Between Loss and Revival

Beginning in the 1990s, research interest increased in the period between the end of World War II and the establishment of the State of Israel, a period that can be called the "link" between destruction and revival. This includes research and writing about the displaced persons camps, which until then had been dwarfed by these two big events, and therefore were repressed - the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel. In my opinion, we do not have a satisfactory study of the period, even though there are treasures of data in large archives, and a body of testimonies accumulated following Spielberg's blessed project. Yet I didn't find any comprehensive research on the Foehrenwald camp, except for one that I will mention at the end of my speech that refers to the last years of the camp. In my humble opinion, there is not enough appreciation for the strength of mind and character that our heroic parents needed to face the obstacles that stood in their way after the war. How they managed to put the past behind them, without forgetting it, and build a new life. One researcher who wrote a comprehensive book called "Life Between Memory and Hope, The Survivors of the Holocaust in Occupied Germany" 2006, is Zeev Mankowitz, who immigrated to Israel from South Africa as a youth, and unfortunately died at a relatively young age, ceasing this important research. At the beginning of the book, he asks "How can this neglect be explained at a time when rich archival material was available and open to historians in Israel and abroad? He answers a long and interesting answer that we don't have time to go into the details of. According to him, it was expected that "the brief moment of the survivors on the stage of history stood in the shadow of the destruction of the Holocaust and the establishment of the state", but the reasons are more complex. One of them is that the survivors received a passive image, as if they were broken and helpless and worn out, led and supported by others, and as if they had no part in the heroic transition between the Holocaust and the revival for which the undergrounds in Israel and the politics of the Allied powers was the prime movers. Another barrier is that most of the material on the survivors of the exodus is in Yiddish, the language of our mothers, which most members of our generation do not understand.

His interesting argument is that the survivors and the Bricha (escape) and exodus from Soviet held territory made an important contribution to the establishment of the State of Israel in particular and to Jewish life in general, which was reinforced by a series of studies written in the last twenty years that came to the conclusion that the displaced persons camps, where most of the Jewish survivors were concentrated, had a very important role in their initial physical and mental rehabilitation in the restoration of Jewish culture, In the establishment of new Jewish communities, the strengthening of Zionism among the survivors and in exerting international pressure to promote the establishment of the state.

Here - in this gathering, we have the main product of this return to renewed life, sitting here. We are part of tens and maybe hundreds of thousands, who laid a new and fresh infrastructure for the State of Israel. Each and every one of us is considered a miracle. A miracle and also a candle, because many of us carry the names of our deceased grandfathers, aunts and uncles and do not forget them.

And there is also an important legacy for the survivors, which has faded over the years but maybe we will be able to revive it. I am quoting here Shmuel Gringhaus, a survivor of the Kovno ghetto and the Dachau camp, who was a resident of the Landsberg displaced persons' camp. A thinker who wrote a series of articles in the years 46-49 about the legacy of the surviving refugees, in which he expressed hope that following the war a new humanistic culture would be born, which he himself saw as utopian, in which there would be an integration of American freedom and Soviet equality - national freedom, social justice and respect for individual rights.

I think we should all look at his writings, although it is a forgotten and neglected legacy.

Among other things, he wrote: "Today, the survivors have their own ideology, being the product of barbaric treatment of the Jews, we must create more humane relations with the environment... Our eyes are large and deep, for they peered into eternity... We carry with us the heritage of thousands of years of our people's history to the Land of Israel and to the United States, so that the continuity of our secular moral and cultural values will be guaranteed."

Ironically, a large majority of Holocaust survivors concentrated at the end of the war on German soil occupied by Allies. Some of them were survivors of the "death marches" of sorts, who were forcibly taken by the Germans from the camps in order to cover up the traces of their crime. Others, who emerged from their hiding places or partisans who came out of the forests, and soon also those returning from the territories of the USSR, the repatriates who saved themselves by fleeing to the east at the outbreak of the war, and when they returned they realized that Poland and other European countries were not a safe place for them and preferred to move to the land of Germany which was under the control of the victorious powers. Here, they thought, they could live as free people for the time being and plan their future. The great majority of them wanted to immigrate to the Land of Israel, the gates of which were, locked by the British.

