After the Holocaust 9781644696804

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AFTER THE HOLOCAUST

Touro University Press Books Series Editor MICHAEL A. SHMIDMAN, PhD (Touro College, New York) SIMCHA FISHBANE, PhD (Touro College, New York)

AFTER THE HOLOCAUST Monty Noam Penkower

N E W YO R K 2021

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Penkower, Monty Noam, 1942- author. Title: After the Holocaust / Monty Noam Penkower. Description: New York : Touro University Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021016860 (print) | LCCN 2021016861 (ebook) | ISBN 9781644696781 (hardback) | ISBN 9781644696798 (paperback) | ISBN 9781644696804 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781644696811 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Influence. | World War, 1939-1945--Refugees. | Harrison, Earl Grant,‫ ‏‬‎1899-1955. | Holocaust survivors--Violence against--Germany. | Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945), and the arts. | United States--Emigration and immigration--Government policy. Classification: LCC D804.3 .P457 2021 (print) | LCC D804.3 (ebook) | DDC 940.53/1814--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021016860 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021016861 Copyright © Touro University Press, 2021 Published by Touro University Press and Academic Studies Press. Typeset, printed and distributed by Academic Studies Press. ISBN 9781644696781 (hardback) ISBN 9781644696798 (paperback) ISBN 9781644696804 (adobe pdf) ISBN 9781644696811 (epub) Touro University Press Michael A. Shmidman and Simcha Fishbane, Editors 320 West 31st Street, Fourth Floor, New York, NY 10001, USA tcpress@ touro.edu Book design by Kryon Publishing Services. On the cover: Jewish children on January 27, 1945, when soldiers of the Red Army liberated Auschwitz. Cover design by Ivan Grave. Academic Studies Press 1577 Beacon Street Brookline, MA 02446, USA press@ academicstudiespress.com www.academicstudiespress.com

To My Exemplary Teachers The mind of the wise man makes his speech effective And increases the wisdom on his lips. (Proverbs 16:23)

Contents

Prefacevii   1   The Earl Harrison Mission: Its Genesis

1

  2   The Earl Harrison Report: Its Significance

32

  3   Keeping the Borders Open: 1945–1946

79

  4  A Murder and Its Aftermath 

126

  5   Nathan Rapoport and Poland’s Landscape of   Holocaust Memory

157

Index203

Preface

In the autumn of 1940, the German philosopher and cultural critic Walter Benjamin found himself in the Catalan seaside town of Portbou. Fleeing southern France, where collaborationist Vichy government officials were handing over Jews to the Gestapo, the stateless Jew had crossed the Pyrenees with some fellow refugees to Spain. From there Benjamin hoped to reach Lisbon, where he could sail to New York City and be installed in an apartment set up for him by his already exiled colleagues from the Frankfurt School. However, a police official on the Spanish side declared when they arrived on the evening of September 26 that the border had been closed and that, without French exit papers, they would be returned to the French the next day. Fearing capture by the Gestapo, Benjamin took his life that night with an overdose of morphine pills; the other refugees were promptly allowed into Spain. Left behind in the hands of his friend and political theorist Hannah Arendt was Benjamin’s last major work, written in the spring of that year in Paris after he had been released from two months in an internment camp near Nevers, France. Entitled “On the Concept of History,” the essay is often referred to as “Theses on the Philosophy of History.” Composed of twenty numbered paragraphs, this critique of historicism and most notably Marxist historical materialism rejected the past as a continuum of progress. Benjamin’s alternate vision of the past and “progress” employs Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus (1920), an oil transfer with watercolor which he had purchased in Munich in 1921 for 1,000 marks. The philosopher’s perspective, offered in thesis IX, sees the “angel of history” with his back turned to the future. The eternally hovering angel, with hair that looks like paper scrolls, aerodynamically hopeless wings, and googly if rather melancholy eyes, looks as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly

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contemplating. Benjamin’s view of historical process as an unceasing cycle of despair is presented thus: “His eyes are staring . . . his face is turned toward the past. Where we see the appearance of a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe, which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise.”1 The storm that engulfed Benjamin’s fellow Jews across Europe’s soil in World War II, the “one single catastrophe” that in time would be called the Holocaust, could not have been foretold. While words like “annihilation,” “destruction,” “extermination,” “starvation by death,” “elimination,” “physical extinction,” “shoah,” and “the onrush of lava” surfaced with greater frequency in the depressing 1930s, no one could have forecast the time when Jewish hopes would be literally reduced to the anonymity of ashes. That unprecedented human tragedy, fueled by a racist Nazi ideology which zealously brooked no compromise, was simply inconceivable. Before 1938, even the most pessimistic Zionists, who “foresaw a complete end” to Jews in Germany, planned for an orderly emigration to Palestine extending over a period of 15–20 years, with no more than 20,000–25,000 emigrants annually. Arthur Ruppin, the founder of Zionist settlement, spoke at the Evian Conference on Refugees that July of an annual emigration rate of 50,000 Jews from Germany and Austria over a six-year period. Revisionist-Zionist leader Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky pressed in October 1938 for an immigration of 1,000,000 within three years, and blundered badly when deriding the Third Reich in May 1939 as an “inflated balloon.” Even the call of David Ben-Gurion, executive chairman of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, for an “aliya rebellion” without British approval after Kristallnacht, which he saw as “the signal for the extermination of the Jewish people throughout the world,” referred to the entry of 1,000,000 Jews in a short time.2 Yet most Jews across Europe were trapped by nations which had bolted their doors, as the Evian Conference made crystal clear, while dictators obsessed with antisemitic onslaught would not allow the luxury of orderly, long-range mass resettlement. World Zionist Organization president Chaim Weizmann’s public cri de coeur to Great Britain’s Palestine Royal Commission in November 1936, pointing to six million Jews living east of the Rhine “doomed to be pent up in places where — viii —

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they are not wanted, and for whom the world is divided into places where they cannot live and places in which they cannot enter,” had not received a positive response. Hearing Colonial Secretary Malcolm MacDonald’s comment on May 13, 1939, that the Jews had made “many mistakes,” Weizmann’s sharp retort reflected personal bitterness and his people’s angst: “Our chief mistake is that we exist at all.” Ten days later, the Chamberlain government’s White Paper limited the immigration of Jews to Palestine (the Jewish National Home pledged in Britain’s 1917 Balfour Declaration and the League of Nations 1922 Mandate to His Majesty’s Government) to 75,000 for the next five years, subject to the country’s “economic absorptive capacity,” and thereafter to be contingent on Arab consent.3 The Jewish-Czech novelist Franz Kafka, whose The Trial was published in Prague in 1925, one year after his death, had cautioned of a time when innocent people would wake up one morning to discover that they were guilty of being themselves. Still, none could rationally predict that the accident of birth would doom European Jewry to systematic slaughter, aided by nations complicit in murder while the free world governments, standing by, relegated Hitler’s primary victim to one category: expendable. The callousness exhibited, for example, by the Anglo-American alliance at the 1943 Bermuda Conference on Refugees to the one people marked for death in the global conflict found a similar response with the self-professed guardians of humanitarianism and morality like the International Red Cross and the Vatican, as well as with the neutral governments; Moscow ignored the entire matter. A few courageous Jewish souls, as well as Gentiles later designated by Israel’s Yad Vashem the Righteous among the Nations of the World, attempted to shatter the Allied conspiracy of silence and the prevailing illusion that nothing could be done, but their valiant race against calculated mass-production death wrested only limited successes.4 While the world peered after V-E Day into the abyss that had ultimately claimed an estimated six million innocent Jewish lives, including 1,500,000 children, Jews the world over, joined by many non-Jews, endorsed the Zionist thesis that the scourge of Jewish powerlessness had to undergo a radical transformation if Auschwitz-Birkenau were not to be repeated. Lacking the ground of an autonomous state under its feet for two millennia, Jewry had fallen prey to endless persecution and martyrdom at the hands of host countries. In an amoral world, political — ix —

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expediency eclipsed justice and reason. With stateless Jews commanding no leverage in the Western councils of war, Hitler’s diabolic “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” enjoyed an unbridled reign. Only an independent commonwealth in the one land that had seen their birth as a people and that beckoned now as the end to their anguished wanderings in exile could offer their return to history, affording them at last a place as actors in the family of nations. Most Holocaust survivors, literally “a brand plucked from the fire” (Zechariah 3:2), had few doubts about Jewish sovereignty in Palestine. A few days after Bergen-Belsen’s liberation on April 15, 1945, by British troops, a few hundred Jewish prisoners, knowing that they were being recorded by the BBC radio service, sang the Zionist anthem of hope HaTikva, and the Jewish army chaplain then declared: “Am Yisrael Chai!” (“The nation of Israel lives!”). The first large boatload to reach Haifa harbor after V-E Day, including 242 orphans from Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau, and Bergen-Belsen, hoisted a Zionist flag when arriving aboard the Mataroa on July 15, 1945. Two days later, Vilna ghetto partisan leader Abba Kovner urged the British Army’s Jewish Brigade center in Italy to achieve a mass exodus from Europe to the biblically covenanted Promised Land. The first conference of the “surviving remnant” (sh’eirit hapleita), convening on July 25 at St. Ottilien and representing 40,000 Jews from the so-called Displaced Persons (DP) camps in Germany and Austria, demanded “the immediate establishment of a Jewish State in Palestine, the recognition of the Jewish people as an equal with all the Allied nations, and its inclusion in the peace conference.” Earl Harrison, President Harry S. Truman’s special emissary to investigate the DP camps that summer, also came to realize that “a high percentage” of Holocaust survivors wanted prompt emigration from Europe, preferably to Palestine. The Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine (1946) and the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (1947) arrived at the same conclusion. More than 70,000 crossed Europe’s borders to crowd into boats for the arduous, oftentimes perilous journey against the mighty British Royal Navy, their identity as DPs revealed in a novel sense: human beings now “destined for Palestine.” Two-thirds of the survivors would ultimately settle there.5 The chapters in this volume examine a few facets of the drama. I have briefly touched on the first four in the final part of my trilogy — x —

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on the rise of the State of Israel between Hitler’s coming to power in January 30, 1933, and Ben-Gurion’s declaration of its independence on May 14, 1948, but remain convinced that they merit full exposition. The first two, which saw publication in a different format in The American Jewish Archives 68:1 (2016), explore the genesis of the Earl Harrison mission and the significance of its ensuing report. Chapter 3 examines the struggle over keeping the borders of Europe open to survivors of the Shoah, who sought entry into the American military zones of Germany and Austria in the first year after the end of the Third Reich’s unconditional surrender, their predominant wish being to leave for Palestine. The murder on March 29, 1946, of Radom’s Shmuel Danziger, the first Jew officially killed in Germany after the Holocaust, and its aftermath are studied in Chapter 4. Chapter 5 reviews Poland’s landscape of Holocaust memory ever since that country commemorated the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt with renowned sculptor Nathan Rapoport’s iconic monument in 1948. After the Holocaust is dedicated to those teachers who have fundamentally helped shape my perspective over the years on what is truly significant and lasting. My late parents of cherished memory, Rabbi Murry S. Penkower and Lillian Stavisky Penkower, provided essential guidance as first mentors in melding Jewish tradition and worldly wisdom. Rabbi Aaron Soloveichik and Rabbi Dovid Cohen were exemplars of Torah study and human values. In Yeshiva College, I had the privilege and pleasure of learning much from some outstanding faculty: Professors Irving (“Yitz”) Greenberg and Louis H. Feldman (History); Sidney D. Braun (French); and David Fleischer and Seymour Lainoff (English). Professor William E. Leuchtenburg, director of my PhD dissertation at Columbia University, reflected the finest traits of prodigious research, incisive analysis, and a limpid prose style. Thanks in large part to them, I remain committed to an observation that I had cited when inaugurating the Victor J. Selmanowitz Chair of Modern Jewish History at Touro College on May 5, 1996. Its author was Alfred Kazin, who in his journals commented on John Dewey: “A man can give his whole life to purposive teaching and to make of it a moral as well as an intellectual example.”6 A special thank you is due to two former colleagues at Touro College. Michael Popkin, chair of its Humanities department for many years, who continues to be an esteemed friend, once again read the manuscript for clarity of style. The understanding and support of Michael — xi —

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A. Shmidman, Dean of the Graduate School of Jewish Studies, helped bring this volume and others to fruition. At the Academic Studies Press, the ongoing encouragement of Editorial Director Alessandra Anzani is much appreciated, as are the copy-editing skills of Ekaterina (“Kate”) Yanduganova for this book, as well as for the two volumes of Palestine to Israel: Mandate to State, 1945–1948 (2019) and Israel: As a Phoenix Ascending (2021). The human mind slowly awakened in later years to the stark reality of the Holocaust, yet the darkest night in Jewish history is still at times universalized, trivialized—even brazenly denied outright. Furthermore, antisemitism, genocides, and the depersonalization of the powerless are not alien, alas, to our age. At their peril, many have forgotten the words of Associate Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, Chief of Counsel for the United States at the Nuremberg Trials, who, speaking of the Nazi atrocities, warned in his opening statement before the International Military Tribunal: “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.”7 This sad reality recalls the quotation in both Catalan and German on Walter Benjamin’s tombstone in Portbou, taken from section seven of his “Theses on the Philosophy of History”: “There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.” Nonetheless, the restored State of Israel continues to serve the Jewish people and their allies in the on-going struggle for decency and truth as a bridge against apocalyptic despair, providing some solace and even joy in the wake of hitherto unimaginable horror. It presents dramatic refutation to the claim made in the black granite Merneptah Stele (1209–1208 BCE), discovered by noted British archeologist Flinders Petrie in 1896 at Thebes and housed in Cairo’s Museum of Ancient Antiquities. In this earliest known attestation of Israel, the Egyptian king, thirteenth son of Ramses II (acknowledged by most scholars as the Pharaoh of the Jewish exodus recorded in the Bible), hailing his defeat of the Libyans and the region of Canaan, declared thus: “Israel is laid waste, its seed is no more.” Fittingly, a copy of that stele can be found today in Jerusalem’s Bible Lands Museum.8 The fate of Angelus Novus, which roamed vagabond for years, reflects this remarkable turn of history as well. Unlike Benjamin, it found a safe, new berth. Shortly before leaving Paris for his doomed — xii —

