly to receive food; they are subsequently interned and deported to Auschwitz. March 27, 1944: The Germans seize about two thousand Jewish children and a few remaining elderly Jews in the Kovno concentration camp (previously the Kovno ghetto), where most are killed or deported to Auschwitz. April 4, 1944: The Hungarian Ministry of the Interior orders the Jews of Hungary to undergo obligatory registration, and Hungarian authorities begin to confiscate fifteen hundred Jewish apartments in Budapest to house non-Jewish Hungarians who have lost their homes in Allied bombings. April 7, 1944: A confidential decree is issued for the concentration of Jews in Hungary. April 10, 1944: The Red Army liberates Odessa. Up to April 13, 1944: German and Hungarian leaders reach agreement about limited deportations (one hundred thousand Jewish men capable of working). April 16, 1944: Ghettoization of Jews in Hungary begins in what later became Deportation Zone I (Carpatho-Ruthenia). The government issues a decree on the registration and confiscation of Jewish assets. The Red Army liberates the vital Black Sea port of Yalta in Crimea. April 22, 1944: The Szentkút agreement is reached, entailing a final decision on the deportation of all Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz. April 25, 1944: Eichmann summons Joel Brand, a member of the Hungarian Aid and Rescue Committee, to discuss a deal between the SS and the Allies, in which the Nazis would release 1 million Jews in exchange for ten thousand trucks and other supplies.

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May 9, 1944: The Red Army liberates Sevastopol, Crimea’s largest city. May 15, 1944: Mass deportations by the Hungarian authorities begin. Over the next fifty-six days, more than 430,000 Hungarian Jews are deported to Auschwitz. June 4, 1944: Allied troops liberate Rome. June 6, 1944: Operation Overlord, the Allied landing in Normandy, begins; close to 160,000 troops land in France, opening up a second front against the Germans. By September, more than 3 million Allied troops are in France. June 22, 1944: The Red Army launches a massive offensive in Soviet Belarus, reaching westward to the Vistula across from Warsaw by August 1. June 25, 1944: The Jews of Budapest are forced into 1,948 designated buildings (“yellow-star houses”) by this date. June 30, 1944: King Gustav V of Sweden sends a cable to Admiral Miklós Horthy calling on him to save Hungarian Jewry. July 2–3, 1944: The remaining three thousand Jews from work camps near Vilna are taken to Ponary and executed. July 3, 1944: The Red Army liberates Minsk. July 4, 1944: Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandl secretly transmits to Switzerland the Auschwitz protocols (also known as the Vrba-Wetzler Report), a twenty-six-page document detailing the killing methods at Auschwitz II–Birkenau. George Mantello (George Mandel), a Hungarian Jew who became the first secretary of the consulate in El Salvador, translates it into English. July 6, 1944: Horthy halts the deportations from Hungary. July 8, 1944: Liquidation of the Kovno concentration camp (previously the Kovno ghetto) begins. July 9, 1944: Hungarian deportations end. July 13, 1944: The Red Army liberates Vilna. July 19, 1944: Eichmann’s unit deports 1,220 Hungarian Jews from the Kistarcsa internment camp to Auschwitz. July 20, 1944: Inside Hitler’s Wolf ’s Lair headquarters near Rastenburg, East Prussia, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg’s assassination attempt on the Nazi Führer fails. July 22, 1944: In Lublin, the communist-led Polish Committee of National Liberation proclaims itself the only legitimate Polish government and assumes administration of liberated Polish territory.

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July 23, 1944: The International Red Cross visits Theresienstadt, which the Germans disguise as a benign place for the duration of the visit. The Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa) begins an uprising in Lwów, liberating the city from the Germans after several days. The Soviets soon take Lwów over. July 24, 1944: The Red Army liberates Majdanek. About fifteen hundred Jews from the Sárvár internment camp are deported to Auschwitz. July 25, 1944: Anglo-American forces break out of the Normandy beachhead and head toward Paris. July 27, 1944: The Red Army liberates Białystok and Lwów. August 1, 1944: The Warsaw Uprising, a major operation of the Polish underground, begins. The noncommunist underground Polish Home Army rises up against the Germans in an effort to liberate Warsaw before the arrival of Soviet troops. The Soviet advance halts on the east bank of the Vistula. On October 5, the Germans accept the surrender of the remnants of the Polish Home Army forces fighting in Warsaw. Approximately one thousand Jews, most of them ŻOB fighters in hiding, take part in the fighting. Up to two hundred thousand civilians are killed, and hundreds of thousands flee the city. The Red Army liberates Kovno. Raoul Wallenberg meets with Horthy and asks him to suspend the deportation of Hungarian Jewry permanently. August 2, 1944: The Germans liquidate the “gypsy family camp” at Auschwitz II– Birkenau, sending nearly three thousand Roma to the gas chambers and transferring approximately fifteen hundred to Buchenwald. August 6, 1944: Liquidation of the Łódź ghetto begins, and over seventy-four thousand Jews are deported to Auschwitz. August 17, 1944: Allied troops liberate the Drancy assembly and detention camp, a major deportation center for Jews in France. More than sixty-five thousand French and other European Jews were ultimately deported from Drancy to their deaths. August 19, 1944: An uprising against the German occupation begins in Paris as the Allied troops reach the city. Six days later, the troops of the Free French forces, supported by Allied troops, enter the French capital. August 21, 1944: The Dumbarton Oaks Conference begins in Washington. Over one and a half months, the Allied leaders and China negotiate the basic structure and functions of the United Nations.

Chronology

535

August 23, 1944: The Red Army reaches the Prut River, and the Romanian opposition overthrows the Ion Antonescu regime. Romania switches sides in the war. August 24, 1944: Horthy refuses to hand over Budapest’s Jews to the Germans. Eichmann’s special deportation unit is called back. August 25, 1944: French Free forces, led by General Charles de Gaulle, liberate Paris. August 29, 1944: Horthy dismisses Prime Minister Döme Sztójay, and a new government forms under Horthy loyalist General Géza Lakatos. September 12, 1944: Romania signs an armistice with the Soviet Union. September 13, 1944: The US Air Force bombs Auschwitz III–Monowitz (Buna). October 2–3, 1944: After a sixty-three-day siege, the Polish Home Army surrenders to the Germans in Warsaw. The Warsaw Uprising is crushed. October 7, 1944: A Sonderkommando unit of Greek Jews and others revolt, kill three SS guards, and blow up Crematorium IV at Auschwitz. October 14, 1944: British forces liberate Athens. October 15–16, 1944: Horthy attempts to negotiate an armistice with the Allies; the Arrow Cross deposes him in a coup. October 18–20, 1944: Eichmann’s Sondereinsatzkommando returns to Budapest. October 20, 1944: Yugoslav communist leader Josip Tito’s partisans liberate Belgrade. October 26, 1944: The Arrow Cross government of Ferenc Szálasi hands over seventy labor service companies to the Germans. November 6, 1944: Forced marches of Budapest Jews to Hungary’s western border begin. November 17, 1944: Szálasi creates two ghettos in Budapest. November 25, 1944: Heinrich Himmler orders the destruction of the Auschwitz II– Birkenau gas chambers and crematoria. December 3, 1944: Clashes between police and communist demonstrators in Athens lead to a civil war in Greece. December 10, 1944: Eichmann orders the Budapest ghetto sealed. December 16, 1944: The Germans launch a final offensive in the west, known as the Battle of the Bulge, in an attempt to reconquer Belgium and split the Allied forces along the German border. By January 1, 1945, the Germans are in retreat. December 24, 1944–February 13, 1945: The Red Army besieges Budapest. Arrow Cross militiamen terrorize and massacre the city’s Jews.