Some of them continued through Austria to Italy, to get closer to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, the few who succeeded migrated to the countries free to take some of this immigration.

The total number of Jewish survivors is estimated at 250-300 thousand men and women. Due to the wide demographic dispersion, there is no accurate estimate. There was also a phenomenon that Jews who did not want to be registered as such when the orderly registration of the displaced began. The estimate regarding the territories of Germany in 1945 is between 80-90 thousand. It is interesting that the percentage of men who survived was higher than the percentage of women, and that the age of 81% of the survivors was between 18-39, meaning that children and the elderly survived less, of course, due to the Nazi policy that preferred to leave alive men who were able to work.

It so happened that the majority of the survivors from all over Europe found themselves in Germany, they were only a small part of the millions of refugees who wandered across the continent and of German citizens who lost their homes in the Allied bombings. There were about 60 million people in the occupied territory of Germany at the time, about 8 million of whom were former forced laborers and released prisoners of various nationalities, most of them in Germany and some in Austria, and the task facing the occupation authorities was to return them to their homes.

How could this humanitarian crisis be dealt with?

The armistice was signed on May 8, 1945, when the occupation of Germany by the superpowers was completed. They established a control council called the Allied Control Council - ACC and convened the famous conference in Potsdam, in which the heads of states participated to discuss temporary arrangements for dividing the territory and governing it. A number of principles were established in it, among them the de-Nazification and demilitarization of Germany, the prosecution of Nazi criminals before an international court and the recognition of the communist regime in the USSR and Poland. (The conference is considered a victory for the USSR).

Some see the fundamental differences of opinion that arose at this conference as the beginning of the Cold War (but that is not our concern now). The task was to direct the movement of migrants, maintain law and order and restore life after the war.

Already during the war, the Allies established the UNRRA Relief and Rehabilitation Agency. The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration was established in 1943 and was adopted by the United Nations, which was founded in October 1945. Our friend Shai Lachman will talk about this organization in more detail later. Here I will only mention that the survivors were concentrated in various collection points and housed in expropriated buildings, in camps that were established and, as we all know, in former labor and concentration camps that were converted to displaced persons camps. Another well-known fact is that following the murder of Jews in Kielce in Poland on July 4, 1946, another wave of thousands of refugees flooded the displaced persons camps, especially in the American area which was more convenient for absorption. Starting in 1947 thousands more were added from Czechoslovakia, Romania and Hungary , because of antisemitism in their countries and a poor economic situation.

The displaced persons camps were seen by their inhabitants as a place of transition and in no way a permanent solution. Despite this, we read with astonishment about the organization of those living in the camps in all areas of life, well beyond the satisfaction of basic needs by the relief organizations, led by the Joint. There was education, rich culture, professional training, work, journalism, political party and youth movement activities and the active struggle to open the gates of the land of Israel.

By July 1945, the survivors established the Central Committee of the Freed Jews in Bavaria, to represent the interests of the Jews under the American occupation government in Germany, it was recognized officially only more than a year later. It was Shmuel Gringhaus, mentioned above, and the American military rabbi Avraham Klausner who succeeded in getting the American occupation authorities to officially recognize the Central Committee as the sole negotiating partner. This was accomplished by September 1946. Rabbi Klausner is also known for the important enterprise he initiated and carried out - the preparation of a detailed list of survivors that appeared in six volumes under the title "She'erit Haplita” the remaining survivors.

The living conditions in the camps were harsh, as shortages and hunger prevailed throughout Germany and the transportation systems collapsed, entire cities were destroyed. German citizens who also suffered from shortages were jealous of the displaced persons especially the Jews, who were treated by the relief organizations and provided for, this caused additional unrest.