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flight, the German philosopher entrusted some of his papers and Klee’s painting to author and Bibliothèque Nationale de France librarian Georges Bataille. Later, the painting came into the hands of Benjamin’s long-time friend, the pioneering kabbalah scholar Gershom Scholem, in Jerusalem. Finally, Scholem’s widow gave Angelus Novus to the Israel Museum in 1987. No longer would Jews seeking refuge be bereft of hope. Outraged at not being seated among the delegates at the Evian Conference, Goldie Myerson (later Golda Meir) had called a press conference in the ornate dining room of the Hotel Royal. Speaking as head of the Histadrut’s Political Department, the forty-year-old Palestinian emissary announced: “There is only one thing I hope to see before I die and that is that my people should not need expressions of sympathy anymore.” Receiving the credentials of Soviet ambassador Alexander Abramov five years after Israel’s rebirth of independence, so the ofttold story goes, President Yitzhak Ben-Zvi explained that he left Russia for Eretz Israel in early 1907 because there was “no room” there for him and Czar Nicholas II. “Why did you go, though?” his guest asked. “You should have held ground.” Ben-Zvi replied: “I had somewhere to go. The czar didn’t.” The young nation-state, symbol of light prevailing over darkness, now offered Jews a welcome home.9 In the last of his Theses, Benjamin noted that while the Jews were prohibited from investigating the future, the Torah and the prayers instructed them in remembrance. “This stripped the future of its magic, to which all those succumb who turn to the soothsayers for enlightenment.” “This does not imply, however,” he was quick to add, “that for the Jews the future turned into homogeneous, empty time. For every second of time was the strait gate through which the Messiah might enter.” Until then, those enjoined to be “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:6) continue to remember their past, teeming with harsh and essential lessons for the present, and to hope for future appeals to the better angels of our common nature. Jerusalem Hanuka 5781 ---------------- Addendum: A revised version of the Preface was first published in the Jerusalem Post Magazine, January 22, 2021, in conjunction with the commemoration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day — xiii —

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(January 27). That date, designated unanimously for annual commemoration by the UN General Assembly (resolution 60/7) on November 1, 2005, during the forty-second plenary session, was chosen to recall the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi death camp, by the Red Army on January 27, 1945. The resolution declared that “the Holocaust, which resulted in the murder of one-third of the Jewish people, along with countless members of other minorities, will forever be a warning to all people of the dangers of hatred, bigotry, racism and prejudice,” and it called on the UN member nations to “develop educational programs that will inculcate future generations with the lessons of the Holocaust in order to help to prevent future acts of genocide.” Further, it stated that the UN “rejects any denial of the Holocaust as an historical event, either in full or part,” and “condemns without reserve all manifestations of religious intolerance, incitement, harassment or violence against persons or communities based on ethnic origin or religious belief, wherever they occur.”10

Endnotes  1. Ronald Beiner, “Walter Benjamin’s Philosophy of History,” Political Theory 12:3 (August 1984): 423–434; Mark Lilla, “The Riddle of Walter Benjamin,” The New York Review of Books, May 25, 1995; O. K. Werckmeister, “Walter Benjamin’s Angel of History, or the Transfiguration of the Revolutionary into the Historian,” Critical Inquiry 22:2 (Winter 1996): 239–267; Samantha Rose Hill, “Walter Benjamin’s Last Work,” Los Angeles Review of Books, December 9, 2019.   2. Monty Noam Penkower, The Swastika’s Darkening Shadow: Voices Before the Holocaust (New York, 2013), conclusion. On the night of November 9–10, 1938, a state-sponsored pogrom resulted in the murder of ninety-one Jews, more than 1,400 synagogues across Germany and Austria torched, and Jewishowned shops and businesses plundered and destroyed. In addition, the Jews were forced to pay “compensation” for the damage that had been caused on this “night of broken glass” (Kristallnacht), and approximately 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Most significantly, as Karl Schleunes has shown, a Central Office for Jewish Emigration, placed under the direction of thirty-two-year-old SS Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann, was created to provide professional coordination everywhere under Nazi — xiv —

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control for the forced expulsion of Jews in the future. Karl Schleunes, The Twisted Road to Auschwitz: Nazi Policy Toward German Jews, 1933–1939 (Urbana, 1970).  3. Monty Noam Penkower, Palestine in Turmoil: The Struggle for Sovereignty, 1933–1939, vol. 1, Prelude to Revolt, 1933–1936; ibid., vol. 2, Retreat from the Mandate, 1937–1939 (both New York, 2014).   4. Monty Noam Penkower, The Jews Were Expendable: Free World Diplomacy and the Holocaust (Urbana, 1983). The Bermuda Conference on Refugees was held by the United States and Great Britain on April 19–30, 1943, its secret sessions closed to Jewish organizations. Intended to quell public appeals for the rescue of European Jewry, the conferees had resolved even earlier not to alter the strict immigration quotas for admission of Jews into the United States and Palestine, and rejected any plausible possibilities for rescue.   5. Monty Noam Penkower, Palestine to Israel: Mandate to State, 1945–1948, vol. 1, Rebellion Launched, 1945–1946; ibid., vol. 2, Into the International Arena, 1947–1948 (both New York, 2019). The Jewish Brigade, created largely of Palestinian Jewish military units in September 1944 as part of the British Army, fought in Italy with distinction. Its total strength approximately 5,000, many of its soldiers soon provided relief to Holocaust survivors, as well as guided them across Europe’s frontiers to boats heading clandestinely for Palestine. More than 30,000 Palestinian Jews volunteered to serve in the British Armed Forces, 734 of whom died during World War II.  6. Idem, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Palestine Imbroglio (New York: Touro College Graduate School of Jewish Studies, 1996).   7. Jackson address, November 21, 1945, fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/ /resource/document/DocJac01.htm. Even the first memorial in the United States to the heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt, a stone plaque (Der Shteyn) dedicated on October 19, 1947, at Eighty-Fourth St. and Riverside Park in New York City as the site for a future American monument to the uprising, had added that it also was to be in memory of “the six million Jews of Europe murdered in the cause of human liberty” (my italics). The plaque remains; the monument was never built.  8. See Jeremy Norman, “The Merneptah Stele, the Only Ancient Egyptian Document that Mentions Israel,” HistoryofInformation.com, https://www. historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=1561. Running counter as well to the Merneptah Stele’s assertion that Israel’s “seed is no more” was the astounding growth of date palms in Israel from 2,000-year-old seeds, seeds first uncovered by Professor Yigael Yadin in his 1963–1965 archeological dig at Masada. — xv —

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In 73–74 CE, 960 Jewish men, women and children, who had taken refuge in that mountaintop fortress built by Herod above the Dead Sea, committed suicide rather than fall captive to Roman soldiers. Drs. Sarah Sallon and Elaine Solowey planted three of the seeds in 2005 at the Negev’s Kibbutz Ketura, and one, nicknamed “Methuselah” after the oldest person mentioned in the Bible (Genesis 5:27), and now the oldest seed ever germinated, sprouted. Following this, the two scientists achieved the same result with six date seeds that were discovered in excavations at Qumran, Wadi Makukh, and Wadi Kelt. Pollen gathered from the male “Methuselah” subsequently fertilized the female “Hannah” date palm, in turn yielding golden dates in 2010. Shlomo Maital, “2,000-year-old dates: Yummy!,” Jerusalem Post, October 15, 2020.   9. Golda Meir, My Life (New York, 1975), 159. The Ben-Zvi story is found in Yonah Cohen, HaKnesset: Diyunim V’Hiyukhim (Tel-Aviv, 1972), 122, repeated in his revised HaKnesset K’Mo ShehHi (Jerusalem, 1983), 202, and in Lawrence J. Epstein, A Treasury of Jewish Anecdotes (New York, 1989), 36; neither author provides an exact source. The Evian Conference on Refugees, convened by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt to deal with the growing Jewish refugee crisis intensified by the German annexation on March 12, 1938, of Austria (der Anschluss Österreichs), met at the resort town of Evian-les-Bains, France, on July 7–15, 1938. None of the thirty-two invited countries was prepared to ease changes in its restrictive immigration quotas except for the tiny Dominican Republic, whose dictator Rafael Trujillo hoped to repair his image internationally and gain personal financial benefit, as well as have Jews marry local inhabitants and “lighten” the population. (He granted visas to 1,000 Jews, who were to live in Sosua, a special community established for them with funding from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.) The Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees, set up at the Evian Conference, accomplished nothing of significance in later years. 10. The text of the resolution is available at https://www.un.org/en/holocaustremembrance/docs/res607. shtml.

— xvi —

1. The Earl Harrison Mission: Its Genesis

The first promising turn in Zionist fortunes after V-E Day—imperceptible at the time—occurred on May 21, 1945. With the Allied armed forces receiving Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender just two weeks earlier, a few members of the US Treasury Department’s inner circle wondered: Could some organization succeed the War Refugee Board (WRB)? The Board had saved many thousands of Jews from the Holocaust, but now its mission was over. Treasury Department Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr., whose confrontation in January 1944 with President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR), his sponsor and closest friend, had played a decisive role in the Board’s creation, “definitely and positively” wished to wind up his own efforts on its behalf. Having been instrumental in designing and financing Roosevelt’s New Deal domestic programs and especially in funding America’s participation in World War II, Morgenthau sought to focus on fiscal matters, both domestic and foreign, in the postwar world. Josiah E. DuBois Jr., principal author of the scathing antiState Department “Report to the Secretary on the Acquiescence of This Government in the Murder of the Jews,” which had persuaded Morgenthau to face FDR on the issue, pressed for a new agency run by a cabinet committee. It would act, argued DuBois, the WRB’s General Counsel, as “the U.S. spark-plug” in the whole problem of resettlement of those “Displaced Persons” (DPs) who did not have homes to return to after the war, primarily “the Jewish group.” The United Nations Relief and Reconstruction Administration (UNRRA) would not do this job, nor would the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees (IGCR) if State instructed its representative not to. State had recently appointed Earl G. Harrison as its representative, John Pehle interjected. With Morgenthau not serving on the agency, Pehle, the WRB’s first director,

After the Holocaust

doubted that it would be very different if Harrison were working under State or a new organization. Undoubtedly, Pehle agreed with DuBois, the Secretary’s involvement would do a lot of good, but there would be many more “headaches” than the WRB—notably “the Palestine thing.” Morgenthau suggested that he present a personal report to President Harry S. Truman, who had entered the White House following Roosevelt’s sudden death on April 12, 1945. After telling the sixty-one-year-old chief executive from Missouri about the WRB’s work, Morgenthau could advise that either State or a new cabinet committee “handle and advise” on the matter of non-repatriable refugees. Morgenthau’s preference would be a three-man group from the State, Interior, and Commerce Departments. The British followed a similar cabinet committee procedure very successfully, he pointed out. There were many reasons why he (a Jew of German ancestry) should not be on the committee, Morgenthau added: “We’re not kidding ourselves. It gets down largely to Palestine.” With all in agreement that Monday, WRB Assistant Executive Director Florence Hodel was tasked with drafting one memorandum on the WRB and one bearing Morgenthau’s suggestion to the chief executive.1 At Truman’s first cabinet meeting, Morgenthau had actually been the first to offer his resignation if desired. Two days later, after Truman expressed his desire that Morgenthau stay on as Treasury Secretary, Morgenthau concluded that the former Vice-President had a mind of his own: “The man has a lot of nervous energy, and seems to be inclined to make very quick decisions. He was most courteous with me, and made a good impression, but, after all, he is a politician, and what is going on in his head time only will tell.” Rumors swirled about that some of Truman’s acquaintances had started a campaign to get rid of perhaps five cabinet members, including Morgenthau (because he was a Jew, amongst other reasons). Yet Truman expressed “complete confidence” in Morgenthau when he broached the idea of writing a book that would explain the Morgenthau Plan to eliminate Germany’s armament and industrial capabilities. A week later, however, a more guarded Truman requested Morgenthau to hold off on publication; while he was “by and large” for the stringent plan, the three major war allies had not yet agreed on Germany’s future. “I again went away with the distinct feeling that the man likes me and has confidence in me,” Morgenthau wrote in his diary on May 9, “and I must say that my confidence in him continues to grow.”2 — 2 —

The Earl Harrison Mission: Its Genesis

Morgenthau had read the thirty-third President of the United States incorrectly. Not an ideological New Dealer like the long-time Secretary of the Treasury, Truman spent his ten years in the Senate with pragmatic, middle-of-the-road politicians. Wanting a cabinet that could help him on Capitol Hill, he would soon give cabinet posts to four members or former members of Congress. Clinton Anderson of New Mexico took over Agriculture from Claude Wickard, while Lewis W. Schwellenbach of Washington, one of the few national figures to support Truman in his uphill battle to be renominated in Missouri’s democratic Senate primary in 1940, replaced Frances Perkins in the Labor Department. James Byrnes of South Carolina, whom Morgenthau disliked, was Truman’s choice to succeed Edward R. Stettinius Jr. at State. Truman considered Kentuckian Fred M. Vinson, former Congressman and Judge on the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia—who as director of the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion had clashed at times with Morgenthau—a “straight shooter, knows Congress, and how they think, a man to trust.” Vinson was a regular player in Truman’s poker games, and the new President thought him very worthy of heading the Treasury Department. As for the Morgenthau Plan, Truman deferred to Secretary of War Henry Stimson, its major opponent in the cabinet. Stimson had insisted to Roosevelt that ten European countries, including Russia, depended upon Germany’s export-import trade and production of raw materials. Western Europe had to be kept “from being driven to revolution or Communism by famine,” Stimson warned the President on May 16, and the revival of Europe could not be separated from the predicament of Germany.3 One week later, Morgenthau gave Truman the memoranda on the WRB’s record and his own proposal for its successor. The board, set up under the Secretaries of State, Treasury, and War to “save victims of Nazi oppression in imminent danger of death,” had achieved much in terms of rescue and relief; protecting stateless Jews who held questionable identification papers; issuing warnings to forestall further persecution of Jews and other minorities; and establishing a temporary safe haven for 982 refugees in Fort Oswego, New York. “The equally great problem of the resettlement of hundreds of thousands of displaced persons who are unable or unwilling to return to their homelands” remained, however. To achieve the IGCR’s future success in this regard, Morgenthau — 3 —

After the Holocaust

advised, every consideration should be given to setting up a new cabinet committee that would place “the full force and weight” of the US government behind its activities. The committee, perhaps consisting of the Secretaries of State, Interior, and Commerce, could also handle US relations with the IGCR and UNRRA. If Truman wished, Morgenthau would be glad to sound out other interested people about this proposal prior to the liquidation of the WRB, which was contemplated for the very near future.4 Truman read the WRB memorandum very carefully, after which Morgenthau observed that he did not feel he should continue on the new committee. “This was going to lead right into the Palestine question and a lot of other Jewish questions,” he explained. Recalling his experience on Capitol Hill, the President responded: “I know that there are three different groups of Jewish interests and none of them see alike.” “I don’t belong to any group,” Morgenthau rejoined; he would be delighted to be consulted if the President asked for his advice. “I am representing 135 million people,” asserted the Secretary as their meeting ended. “I know that,” said Truman. He did not ask Morgenthau to do anything, but he kept the memorandum. That same evening, following the submitted resignations of Perkins, Wickard, and Attorney General Francis Biddle, Truman was asked by the press if Morgenthau had done the same. He had not, the President emphatically replied, and if he had done so the resignation would not have been accepted. Asked if intended to make a change in the State Department, the President answered that he did not.5 Pressing forward, Morgenthau and some staff met with Edward D. McKim, Truman’s chief administrative assistant, on the morning of May 28. For personal reasons, Morgenthau began, he felt that he should withdraw from the proposed cabinet committee, but hesitated to do so without seeing the program cared for by members who would be sympathetic toward war refugees. Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes and Secretary of Commerce Henry Wallace would afford the needed viewpoint, Morgenthau asserted; Stettinius, although sympathetic, might be forced to delegate personal consideration to “old-line” State personnel, who would manifest insufficient interest in the approximately seven million refugees “walking the roads of Europe.” The Jews were represented by three groups, unlike the Catholics in this respect, and such a sympathetic committee would relieve Truman of this pressure. — 4 —