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December 28, 1944: Abba Hillel Silver and Rabbi Stephen S. Wise resign as cochairmen of the American Zionist Emergency Council. December 31, 1944: Following the Soviet takeover of the country, Hungary’s Provisional National Government declares war on Germany. On January 20, 1945, the Hungarian government signs an armistice agreement with the Allies in Moscow.

1945 January 16, 1945: The Red Army liberates Łódź. January 17, 1945: The Red Army liberates Warsaw. Auschwitz is evacuated and approximately sixty-six thousand prisoners are sent on death marches. The last forty-eight Jewish prisoners at Chełmno, part of Sonderkommando 1005, revolt against the SS. Only three survive. January 19, 1945: Kraków, the capital of the Generalgouvernement, is liberated by Soviet Troops. January 27, 1945: Soviet troops liberate Auschwitz, freeing seven thousand prisoners. Jews make up a very small percentage of the survivors. February 4–11, 1945: At the Yalta Conference, Josef Stalin, Winston Churchill, and Franklin Roosevelt discuss the division of Germany into Allied occupation zones, the setting of postwar borders in Europe, and the repatriation of an estimated 11 million displaced persons (i.e., civilians uprooted by Nazi Germany), among them slave laborers and concentration camp prisoners. February 13–15, 1945: The Allies bomb Dresden, destroying most of the city and killing approximately twenty-five thousand people. March 1945: The Deportáltakat Gondozó Országos Bizottság (DEGOB, National Committee for Attending Deportees) testimony project is founded in Budapest. March 16, 1945: The last transport of Jews from the Protectorate is sent to Theresienstadt. April 1945: Partisan units, led by Josip Tito, capture Zagreb and topple the Ustaše regime. The top Ustaše leaders flee to Italy and Austria. April 3–4, 1945: Approximately thirty thousand Buchenwald inmates are taken on a death march, during which thousands perish. April 4, 1945: American troops discover mass graves when they liberate Ohrdruf, a subcamp of Buchenwald. On April 5, 1945, generals Dwight D. Eisenhower, Omar N. Bradley, and George S. Patton view the camp.

Chronology

537

April 11, 1945: In anticipation of liberation, prisoners at Buchenwald seize control of the camp and storm the watchtowers. Later that afternoon, US Third Army troops liberate Buchenwald, freeing twenty-one thousand prisoners. Of Buchenwald’s 238,980 thousand inmates, approximately 50,000 perished. April 12, 1945: US President Roosevelt dies, and Harry S. Truman takes over the presidency. April 15, 1945: The British Eleventh Armored Division liberates Bergen-Belsen. April 16, 1945: The Soviets launch their final offensive, encircling Berlin. April 20, 1945: The US Seventh Army captures Nuremberg. April 22, 1945: One thousand prisoners of the Jasenovac concentration camp (in the former Independent State of Croatia) stage an uprising. A small number succeed in escaping the camp, but most are killed by Ustaša guards. April 23, 1945: American army units liberate Flossenbürg concentration camp and the approximately fifteen hundred remaining inmates. April 26, 1945: The SS take approximately seven thousand Jewish prisoners from Dachau on a death march; most are shot or die from various ailments along the way. April 27, 1945: The Landsberg displaced persons camp is formed and becomes the second largest in the American Zone. By October, it will function as an exclusively Jewish camp. The major Austrian parties declare the country’s independence from Germany, revoking the 1938 Anschluss. April 30, 1945: Hitler commits suicide. May 1, 1945: The US Army opens the Feldafing displaced persons camp, which will become the first all-Jewish DP camp in the American Zone. May 2, 1945: Berlin surrenders to the Soviets. May 4, 1945: The first Jewish DP newspaper, Tkhies hameysim (Resurrection of the Dead), appears in handwritten Yiddish, three weeks after the liberation of Buchenwald. May 5, 1945: American forces liberate Mauthausen. May 7, 1945: Germany surrenders to the western Allies at Reims, in northwestern France. May 8, 1945: Theresienstadt is liberated by the Soviets, freeing approximately seventeen thousand prisoners. American troops capture Hermann Göring in Berchtesgaden. May 23, 1945: Himmler commits suicide.

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June 1945: The Foehrenwald displaced persons camp is established and becomes one of the largest Jewish DP camps. It was also the last Jewish DP camp to close, in 1957. June 9, 1945: The Soviet Military Administration in Germany is created for the zone occupied by the Red Army. June 15, 1945: Jewish DPs in Germany found the Central Committee of Liberated Jews. June 21, 1945: Allied troops conquer Okinawa, the last island stop before the Japanese archipelago. July 17–August 2, 1945: The Potsdam Conference takes place in Potsdam, Germany, between the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union. President Truman, Prime Minister Churchill (proceeded by Clement Atlee during the conference), and General Secretary Stalin meet to discuss how to establish a basis for a postwar order, including the punishment of Nazi crimes. August 1945: Jewish ethnographer M. I. Beregovskii conducts interviews with survivors of the concentration camps in Transnistria. August 3, 1945: Earl G. Harrison, American envoy to the Inter-Governmental Committee on Refugees, submits a report to President Truman that sharply criticizes DP camp conditions in Germany and Austria, especially those facing Jewish DPs. As a result, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) takes over DP camp administration, leading to improved conditions. August 6, 1945: The United States drops an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. August 8, 1945: The Soviet Union declares war on Japan and invades Manchuria. August 9, 1945: The United States drops an atomic bomb on Nagasaki. August 30, 1945: The Allied Control Council is created to set occupational policy in Germany. September 2, 1945: Having agreed in principle to unconditional surrender on August 14, 1945, Japan surrenders formally, ending World War II. September 29, 1945: The Office of Military Government, United States is created under US Army general Lucius D. Clay as the governing body in the US occupation zone in Germany. October 1, 1945: UNRRA assumes responsibility for the administration of displaced persons in Europe. November 28, 1945: The Central Historical Commission is founded in Munich as a subdivision of the Central Committee of Liberated Jews in Bavaria.

Chronology

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December 20, 1945: Following the Allies’ Moscow Declaration of October 30, 1943, and the London Agreement of August 8, 1945, Control Council Law (CCL) No. 10 is enacted to create the legal basis for trials dealing with crimes against peace, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and membership in criminal organizations. CCL No. 10 is applied in the occupation zones of the three western Allies until 1951 and in the Soviet Zone until 1955.