In the first period, Jews were housed together with refugees and other displaced persons of all nationalities in terrible density between barbed wire fences, and next to them were often German guards who treated them with anti-Semitism and even abuse. They suffered humiliating treatment because of their Jewishness. The sanitary conditions were unbearable and some of them were still wearing the prisoners' uniforms because no other clothes were distributed. Tens of thousands were held in the large Foehrenwald , Landsberg and Feldafing camps and in dozens of smaller camps. Their photos appeared in the press in the USA and American Jewish soldiers wrote to their families and communities about what they saw. There was an outcry among American Jews - and in Great Britain - and a demand to take urgent action. President Truman sent a special envoy on his behalf to closely inspect the situation in the camps. It was Earl Harrison, a senior attorney from Philadelphia who headed the Department of Alien Registration in the American government, and later was appointed Commissioner of Immigration, Absorption and Naturalization and also dealt with refugee matters. He left for his mission in July 1945, and in his mandate letter it was stated that he must place special emphasis on the situation of the Jews among all the displaced, and to recommend ways to improve their situation. It is important to note that in East Asia the war still continued in full force and exacted a great budgetary and economic toll from the USA, which had already begun with massive aid to Europe. But President Truman, who was a religious man and loved the Bible, was shocked by the pictures and news about the fate of the Jews; he realized that anti-Semitism did not disappear with the end of the war. The pressure of the American Jewish community and the desire that they vote for him in the upcoming elections obviously played a role, as well as pressure from his Jewish finance minister Henry Morgenthau. It was decided to attach to Harrison the director of the Joint in Europe, a Jewish American citizen named Joseph (Joe) Schwartz, who was very knowledgeable about what was happening. Schwartz is an unsung hero who is not well known to us Israelis, but his work was enormous both during the war and after it. Only recently was he the center of a monumental study of 4 volumes and thousands of pages by Prof. Tovia Frieling of Ben Gurion University in the Negev.

Two other members were in the expedition, and they divided between them and checked thirty camps, with Harrison concentrating on the camps in the American territory. I assume he also visited Foehrenwald.

The tasks assigned to Harrison were:

1. To check the conditions in which the displaced people live, and especially those who had no country to return to, with an emphasis on the Jews among them

2. Check what their needs are

3. To find out how the military authorities, the governments of the occupied regions and the relief bodies are responding to these needs.

4. Check what the displaced people themselves want, to where they want to move if they cannot return to their countries of origin.

Harrison was horrified by what he observed, and his report was urgently written and included the following sentence: "Our attitude towards the Jewish survivors is exactly like the Nazis', the only difference is that we do not exterminate them. They stay in large numbers in a concentration camp, under our military guard, which replaced the SS battalions."

Already in mid-August, the report was sent to the president, with the demand to increase the food and clothing allocations, to improve the living conditions in the camps, and to separate the Jews from the others. Schwartz was the shadowy figure behind what was later called the "Harrison Report" and had a great influence on him. He also used the tour of the camps to plan the Joint preparations in the camps for the day when the other organizations would leave them. President Truman read the Harrison Report and was outraged by the army's failure in treating the survivors. He adopted the report's recommendations in full. The President emphasized his country's deep humanitarian commitment to the victims.

Truman wrote to General Eisenhower, who was chief of staff of the US Army in the occupation zone in Germany, on August 31, 1945:

"I know you will agree that we have a special responsibility towards the victims of persecution and tyranny who stay in our region. We must make it clear to the German people that we abhor and strongly reject the hate and persecution policies of the Nazis. We have no better opportunity to demonstrate this than through our own attitude towards the survivors who remained in Germany".

Truman sent the report to Attlee in order to pressure the new Prime Minister of Great Britain (elected after Churchill's defeat in the elections in the midst of the Potsdam Conference) to change his country's policies regarding the entry of Jews into Israel. He hoped that Attlee would agree to the proposal to allow 100,000 displaced persons to enter the country. Attlee proposed instead to establish an Anglo-American committee that would examine the possible consequences of the proposed massive Jewish immigration on the situation in Palestine (which we will not go into here now) Most importantly for our topic - the report led to the separation of the Jews from members of other nations and their gathering in separated camps; a significant improvement in the living conditions; The expropriation of their care from the US Army to UNRA and the Joint.

I look in amazement at the Jewish life that developed in the displaced persons camps, at the initiatives undertaken by people who had just lost everything and were determined to continue. The well-known phenomenon of the baby boom has received many mentions. Those who lost home and family were eager to start new families for themselves, this is both a natural instinct and a conscious decision. But that was not the end of their activity. Extensive educational and cultural systems, health and training systems and a rich press were established, mostly in Yiddish (a subject that was researched in Ella Florsheim's doctoral thesis and book "The Revival of Words".