The Earl Harrison Mission: Its Genesis

Morgenthau said that he would send McKim contact information for Earl Harrison, now in London, who was acquainted with the refugee program. McKim summarized Morgenthau’s suggestion in a memorandum to Truman, adding that Judge Samuel Rosenman, Roosevelt’s main speech writer and adviser to Truman, questioned the advisability of the Interior and Commerce Departments being on the committee. If the chief executive decided to form this new agency, McKim noted, it should be done before the WRB was dissolved. “What good would such a board accomplish?” wrote Truman on the memorandum.6 The same day, Joseph C. Grew, Acting Secretary of State while Stettinius chaired the United States delegation to the United Nations Conference on International Organization in San Francisco, sent Truman a memorandum on Palestine. The American Christian Palestine Committee, chaired by Senator Robert Wagner (D, New York) and including a number of distinguished non-Jews, was requesting all members of Congress to have the President endorse unlimited Jewish immigration and statehood in Palestine now that the war in Europe had ended. Palestine, Grew noted, may be included among the dependent areas for which a system of trusteeship was evolving at San Francisco, and definite arrangements regarding specific territories were to be considered later. Given the current crisis in Syria and Lebanon and renewed outbreaks of terrorism in Palestine itself, any action by the US government along the lines desired by the American Christian Palestine Committee would “increase the prevailing tension in the Near East.” Truman agreed with Grew that such an endorsement would have “most unfortunate” repercussions at present. That evening, at his first official dinner, Truman received the regent of Iraq, who would be publicly told by Special Departmental Assistant William Phillips that the government welcomed the Arab League’s formation on March 22 as not only benefiting the Arab countries, but making “important and constructive contributions to the great tasks awaiting the United Nations.” The following day, Truman “approved in principle” the efforts of the Departments of State, War, and the Navy, sanctioned by Roosevelt in January, to seek congressional aid for Saudi Arabia’s urgent financial requirements.7 Truman’s congressional record towards Jewish needs up to this point was clear. He had protested the May 1939 British White Paper, which effectively sealed off Palestine to large Jewish immigration and — 5 —

After the Holocaust

imagined a state there with a large Arab majority, as but another example of British “surrender to the Axis powers.” In his address to “Demand Rescue of Doomed Jews” at a Chicago rally on April 14, 1943, Truman had urged that “today—not tomorrow-we must do all that is humanly possible to provide a haven and place of safety for all those who can be grasped from the hands of the Nazi butchers.” Yet he immediately resigned from the militant, Irgun-inspired Committee for a Jewish Army when it condemned the Anglo-American Bermuda Conference on Refugees that same month for indifference to Jewry’s systematic slaughter across Nazi-occupied Europe. “The Jewish Congregations,” he admonished a rabbi that December, should “support wholeheartedly the foreign policy of our government.” Truman likewise accepted the administration’s stance against a pro-Zionist congressional resolution in early 1944. Writing to disturbed constituents, he used a mixed metaphor to explain himself: with London and Washington “absolutely necessary to us in financing the War, I don’t want to throw any bricks to upset the applecart, although when the right time comes I am willing to make the fight for a Jewish homeland in Palestine.” A few months later, Truman endorsed a resolution in the Democratic Party’s election plank to favor the opening of Palestine to “unrestricted Jewish immigration and colonization, and such a policy as to result in the establishment there of a free and democratic Jewish Commonwealth.”8 Untried as yet in foreign affairs, the new occupant of the Oval Office had authorized a Zionist delegation led by Stephen Wise on April 20 to say that he was carrying out his predecessor’s policies, and that “we, his visitors, knew what Mr. Roosevelt’s policy in regard to Palestine had been.” Given the actual uncertainty in Roosevelt’s position, Stettinius had weighed in four days earlier with a memorandum to Truman about present government policy that both Arabs and Jews should be consulted before a definite settlement was reached, with the primary responsibility resting in Britain’s hands. A “distinction” was to be made between Palestine as such and the question of Jewish refugees, Stettinius added, for whom we afford “the greatest possible assistance” through agencies such as the WRB and the IGCR. Two weeks later, Grew disclosed to Truman three pertinent facts bearing on the contentious Palestine issue. These included Roosevelt’s assurances during the war to Arab leaders that no decision on Palestine — 6 —

The Earl Harrison Mission: Its Genesis

would be reached without “full consultation with both Arabs and Jews”; Roosevelt’s letter on April 5 to Saudi Arabia monarch Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud that he would take no action “which might prove hostile to the Arab people”; and Roosevelt’s recent acknowledgment to a State Department official that a Jewish commonwealth in Palestine could be created and maintained “only by military force” in light of Arab hostility throughout the region to Zionism. On May 17, Truman renewed to Emir Abdullah of Trans-Jordan Roosevelt’s assurances that “no decision should be taken respecting the basic situation” in Palestine without full consultation with both Arabs and Jews. The president of the Egyptian Council of Ministers would receive a similar assurance from Truman not long thereafter.9 For the World Zionist Organization (WZO) and its advocates, the issue was unequivocally clear. As the V-E Day manifesto of the Jewish Agency for Palestine executive in Jerusalem asserted, the time had come to draw the lesson from “the fearful cataclysm” which had claimed three-quarters of the Jewish people under Hitler. No one was prepared for the unmentionable atrocities which Allied forces had encountered when reaching the German concentration camps one month earlier. Shocked by a tour of Ohrdrurf on April 12, Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) commander Dwight D. Eisenhower cabled Washington and London to send officials and newsmen to serve as eyewitness to the “unspeakable conditions,” “where the evidence of bestiality and cruelty is so overpowering as to leave no doubt in their minds about the normal practices of the Germans in these camps.” Stomach-turning photographs of Nordhausen, Dachau, Bergen-Belsen, Mauthausen, and many other barbarous centers, filling newspapers and magazines worldwide, only strengthened the Zionist argument: the Jews’ unique stateless position, having marked them out for wholesale destruction in what would later be termed the Holocaust, mandated sovereignty in their ancestral homeland of Palestine.10 On May 22, WZO president Chaim Weizmann submitted the Jewish Agency’s memorandum to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, demanding the early establishment of a Jewish commonwealth and the quick immigration of the first million Jews from Europe and the Muslim world into Palestine. Had not the Conservative Party herald promised, during their last meeting the previous November, a substantive proZionist solution when the war against Germany ended? The White Paper — 7 —

After the Holocaust

still stood, “prolonging the agony of the Jewish survivors.” The situation of Jews in liberated Europe was “desperate,” Weizmann pleaded, and his own position as president of the Jewish Agency was becoming “untenable.” That same day, at the British Labour Party’s Annual Conference in Blackpool, Hugh Dalton had reiterated the party’s earlier declared commitment to facilitate entry into “the Land of Promise and Hope” for any Jew desiring to go there, and suggested that steps be taken to obtain American and Soviet consent for a policy “which will give us a happy, a free and prosperous Jewish State in Palestine.”11 The members of the British Cabinet Committee on Palestine thought otherwise. Minister Resident in Cairo Edward Grigg (supported by Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden) recommended a new mandate or trusteeship for an undivided Palestine with a legislative council, and His Majesty’s Government (HMG) retaining its present responsibility for administration and security. Partition advocate Colonial Secretary Oliver Stanley considered this in essence a return to the White Paper, and he urged that Jewish immigration be temporarily continued after September (when the White Paper quota was expected to run out) pending the ultimate deliberation. To the members of his senior staff, he suggested on May 25 that in a few years’ time the Jewish case for large-scale immigration to Palestine might be much weaker, “as they might not be able to get immigrants.” Much depended on Russia’s position, he noted, and “it would be a pity” to make any fundamental change “in order to meet a problem that might disappear in the near future.” Further evaluation of Arab and Jewish reactions to possible alternatives, of the military commitments involved, and of the foreign policy implications for HMG still had to be made, Stanley concluded.12 SHAEF’s revised administrative memorandum of April 16, 1945, had distinguished between “refugees,” “displaced persons,” and “stateless persons” in Germany. The first were German civilians within Germany temporarily homeless because of the war, while the second were civilians outside of the boundaries of their country who wished to return home but could not without assistance. “Stateless” persons, to include persons of enemy or ex-enemy origin, by law or in fact “lacked protection of any government”; only after every effort to determine nationality failed should individuals be relegated to this category. UNRRA had been authorized by the United Nations to undertake the care, relief, and repatriation of displaced persons. The IGCR was responsible for — 8 —

The Earl Harrison Mission: Its Genesis

the resettlement of persons, including stateless ones, who “have been obliged to leave their homes for reasons of race, etc.” UNRRA had agreed to care for these for a period of time to be agreed upon, after which the IGCR would assume responsibility for those not repatriated or resettled. SHAEF recognized that it was “normally desirable” to accommodate non-repatriable persons in separate assembly centers with a view to “relatively permanent occupation”; special welfare, educational, and medical staff should operate there when possible. German residences would, as necessary, be requisitioned, vacated, and used to provide accommodation.13 This approach did not sit well with the British authorities. The American Embassy in London cabled to the State Department, Harrison, and the WRB on May 28 a Foreign Office spokesman’s declaration that cabinet ministers had decided not to engage in any discussion of the broad problem of resettlement at present and to treat this matter “passively.” Every effort should be made, they felt, to repatriate the refugees, in this way reducing the IGCR’s responsibilities. The refugees might be encouraged to refuse to return to their country of origin if the matter of resettlement were raised. “Very strict” tests should be made as to non-repatriability. Finally, cabinet ministers declared that the “British authority will not go” beyond their present financial commitments for the operating expenditures of the IGCR for 1945.14 Indeed, on June 2 the Foreign Office’s specialist in such matters confirmed this decision to IGCR director Herbert Emerson. According to Paul Mason, head of the Cabinet Committee on Refugees, their meeting concluded that it was “probably premature” to assume that a “hard core of considerable magnitude” of non-repatriable refugees would be found. Its members “favored the assumption that all refugees were repatriable.” The problem, therefore, should not at present be considered on “an international footing.” The same day, Truman wrote Morgenthau that he had “about made up my mind” not to appoint any committee about the refugee program. The next time the two met, he added, they would discuss it further.15 Pointedly, all of these confidential memoranda (including Morgenthau’s to Truman for a cabinet committee) masked the identity of Hitler’s prime target of racist hatred. This came at a time when Jewish organizations in Great Britain and the United States unsuccessfully pressed their respective governments to aid Holocaust survivors, — 9 —

After the Holocaust

who were either stateless or citizens of former enemy countries with none to intercede on their behalf. While thousands were dying from disease each week in the very concentration camps where they had been incarcerated by the Germans, those still alive were wearing the same thread-bare clothing and receiving food rations lower than those allocated to Germans. HMG’s War Office dug in its heels, opposing delegations of visitors to the camps. Thanks to harrowing reports from Jewish chaplains in the US Army, the American Jewish Conference got six congressmen to cable Eisenhower on May 10, asking him to “appoint Jewish liaison officers under military assignment and control” to act as consultants with SHAEF and to deal with “displaced persons and their repatriation and resettlement.” The Conference and the Board of Deputies of British Jews volunteered to prepare a list of qualified personnel. Eisenhower’s reply came on May 29, assuring the congressmen that the survivors’ plight had been brought to the attention of his headquarters, and that UNRRA had arranged for voluntary agencies to care for specific problems. The request for Jewish liaison officers was rejected.16 In view of Truman’s note that he did not favor the creation of a cabinet committee to continue the WRB’s work, Morgenthau sought to insure the early liquidation of the Board. With the principal remaining problem the WRB’s overall responsibility for the Emergency Refugee Shelter at Ft. Oswego, Morgenthau met with a group of concerned organizational representatives on June 5. He thought that Congress would permit these refugees to remain in the United States, and he suggested that three prominent legislators be seen in order to achieve this end. A policy of “sponsored leave” would be the best solution, thought those present. Pehle, Special Assistant to Morgenthau, prepared a memorandum for Truman, with WRB Executive Director William O’Dwyer presenting another about the ending of that body and the suggestion that the Interior Department, which had actual administrative responsibility of the Ft. Oswego project from its inception, take over full authority. The next day, Truman signed the memorandum and agreed that O’Dwyer, then running on the Democratic ticket for the New York City mayoralty, remain on duty until the WRB closed at the end of August. Roswell McClelland, the Board’s delegate in Switzerland, was immediately instructed to complete his work by that date, forward to Washington all reports and records, and return all unspent confidential — 10 —

The Earl Harrison Mission: Its Genesis

funds to Chase National Bank, New York City. The remaining surplus 206,000 prisoner of war food parcels in McClelland’s possession were transferred to UNRRA control.17 Weizmann’s anxious letter on June 7 to Meyer Weisgal, his closest confidant, would dramatically alter the fate of the Holocaust survivors in Europe. Churchill had still not replied to Weizmann’s latest appeal, while the results of a General Election in Great Britain, scheduled for early the next month, could not be forecast. “I wonder,” Weizmann asked, “whether the situation is being made clear to Talboker?” (This Hebrew coded reference to the German “Morgenthau” would not be lost on Weisgal.) The delay in reaching a decision on Palestine, he added, “is costing many Jewish lives from the poor remnant that remains to us, and the longer they wait, the more difficult everything will become.” Weizmann would try to do something in London in the course of the next few weeks, but Weisgal had “to help from your side, too.”18 Weisgal, then in New York, lost little time in contacting the Treasury Department head via Henrietta Stein Klotz, Morgenthau’s Secretary since 1922 and watchdog over all of the stolid official’s appointments. Klotz, the daughter of an Orthodox Jewish home of Polish-born parents, had first inculcated in the man Washington dubbed “Henry the morgue” some appreciation of the Jewish heritage, and cultivated her boss’s budding association with Weizmann and Weisgal during the war years. Weisgal proposed that a thorough survey by a presidential emissary be made of the current position of the Jews in Europe, covering their needs, prospects, and hopes. He suggested James McDonald, first League of Nations High Commissioner for Refugees from Germany (1933–1935), and in one day obtained the “unqualified approval” from a cross-section of American Jewish leadership for this mission. Assuming that McDonald’s embrace of Zionism during the war would be anathema to State’s anti-Zionist Near Eastern department, Morgenthau thought Harrison a better choice. On the morning of June 11, Morgenthau telephoned Grew, asking him to meet for five minutes with Pehle to consider Harrison’s going to see “how the Jews are being treated in Europe.” Some of Morgenthau’s Jewish friends were saying that the survivors were being treated “as badly as they were before we defeated Germany.” He did not know whether this was true or not, but thought that “we had better find out the facts.”19 — 11 —