1946 March 29, 1946: A riot breaks out in the Stuttgart displaced persons camp between local German police and the Jewish DPs residing there. One survivor dies as a result of the incident. July 4, 1946: A Polish civilian mob carries out a pogrom against Jewish survivors in Kielce. Following a ritual murder accusation, the mob kills forty Jews and wounds dozens of others. As a result of the attack, Jews from Poland and eastern Europe migrate en masse to DP camps in Germany, Austria, and Italy. July 29, 1946: Psychologist and sociologist David Boder conducts the first of his oral history interviews with Jewish survivors at the ORT training school in Paris. It is the first such recorded oral history interview project. August 1946: The first edition of Fun letstn churbn (From the Last Extermination), a periodical devoted to the history of the Jewish people during the Nazi regime, is published in Munich. October 1, 1946: The International Military Tribunal passes judgment on major Nazi war criminals on trial in Nuremberg, Germany, convicting eighteen and acquitting three. Eleven of the defendants receive death sentences. October 16, 1946: In accordance with sentences handed down after the convictions, ten of the Nuremberg defendants are executed by hanging. One defendant, Hermann Göring, had committed suicide in his cell.

Index

Entries that appear in boldface can be found in the Glossary. Page numbers followed by “n” indicate footnotes. Page numbers in italic indicate illustrations and photographs. Cities and countries are listed according to current borders. Aachen (Germany), survival of Jews in, 60 Africa, North, 369–375 Agudat Israel, on Jewish state, 201, 203–204 agunah, 265–268, 417 Aid Society for Jewish Refugees, 121–124 air raids, at Sömmerda, 35–39 Akselrod, A., 427–431 Aleichem, Shalom (Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich), 175, 192 Alexander, Morris, 158–159 Algerian Jews, 370n19 Allies, air assault on Germany, 1 Althoff, Becky: on children in DP camps, 102–107; on kibbutz movement, 207 American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), 257–261 American Jewish Conference, 15–19, 287–289, 329–330 American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (AJJDC): Bund and, 205–207; children removed from families by, 102–107; DEGOB and, 445; “heirless” property and, 347;

reparations and, 330, 336–339; on restitution, 302; in Shanghai, 154–156; at Stuttgart West DP Camp, 173; Swiss Jews aided by, 121, 124; testimonies collected by, 451–454; in U.S. immigration, 137 American Jewish soldiers: in Buchenwald liberation, 55–58; European Jews as, 58–61; experiences of liberation, 53–64; relatives missing in Europe, 55, 58–61 American Jews: attitudes on survival, 86; perspective on war crimes trials, 287–289 American soldiers, meeting after liberation, 71 Anglo-American Commission on Palestine, 174–175 Ansbach (Germany), resettlement in, 105 antisemitism: in Poland, 223–227; in Soviet Union, 220–223 Apsan, Dora, 82–85 Arendt, Hannah, 314 Argentina: Austrian Jews in, 150–153; emigration to, 145; German Jews in,

541

542

Index

150–153; Płotsk community in, 368– 369; refugees in, 150–152, 411–415 artwork, stolen, 331, 333–336 Aryanization laws, in Italy, 26 Ashkenazi Jews, yitzkor books of, 368–369 assimilation, Holocaust as, 411–415 Association of Jewish Refugees, 144–150, 176 Atkin, Carl, 189–191, 191 Auerbach, Rachel, 238 Aufbau (newsletter), 144 Auschwitz (concentration camp): death march from, 46, 51–52; death toll at, 245–246; deportations from Kovno, 24; historical study of, 359–362; liberation of, ambivalence during, 53; mass deportations to, 3; testimony on, 446–451, 453–454 Auschwitz protocols, 4–5, 12n7 Australia, emigration to, 147–148 Austria: death marches to, 46; Jewish displaced persons in, 68–69; Labor Bund in, 205–207; survivors in, 117– 120, 247–248 Austrian Jews: in Argentina, 151–153; in Shanghai, 153–156 Bad Arolsen (Germany), 255–256 Bavaria, Polish Jews in, 215–217 Beregovskii, Moishe, 180n43, 454–456 Bergen-Belsen (concentration camp): as DP camp, 164, 262–264; DP theater at, 192; foreign nationals camp in, 12–14, 14; liberation of, 53–54, 127; memoir of, 364–366; survivors from, 126, 130; testimony about, 461–468; trial for crimes at, 283–287, 295–300 Biała Podlaska (Poland), 397, 399 Bimko, Hadassah (Ada), 164, 283–287 birth dates, inaccuracies in, 235 Bisenhaus, Polia, 458–468 black market, at Stuttgart West DP camp, 211–214 Blumenstein, Else, 258 Blumenstein, Franz, 258–261

Board of Deputies of British Jews, 177– 178, 271–274, 322–327, 332–336 Boder, David, xxviii, 180n43, 354–355, 457–468 Bolivia, emigration to, 145–146 borders, and national identity, 115, 214, 217–219 Brand, Joel Jenő, 93–94 Brazil, emigration to, 146 Breckenridge Long, Samuel Miller, 15 Brest-on-the-Bug (Brześć) (Belarus), 436–438 Britain. See Great Britain British Mandate. See White Paper of 1939 Brkljačić, Ivica, 291–292 Brotman, A. G., 323–327, 333–336 Brucker, Oskar, 294 Bryk, Levy, 261, 263 Bryk, Rachel, 261–264 Buchenwald (concentration camp): conditions in, 56–58; death march to, 51–52; DP camp, kibbutz movement at, 207–210, 209; liberation of, 53, 55–58, 73–75; population of, 55–56 Budapest (Hungary): DEGOB in, 444; Jews in, 125; rescue action in, 96; roundups in, 266n57; testimonies in, 445–454 Bukovina, 455 Bulgaria, Jews protected in, xxxi Bulletin du Centre israélite d’information (Bulletin of the Center for Jewish Information), 340–343 Bund. See Labor Bund burial, 396–397, 398, 399, 400 bystanders, xxxi–xxxii Canada, emigration to, 148–149 Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation, memoir collection of, 357–358, 423–426 Central Bureau of Orthodox Communities, 267–268 Central Committee of Liberated Jews of Bavaria, 170, 171

Index Central Committee of Polish Jews, collaboration trials of, 306–313 Central Historical Commission: interviews by, 435–438; on need for historical commission, 420–423; survivors defined by, 81 Central Index of Jewish Survivors, 244 Central Jewish Committee, at BergenBelsen, 164 Central Jewish Historical Commissions (CJHCs), memoir collections of, 358, 359, 361, 390–391, 434–435 Chajet, Chaim, 307–313 Chełm (Poland), commemoration of, 406–409, 409 Chełmno (death camp): deportations to, 4, 261; war crimes in, 361n7 Chideckel, Solly, 347–352 child survivors: best interests of, 103; custody of, 102–107, 156–160, 256–257; emigration of, 156–160; expectations placed on, 97; experience of, 97–109, 251; family for, 98; foster families for, 252–255; health of, 251; hidden, 75–77, 259–260; “home” for, 98; interviewing, 442; in non-Jewish placements, 98, 101; obstacles faced by, 82; parenting of, 102–107; relocating, 258; removed from families, 102–107; reunification with families, 102; searching for, 251–261; separated by emigration, 130–134; in Soviet Union, 107–109; symbolic importance of, 97, 442; testimonies of, 387–390, 439, 440, 441, 441–444. See also Jewish orphans Child Tracing Service. See International Tracing Service Chile, emigration to, 146–147 Chinese National Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (CNRRA), 156 Chrastava. See Kratzau Churchill, Winston, 421 Cluj (Romania), return of Kasztner Jews to, 93–97