I want to portray the importance of political activity in the life of the survivors: In Bricha (rescue and escape) actions, forming of training kibbutzim and Haapala (Clandestine immigration to Israel) all this in the DP camps.

Unfortunately, in the politics of that time, you can find actual clues to the situation in contemporary Israel. It seems that the controversies which also has promoting, creative and positive sides, led and is leading till today the ugly phenomena of mutual boycott and hatred. At the end of the war, there were attempts to unite forces within the Zionist movement, "a quest for a new order that would reject old divisions", as Mankowitz wrote. But it didn't work. Starting in 1946, the movements distanced themselves from each other and each worked in battle and for the benefit of its own people.

In my opinion - the main cause of the rift that opened up was the emissaries from Israel, who brought with them to post-war Europe the political split between the parties, movements and undergrounds in the Land of Israel. I know this first-hand from my parents, who experienced it personally in one defining moment during the meeting of the partisans with the men of the Jewish Brigade in Italy, in July 1945 where survivors from different parties took the stage and spoke about the need to unite forces at this time.

A moment later the emissaries of the socialist movements from Israel, who had not yet grasped the magnitude of the disaster, because who could? pulled their people aside and explained to them why it was forbidden to cooperate with the Revisionist Betar Movement, for example, and from then on they dedicated themselves to creating a myth of heroism around their own people only. This was manifested in the following years in a split in the main organizations that dealt with rescue and escape, in the unequal distribution of certificates and even boycotts.

The organization of the camps according to movements actually benefited the people, in my opinion, provided them with a framework for identification, something akin to an extended family, a place to come back and talk and argue about ideas and ideals and disconnect a little from the difficult everyday life, to instill hope for the new life in Israel. But this division also naturally led to disputes. Mankowitz devotes an instructive chapter to this topic based on documents rather than feelings.

I chose to tell you here about an event that is connected to our gathering today - a gathering of representatives of the Betar movement from all over Europe specifically in Foehrenwald on June 9-11, 1946. My late father Chaim Lazar joined Betar as a child in Panevėžys Lithuania after hearing Jabotinsky speak in the city and captivated by his words and personality. The war passed over him in the Vilna ghetto, where he was a member of the PFO underground, which united all movements, as a member of Betar and later in the partisans. Upon liberation he went to Lublin where he began his activities in the Betar survivors' organization for rescue and escape, after realizing even then that they were excluded from the mainstream. At the time of the Foehrenwald convention, he was already the Beitar Commissioner in Rome.

It was the first pan-European gathering of the members of the movement after the war and two thousand members participated in it. "We chose Foehrenwald because it had the most favorable conditions to receive the delegates and the conference delegates" he later wrote. How was there room to accommodate 2000 people? I can't imagine, but they weren't spoiled like us.

He described the journey of the 4-man delegation that left Rome for Foehrenwald: "we left for Paris and from there we drove towards the German border accompanied by a guide, Beter member from France who was helped by a French liaison to transfer us illegally to Germany via the Strasbourg-Saar-Briken border. After walking for about an hour through fields and woods, we found ourselves on German soil. From then on, we traveled "legally" equipped with refugee certificates from the Foehrenwald camp, and appropriate travel permits. Upon their arrival they met other Betar members who came from Austria, Belgium, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, France and Romania and of course - the hosts from Germany. "These were exciting meetings, especially with the friends who came from behind the Iron Curtain."

As the way of their movement, they held parades, sports competitions and waving of flags.

The conference was held "in a spacious hall that was full to the brim" where the heads of the delegations gave reports on their activities. There were lectures and discussions especially about the struggle to open the gates of the country against the Mandate government. At its opening, a commemoration was held for the martyrs and rebels who perished in the Holocaust and a memorial service was read in memory of Jabotinsky, which was composed at the time of his death 6 years earlier by David Raziel (the Irgun commander who was also no longer alive, after he fell in an operation in Iraq by the British mission in May 1941)

Mordechai Katz, who was sent from Israel to establish the central office of Betar Europe in Paris, gave the keynote speech from which I quote a short and topical paragraph:

"The lesson of the Holocaust goes much further than an establishment of the Jewish State in Israel, that is, to turn its people into a powerhouse of many millions, which will concentrate the majority of the people within the borders of the state, which will be strong in material and spiritual terms, in the military and economic spheres, which will never depend on the mercy of foreign nations and which will not live in illusions."