After the Holocaust

Grew responded that the proposal had to be cleared with Eisenhower in the first instance, as well as Stimson. If it is a question of a cable, Morgenthau retorted, a talk with Pehle could determine what kind of telegram to send. Grew, who was tied up almost every hour that day, suggested that William Phillips talk with Pehle, as Phillipis was “running that side of the show.” Wanting the cable to go out the same day authorizing Harrison to go, and with Phillips a personal friend, Morgenthau agreed. That same afternoon, after Pehle saw Phillips, Grew sent a telegram for Eisenhower’s “immediate” attention seeking permission to have Harrison travel, possibly with McClelland, to “ascertain certain facts with regard to displaced persons particularly Jews” as a matter which should have the government’s “wholehearted support.” A delighted Morgenthau had Klotz inform Weisgal of this swift development. On June 14, Weisgal wrote Morgenthau that, regardless of who else might accompany Harrison, he should have someone who is familiar with Jewish history and tradition, “one who has deep roots in Jewish life,” and who is equipped to talk directly with some of the Jews to ascertain how best to deal with “the European Jewish problem.” If permitted to do so, Weisgal would be pleased to submit certain suggestions in this regard. In a letter to “Henrietta,” “Meyer” added that “our people” were deeply appreciative of Morgenthau’s ready response in this matter: “There is such a deep sense of despair with regard to the position of the remaining Jews in Europe that the mere knowledge of his interest and solicitude in the matter is a source of great comfort to us.”20 Earl Harrison was a leading trial lawyer in Philadelphia, a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, a Republican, and a Presbyterian. The forty-six-year-old had entered government service when appointed Commissioner of Alien Registration in 1940 at the suggestion of Solicitor General Francis Biddle. In that capacity, he imaginatively had suggested the use of post offices for registration and fingerprinting for approximately five million non-citizens, and the success of that program led to his appointment as Commissioner of Immigration and Naturalization in July 1942. During the next two years, the friendly, hard-working Commissioner oversaw the largest number of applications for citizenship in the history of the service. Harrison had direct charge and responsibility for the nation’s detention centers for aliens whose loyalty was in doubt, as well as for many special — 12 —

The Earl Harrison Mission: Its Genesis

wartime duties. Visiting every one of twenty-two district offices, he displayed an open, warm demeanor and noteworthy administrative abilities. These, together with first-hand knowledge of various social agencies, led wartime Attorney General Biddle to praise his “extraordinarily human heart” for making foreigners in the country “understand how much they contributed to us.” For a record of remarkable achievement in solving problems under his jurisdiction, the American Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born awarded Harrison its annual medal in April 1943. On March 15, 1945, Roosevelt appointed Harrison the US representative on the IGCR, which placed him in close touch with the immense refugee problems thrown up by the persecutions and dislocations across the war-torn continent of Europe.21 Representatives of Jewish organizations who already had dealings with Harrison since his appointment to the IGCR found him an understanding audience. Jewish US Supreme Court Associate Justice Felix Frankfurter told Weisgal that Harrrison was “a good man.” Weisgal cabled the Jewish Agency office in London that he was “very sympathetic and friendly” and should be seen. Two executive members of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) in New York noted that Harrison accepted their view on a number of points. Regardless of the abolition of Nazi legislation, Harrison agreed that no one should be forced to accept German nationality against their will, and that thousands of Jewish survivors, stateless or citizens of mainly east European countries who were not naturalized, should not be treated as ordinary aliens and forced to be repatriated to their former countries. Harrison also assented to their requests that the Ft. Oswego refugees be authorized to stay there for a few months more until the problem of their immigration would be solved, and that a WJC representative should be included in the UNRRA delegation to Germany—although he pointed out that difficulties might well arise if that individual would focus on Jewish immigration to Palestine. The Hadassah Women’s Zionist organization brought to Harrison’s attention the plight of eight hundred Jewish orphans from Buchenwald, now in France, who could not receive permission from that government to travel to Palestine because their parents, “deported by Germans from France to unknown destinations,” might still return.22 The promising appointment of Harrison, the objective but idealistic law professor, could not have come at a better time for Weizmann, who had finally received word from Churchill on June 9. The Prime Minister’s — 13 —

After the Holocaust

curt answer—“There can be no possibility of the question being effectively considered until the victorious Allies are definitely seated at the Peace table”—came as a “great shock.” This, Weizmann wrote back six days later, “substituted some indefinite date in the future.” Continuance of the White Paper, barring Palestine’s doors to “the surviving remnant” of European Jewry, was also “unbearable” to Jews confined to “a territorial ghetto” consisting of five percent of the area of Western Palestine. The earnest plea drew no reply, although Randolph Churchill soon told Weizmann that his father realized the urgency of the Jewish question, but felt he must obtain American support. Hearing this, Weizmann wrote Weisgal: “Now it is essential that your chief [Truman] should be fully briefed about the situation, and convinced of the need for taking some sort of decision at the earliest possible moment.” Weizmann thought that Palestine would be discussed at the forthcoming Big Three meeting in Germany with Truman, Churchill, and Soviet Prime Minister Joseph Stalin. It was therefore all the more crucial “to have your chief’s full weight on our side: perhaps only he can really swing the balance.”23 The proposed Harrison mission to liberated Europe moved forward. On June 12 he and George Warren, State’s specialist on refugee issues, called on Pehle. Pehle made it clear that, for all the pressure from various groups, “particularly the political Zionists,” his boss was primarily concerned with the needs of these “displaced people.” Harrison expressed a willingness to undertake the trip, and appeared to approve fully of McClelland’s aiding him. It was suggested that Harrison travel not in his IGCR capacity, but either as Truman’s emissary or at least that of State with a personal letter from the President. Warren declared that he would arrange these details, clearing all with Pehle before setting any formal request in motion. A memorandum from Morgenthau to Grew was drafted, noting particularly the “very serious” situation of approximately one million surviving Jews, who continued to be victims in many countries of racial hate “engendered and intensified” by the Nazis. It noted that many groups in the country felt that the Allies did not act “vigorously enough” or were unable to take action that might have prevented the massacre of millions of European Jews. These groups also believed that, with the war over, the opportunity existed for immediate assistance to the surviving Jews, “who as a people were the greatest victims of the Nazis.” The memorandum closed by saying that Harrison and McClelland — 14 —

The Earl Harrison Mission: Its Genesis

should be sent immediately to investigate what intergovernmental, governmental, and private agencies could do for the survivors that was not now being done.24 Warren, State’s liaison to the WRB, prepared a displaced persons press release. Quoting Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy, it announced that of the almost 5,500,000 displaced persons, the Allies had repatriated up to 3,075,726 to their home countries by June 18. Another 2,177,609 were being cared for in Allied displaced persons camps, with another 168,200 estimated to be living outside such camps. SHAEF estimated that “the entire problem” may resolve itself by September 1 into caring for the residual of non-repatriables and stateless persons. Behind these figures lay a story full of drama, bringing “order out of chaos” by channeling the movement of people and providing them with food, clothing, temporary housing, and medicine. Displaced persons had received “highly preferential treatment” in Germany, with Army Groups instructed by SHAEF to raise their living conditions to a standard as high as resources allowed “without consideration of any adverse effect on living conditions of the German people.” By the end of summer, UNRRA, which currently had 280 teams deployed throughout the Allied zone in Germany, would assume virtually the entire manpower burden of handling displaced persons. Eventually, the IGCR would have the problem of finding places for “those people whom the Nazis and the war turned into men without countries.” Reviewing how the problem was met, Eisenhower came to the following conclusion at a press conference in Washington on June 18: the personnel in charge of displaced persons have done their real task “beautifully, and the process of getting them out has been working most efficiently.”25 The same day, Pehle informed Morgenthau that a cable about the mission had just arrived from SHAEF. A paraphrase of the telegram, given him by Phillips, indicated that it “welcomed” the visit of Harrison and McClelland to make the proposed survey. The American delegate to the IGCR was ready to leave at any time. Warrren, working on all arrangements for the trip, would try to get Harrison off for Europe late the same week, while McClleland would be cabled to be ready to meet Harrison in Paris. Pehle suggested to Harrison that success would be facilitated if he were to go as the President’s representative or at least have a letter from Truman endorsing the trip. Harrison agreed strongly, although Phillips did not give much encouragement to the idea. State — 15 —

After the Holocaust

was preparing a “special passport,” but Pehle thought that a diplomatic passport should be issued “if real importance is attached to this mission.” Pehle thought that both of these matters could be satisfactorily handled by a telephone call to Grew from Morgenthau after he had seen Harrison. O’Dwyer cabled McClelland that the WRB “heartily” approved the suggestion of his accompanying Harrison, and asked if he would agree to serve as special attaché of the American Legation in Berne.26 Reminding Morgenthau that destiny had cast him for a role in Jewish affairs regarding Truman greater than he could have played with Roosevelt, Frankfurter arranged for the Secretary to receive an update on Palestine from Gershon Agronsky on June 19. The founding editor of the Palestine Post explained that the Jewish yishuv (community), which had played its part in the Allied war effort, was prepared to “go down fighting” against the restrictive White Paper. If the British firmly announced a pro-Zionist settlement for Palestine and if backed up by America—the only circumstance in which HMG would likely take a strong stand—there would be “no trouble” with the Arabs. Complete unity existed in the Jewish camp for free immigration, including non-Zionists like American Jewish Committee (AJC) president Joseph Proskauer. Morgenthau noted that they were sending Harrison to Europe to see “what remains of the Jews.” They could not send James McDonald, but he thought Harrison would be “first rate.” Morgenthau pressed Agronsky to send him something in writing for “No. 1” [Truman], then departed. Frankfurter advised Agronsky that Morgenthau, and this talk with him, could be very valuable. With Morgenthau, the Justice added, Agronsky had one of unsere Juden (our Jews), who at this stage was worried as to what extent the demand for immigration was unanimous.27 “I hasten to advise you,” Grew replied to Morgenthau’s letter the next day, that he approved both the request for a diplomatic passport and a letter to Harrison from the President. Along the lines which Morgenthau had suggested, the letter would express Truman’s interest in the mission and ask for a report from Harrison on his return. It would be sent to Truman for his signature and forwarded to Harrison in Europe. Morgenthau soon cabled Treasury Department representatives across Europe, as well as Col. Bernard Bernstein, US counsel on the Control Commission for Germany and a strong proponent of the Morgenthau Plan, to extend their fullest cooperation to Harrison in his — 16 —

The Earl Harrison Mission: Its Genesis

“difficult task.” He soon received, from Weisgal, Weizmann’s letter of June 6 about “Talboker,” while Klotz heard from Weisgal that Agronsky was much impressed with Morgenthau, and that Weisgal would be seeing Harrison at his law office in Philadelphia the next day.28 Acknowledging Morgenthau’s intiative, Grew’s memorandum on June 21 to Truman noted that State had directed Harrison to proceed immediately to the liberated countries of Europe and to Germany in order to ascertain the needs of stateless and non-repatriables, particularly Jews, as well as to determine generally the view of the refugees “with respect to their future destinations.” Private groups in the United States were pressing urgently for this information, facts which would aid federal agencies to deal effectively with the problem through military channels and the related international agencies. SHAEF had approved the mission, and an expression of Truman’s interest would facilitate the mission and reassure interested groups that positive measures were being undertaken on their behalf. An attached draft for Truman’s signature assigned Harrison to be his “personal representative with the rank of minister.” Harrison was asked to inquire into the relief, rehabilitation, and resettlement needs of the displaced persons who had survived Nazism, “particularly the Jews,” in terms of their relief, rehabilitation, and resettlement. Truman expected Harrison to report to him the findings of the survey and such recommendations as he might feel free to make.29 On June 22, 1945, in a letter on White House stationary, Truman authorized the mission.30 Omitting any reference to Jews or Harrison’s additional charge to determine their views regarding their “future destinations,” the communication from the White House to Harrison was brief: I am advised by the Department of State that you are to proceed abroad to inquire into the needs of stateless and nonrepatriable refugees among the displaced persons in Germany and to determine the extent to which those needs are now being met by military, governmental and private organizations. It is important to the early restoration of peace and order in Europe that plans be developed to meet the needs of those who for justifiable reasons cannot return to their countries of pre-war residence. — 17 —

After the Holocaust

I wish you every success in your mission and will be interested to receive your report upon your return. Very sincerely yours, Harry S. Truman A decade later, Truman’s memoirs record that he did not think the State Department’s approach in 1945 towards the Palestine question “would solve the basic human problem.” The fate of thousands of Jews in Europe—“really only a fraction of the millions whom Hitler had doomed to death”—was “a primary concern.” They had suffered “more and longer” than any other group which had been displaced by World War II, yet their condition “had barely improved since the fighting had ended.” He intended the Harrison mission to investigate their current condition. Other than Truman’s basic humanitarian concern, the appointment appeared justified on political grounds, responding to the concerns of organized American Jewry. Finally, as aired years later on CBS Reports, a personal memory was recalled to explain his stance. Truman related how members of his own family in Jackson County had been displaced from Missouri in August 1863 by Union Order No. 11, intended to deprive pro-Confederate guerrillas of material support from the rural countryside, and then he declared: It was my attitude that the American government could not stand idly by while the victims of Hitler’s madness were not allowed to build new lives. Hitler had been murdering Jews right and left. It’s been estimated that he killed six million Jews—burned most of them up in furnaces. It was a horrible thing. I saw and I dream about it even to this day. On that account, the Jews needed some place where they could go.31 Weisgal sat down with Harrison on June 23, bringing along his close friend Henry Montor. The two had first met soon after Montor moved from Cincinnati to New York City in 1925 to become assistant editor under Weisgal of the Zionist Organization of America’s New Palestine magazine. He subsequently established the PALCOR news agency, meant to feature news of Palestine, and became publicity director of the United Palestine Appeal. At Montor’s suggestion, Weisgal took the — 18 —

The Earl Harrison Mission: Its Genesis

lead in organizing the highly successful Jewish Palestine Pavilion at New York’s 1939 World’s Fair. Since the creation of the United Jewish Appeal (UJA) that same year, Montor had proved to be a highly gifted fundraiser in his capacity as its executive vice-chairman. Weisgal and Montor intended to impress upon Harrison that an enduring solution had to be found for the survivors of the Holocaust and that it rested in Palestine.32 Weisgal and Montor were “deeply reassured” to find Harrison in “obvious” sympathy with European Jewry’s plight and the prospects that he was to survey. He agreed to the suggestion that he meet with Weizmann in London, and that Joseph Schwartz of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) join in the mission, if possible. The pair stressed that Harrison’s rendered service could be “truly historic,” as Weisgal put it, laying the foundation “for a sound, constructive solution of a problem that has so long eluded the world and bedeviled the Jewish people.” A maximum of time, preferably eight weeks, ought to be allowed for his mission, and Jews should be “free of duress” so they could talk to Harrison freely during his trip abroad. A long-range solution had to be found, rather than the temporary and unhappy solutions that had been offered Jews for thousands of years, since the lack of a permanent home lay at the root of the “Jewish problem.” Weisgal urged Harrison to go to Palestine to study for himself what had been done and what could be done in order to meet the problem of Jews who desired a lasting haven, and wished him good fortune on the “momentous journey.”33 At Harrison’s suggestion, Weisgal followed up with a lengthy memorandum two days later. The physical and economic condition of an estimated one and one-quarter million Jewish survivors, including the refugees in Allied and neutral countries, “is precarious in the extreme,” he emphasized. The condition was aggravated by virulent antisemitism in most of these countries. Their “permanent security” mandated a longrange solution to the centuries of Jewish homelessness. The majority of the Jews of Europe would wish to go to Palestine if given the opportunity to do so, Weisgal asserted. Europe had but three alternatives: “the completion of the process of slaughter so that there shall be no Jewish problem in Europe”; complete, guaranteed equality wherever the Jews may be; or immigration to a land “which they can call their own and where they are welcome and within which they can develop themselves — 19 —