543

collaborators, among Polish Jews, 306–313 collective memory, vs. individual memory, xxix Comité d’Union et des Défense des Juifs (United Jewish Defense Committee), 9 commemorations: dates of death in, 415– 419; graves, 396–397, 398, 399, 400; local, 401–409; in national identity, 426–432; purposes of, 353–354, 395– 396; theology and, 410–411; yitzkor books in, 367–368 communal memoirs, 367–375 communism: in DP Zionism, 200–201; Jewish politics equated with, 176–178. See also Soviet Union concentration camp system: eyewitness testimony about, 290–295; Jewish camp leaders in, 463; post-liberation conditions in, 63–64; size of, 5; unraveling of, 1, 5; writing in, 33–39 Conference of the Central Committee of Liberated Jews, 165 Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany, xxxiii, 316 Congress of Soviet Jews, 223 Cooperative Committee for Democratic Reconstruction (Sambetskommittén för Demokratiskt Uppbyggnadsarbete, SDU), 125–129 Council of Liberated Jews, 165 Cuba, emigration to, 258 Cunningham, Alan, 131n30 custody, of child survivors, 102–107, 156– 160, 256–257 Czechoslovakia: Jewish DPs in, 217–219; military tribunals and, 271; restitution and, 325 Dachau (concentration camp): Kovno Jews deported to, 3–4, 24; liberation of, 62–64, 465 Danish Jews, in Sweden, 125 Danziger, Samuel, 212 death: determining date of, 415–419; proof of, 265–268

544

Index

death marches: beginning of, 5; conditions of, 44–45, 50–52; death toll of, 46; number of prisoners on, 46 Deggendorf (DP camp): daily life in, 189– 191, 191; education and recreation at, 169–170; emigration from, 168; food at, 169; housing in, 168 Delegation of Argentine Jewish Associations (Delegación de Asociaciones Israelitas Argentinas, DAIA), 150–153 Deportáltakat Gondozó Országos Bizottság (DEGOB), 444–451 deportations: to Auschwitz, 3; to Chełmno, 4; of Dutch Jews, 60; from Estonia, 19–25; of Hungarian Jews, 1, 3; from Kovno ghetto, 3–4, 21–22, 23–25; of Lithuanian Jews, 19–25; from Łódź ghetto, 4; of Slovakian Jews, 3 deportees, from Hungary, 444–451 depositions, 290–295 Dijkstra, Johannes, 260 discipline: in DP camps, 170–171; at Kratzau, 43–44 displaced persons (DPs): daily life of, 178–198; in economy, 138, 140, 141– 142, 143; Jews separated from general population, 112; resettlement desired by, 67–68; as status, 161–162; struggle faced by, 64; testimonies of, 61–62; types of, 111–112; in United States, 134–143; in Vienna, 68–69. See also Jewish displaced persons Displaced Persons Act, 115 displaced persons camps. See DP camps documents: choosing, xxxii; in historical scholarship, 425; lists of living and dead, 234–237; in locating relatives, 233–239 Dominican Republic, refugees in, 144, 258–261 “Dos lid fun yidishn Di-Pi” (Leivick), 184, 187–188 Dos naye lebn (newspaper), 238–239, 306–313 DP(s). See displaced persons

DP camps: access to newspapers, 173, 175–176; administration of, 112, 162; Bergen-Belsen as, 164, 262–264; as choice, 177–178; collaboration trials in, 307; commemoration in, 427–428; comprehensive study of, 166–171; conditions in, 65, 67–68; conditions of Jewish DPs in, 162–164; discipline in, 170–171; education at, 169; elections in, 202–203; emigration from, 168, 174–175; food at, 169; housing in, 168, 175; infiltrees in, 164; Jewish chaplains in, 166; Jews in administration of, 170– 171; Labor Bund in, 205–207; in Linz, 65–68; lists of living and dead compiled in, 234–237; in locating children, 255; mail services in, 175; morale in, 170– 171; newspapers in, 175–176, 178–183; populations of, 164; recreation at, 169; religious life in, 170; she’erit hapletah used in, 77–79; songs from, 179–183; theater in, 191–198, 193, 195; types of, 162; urban, 171–176; violence against, 211–214; Zionism in, 112–113, 200–210 Dutch Jews: deportation of, 60; reparations for, 336–339; survival of, 60 Dwolatzky, J., 158–159 Easterman, Alex, 296–300 Eaton, Joseph W. (Joseph Wechsler), 58–61 Ečer, Bohumil, 271 education: at DP camps, 169; at Stuttgart West DP Camp, 173; for survivors, 88 Ehrenburg, Ilya Grigoryevich, 230 Eichmann, Adolf: in Argentina, 151; Kasztner Jews and, 93; trial of, 314, 427 Eisenhower, Dwight D., Jewish affairs under, 166 Eisner, Irving P., 55–58 El Salvador, false citizenship documents from, 12–14, 14 emigration: of child survivors, 156–160, 252–255; complexities of, 113; from DP camps, 168, 174–175; other

Index options for, 144–160; of Polish Jews, 225–226; quotas in, 116; by refugees, 116; reparations and, 320–322; from Shanghai, 154–156; by survivors, 116– 117; to Switzerland, 120n10, 121; from Theresienstadt, 13–14, 14; White Paper restrictions on, 17. See also Palestine Emmerich, Hugo, 338 Engel, Chaim, 90–93 England, Warsaw Jews aided by, 11 Engströmer, Dory, 125 Ereda (concentration camp), liquidation of, 22 Estonia, deportations from, 19–25 ethnic Germans, in Vienna, 68 European Jews: as American Jewish soldiers, 58–61; experiences of liberation, 53. See also specific countries European Tracing Office, 244 expellees: challenges faced by, 113; definition of, 112 Extraordinary Commission, 274–280 families: for child survivors, 98, 102–107; and concept of “home,” 84–85; decimation of, 261–268; reconstituted, 234; separation of, 76, 130–134. See also relatives Fantlová, Zdenka, 126–129 Farn Yiddishn Kind (newspaper), on child survivors, 97 Feder, Sami (Sajnel), 179–183, 192 Feigenbaum, Moshe Yosef, 420–423, 435 Feldafing (DP camp), 164, 168, 170 femmes tondues (shorn women), 302n62 Filtzer, David L., 85–89, 89 First Congress of the She’erit Hapletah of European Jews, 165 First Vienna Award, 217 Flaiszer, Jakob Leib, 328–331 Florence, roundup of Jews in, 30 Föhrenwald (DP camp): child survivors at, 102–107; education and recreation at, 169; housing in, 168; religious life at, 170; theater at, 192

545

forced labor: death through, 32; escalation of, 1, 32; in Hungary, 15; in Sömmerda, 32–39 Först, Samson, 382–387 Fossoli (camp), 30 foster families, for child survivors, 252–255 France: child survivors in, 98, 252–255; historical scholarship in, 423–426; justice system in, 301–306, 339–343; locating relatives in, 239–243; reparations in, 301–306, 339–343; underground presses of, 9–12 Frank, Anne, 431 Frankel, William, 271–274 Free Italian Colony, 26–32 French communists, in resistance movements, 8–12 French Jewish resistance movements, 8–9 French Jews: final arrests in Paris, 9; in occupied vs. unoccupied zones, xxxi; reparations for, 301–306, 339–343 Friedman, Filip, 358, 359–362, 434–435 Friendly, Fred, 55 funerals, 396–397, 398, 399, 400 Fun letstn churbn (journal), 61–64, 435–436 Fürstengrube (concentration camp), 244n19, 245 Fürth (DP camp), 396, 397, 400 Gansel, Josef, 218–219 Gara, Maria, 451–454 geography, in fates of Jews, xxx–xxxi Geringshof, kibbutz at, 208 German Jews: in Argentina, 150–153; expatriation of, 152; repatriation of, 79, 215; restitution for, 326; in Shanghai, 153–156; treatment as refugees, 61 German refugees, in Britain, 144 Germany: Polish Jews settling in, 215–217; restitution efforts in, 315–316, 325–326 Gesundheit, Estera, 391–394 ghettos, final liquidations of, 1 Gliksman, Volf, 436 Goebbels, Joseph, 192