And this, he added – we must always remember and never forget what Amalek the German did to us.

Later, additional gatherings were held in Foking, Landsberg and Pfeldping, and in December 1947 in the city of Munich.

Let's move on to our last topic for the evening - why did the Foehrenwald camp continue to exist until 1957 when all the other camps had already been liquidated and the State of Israel faced a decade of its existence?

I did wonder why this happened and found an answer in a study written in 1988 as a MA thesis from Bar Ilan university which deals with exactly this question and explains the background and reasons. It talks about the dealing with 1810 of the camp's residents remaining within its walls without a solution being found for them.

They were people with extreme and chronic diseases, handicapped, elderly and people with chronic ailments:

400 tuberculosis patients and 400 children up to the age of 16, including 260 up to the age of 7 who were born in the camp. No country agreed to receive them, including the State of Israel - on the grounds that there are still no suitable institutions and a system in Israel that can take care of them. So, they reluctantly stayed in the camp where the conditions were satisfactory, they had a roof over their heads, they were provided with food, clothing and a sense of security, they chose a committee to represent them and created a lifestyle like in a Jewish shtetl, as the author of the study, Isaac Vilner, found. But they were idle, did not work, and forced unemployment created negative effects. The one who first maintained the camp, which passed under the responsibility of the German government, was the Joint, and joint discussions were held regarding their fate, with the wish being to close the camp as quickly as possible. In June 1953, a plan was drawn up that presented three alternatives - emigration to Israel or other countries, integration among the German population or hospitalization of the chronically ill and the elderly. Each of them was problematic and met with resistance from the camp residents, who realized that they would be able to squeeze benefits from the Germans who wanted to get rid of them. The author specifically mentions the ultra-orthodox group of 200 people who preferred to stay in Germany, but presented impossible demands - to live centrally in city centers and receive aid, which both the Germans and the Joint refused.

In the meantime, an unexpected population was added to the camp - people who immigrated to Israel but did not integrate into it and returned to Germany. The rumor of Foehrenwald as a "refuge city" where you can find shelter and a relatively comfortable life passed from word of mouth, and hundreds of returnees infiltrated it, which caused friction both with the old residents and with the authorities who considered them "illegal", but being Holocaust survivors they had to treat them with sensitivity balance.

In the years 1955 to 1957, a slow process of eliminating the camp and finding personal solutions continued - 525 people emigrated from it, of which only 40 went to Israel. About 800 remained in Germany and integrated into its economy, and half of the ultra-Orthodox continued to live there and receive an allowance. Only 11 sick and elderly people were hospitalized in German hospitals and institutions.

The camp finally closed its doors on February 27, 1957, thus "come to an end a human drama of Holocaust remnants who were abandoned by everyone, and who fought their way for their part in this world. It was a tragic epilogue to the flourishing of Jewish cultural life in the displaced persons camps in Germany after the end of World War II " concludes Vilner.

To end with something optimistic, I will read to you a short excerpt from the testimony of an ordinary man, Eliezer Adler, a native of Belze, Poland, who returned from the territories of the USSR as part of repatriation and stayed in a displaced persons camp in the American occupied zone near Munich (it is not clear whether he was in Foehrenwald) between 1946-1948 then immigrated to Israel.

And so he said:

"This matter of rehabilitating the remnants, the desire of the Jews to live - it's unbelievable! People got married. They would take one hut and divide it into ten small rooms for ten couples. The need to live overcame everything - nevertheless and in spite of everything - I live! and even an intense life ... You knew you didn't have a family, that you were lonely, that you had to do something... After such destruction, build a new life? Get married? Have children?

But the need for life was not everything, today I see that what saved us mainly was the struggle for the Land of Israel, which brought us to the realization that this is the main effort that needs to be made. The struggle for the Land of Israel meant taking young people and giving them a Zionist education, teaching them Hebrew, sending them to immigration, transporting people along the escape routes. We were then in the action phase. Doing this gave meaning to our lives, that kept us alive.

We, the members of the second generation, carry on our shoulders a promise to continue on their path.