After the Holocaust

on a permanent, free, secure basis.” The recommendations of Harrison’s survey, to be effective, should be determined “on the basis of their justice and equality and in the light of the difficulties of execution of the program.” The United Nations had to take resolute action, the memorandum concluded, “so that the Jews who suffered more from hate and brutality than any other people on earth may, too, achieve some measure of peace and security in the world now being created.”34 In Washington, Morgenthau, his resolve bolstered by the Zionist presentation of Frankfurter and Agronsky, informed State Department official Robert B. Reams on June 25 that, “as a Jew and as a citizen,” he was very much interested in the Jewish problem, and had raised the question of the Jews going into Palestine. The European Division’s expert on refugees, who had consistently and staunchly opposed relief and rescue during the Holocaust, was greatly shocked. He asked: “Why in Jews? You are interested in humanity.” Morgenthau called in Pehle, asked him to prepare a memorandum and take it over to Reams the next day. He also repeated “the same story” of the postwar Jewish refugee problem to McCloy. He made an appointment for Pehle to see McCloy the next day as well.35 Pehle’s memorandum of June 26, observing that “the interested American public” was becoming “gravely concerned” over the plight of approximately 100,000 Jews located in the SHAEF zone of Germany, proposed that immediate steps be taken to bring about their mental and physical rehabilitation. These included the movement of all who desired to go to displaced persons centers; the availability of adequate food supplies there; the removal of children as soon as possible to temporary refuge in nearby countries ready and willing to receive them; and the establishing as soon as possible of a system of communication, a vital factor in rehabilitation, whereby survivors could write to friends and relatives. Reams promised to bring this matter promptly to Grew’s attention, and see if a cable along these lines could be sent promptly to SHAEF headquarters in Frankfurt. McCloy agreed with the suggestions, and said that he would take immediate action. Pehle assured Morgenthau that he would follow the matter up with both the State and War Departments.36 That same day Weisgal informed Morgenthau that Harrison agreed to Schwartz’s accompanying him as “the most capable person for such a mission.” The Ukrainian-born scholar, after receiving an Orthodox — 20 —

The Earl Harrison Mission: Its Genesis

rabbinic ordination at what later became Yeshiva University and a doctorate in Arabic and Near Eastern Studies at Yale University, had spent some time at Cairo University and in Palestine. The Great Depression ruled out an academic career, so Schwartz worked as executive director of the Brooklyn Federation of Jewish Charities, briefly joined the JDC in New York as secretary, and then moved to Europe to direct its activities there. In that capacity, he became the JDC’s single most influential personality during World War II. The charismatic, tall Jew in the uniform of a US Army colonel also arranged, after a meeting in 1943 with Jewish Agency treasurer Eliezer Kaplan, to have the JDC help with shipping and maintenance for passengers of aliya bet (immigration in contravention of British mandatory law) on their way to Palestine. Not surprisingly, Weisgal quickly received an “urgent request” from the Jewish Agency and the American Jewish Conference that Morgenthau designate Schwartz as Harrison’s associate. Apprised by Weisgal and Kaplan of the mission, Schwartz indicated his availability and that he would remove himself from his JDC post for the time required. Morgenthau hesitated, thinking that Schwartz’s affiliation with of the non-Zionist JDC would make him unacceptable to Zionists. A long telephone conversation with Weisgal ultimately convinced Morgenthau, who had been informed that McClelland needed at least one month to wind up WRB affairs in Switzerland, to recommend Schwartz’s appointment to State. A few days later, Grew requested Schwartz, with his “special knowledge,” to serve as a consultant to the State Department.37 Weisgal cabled to Weizmann that Morgenthau had obtained Harrison’s assignment and had requested that “his messenger” be given all the attention possible. A letter that Morgenthau received from Agronsky, stressing that only Palestine could show “a light at the end of the tunnel” for the surviving handful of Jews in Europe—“their former homes in ruins, the ruins haunted by ghosts”—had also made its mark. Fully in agreement with Agronsky’s plea that only America could press Great Britain to support a Jewish state to bring in the survivors and prepare the country for their reception, Weizmann replied that he would certainly give Harrison his fullest attention. Yet he thought the enquiry came “rather late in the day.” To his Jewish Agency colleagues in London, Weizmann declared that Truman, “about whom they knew nothing,” had to be approached before the Allied leaders’ meeting at Potsdam. Any — 21 —

After the Holocaust

delay would be dangerous, because he considered the position “untenable.” In fact, Weizmann seriously considered resigning his post, as Churchill and Roosevelt had “deceived and let down” the Zionists. He had no confidence in the Big Three: “Nobody cared what happened to the Jews. Nobody had raised a finger to stop them from being slaughtered. They did not bother even about the remnant which had survived.”38 The Jewish Agency’s other two major leaders, political department director Moshe Shertok (later Sharett) and executive chairman David Ben-Gurion, harbored similar convictions. On June 18, Shertok had officially requested Palestine High Commissioner Lord Gort, in light of the unprecedented “campaign of extermination” that had destroyed over six million European Jews, for 100,000 immigration permits (25 percent for children) to be placed immediately at the Agency’s disposal. A detailed memorandum indicated that a settlement of this size was not only practicable, but would generally benefit the economic structure of the country. Gort, who insisted in secret cables to the Colonial Office that a maximum of 2,000 permits per month be maintained until the peace conference, did not respond with alacrity. Ben-Gurion went further, declaring in press conferences abroad that only “a regime of bloody terror” would be able to maintain the White Paper, and that the yishuv had to unite for a Jewish state immediately and so “redeem the Jewish people.” On June 27 he told State’s Near Eastern and African Affairs office head Loy Henderson that if their demands were not met, the Jews would fight in defense of their rights “and the consequences would be on Great Britain’s head.”39 At 8 a.m. the next day, Harrison flew to London for the start of his mission. Meeting with a few intimate staff members, Morgenthau wondered what he would answer if Truman said anything to him “about being next in line” to the presidency. He thought he would first laugh, then respond that he was going to say a prayer that evening and an extra prayer for the President’s health, and he hoped the others would do the same. Stettinius, he went on, was officially out, with Byrnes to take his place. If anything should happen, “God forbid,” to President Truman, he observed, “I would be next.” (Since there was no Vice-President and the Secretary of State would accompany the President at Potsdam, the current law would have the Treasury Secretary succeed to the White House.) Rosenman had confirmed, in response to Morgenthau’s inquiry, that this was the case.40 — 22 —

The Earl Harrison Mission: Its Genesis

Yet by that point Morgenthau sensed his distance from Truman. The President disagreed with his criticism that Supreme Court Associate Justice Robert Jackson’s plan for the Allied trial of German war criminals would delay indefinitely any convictions. When Morgenthau, trying to ascertain the truth of rumors about Byrnes succeeding Stettinius, told Truman that “I can’t get along with him,” the chief executive had sidestepped the issue. On June 18 Truman had turned down Morgenthau’s request to accept a French government invitation to open an exhibit of war bonds in Paris early in July, during which Morgenthau intended to see if the US Army was building up a strong Germany. Hearing that Truman did not want Morgenthau in Europe at the same time when Truman would be at Potsdam, the Secretary noted that before departing for the Yalta Conference in February, Roosevelt had said that if anything happened or an emergency arose, Morgenthau should convene the cabinet. “That’s so,” responded Truman. “I want you to be here. You are the ranking man by law.” Truman declared that he wanted no congressional hearings on the Morgenthau Plan until he had his “feet on the ground” on Potsdam. Two weeks later, Morgenthau would learn that Truman, worried about coal supplies in Europe, had overruled Treasury in sanctioning the production of coal in Germany’s Saar and Ruhr regions. Meanwhile, Byrnes’s appointment by Truman had been announced on June 30.41 A showdown could not be long away. Frankfurter sent Morgenthau warm congratulations on the success of his Seventh War Loan, along with a note about Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour’s stated hope in 1920 that the Arabs would not begrudge “that small notch” in their territories to Jews, who “surely have a title to develop on their own lines in the land of their forefathers.” Yet Morgenthau’s great disappointment about Truman’s decision that he stay home from the meeting of the Big Three festered, and now Byrnes had received swift Senate confirmation on July 2 as the new head of the State Department. Morgenthau felt the need to send “heartiest congratulations” to Byrnes, conveying his full cooperation and that of his department in the future. He could not have known that, meeting with the President briefly the same morning, Stimson sharply objected to Morgenthau’s being part of the US delegation to Potsdam. “Don’t worry,” the President responded to Stimson, “neither Morgenthau nor [Bernard] Baruch nor any of the Jew boys” would be going there. One year earlier, Stimson — 23 —

After the Holocaust

had confided to a diary his conviction that the Morgenthau Plan derived first and foremost from his cabinet colleague’s “Semitic grievances,” and that “a man of his race” should be forbidden to deal with Germany. Rather than have the plan “fighting brutality with brutality,” Stimson called for punishment of Nazi war criminals by legal process and for Germany’s rehabilitation. Morgenthau could not, at the same time, shake off gossip around Washington that he was going to resign and that Vinson would take his place. After a week’s thought, and with his lawyer and close friend General Edward Greenbaum advising Morgenthau to get out “while the going is good,” he concluded that the time had come to find out what Truman wanted.42 Truman, a Missouri Baptist coming from a prejudice-ridden small town, had embraced, in some of his private correspondence, negative stereotypes about the business acumen of “Hebrews and kikes.” His mother-in-law and his wife, Bess, never hosted a Jew in their house. On the other hand, Truman and Eddie Jacobson, who first operated a highly successful Army canteen together during World War I and then ran a men’s clothing store in Kansas City until it went bankrupt, remained close friends. A notation in Truman’s diary for June 1 questioned the Jewish claim to be picked out for “special privilege,” and averred that “any race, creed or color can be God’s favorites if they act the part— and very few of ‘em do that.”43 The remark one month later about “Jew boys” (although Baruch opposed the Morgenthau Plan) also found its way into Stimson’s diary. Still, Truman had just approved the Harrison mission, and his foreign policy on Palestine remained unclear. Public actions, not private words, would be the true test of decision. At 10:15 a.m. on July 5, 1945, Morgenthau sought to verify where he stood with Truman. His considerable agenda, according to Morgenthau’s diary, included talking about “Weisgal and Schwarz [sic],” but the conversation completely dealt with a single issue. According to what Morgenthau told his staff soon thereafter, Truman offered to make a “categorical denial” about the Secretary’s resigning. But when Morgenthau requested a letter saying that the President asked him to stay until V-J (Victory over Japan) Day, Truman responded that he needed time to think it over; he did not want to be rushed and pressured. Morgenthau understood this was “the tip-off” that Truman was “dodging for time” and might want a new head for the Treasury Department. Believing that he deserved not to be on trial after — 24 —

The Earl Harrison Mission: Its Genesis

twelve years of cabinet service, Morgenthau proposed that he submit a letter of resignation and suggested that it be given out that evening. Vinson could be sent over to the department, and Morgenthau would “break him in.” Hearing that Vinson would be going with Truman to Europe to look after lend-lease and other matters, Morgenthau concluded that when the two came back “they would pull the carpet out” from under his feet. Unable to hold his head up and have Truman say he was uncertain about Morgenthau, Morgenthau decided to resign without delay. Before departing, he received Truman’s agreement to his publishing a book, now as a private citizen, advocating the Morgenthau Plan, and giving Eisenhower a copy. A half hour had passed. With the help of long-time associates Daniel Bell and Herbert Gaston, Morgenthau’s letter reached the White House fairly quickly. Revealing nothing of the tension of the morning interview, it recalled his active work with Roosevelt in meeting the important problems confronting the country before and during the war, and it stated that Morgenthau felt he could now appropriately “be released from my responsibilities.” Almost at the same time, a United Press story, based on an “unimpeachable source” at the White House, announced that Morgenthau had resigned during his visit with Truman, the step to take effect when Truman returned from the Big Three conference. “I am beginning to feel kind of good,” Morgenthau told his aggrieved staff. A greatly surprised Rosenman, whom Truman had assigned to draft an official response, met with Bell and Gaston to record the “high spots” of Morgenthau’s record: the highly successful federal tax programs; financing the government in time of war; reducing the interest on the national debt coincident with the tremendous increase in revenues of more than $200 billion; and the proposed Bretton Woods Conference legislation setting up a system to regulate the international monetary system. At 4 p.m., Truman made the announcement himself, saying that he was sorry for the decision, but grateful that the Secretary would remain until he returned from Potsdam. In reply to a reporter’s question, he indicated that he had Morgenthau’s successor in mind. The President’s later recollection of their meeting states that he did not want the Treasury Department to meddle in foreign affairs, so he fired Morgenthau when the Secretary insisted on going to Potsdam or he would resign. Morgenthau’s diary, which made no mention of the Potsdam issue, indicates that he lost little time in calling a few prominent editors, explaining — 25 —

After the Holocaust

how he “forced the issue” in the face of Truman’s evasiveness with the request to stay until Japan’s defeat. “It’s a different crowd—I’m not one of the gang,” he told columnist Drew Pearson, and this to Senator Wagner: “so we will let Missouri in and New York move out.”44 The next evening, Truman announced his intention to appoint Vinson as Secretary of the Treasury. Morgenthau immediately offered his “very heartiest congratulations,” along with his assurance that when Vinson returned from Potsdam Morgenthau stood ready to give him any and all assistance that he would like. Surprised to hear that Truman had decided to leave Vinson in Washington, Morgenthau repeated his offer to make himself available and tell him “about this very complex work.” Morgenthau then cabled all the senior Treasury representatives abroad, and told them that he would remain at his post until the President returned from the forthcoming conference in Europe; he requested that they discharge their duties fully and conscientiously, and thanked them for their service. Before leaving for a brief rest on July 7, he met with Eisenhower to give him the current draft of the Morgenthau Plan. From their talk, Morgenthau got the impression that there was not “one iota of difference” between their approaches to the treatment of postwar Germany.45 With Vinson remaining in Washington, however, Truman saw no reason why Morgenthau should not step down without further delay. Having sailed away for the Potsdam Conference, he sent Rosenman to urge Morgenthau to do so, claiming that the White House was under great pressure “on account of the people worrying about the succession.” “I just think that he wants to have his own people around him,” advised an uncomfortable Rosenman. He suggested (with Morgenthau’s approval) that, in a private letter, Truman make Morgenthau American Governor of the International Fund and Bank to be set up once Congress enacted the Bretton Woods legislation. With Vinson refusing to endorse the idea, however, Rosenman sent drafts of Morgenthau’s letter of final resignation and Truman’s public acceptance, as well as a third cable with his own proposal for Morgenthau’s new appointment. “I appreciate very much the fine spirit and keen sense of public responsibility in which you have approached this matter,” Truman’s letter of acknowledgment to Morgenthau concluded. On July 14, Truman ordered that only the first two drafts be released, not the third cable. “It is a cold-blooded business-like way of doing it,” Morgenthau told Rosenman, “it is what I expected.” — 26 —