546

Index

Gold, Arthur, 98–102 Goldman, Moisés, 153 Goldmann, Nahum, 330 Graber, David, on fate of Oyneg Shabes archive, xxxii–xxxiii Grasett, Arthur Edward, 335–336 graves, 396–397, 398, 399, 400 Great Britain: German refugees in, 144; guerilla warfare against, in Palestine, 322–323; military tribunals and, 271; in Palestine emigration, 164, 285–286; in reparations, 323–327; war crimes trials by, 295–300 Grese, Irma, 295–300 Grinberg, Zalman, 281–283 Gringauz, Samuel, 428 Gruenbaum, Eliyahu, 208 Guez, Gaston, 371–375 Gutman, David and Gina, 108–109 Gutman, Marek, 214 Gutman, Mayer, 211–212 Hagganah, 322–323 Halevi, Benjamin, 94 Halpern, Leivick, 184, 187–188 Hambühren (concentration camp), 261n51 Harrison, Earl G., 162 Harrison Report, 134–135, 162–164 Hashomer Hatzair: in escape of Slovakian Jews, 6–8; on Jewish state, 201; Zuckerman in, 6 Haskin, Esther, 337–339 Hašler, Karel, 127 Hausner, Martin, 163 Hebrew: as lingua franca, 179; vs. Yiddish, 179n36 Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS): in reparations, 330; Swiss Jews aided by, 121; in U.S. immigration process, 115–116, 137 Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 333–336 Heim, Otto H., 121–124 Heinrichmeyer, Else, 256–257 “heirless” property, 346–352 Hellman, Samuel (Samuel Helmann), 57–58 Henriques, E. F. Q., 323–327

Herzberg, Isaak and Berta, 13–14, 14 HICEM: in South African emigration, 160; Swiss Jews aided by, 124 hidden Jews: children, 75–77, 259–260; survival experience of, 91–93 Hirschler, Rene, 425–426 historical commissions, need for, 420–423. See also Central Historical Commission; Central Jewish Historical Commissions historical scholarship: emerging, 419–426; purposes of, 434–435; survivorcentered, 457–468 Hitler, Adolf, xix, 17, 18, 192, 297, 298, 383 Hochland Lager, kibbutz movement at, 207 holidays, in commemorations, 407–409, 411–415 Holocaust, theological explanations for, 410–419 Holocaust memoirs: on Auschwitz, 359–362; of children, 387–390; collections of, 357–358; collective, 381–387; connotations of term, 357; considerations for, 353; diversity in, 358, 375–381; early postwar, 375–387; editing of, 388–390; emergence of field, 359–366; languages of, 359–360, 382–387; subjectivity of, 363–366; translation of, 377; unpublished, 387– 394; yitzkor (memorial) books, 367–375 “home”: for child survivors, 98; concept of, 115, 199; emotional uncertainty about, 82–85; Germany as, 215–217; and Zionism, 200–210 Horthy, Miklós, forced labor under, 15 Hössler, Franz, 295–300 housing: in DP camps, 168, 175; for refugees, 113; for Shanghai refugees, 155–156; for survivors, 117–120; in Vienna, 117–120 Hungarian Jews: commemoration dates and, 415–419; in Czechoslovakia, 217–219; deportation and murder of, 1, 3, 93–94; escape of, 17; geography and fate of, xxxi; Red Cross aid for,

Index 27; repatriation of, 444–451; rescue efforts for, 95–96; in Sömmerda, 32–39; Swedish protection of, 125; testimonies of, 442–454. See also Kasztner Jews Hyman, Abraham, S., 165–166 Ichud party, 201–203 Indonesia, 134 infiltrees: definition of, 111–112; in DP camps, 164; in Germany, 215–217; at Stuttgart West DP Camp, 172–176 International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg (IMT): American Jewish perspective on, 287–289; Jewish DPs at, 171, 280–283; Jewish perspectives on, 229–230; Jewish testimony in, 290–300; Jewish voices at, 269–270; responsibility of, 229; verdict, 287–289 International Tracing Service (ITS), 233, 256–257 interrogations, in Soviet evidence gathering, 275–280 interviews. See testimonies Israel: memorial in identity of, 426–432; reparations to, 316. See also Palestine Italian Jews: deportations of, 26, 28–30; plea to Red Cross for, 27–32; roundups of, 30 Italy: German invasion of, 25–26; racial laws in, 25–26; restitution in, 343–346 Jackson, Robert Houghwout, 229 Jasenovac (concentration camp), 290–295 Jewish Agency for Palestine, 445 Jewish chaplains, in DP camp administration, 166 Jewish Colonial Association, 150 Jewish community, orphans in survival of, 102 Jewish displaced persons (DPs): American awareness of, 458; challenges faced by, 162; conditions in DP camps, 162–164; in Czechoslovakia, 217–219; emigration to Palestine, 113; vs. enemy personnel, 166; misunderstandings about, 166– 171, 176–178; at Nuremberg trials,

547

171; participation in war crimes trials, 280–283; patriotism of, 134–137; psychological health of, 162–163; reparations for, 328; self-government of, 164; separated from general population, 112; settling in Germany, 215–217; in Soviet Union, 220–223; in United States, 134–143; U.S. reception of, 135. See also displaced persons Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB, Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa), 6–8 Jewish National Fund, 431, 432 Jewish organizations: in child rescue, 101; in locating relatives, 233; refugees supported by, 123–124; in reparations, 322–336, 328–331. See also specific organizations Jewish orphans: in Jewish community, 100– 102; postwar placement of, 98–102; psychological health of, 99–100; religious life of, 99–102, 108–109. See also child survivors Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), 135–137, 176, 212, 225 Joubert, Annette, 340–343 justice: collaborators and, 306–313; in France, 301–306, 339–343; Jewish involvement in, 270; in locating relatives, 230–231; Palestine and, 283– 287; in reparation, 301–306; verdict and, 287–289. See also International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg; reparations; restitution; war crimes trials Kadish, George, 405, 406 Kahane, Shlomo, 265 Kahnt, Erich, 302, 305 Kalmanovich, Zelig, 332 Kaner, Leon, 261–264 Kaplan, Israel, 435, 441–444 Karmel, Henia, xxv Kasztner, Rudolf (Rezső), 93–97 “Kasztner Jews,” survival experience of, 93–97 Katyn Massacre, 224 Kaunas. See Kovno

548

Index

Kawer family, 396–397, 398 Kayem, Irene, 156–160 Keyes, Geoffrey, 174 Kfar Hassidim, emigration to, 130–134 khurbn forshung (destruction research), 359 kibbutz movement: commemoration by, 427; in DP camps, 207–210, 209 Kielce Pogrom, 224–225, 310, 467–468 Klausner, Abraham, 61–64, 234–237 Klein, Fritz, 295–300 Klein, Lilly, 33–39, 34 Klooga (concentration camp), liquidation of, 22 Klüger, Ruth, xxviii Koleinu (newsletter), 144 Kornianski, Yosef, 8 Kovno: destruction of, 19, 25; hideouts near, 24; mass murders at, 21, 24 Kovno ghetto: commemorations in, 405, 406; deportations from, 3–4, 21–22, 23–25; hiding places in, 25; liquidation of, 19–22, 24–25 Kramer, Josef, trial of, 283–287, 295–300 Kratzau (concentration camp), 39–45 Kraus, Michal: death march experienced by, 49–50; liberation experience of, 69–72; memoir as reconstruction, 388–390; on physical health, 85–89, 89 Kulkielko, Renya, 376–381 Labor Bund, on Jewish state, 200–201, 204–207 Lake Maggiore (Italy), massacre at, 28 Landsberg (DP camp): commemoration in, 405, 406; education and recreation at, 169; housing in, 168; Ichud party in, 202–203; religious life in, 170; riot at, 212; theater at, 192, 193 Landsmanschaftn: commemorations of, 406–409, 409; memoirs of, 367 Langfelder, Otto, 290–295 La vara (newspaper), 401–405 Lavergne, Amélie and Georgette, 302–306 Leivick, H., 184, 187–188 Lemberg. See Lwów Lerner, Harry, 171–176, 212–214

Lerner, Samuel and Ida, 172–176 letters, in locating relatives, 239–250 Levi, Primo: The Drowned and the Saved, xxv–xxvi; Survival in Auschwitz, 53 Lewin, Meshulam (Sylvain), 187–188 Lewisohn, Ludwig, 377 Lewy, Julius, 65–68 liberation: ambivalence about, 53; American Jewish soldiers’ experiences of, 53–64; disappointment of, 78; emotional reactions to, xxv–xxvi; European Jews’ experiences of, 53; experience of, 70–72; of hidden children, 75–77; Israel and, 428–431; lack of uniformity in, 2; Soviet Jewish soldiers’ experiences of, 53; survivors’ experiences of, 64–79 library collections, stolen and destroyed, 331–336 Linton, Joseph I., 330 Linz (Austria), DP camp in, 65–68 Lipszyc-Green, Reuben, 183–186 Lithuania, testimony about atrocities in, 275–280 Lithuanian Jews, deportation of, 19–25 Łódź ghetto, deportations from, 4 Lohbauer, Hilde, 299 Louw, Eric, 149 LPC (“likely to become a public charge”), 115, 138 Lubetkin, Zivia, 6–8 Lubocki, Meilach, 19–25, 20 Lutz, Carl, 445 Luxembourg Agreement, 316 Lwów, 136n42 Maastricht (Holland), survival of Jews in, 60 Macedonia, Bulgarian acquisition of, xxxi Mackenzie King, William Lyon, 148–149 Majdanek (concentration camp): death toll at, 245–246; deportations to, 4, 6; evacuation from, 46 Mantello, George, 12–14, 14 Mapai, on Jewish state, 201 marriages, releasing women from, 265–268 mass burials, 396–397, 399

Index mass murders: at Kovno, 21, 24; at Lake Maggiore, 28; in Lithuania, 276–280 Mauthausen (concentration camp): death march to, 46–48, 50; hygiene in, 67; liberation of, survivor experience of, 70–72; survival rate in, 32 Mayer, Albert and Jack, 159 Mayer, Leon, Hilda, and Leon, Jr., 157–160 McClelland, Roswell, 96 Melamet, A. M., 160 memoir. See Holocaust memoir memorial services. See commemorations memory: collective vs. individual, xxix; shaping of, xxix memory making, Jewish tradition in, 353–354 Mengele, Josef, 448–449 Milan, roundup of Jews in, 30 Milch, Arieh, 441–444 Minkin (Menikin), Abraham Isaac, Sarah, Musha, and Hannah, 253–254 Mitlplunkt, Y., 407–409 Mitnick, J. George, 65–68 Molodowsky, Kadia, 395 morale, in DP camps, 170–171 Morgan, Frederick E., 176–178 Morocco, 370n19 Moses, Siegfried, 320–322 Mowshowitch, D., 323–327 Munich Yiddish Art Theater (MIT), 192 Munzer, Josef, 439, 440 Musical Yiddish Cabaret Theater, 192 Mussolini, Benito, 26n52 Nadich, Judah, 166–171 National Council of Jewish Women, in U.S. immigration process, 137 national identity: borders and, 115, 214, 217–219; memorial as, 426–432 nationality, and war crimes trials, 272–274 National Refugee Service, in U.S. immigration process, 115, 137 Nehama, Joseph, 362–366 Netherlands: child survivors in, 98; reparations in, 336–339. See also Dutch Jews

549

Neuengamme (concentration camp), 180n43 Neumann, Edit, 256–257 Neumann, Viktoria, 257 Neunburg vorm Wald, Jews settling in, 215–217 newspapers: DP camp access to, 173, 175–176; of DP camps, 178–183; in locating relatives, 238–239; war crimes trials covered in, 280–289 New Zealand, emigration to, 147 Nizer, Louis, 287–289 Noll, Dina Tsenelevna, 275–280 non-Jews: child survivors placed with, 98, 101; Holocaust scholarship and, 421– 422; reparations for, 318–319, 324 Nordheim, David, 130 Nordheim, Rachel, Moshe, Batsheva, Rivka, and Shimon Nehemia, 130–134 Nordheim, Simon, 131–132 Nuremberg trials. See International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg Odessa, 222–223 Office of Military Government, United States (OMGUS), in restitution efforts, 315, 347 Ornstein, Lajos, 46–48 ORT (Organisation-ReconstructionTravail): in reparations, 330; Swiss Jews aided by, 124 Osrin, Gus, 159–160, 348–352 Our Voice (underground newspaper), 10–12 Oyneg Shabes archive, fate of, xxxii–xxxiii Palestine, emigration to: Britain in, 164, 285–286; by children, 105–106, 130; closure of, 17; DP camp administration of, 168; from DP camps, 174–175; by DPs, 113, 163–164; in Kasztner Jews’ rescue, 96; memoir of, 378–381; obstacles to, 116, 129–134; by Polish Jews, 225–226; quotas in, 129–130; recruitment for, 113; reparations and, 320–322, 326; rescue efforts and, 426– 427; from Switzerland, 123; war crimes trials and, 283–287. See also Hagganah