The Earl Harrison Mission: Its Genesis

On July 17, the Senate confirmed Vinson by unanimous vote to be the new Secretary of the Treasury. “I’m totally free,” Morgenthau wrote, as he put an end to his diary entries. Standing alone in a corner when Vinson was sworn in, looking “crushed” until Klotz came over to comfort him, he quietly departed Washington soon thereafter. The fate of the Harrison mission, a venture made possible by Morgenthau’s direct intervention, now lay in the hands of others.46

Endnotes   1. May 21, 1945, vol. 848, Henry Morgenthau, Jr. Diaries (hereafter MD), Franklin D. Roosevelt Library (hereafter FDRL), Hyde Park, New York. For the creation of the US War Refugee Board, see Monty Noam Penkower, The Jews Were Expendable: Free World Diplomacy and the Holocaust (Urbana, 1983), chap. 5. For a survey of the Board’s activities during World War II, see David Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust 1941–1945 (New York, 1984), part 4. The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration was created during a forty-four-nation conference at the White House on November 9, 1943. Its mission was to provide economic assistance to European nations after World War II, and to repatriate and assist the refugees who would come under Allied control. The Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees, established as a result of the July 1938 Evian Conference on Refugees and headquartered in London, did little during the war years.   2. April 12, 14, 16, 27, 1945; May 2, 4, 9, 1945; all in vol. 848, MD.  3. Robert J. Donovan, Conflict and Crisis, The Presidency of Harry S. Truman, 1945–1948 (New York, 1977), 26–28, 76–77; MD, vol. 848, April 16, 1945, vol. 848, MD; Memoirs by Harry S. Truman, vol. 1, Year of Decision (New York, 1955), 235–236; Arnold A. Offner, “Research on American-German Relations: A Critical View,” in America and the Germans: An Assessment of a ThreeHundred-Year History, ed. Joseph McVeigh and Frank Trommler (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990), vol. 2, 176; Michael R. Beschloss, The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hitler’s Germany, 1941–1945 (New York, 2002).   4. Memorandum, May 22, 1945; Morgenthau memorandum for the President, May 23, 1945; both in vol. 849, MD.   5. May 23, 1945, Morgenthau Presidential Diaries (MPD), FDRL; Washington Evening Star, May 23, 1945. — 27 —

After the Holocaust

  6. May 28, 1945, vol. 849, MD; McKim to Truman, and Truman’s penned notation, May 28, 1945, Harry S. Truman Presidential Library (hereafter HSTL), Independence, MO.   7. May 28, 1945, President’s Secretary Files (hereafter PSF) 82, HSTL; Halifax to Foreign Office, June 3, 1945, Foreign Office (hereafter FO) 371/45239, Public Record Office (hereafter PRO), Kew, England; Truman notation, May 29, 1945, on Grew memorandum, May 23, 1945, copy in L35/A116, Central Zionist Archives (hereafter CZA), Jerusalem.  8. Congressional Record, Seventy-sixth Congress, first session, 1939, vol. 84, pt. 13, appendix, 2231–2232; Truman to Bergson, May 7, 1943; Truman to Smoller, December 12, 1943; Truman to Levin, February 16, 1944; all in senatorial and Vice-Presidential file 71, HSTL; Reuben Fink, America and Palestine (New York, 1944), 420–421. On the Committee for a Jewish Army and other groups organized by Hillel Kook (Peter Bergson) in the war years, see Monty Noam Penkower, The Holocaust and Israel Reborn: From Catastrophe to Sovereignty (Urbana, 1994), chap. 4.  9. New York Herald Tribune, April 21, 1945; Stettinius memorandum, April 16, 1945, PSF 159, HSTL; Foreign Relations of the United States (hereafter FRUS), 1945, vol. 8 (Washington, DC, 1969), 705–709. 10. Manifesto, May 8, 1945, General-Jewish Agency files, American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee archives (hereafter JDCA), New York City; Robert H. Abzug, Inside the Vicious Heart: Americans and the Liberation of Nazi Concentration Camps (New York, 1985). 11. Weizmann to Churchill, May 22, 1945; Weizmann-Churchill talk, November 4, 1944; both in Weizmann Archives (hereafter WA), Rehovot; Dalton speech extracts, May 1945, International Department files, seq. 1, box 5, Labour Party MSS., Transport House, London. 12. Grigg to Eden, January 29, 1945, PREMIER 4/52/3; Grigg memorandum, April 4, 1945, CAB 66/64; Stanley memorandum, May 16, 1945, CAB 66/65; May 25 meeting, Colonial Office (hereafter CO) 733/461/75872/II; all in PRO. 13. SHAEF Administrative memorandum 39, revised April 16, 1945, Earl Harrison Diary, RG-10.088, US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC. I thank Benton Arnovitz for making this diary available to me. 14. Winant to State, May 28, 1945, MD. 15. Mason to Emerson, June 2, 1945, Harrison Diary; Truman to Morgenthau, June 2, 1945, vol. 851, MD. 16. Arieh J. Kochavi, Post-Holocaust Politics: Britain, the United States, and Jewish Refugees, 1945-1948 (Chapel Hill, 2001), 33; Alex Grobman, Rekindling the — 28 —

The Earl Harrison Mission: Its Genesis

Flame: American Jewish Chaplains and the Survivors of European Jewry, 19441948 (Detroit, 1993), 70–71. Numerous reports by chaplains can be found in the Jewish Welfare Board Archives, New York City. The American Jewish Conference, created in August 1943, served as an umbrella group of most Jewish organizations in the United States. When the Conference adopted a pro-Zionist stance, the American Jewish Committee departed its ranks. See Penkower, The Holocaust and Israel Reborn, chap. 3. 17. June 5, 1945 meeting; O’Dwyer to Morgenthau, June 6, 1945; both in vol. 852, MD; Diary, June 6, 1945, with Morgenthau memorandum for the President, MPD; Board to McClelland, June 6, 1945, vol. 852, MD; Board to McClelland, June 9, 1945, vol. 853/2, MD. In confidence, Morgenthau conveyed to Wise, who on June 5 had raised the matter of WRB surplus parcels in Switzerland, this last decision. Morgenthau to Wise, June 9, 1945, file 264, World Jewish Congress Archives (hereafter WJCA), New York City (now at the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati). 18. Weizmann to Weisgal, June 7, 1945, WA. The German word Morgen (“morning”) meant boker in Hebrew, while thau (“dew”) meant tal (the family name translated as “morning dew”). 19. Klotz interview with the author, March 14, 1977; Weisgal to Klotz, June 12, 1945; Morgenthau-Grew telephone call, June 11, 1945; both in vol. 854, MD. An earlier draft of a memorandum, dated June 8, by Morgenthau’s staff for Grew to give Truman had proposed that McDonald be assisted by Harrison. June 8, 1945, Box 11, War Refugee Board (hereafter WRB) files, FDRL. For McDonald, see Monty Noam Penkower, “Honorable Failures against Nazi Germany: McDonald’s Letter of Resignation and the Petition in its Support,” Modern Judaism 30:3 (October 2010): 247-298; James G. McDonald, “The Time for Decision is Past,” New Palestine 33 (March 1943): 5–7. 20. Morgenthau-Grew telephone calls; Morgenthau-Pehle telephone call; PehleMorgenthau telephone call; Phillips to Murphy; all June 11, 1945, vol. 854, MD; Weisgal to Morgenthau, June 14, 1945, Z5/991, Central Zionist Archives (hereafter CZA), Jerusalem; Weisgal to Klotz, June 14, 1945, Z5/1046, CZA. 21. Lewis M. Stevens, “The Life and Character of Earl G. Harrison,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 104:5 (March 1956): 591–602. 22. Weisgal to Linton, April 6, 1945, Z5/991, CZA; Tartakower to Office Committee, May 21, 1945; Harrison to Tartakower, June 28, 1945; Harrison to Biddle, June 15, 1945; all in file 2a, WJCA; Kramarsky to Harrison, June 7, 1945, Z5/991; Frankfurter to Weisgal, June 28, 1945, Z5/967; both in CZA.

— 29 —

After the Holocaust

23. Churchill to Weizmann, June 9, 1945; Weizmann to Churchill, June 15, 1945; Linton to Namier, June 18, 1945; Weizmann to Weisgal, June 18, 1945; all in WA. 24. Hodel memorandum, June 12, 1945; draft of Morgenthau memorandum to Grew, n.d.; both in box 11, WRB. 25. Warren draft memorandum, n.d., box 11, WRB. The draft was not released. 26. Pehle memorandum to Morgenthau, June 18, 1945, vol. 855, MD; O’Dwyer to McClelland, June 19, 1945, box 11, WRB. 27. Agronsky note, June 19, 1945, A209/3, CZA. 28. Morgenthau to Grew, June 20, 1945; Grew to Morgenthau, June 20, 1945; Morgenthau to Treasury representatives, June 21, 19435; all in vol. 856, MD; Weisgal to Klotz, June 22, 1945, vol. 857/2, MD. 29. Grew memorandum to Truman, and draft letter attached, June 21, 1945, box 11, WRB. 30. Truman to Harrison, June 22, 1945—a copy sent by Pehle to Morgenthau, June 27, 1945; vol. 859, MD. The State Department’s eventual public announcement declared that Harrison’s mission was to ascertain the extent to which the needs of non-repatriables, who include “many Jewish survivors of Nazi persecutions,” were now being met by the military authorities. Jewish Telegraphic Agency (hereafter JTA), July 9, 1945. 31. Memoirs by Harry S. Truman, vol. 2, Years of Trial and Hope (New York, 1965), 163; Leonard Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust (New York, 1982), 36–38; Michael T. Benson, Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel (Westport, 1997), 63–64. 32. Montor interview with the author, June 8, 1977. The United Jewish Appeal for Refugees and Overseas Needs combined the efforts of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, led by Rabbi Jonah Wise; the United Palestine Appeal, led by Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver; and the National Coordinating Committee Fund, led by William Rosenwald. While the organizations would raise funds together, the Joint Distribution Committee would assist Jews in Europe, the United Palestine Appeal would aid the Jewish community in Palestine, including refugees from Europe arriving there, and the National Coordinating Committee Fund would assist refugees arriving in the United States. New York Times, January 13, 1939. 33. Weisgal to Harrison, June 25, 1945, Z5/991, CZA. 34. Weisgal memorandum, June 25, 1945, Z5/991, CZA. 35. June 25, 1945, vol. 864, MD; Richard Breitman and Alan M. Kraut, American Refugee Policy and European Jewry, 1939-1945 (Bloomington, 1987), 139, 159, 180, 186, 194. — 30 —

The Earl Harrison Mission: Its Genesis

36. Pehle to Morgenthau, June 27, 1945, vol. 859, MD; Pehle memorandum, June 26, 1945, box 11, WRB. 37. Weisgal to Morgenthau, June 26, 1945, Z5/861, CZA; Penkower, The Jews Were Expendable, 159, 174, 201, 213; Yehuda Bauer, American Jewry and the Holocaust, The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, 1939-1945 (Detroit, 1981); Weisgal to Weizmann, July 3, 1945, WA; McClelland to O’Dwyer, June 20, 1945, Box 11, WRB; Grew to Schwartz, July 2, 1945, file 1025, 1945-1954, JDCA. 38. Agronsky to Morgenthau, June 26, 1945, Z5/861, CZA; Weizmann to Weisgal, June 28, 1945, WA; Jewish Agency Executive London, June 25 and 27, 1945; both in Z4/30017, CZA. 39. Shertok to Gort, June 18, 1945, Jewish Agency confidential files, Zionist Archives, New York City (now in the CZA); Gort to Stanley, March 17 and 19, 1945, CAB 95/14, PRO; Zionist Review, June 15, 1945; JTA, June 22 and 26, 1945; FRUS, 1945, vol. 8, 713–715. 40. June 28, 1945 meeting, vol. 859, MD. 41. May 23, 1945; June 1, 13, 16, 18, 1945, MPD. 42. Frankfurter to Morgenthau, July 2, 1945, vol. 862, MD; Morgenthau to Byrnes, July 2, 1945, vol. 861, MD; Beschloss, The Conquerors, 246; Kochavi, Post-Holocaust Politics, chap. 3; Edward N. Peterson, The American Occupation of Germany: Retreat to Victory (Detroit, 1978), 37–44. 43. Off the Record, The Private Papers of Harry S. Truman, ed. R. H. Ferrell (New York, 1982), 41. For Jacobson’s role, see Frank J. Adler, Roots in a Moving Stream (Kansas City, 1972). 44. July 5, 1945, MPD; various entries, July 5, 1945, vol. 862, MD; Memoirs by Harry S. Truman, vol. 1, 327. 45. Morgenthau-Vinson telephone call, July 6, 1945; Morgenthau cable, July 7, 1945; Treasury staff meetings, July 7 and 10, 1945; all in vol. 862, MD. Eisenhower agreed with the Morgenthau Plan at the time, but his views of German rehabilitation softened by 1947. Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower: Soldier, General of the Army; President-Elect, 1890–1952, vol. 1 (New York, 1983), 421–425. 46. July 11 and 13, 1945, MPD; Morgenthau-Rosenman telephone calls and drafts of letters, July 13, 1945; Truman cable to Rosenman, July 14, 1945; Truman to Morgenthau, July 14, 1945; Morgenthau-Rosenman telephone call, July 14, 1945; all in vol. 863, MD; Henry Morgenthau III, Mostly Morgenthaus, A Family History (New York, 1991), 406.