550

Index

Paris Peace Treaties, on reparations, 328, 329 Passover Haggadah, 411–415 Pat, Jacob, 224–227 patriotism, of Jewish DPs, 134–137 Pavlović, Marko, 292 Pehle, John, 15 Perl, Mirjam, 446–451 perpetrators, xxxi–xxxii physical health: of child survivors, 251; after hiding, 92; at Kratzau, 44; and medical facilities, 119; of survivors, 82, 85–89, 89, 125, 128 Picili, Hinko Dominik, 291–292 Pidhaitsi (Ukraine). See Podhajce Pilpel, Robert, 337–339 Piłsudski, Józef, 11n25 Pintschewski, Moshe, 194–198, 195 Płotsk (Poland), 368–369 Podhajce (Galicia), 442–444 Poland: collaboration trials in, 306–313; repatriation to, 177–178 Polish government in exile: postwar, 224; recognition of, 11 Polish Jews: collaborators among, 306–313; and communism, 224; misunderstandings about, 176–178; postwar options of, 223–224; settling in Germany, 215–217; settling in Poland, 223–227; in Shanghai, 154–156; as symbol of resistance, 9, 10–12; United States quotas for, 135. See also Łódź ghetto Popović, Milivoj, 294 Posnansky, Arthur, 208 pregnancy, and survival, 91–93 Pressel, Helen, 242 Pressel, Joseph, Miriam, and Philippe, 239–243 Preuss, Lawrence, 271–274 property, confiscated: cultural holdings, 332–336; de-Aryanization of, 324–325, 336; “heirless,” 346–352; return of, 118–119. See also restitution psychological health: of child survivors, 102–107, 251; of Jewish displaced

persons, 162–163, 185–188; of Jewish orphans, 99–100; of survivors, 82–85, 92–93, 129, 262–264, 458 purimspiel, 192, 193, 359–360 questionnaires, for collecting testimonies, 438–439, 440 quotas, in emigration: for Brazil, 146; for Palestine, 129–130; for United States, 15–19, 134–135; widespread use of, 116 Rabinovich, Solomon Naumovich. See Aleichem, Shalom racial laws, in Italy, 25–26 Rapoport, Nathan, 431 Record (newspaper), 287–289 Red Cross: Hungarian Jews aided by, 27; in locating relatives, 233; pleas for Italian Jews to, 26–32 refugees: acceptance of, 122–123; in Argentina, 150–152; in Britain, 144; challenges faced by, 113; citizenship for, 121–124; definition of, 112; in Dominican Republic, 144; as emigrants, 116; housing for, 113, 155–156; Palestine and, 426–427; in Shanghai, 153–156; in Switzerland, 120–124; in United States, 134–143; U.S. quota for, 15–19 relatives, locating: of American Jewish soldiers, 55, 58–61; children, 251–261; by displaced persons, 170–171; documents for, 233–239, 465; International Tracing Service in, 256– 257; as justice, 230–231; lack of closure in, 265–268; letter writing in, 239–250; newspapers used in, 238–239; private organizations in, 257–261; through soldiers, 57–58; uncertainty of, 84. See also families religious life: in DP camps, 170; of Jewish orphans, 99–102, 108–109; postHolocaust theologies, 410–419; in Soviet Union, 220; at Stuttgart West DP Camp, 173

Index reparations: administration of, 328–331; current status of, 316–317; definition of, 317; demand for, 283; individual and communal, 317–320, 322–327; Jewish responsibility for, 320–322; in Netherlands, 336–339; for non-Jews, 318–319, 324; questions about, 321– 322. See also restitution repatriation: conditions upon return, 69; emotional experience of, 75; of German Jews, 79; of Hungarian Jews, 444–451; from Shanghai, 154–155; testimonies after, 444–456 resources, for survivors, 92–93, 117–120 restitution: authority for, 324–325; concerns about, 315–316; of cultural holdings, 331–336; definition of, 317; in France, 301–302, 339–343; of “heirless” property, 346–352; legal considerations in, 317–322; local, 336–343; personal claims, 343–352; war crimes trials and, 273. See also reparations Restitution of Identifiable Assets Act, 316 revenge, survivors and desire for, 73, 75 Revisionist Party, on Jewish state, 201 Rich, John F., 259–261 Riegner, Gerhart, 98–102 Rinsky, Benjamin, 153 Robinson, Nehemiah, 317–320 Roet, Solomon, 60 Rohde, Friedrich, 436–438 Romania, survivors expelled from, 249 Roman Jews: deportations of, 28–30; ransom demanded of, 28 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 17 Rosenbaum, Alexander, 208–210 Rosenberg, Alfred, 230, 332, 402 Rosensaft, Hadassah. See Bimko, Hadassah (Ada) Rosensaft, Josef, 164 Sacher, Harry, 323–327 St. Louis, MS, 258, 260 St. Ottilien (DP camp), 165, 169, 170, 281, 428–431

551

Salczberger, Helene, 302 Salczberger, Melchior, 303–304 Salczberger, Nathan, 302–306 Salitan, Leivy, 269–270 Salonika (Greece), 362–366, 401–405 Salzwedel, 180–182 Sambetskommittén för Demokratiskt Uppbyggnadsarbete (Cooperative Committee for Democratic Reconstruction, SDU), 125–129 San Vittore (Italian prison), 30 Schneersohn, Isaac, 357–358, 423 Schtern, Chaim and Sarah, 348–352 Schüller, Käthe, 139 Schur, Heinrich, 117 Schwartz, Joseph J., 159–160 Schweitzer, Max, 248–250 Schwerner family, 241–243 Šeduva (Lithuania), atrocities in, 276–280 Segall, Israel, 194–198, 195 Sephardic Jews: commemorations of, 401– 405; yitzkor books of, 369–375 Shanghai, refugees in, 153–156 The Shanghai Almanac, 154–156 Shapira, Kalonymus, 410 she’erit hapletah (surviving remnant), 77–79, 164, 165, 214 Sheinson, Yosef Dov, 411 Shoskes, Henry, 354n3 Sieting, Edit, 256 Slovakian Jews: in Czechoslovakia, 217–219; deportations to Auschwitz, 3; escape operations from, 6–8 Smirnov, Lev N., 230 Smuts, Jan, 149 Sobibór (death camp), 5, 59, 90, 407 Sokołów Podlaski (Poland), 396–397, 398 Solidarity (Solidarité) group, 9 Sömmerda (concentration camp), 32–39 Sommerstein, Emil, 225 songs, from DP camps, 179–186 Sorell, Zoltan, 85 South Africa, emigration to, 149–150, 156–160 Soviet Government Statements on Nazi Atrocities, 275

552

Index

Soviet Jewish soldiers, experiences of liberation, 53 Soviet Union: child survivors in, 107–109; forced migrations in, xxx–xxxi; Jewish DPs in, 220–223; Poland liberated by, 224; war crimes evidence gathering in, 274–280 Soyfer, Genie, 455–456 “Special Registration of Enemy Countries’ Citizens Residing in the Republic” (Argentina), 151–152 Spiro, David Kahana, 397 Stuttgart West (DP Camp): administration of, 172–176; conditions in, 171–176; housing at, 172–173; riot at, 211–214 Stutthof, 3–4, 23–25, 307, 313 Sundquist, Eric J., xxviii Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF), 332–336 survivor(s): in Aachen, 60; archetypes of, 135–137; challenges faced by, 64; clothing for, 87, 88; conditions upon repatriation, 69; defining, 81–82; as emigrants, 116–117; emotional reactions of, xxv–xxvi; evolving meaning of term, xxvii; experience of liberation, 64–79; food for, 87, 88, 128; future of, 78–79, 87, 88; hidden Jews as, 91–93; hostility to, xxviii; housing for, 117– 120; Kasztner Jews as, 93–97; locating relatives of, 57–58; in Maastricht, 60; nationality of, 272; physical health of, 82, 85–89, 89, 125, 128; pregnancy and, 91–93; psychological health of, 82–85, 92–93, 129, 262–264, 458; resources for, 92–93, 117–120; as she’erit hapletah, 77; in Sweden, 125–129; sympathy for, 128–129; testimonies of, 125–129; in United States, 134–143; in Vienna, 117–120, 247–248. See also expellees; infiltrees; refugees “survivors’ Haggadah,” 411 Sutzkever, Avraham, 229–230 Sweden: Hungarian Jews aided by, 125; survivors in, 125–129 Swiss Jews, 120–122

Switzerland: neutrality of, 120n10; refugees in, 120–124; rescue efforts in, 12–14, 14 Szatmárnémeti (Hungary), 446–451 Szmarag, Ruth, 76–77 Szmarag, Sigmund and Flora, 76, 77n36 Tegen, Einar and Gunhild, 126 Terezín. See Theresienstadt testimonies: audio, 457–468; of children, 387–390, 439, 440, 441, 441–444; connotations of term, 433; earliest examples of, xxvii–xxviii; historical commissions in, 434–444; letters as, 239; in Nuremberg trials, 290–300; oral, xxviii; purposes of, 354–355, 434– 435; from questionnaires, 126, 435, 438–439, 440; questions concerning, 434; after repatriation, 444–456; selfwritten, 435–436; of survivors, 125– 129; on war crimes, 275–280 theater, in DP camps, 191–198, 193, 195 theologies, post-Holocaust, 410–419 Theresienstadt (concentration camp): conditions in, 245; deportation to, 60–61; emigration efforts from, 13–14, 14; Viennese survivors of, 117–120 Thessaloniki. See Salonika Tolnai, George, 454 Transnistria, 249–250, 382–387, 454–456 Treblinka (concentration camp), 245–246 trials. See International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg; war crimes trials Trieste (Italy), restitution in, 344 Truman, Harry S., 286 Truman Directive, 134–135 Tunisian Jews, yitzkor books of, 369–375 Tydor, Yechezkel, 208 Ukraine, 222, 382n39, 455n31 Ulm (Germany), DP Camp children’s home at, 107–109 UN displaced persons (UNDPs), definition of, 111 United Nations Commission on Restitution, 273

Index United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Organization (UNRRA): children interviewed by, 442; in DP camp administration, 162; Jews classified by, 112; in locating relatives, 233; mission of, 111; in Shanghai, 154–155; at Stuttgart West DP Camp, 172–174; survivor defined by, 81; “Ten Railroad Cars ‘UNRRA’” (Lipszyc-Green), 183–186; Weinsteins’ work with, 138, 142, 143 United Nations War Crimes Commission (UNWCC): Jewish involvement in, 271–274; role of, 271 United Service for the Foreign Born, 116 United States: Auschwitz protocols released in, 5; displaced persons in, 134–143; immigration process of, 115–116, 137–143, 260–261; military tribunals and, 271; quota for refugees, 15–19, 134–135; refugee camp proposed for, 16–18; survivors in, 134–143 United States Army, survivor defined by, 81. See also American Jewish soldiers; American soldiers United States Committee for the Care of European Children (USCOM), 258 United States State Department, antisemitism in, 15 United Zionist Organization, 201–202 unpublished memoirs, 387–394 UNRAA. See United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Organization Unsdorfer, Shlomoh Zalman, 410 Unterhalter, Jack, 205–207 UNWCC. See United Nations War Crimes Commission (UNWCC) Unzer hofenung (newspaper), 280–281 Unzer sztyme (newspaper), 78–79 Unzer veg (newspaper), 165, 192, 193, 281–283 Va’ad ha-Hatzalah: children’s homes of, 107–109; child rescue by, 93; in U.S. immigration process, 137 Vajs, Albert, 290 victims, xxxi–xxxii, 313–314, 427

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Vienna (Austria): displaced persons in, 68–69; housing shortage in, 117–120; survivors in, 117–120, 247–248 Vilna ghetto, transportation from, 21–22 Vilnius. See Vilna ghetto Vock, Philip, 49, 51–52, 69–70 Vrba, Rudolf, 4–5 Vrba-Wetzler Report. See Auschwitz protocols Wallenberg, Raoul, 16, 125, 445 war crimes trials: for collaboration, 306–313; Jewish DPs’ involvement in, 280–283; Jewish representation at, 269–270, 295–300; nationality and, 271–274; observational testimony on, 295–300; press coverage of, 280–289. See also International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg war criminals, in Argentina, 151 War Refugee Board (WRB), 5, 15–19 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, 6, 9, 354 Warsaw Uprising, 10 Wechsler, Jacob and Flora, 59 Wechsler, Joseph (Joseph Eaton), 58–61 Weichart, Michal, 307 Weinmann, Grete, 343–346 Weinmann, Gustav, Hans, and Ernst, 343 Weinstein, Frederick, 137–143 Weinstein, Pola and Risia, 138 Weinstein, Ruth, 139–143 Weiss, Golda Leitman, 266–268 Weiss, Laszlo (Moishe), 266–268 Weisswasser (concentration camp), 83 Weizmann, Chaim, 176 Wetzler, Alfréd, 4–5 “White Bus” operation, 125 White Paper of 1939: as betrayal, 285–286; emigration restricted by, 17, 129–130 Wijnberg, Samuel, Alida, Marthijn, Maurits, and Abraham, 90n22 Wijnberg, Selma, 90–93 Williams, Esther, 248–250 Wilno. See Vilna ghetto Winnykamien, Leopold, and Isabel, 137–143

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Index

Winnykamien, Solomon, 139–140 women: in caring for child survivors, 103, 104; in Kratzau, 39–45; pregnancy, and survival, 91–93; releasing from marriages, 265–268; in Sömmerda, 33–39 World Jewish Congress (WJC): DEGOB and, 445; “heirless” property and, 347; on Kasztner Jews, 95–97; in locating children, 252; location service of, 244– 246; observation of Nuremberg trials by, 296–300; in reparations, 329–330; in Switzerland, 121 “Yad Vashem: A Memorial to the Destroyed Diaspora,” 427 yahrzeit. see yortsayt Yedioth HaYom (newspaper), 283–287 Yiddish: vs. Hebrew, 179n36; as lingua franca, 178–179; at Nuremberg trials, 230 yitzkor books, 367–375

YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, 331 Yom Kippur, 296, 407–409, 416, 428, 443 yortsayt, 415–419 Yugoslavia, war crimes testimony from, 290–295 Zamlung fun katset un geto lider, 179–183, 181 Zappelli, Luigi, 27–32 Zertal, Idith, 200 Zhitlowksy, Chaim, 238 Zionism: commemoration in, 427–431, 432; differing view of, 200–210; in DP camps, 112–113; religious framing of, 203–204; victimhood narrative of, 427; war crimes trials and, 283–287 Zionist youth groups, 6–8, 428, 442. See also Hashomer Hatzair Zisman, Asher, 436–438 Zola, Émile, 269 Zuckerman, Yitzhak, 6–8

About the Author

Leah Wolfson, historian, is the senior program officer and an applied research scholar at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Most recently, she coauthored the third volume of this series, Jewish Responses to Persecution, 1941– 1942 (2013).

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