— 31 —

2. The Earl Harrison Report: Its Significance

Two weeks after the Allied victory over Germany in World War II, US Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr. asked Harry S. Truman to create a cabinet committee to advise on the matter of nonrepatriable refugees, primarily Jews. The country’s new chief executive, quickly sworn in after the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt on April 12, 1945, turned down the request. In early June, Meyer Weisgal, prodded by Zionist herald Chaim Weizmann, suggested to Morgenthau (Hebrew code name “Talboker”) that a presidential emissary inspect the current position and aspirations of Holocaust survivors in Europe. Morgenthau proposed to Acting Secretary of State Joseph Grew that Earl Harrison, State’s representative on the Intergovernmental Committee of Refugees (IGCR), be sent for this purpose. Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) commander Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had cabled Washington and London in April to send officials and newsmen to serve as eyewitness to the “unspeakable conditions” found in Nazi concentration camps, approved the idea. On June 21, in a letter to the White House, Grew endorsed Morgenthau’s initiative. Truman, responding on humanitarian and political grounds, authorized the Harrison mission one day later to study the needs of “stateless and non-repatriable refugees among the displaced persons in Germany.” Weisgal and associate Henry Montor then persuaded Harrison and Morgenthau to recommend that the pro-Zionist Joseph Schwartz, European Director of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), serve as Harrison’s associate. US Supreme Court Associate Justice Felix Frankfurter influenced Morgenthau further in advocating Palestine as prime haven. Harrison left for London on June 28, Schwartz to meet him a few days later.

The Earl Harrison Report: Its Significance

Yet Morgenthau would exercise no further influence on the Harrison report, for on July 5 he submitted his resignation during a brief showdown in the Oval Office. Truman wanted pragmatic politicians with congressional experience like James Byrnes and Fred Vinson (both past Morgenthau adversaries) in his Cabinet; opposed the Morgenthau Plan’s call to eliminate Germany’s armament and industrial capabilities; and did not wish Treasury’s direct involvement in postwar foreign affairs. He refused the Secretary’s wish to attend the Potsdam Conference and to receive a letter saying that the President wished him to stay on until the Allied victory over Japan. Announcing Vinson as Morgenthau’s successor the next day, Truman pressed via Roosevelt speech writer Samuel Rosenman to have Morgenthau step down without delay. On July 14 this was finally arranged, and soon after Vinson’s assuming office three days later, Morgenthau quietly departed Washington.1 “I was shocked out of my wits” at the news of Morgenthau’s resignation in this morning’s papers, Weisgal wrote to Henrietta Klotz, Morgenthau’s long-time secretary, on July 6. Fortunately, Weisgal had received a cable the other day from Harrison, which would be of interest to Klotz and Morgenthau, her “chief.” Truman’s special emissary wrote: “Just finished inspiring helpful hour with Dr. Weizmann confidentially follow up on Schwartz.” The same day, Weisgal mailed Schwartz a copy of his memorandum to Harrison of June 25, although certain that the JDC executive knew “about 1000 times more” than was contained in it. Wishing him “all the luck in the world,” Weisgal expressed the hope that Schwartz would have a “very fruitful—I am afraid I can’t say pleasant— trip.” To Weizmann, he advised the importance of making Schwartz understand “we want unequivocal report it may have important bearing on subsequent events since instructions for report comes from very top.” Weisgal also sought to meet with Morgenthau, only to receive a brief rely that “at present my plans are too uncertain to permit me to make any definite arrangements.”2 The problem of an estimated 1,500,000 survivors could not wait, Weizmann informed Harrison when they met on June 30. Palestine’s doors would soon be closed, as only 3,000 Palestine immigration certificates remained under the restrictive 1939 White Paper. The British would not move alone to solve the problem; they needed the support and “prodding” of the United States. Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s hands would be strengthened by the Americans, who would — 33 —

After the Holocaust

be responding to a humanitarian, not a political, interest. The idea that Washington would share with London in the Palestine mandate was “absurd”; it would mean a double administration, a condominium; the Jews would “fall within [sic] two stools” and nothing would happen. The Americans could say they wanted a settlement and were willing to help economically in Palestine’s development. Hearing that Harrison had read Walter Lowdermilk’s book, which claimed that certain projects such as a Tennessee Valley Authority-type reclamation project for the Jordan Valley could settle an additional five million people in Palestine, Weizmann suggested that they would be able to arrange a loan of $200 million in America for this purpose. Two armed divisions were “ample to hold the Arabs, but the matter could be worked out with them, particularly with US aid, if the “will to do” existed. Weizmann “heartily” endorsed Schwartz, having had many personal experiences with him. A good percentage of the survivors could be taken care of with an increase of 300,000 immigrants to the yishuv (the Jewish community in Palestine), thereby approaching the Arabs’ current numerical strength. He saw “no other place to go.”3 Weizmann colleagues Selig Brodetsky, Berl Locker, and Joseph Linton expanded on his stance in a ninety-minute interview with Harrison. They observed that the day that Hitler entered Prague in March 1939 (thanks to Western appeasement) also signaled Britain’s adoption soon thereafter of the White Paper. Widespread antisemitism in Europe, beginning with Poland, confronted Jews at present; SHAEF refused Jewish organizations entry into refugee camps. The Zionists were requesting 100,000 additional certificates to Palestine. Currently, 12,000 certificates were blocked in Rumania and Bulgaria, where Jews had trouble with exit permits. Of some thousands of survivors admitted to Sweden, many were already asking for Palestine certificates. Russia appeared “friendly” to their concerns. Speed was necessary, and temporary solutions could not meet the crisis. The issue must be faced now. Weizmann’s group then asked Harrison to keep in mind the needs of Jews outside of Europe. This included 750,000 Jews in Arab and Muslim countries, North Africa, and Asia, whose conditions were not as bad as that of the Jews of Europe. As for the Jews of Palestine, they did not wish to remain a minority—especially in light of having received international promises in Great Britain’s 1917 Balfour Declaration and the Palestine Mandate, temporarily given His Majesty’s Government — 34 —

The Earl Harrison Report: Its Significance

(HMG) by the League of Nations in 1922, to support the creation of a Jewish “National Home.” “Ghetto rule,” according to Palestine’s land law of February 1940, restricted Jews to five percent of the country and imposed discriminatory tax legislation. The position in Palestine, not static, would revert to uprisings—the Jews “will take matters into their own hands”—if immigration stopped. Altogether, aside from ideological grounds, they declared, Palestine was the only possible solution—“no other place” wanted the Jews. Brodetsky concluded that Harrison, who took copious notes, knew a lot about the situation, was not new to the subject, and seemed very interested in what they told him.4 “Obviously Harrison was a new factor in the situation,” Weizmann remarked to his associates on July 3, two days before Morgenthau’s resignation. Morgenthau, Weizmann pointed out, would hand over to Truman the final report by Harrison—who “primarily was attached to Morgenthau.” Harrison would proceed to Paris the next day and wait for Schwartz, who was due to arrive there two days later. Schwartz was “very much infected with Zionism,” Brodetsky chimed in. The JDC executive knew Hebrew and Arabic, Weizmann added, had been in Palestine, “was a thinker,” an Orthodox rabbi, “a man of parts, and absolutely honest.” If Weizmann explained the significance of this mission, “he would be very careful.”5 While still in London, Harrison also met with IGCR director Herbert Emerson. Some Jews were returning to Poland and Hungary, Emerson noted, but most Polish Jews refused to go back to their former country, and Rumanian Jews were reluctant to do so as well. All survivors, he claimed, were leaving the Russian zone of Germany. He suggested that a survivor’s own statement should not yet be taken as fixed, nor should the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) determine “with finality” whether one was non-repatriable. It was clear now that resolution of the problem, larger than at first assumed, would take more than six months. Of the three broad groups (repatriable immediately, dissidents, and stateless), Emerson wished the Jews to be treated as within the second category, since some had not been deprived of their nationality. He estimated that the million shown on a SHAEF chart as “hard core” would in fact be down to 500,000 by the end of the year.6 — 35 —

After the Holocaust

In a detailed memorandum to refugee expert George Warren of the State Department, Emerson sought to answer Harrison’s worry about possible “overlapping and confusion” between the specific functions of UNRRA and the IGCR. UNRRA does not operate in some countries, he explained, and it only deals with people displaced as a result of World War II. A short-term organization, it did not cover the long-term problem of the stateless and non-repatriables. As to the protection of refugees, the IGCR’s duty was to “safeguard and promote” the “legitimate interests” of the stateless and others lacking government protection. Some governments had recently asked it to intervene on behalf of refugees, such as the French regarding Spanish refugees in their territory, Emerson noted, and there was ample scope for “intervention and representation” by an international authority on behalf of persons coming within its mandate.7 Harrison also took testimony from two other refugee specialists in London. Lieutenant Colonel Lawrence Cramer of the Combined Displaced Persons Executive confirmed Emerson’s estimate of “hard core” non-repatriables. The half-million figure, he added, depended on how the Polish situation would be handled. If it were done properly, he thought that eighty percent of all Poles would be willing to return. IGCR vice-director Patrick Malin suggested that unless it was recognized that an international organization had to take care of stateless refugees, preferably within the UN’s Social and Economic Council, the British and Americans would find the problem largely theirs because of Jewish pressure within the United States, and peace in Western Europe was vital, particularly to the United Kingdom. The movement of 10,000 stateless persons by sea from Lübeck to Sweden had commenced two weeks earlier, as had that of 250 children from Buchenwald to Switzerland and 535 to France. He noted that some Jewish children had been kidnapped by Polish authorities, placed in possession of the Polish Red Cross, and refused to the French government. Clearly, the condition of the survivors was fraught with pitfalls.8 Harrison heard a “most amazing” story about the removal of Jewish children, mostly orphans, from the Buchenwald concentration camp. Miss Pollack served as liaison between UNRRA and SHAEF; she observed that rigid limitations divided many families—in some cases, even parents from children. The woman representing the Swiss Red Cross had taken a very arbitrary stand in the matter. Finally, 449 people — 36 —

The Earl Harrison Report: Its Significance

got on a train. At the border, Swiss police were not going to admit the group, refusing to let escorts go along. Some of the children had to stand during the entire two-day journey until reaching their destination. At one town, the locals, including Red Cross workers, would not bring water to the young passengers. Everyone adopted a most hostile attitude to these arrivals. The Swiss even refused to permit UN personnel to remain overnight, until the consul intervened. Some liaison offices, part Polish, refused to consider Jews their nationals.9 Lieutenant Colonel Charles I. Schottland, a Jew who served as chief of the Processing Center Section of the successor to SHAEF’s former Displaced Persons (DP) branch, disclosed to Harrison that he was about to visit DP camps. He wanted to have Army Groups agree to set up separate camps, more or less as permanent centers, for non-repatriables, and to review the possibility of using UNRRA personnel. Army officials, he confided, thought that theirs was “a quick, turn-over job,” but were gradually beginning to notice a group of non-repatriables, including Jews, who did not move along “according to the pattern.” These the military consequently regarded as “troublemakers,” because they could not be handled like the rest. The non-repatriables tended to be neglected, with no liaison officers “pounding the desk” for them, as was done for UN nationals. Hence the delay in the US Army’s approving entry into Germany for the JDC and other organizations. The JDC could manage some situations that the military personnel did not handle since they wanted to avoid quarrels with Germany city mayors, with whom they had to live for some years. SHAEF, Schottland added, made recommendations that individual armies were not bound to accept. Eisenhower personally signed “very fine things,” but implementation in the field was up to the local military commanders. Under the circumstances, Schottland urged that a presidential statement indicate the United States’ interest in helping solve the problem of non-repatriables.10 Harrison and Schwartz spent two days in Paris, at which time Schwartz conveyed his understanding of the survivors’ parlous condition. He already had determined that the majority of an estimated 200,000 (sic!) Jewish survivors in Germany and Austria did not wish to be repatriated. They appeared doomed to stay there for an indefinite period of time unless a “radical solution” was found. All the Jews from Germany wished to go to Palestine, Schwartz had just told a meeting of the National Board of the Hadassah Women’s Zionist Organization. Jewish adults returning — 37 —

After the Holocaust

to France, Belgium, Italy, and other countries from Poland and Germany were in “a terrible state,” particularly grieving their loved ones. The Jewish Germans, Hungarians, Poles, and Yugoslavs, who were scattered throughout Germany, did not know what was to become of them. The US Army conservatively estimated the figure of Jewish children in German concentration camps at between six and seven thousand, many of them orphans. A large number of these had received temporary stays in nearby countries, but those governments wanted to know what was next. They knew the situation in regard to certificates, and were not fooled when the JDC and the Jewish Agency for Palestine replied that they would send the children to Palestine. The real problem in this instance was how to get large numbers of Jewish children who remarkably had survived the Holocaust out of Europe, and where to place them. “Europe is a very sick continent,” Schwartz concluded.11 Schwartz also shared with Harrison a report that he, Jewish Agency executive chairman David Ben-Gurion, and other Jewish leaders had received about the condition of survivors in Austria. The report came from Hyman Yantian of the Jewish Relief Unit, a group of ten social workers whom the UNRRA lent to the JDC office in Italy. Yantian had visited camps and spoken with some Jewish chaplains in Salzberg, Augsburg, Dachau, Allach, Ebensee, Linz, and Freienberg, and he concluded that these many thousands of the “battered remnants” of Central and East European Jewry—in most cases the sole remaining members of their families—shared a “passionate desire” to emigrate. Daily they witnessed the repatriation of the French, Czechs, Dutch, Russians, and others who had a country to which to return, and they felt that the United Nations and the world Jewish organizations were neglecting them. Their pressing needs consisted of clothing, food, medicines, literature, and jobs. We must work unceasingly, Yantian asserted, for entry into Palestine for all who wish to go there, as well as the presence of Jewish relief personnel in the proposed Jewish camps.12 Yantian’s report included observations from Chaim Burszteyn and two comrades who had just returned from Poland. The Jewish Committee there estimated that 20,000 Jews remained in the country, together with another 20,000 non-Polish Jews. The Russians decreed that all property confiscated by the Germans could be claimed by the third generation. The Red Army was caring well for the remaining 300 Jews too weak to leave Auschwitz, which currently was being used to — 38 —

The Earl Harrison Report: Its Significance

hold prisoners of war, SS members, and Volksdeutsche. Estimates of those murdered in Auschwitz, including perhaps 3,000,000 Jews (sic!), reached 4,500,000. Nazi and Polish persecutors were obligated to place fresh flowers every day on a memorial that the Russians had raised for all who died there. Several ex-Auschwitz prisoners confirmed that of the Italian Jews deported there in 1943, two transports arrived in Auschwitz II (Birkenau), and all, with very few exceptions, were immediately gassed. In January 1944, about 900 men and women, mostly old people, had arrived from Trieste. Italians could not stand the cold Polish climate, and many who were not immediately gassed died after about two months.13 On July 7, Harrison and Schwartz, accompanied by the IGCR’s Malin and the JDC’s Herbert Katzki (who had been McClelland’s assistant), arrived in Frankfurt. Harrison and Schwartz decided to divide into two teams, each one of them writing his own report, which Harrison would integrate into the final document. Colonel Milton Richmond, head of a US military transport unit in Dachau, helped facilitate Harrison’s visit; he quietly informed Chaplain Abraham Klausner that the Third Army, under General George S. Patton Jr., had structured an itinerary for Harrison that focused on high level policy discussions and bypassed most of the DP camps. Lieutenant Klaunser, a feisty, thirty-year-old Reform rabbi, had traveled on his own throughout the Bavaria area looking for survivors, and he had reported the previous month to Jewish leaders including American Jewish Congress president Stephen Wise and Philip Bernstein, currently executive director of the Jewish Welfare Board’s Committee on Army and Navy Religious Activities. Klausner’s reports highlighted deplorable conditions in the camps, the silence of American Jewry’s leadership, and the US Army’s refusal to recognize the remnant of Europe’s Jews as a separate nationality. Besides collecting tons of materials for the camp inmates, Klausner had recorded to date the names of survivors in three volumes. The last volume included a letter of June 28 from the head Jewish Agency delegate attached to the Allied Commission in Italy that “we may be able to receive our brethren in their motherland.” Klausner told Richmond to ask Harrison to meet with him when Harrison reached Dachau, where Klausner had arrived to join the 116th Evacuation Hospital unit three weeks after the camp’s liberation on April 29.14 — 39 —

After the Holocaust

His first day in Germany gave Harrison an overall picture of the complex refugee situation. Of a total of nearly 2,750,000 refugees remaining in the SHAEF zone, Poles and Russians constituted the majority. No transport or reception centers existed for 100,000 Yugoslavs. Of the 350,000 Balts and Balkan peoples, Malin thought that most Balts would be repatriable. He guessed that there were 25,000 German Jews, perhaps another 5,000 to 10,000 Balkan Jews, and the same number of Polish Jews; the last group was subject to an “additional complication”—antisemitism in Poland. The German, Austrian, Rumanian, Hungarian, and Bulgarian groups, “largely a Jewish problem that was just beginning,” lacked formal representation. The British and Americans had to make up their minds whether dissident Poles, Balts, and Yugoslavs should come in under the “same umbrella” with prewar refugees. The argument against “is political dynamite,” Harrison wrote, while the argument for was “get rid of the charge of doing something for Jews alone.” Outside of Germany, about 100,000 Jews were settled temporarily in Europe. If they were to be helped, Harrison’s diary entry ended, we “must interest other nations and to do this [we] must have other peoples to offer.”15 Two items in Stars and Stripes, relating to these matters, caught Harrison’s eye. The American newspaper covering the US military forces reported on July 10 that the US, British, and Russian occupying powers agreed that food and coal would be supplied from all the Allied zones in Germany to Berlin’s nearly three million German civilians. A SovietPolish agreement also provided for the release from Soviet citizenship of Poles and Jews who were Polish citizens in September 1939, while any Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Ruthenians, and Lithuanians could apply for such release from Polish citizenship. The same edition reported that 818 Jews had just embarked from Marseille for Haifa on the final lap of a journey that had begun in the “Auschwitz Nazi concentration camp” three years ago, taking them through “the most infamous concentration camps in Germany, such as Dachau, Oranienburg, Treblinki [sic], Magdeburg, Belsen, and Buchenwald.” Ranging in age from fifteen days to eighty-two years, some still wore the marks of Nazi treatment on their thin, hollow faces. This shipment was the first since their liberation, and had been arranged by SHAEF in cooperation with UNRRA and the JDC. Antisemitism is “endemic in Western Europe,” the article ended.16 — 40 —

The Earl Harrison Report: Its Significance

During his week in Frankfurt, Harrison met with Ben Klotz, head of the local Jewish Committee, and Lieutenant Aryeh Simon of the Jewish Brigade. Klotz found Harrison understanding of his request that the housing estate in nearby Zeilsheim be converted into a reception center for survivors. The Jewish Brigade, formed as part of the British Army since September 1944, had fought in Italy against the Germans from March until the war’s end, when it set about bringing aid to the survivors. Sent to survey their condition throughout Germany, Simon heard in Frankfurt about Harrison’s mission. He arranged a meeting with Truman’s envoy, and informed him that the feeling of the Jewish remnant in almost all the camps was, “The occupation authorities are against us.” Aside from the US Army’s refusal to recognize them as a group apart, the Jews remained behind barbed wire under armed guard, suffered malnutrition, and lived in constant fear of forced repatriation. Simon estimated that ninety percent from Poland and the Baltic states wanted to go to Palestine, while the more assimilated Jews of Hungary would seek their future abroad, including Palestine. He found Harrison extremely supportive of his two main requests: temporary concentration of the Jews in separate camps and free and immediate immigration to Palestine.17 Schottland’s report on a visit to various US Army Groups confirmed his earlier view that orders from the top received different receptions at the lower level of command. The Army Groups were supposed to designate camps for non-repatriables, and in some cases distinct progress had been made. It was stressed that non-repatriables presented an “entirely different problem.” In Wiesbaden, Colonel W. Brewer of the Twelfth Army did not believe that “permanent camps” were any solution, as very indecisive individuals would go out on their own and “turn up again somewhere as a problem.” Brewer advocated “instituted assimilation,” giving non-repatriables a flat somewhere, the father a job, and the children a classroom education. Landsberg, with around 1,500 Jews out of a population of 5,500, needed clothing and reading materials. Colonel Falferis of Third Army headquarters was much impressed with the demands of different nationality groups there, but felt that “some things just cannot be done.” While Funk Kaserne was only supposed to be a transit camp, about 2,000 from Dachau had been there for some time and were housed in very crowded conditions. Army officials, having closed out some camps to make room for soldiers, were “dumping” — 41 —

After the Holocaust

DPs there, sometimes making them walk. The camp, with 4,500 people, needed a great deal of cleaning up. No organized recreation or facilities (except for the sick) were available.18 Armed with these informative findings, Harrison left Frankfurt on July 13. In one day, he paid visits to Wiesbaden, Darmstadt, Heidelberg, Mannheim, and Karlsruhe. The following day, he left for Stuttgart, lunched near Ulm, and reached Munich. During the next two days, he conferred with Klausner and, with Klausner as his guide, met representatives of what already was called Sh’eirit HaPleita (“the surviving remnant”) in the nearby DP camps of Landsberg, Feldafing, St. Ottilien, and Munich. Klausner, characterized in Harrison’s diary as “aggressive [and] irritating,” gave credit to the US Army for tending to the survivors’ health but deplored “everything else.” In spite of SHAEF directives, the military at the lower level practically refused to acknowledge the Jews’ statelessness, or recognize the Central Committee of the Liberated Jews in the US zone of Germany, which he and thirty-three-year-old Kovno physician Zalman Grinberg had established at Feldafing on July 1. Estimating the total number of Jews in Germany at 55,000, Klausner thought that 25,000 Palestine certificates would solve the problem for those insistent on going there. As he was not a Zionist, he believed that the others ought to receive help to go where they wanted and where it would be best for them.19 Harrison’s notes on four of these camps left little to the imagination. In Dachau, where American soldiers had found countless corpses piled in railroad cars and near the crematorium, the US Army chose to favor the non-Jewish German population—telling “others to go home—if they don’t we will make conditions as unpleasant as possible.” The 200 Czech and Dutch Jews in Alfondschule were housed in a very poor school building with no facilities of any kind: “Sanitation awful. Complete absence any oversight.” Washing and toilet facilities were far better for the 600 Jews, practically all Poles, in Schleissheim, but food was very poor, most clothing consisted of concentration camp uniforms, and inmates lay around all day waiting for meals. The 1,000 Jews in Bogenhausen, including 280 from Greece, enjoyed good food and regular meals, yet “again no supervision apparent.”20 A fuller picture emerged from Harrison’s lengthy interview in Munich with a committee from Dachau. Its members estimated that about 10,000 Jews could be found in many camps in South Bavaria, — 42 —

The Earl Harrison Report: Its Significance

their condition dependent on the military officer in charge. Bürkert had not enough food, Celle lacked a kitchen, and in all DP centers little clothing other than camp uniforms could be had. Survivors, many with heart trouble and tuberculosis, lacked communication, medical supplies, and work. “Most [were] sitting and waiting”; they had no feeling of liberation: “all depressed, uncertain of fate.” No children had survived; there were some young people aged thirteen and fourteen who, wanting to live, had told the SS that they were sixteen. Curfews and passes to leave camps were mandatory. German citizens fared much better as to housing, clothing, and food; Nazi officials still were in positions of responsibility. The survivors wished to go, in about equal proportion, to Palestine and the United States.21 On July 16 Harrison traveled to Garmich-Partenkirchen, Rothenberg, and Salzberg, an area with about 14,000 displaced persons. One day was then spent in Linz, where his diary notation read: “nub of trouble is that Jews have no papers—no status—have nothing,” while another entry observed that the military directive did not differentiate between Germans and the persecuted: when tallying numbers of those requiring repatriation, the United States Forces European Theater (USFET) intelligence report listed countries and registered “unknown” for “stateless.” The Jewish Brigade, Harrison heard, was bringing Jews into the camp and also taking them out, “presumably to Italy.” The Mauthausen labor camp presently housed only three hundred Jews, mainly Hungarians and Poles, with about two hundred in the hospital. The US Army major in charge, “disgusted with the dirty habits” of the inmates, would not move people unless it was to go home or depart Germany. That officer took no account, Harrison observed, of the psychological impact of the “cc [concentration] horror camps.” All told, the conditions were “very bad” in twenty-two camps, with poor food and little decent clothing, throughout Austria.22 Harrison’s general impression of Germany, as he drove about in a Plymouth sedan courtesy of SHAEF headquarters, was one of massive destruction. His notes in this respect began thus: “Ruined cities, food ration lines, no business being conducted, trucks and wagons with people and scanty belongings, walking with bundles, many bicycles.” The country itself was beautiful, flowers sprouted everywhere, women were working in the fields, and the villages remained largely intact. Occasionally, evidence arose of fighting at some crossroads, with — 43 —

After the Holocaust

hundreds of Nazi planes and trucks in ruin lying along the roads and in fields. Rolling stock could be seen overturned along railroad tracks, and only a half dozen trucks were in motion. Many buildings had one or two rooms remaining; there were few horses, teams of cows, or oxen. Broken bridges appeared everywhere, with little signs of reconstruction in building and farming. Wounded men, many legless, and people trudging along the road left an indelible mark on the American visitor.23 Later entries in Harrison’s diary noted German planes lining both sides of road outside Augsburg, having used the Autobahn for a landing strip. An American sergeant at Nuremberg directed Harrison’s driver: “Go down here and turn right. That’ll bring you to a sorta stadium where they held their big shindigs and Hitler made his speeches. Yea, we blowed the eagles off the damn place a coupla days ago.” Two baseball diamonds were arranged within the stadium now; another large stadium remained unfinished. Nuremberg was utterly demolished, Karlsruhe sixty percent demolished after undergoing Allied bombing raids over five days. One man, hearing on a radio that his wife was alive in Sweden, set out immediately without any papers in confidence that he would get there. Such reunions were “most touching and pathetic sights.” Destroyed bridges at Heidelberg could be seen, but its famous university, like those of Oxford and Cambridge, had not been bombed because of an unwritten agreement between the British RAF and the German Luftwaffe. The Autobahn still offered good roads. Mannheim, badly damaged, had much rubble in the streets and on the sidewalks. In Eisen, an estimated ten thousand bodies were still buried in the rubble and ruins. Signs on American jeeps read: “Jersey or bust. Now for the Japs.”24 Some refugees could be repatriated, Harrison decided, not others. Many of the Balts were really German by nature and could be assimilated; many had collaborated, and therefore could become German; and yet others could fit into German life as agriculturists. The dissident Poles, who would have a hard time in Germany, required help to settle elsewhere, probably Canada and the United States. Dissident Yugoslavs fell between Poles and Balts, since they faced less trouble back home than Poles but more than the Balts.25 Jews constituted a separate problem. They confronted tremendous antisemitism in Poland among the people (Harrison underlined the word twice). Not surprisingly, a high percentage wished to go to Palestine. Those originally from Hungary, Rumania, and Bulgaria faced — 44 —

The Earl Harrison Report: Its Significance

less Jew-hatred, but, with many engaged in business, would face Soviet pressure against their being members of the capitalist class. German and Austrian Jews would be bound to live on a lower economic scale at home, while those now outside Germany could not return. Out of a total of 14,000 registrants in Munich schools up to the fourth grade, there was one (Harrison’s emphasis) Jewish child. One survivor gave Harrison a horrific tale of how his wife and child, required to go to “the left” in a death camp, vanished from his sight and almost certainly were gassed along with many others, whose naked bodies were sent via a carrier belt to the crematorium. Only 300 Jews returned to Frankfurt out of a prewar population of 25,000. Jews favored separate camps. All survivors had two big questions: “Relatives and where to go.” Some will wish to return to own countries, Harrison noted, largely to seek relatives, but ultimately they wanted Palestine.26 Snippets of overheard conversation also found their way into Harrison’s diary. Five GIs were coming out of Germany, and one said: “Now that we can fraternize I don’t see anyone we can frat with.” The entire town of Heilbrunn had been wiped out, with 30,000 killed. In that air raid, six American fliers were killed; the graves of twenty-four Frenchmen, all shot in the back of the head, were found. The US Army decided to lift the non-fraternizing rule in Wiesbaden on Saturday night, realizing that fraternizing between American soldiers and German women was “going at anyhow”; the soldiers “prefer” to be in Germany. That city suffered one raid, and only one section was damaged. Darmstadt, on the other hand, was badly damaged. Some eighty percent of the community “has been bled,” and there was not much in the way of supplies.27 As for the survivors of the Holocaust, Harrison concluded that eighty percent of the non-native Jews in Germany wanted to get out—“Palestine, U.S., etc.” This he conveyed to Eliyahu Dobkin, head of the aliya (immigration) department of the Jewish Agency. Dobkin had been told by others that the British zone held 22,000 Jews. The present quota of certificates under the 1939 White Paper, he warned Harrison, would last only through August. The Jewish Agency had requested an additional 100,000 from His Majesty’s Government in London based on the absorptive capacity of Palestine, which currently faced a labor shortage. He requested that representatives from the yishuv be permitted to set up offices in the DP camps, choosing candidates for — 45 —

After the Holocaust

immigration. Dobkin would soon report to his colleagues in Jerusalem that Harrison made a good impression and was a friend. It seems, he added, that Harrison’s final report would state that eighty-five percent of the survivors in DP camps throughout Germany had no recourse but immigration to Palestine.28 On July 18 Harrison proceeded to Deggendorf, Strasburg, and Regensburg. Nuremberg, Neumarkt, Bamberg, Wildflecken, and Frankfurt occupied three days of his trip between July 19 and 21. In Deggendorf, which had a capacity of 3,500, he was told that the inmates had been largely Yugoslavs, but recently had been moved, and about 800 Jews from the Theresienstadt ghetto had been moved in the next day because this DP camp offered the best facility for the approaching winter. Many of these survivors were in very bad physical condition; fortunately, there was a good hospital. Inside, most of the latrine facilities were old and decrepit. Most of Wildflecken’s 650 Jews wished to go to Palestine and the United States. 29 Schottland’s latest information included the promising news that UNRRA supplies, thanks to International Red Cross package stocks, would begin to flow soon in large quantities to DP camps. In his estimate, the numbers of surviving Jews stood as follows: Hungary, 165,000 (most in Budapest); Rumania, 320,000; Poland west of the Curzon line, 90,000; Russia, 150,000; Polish Jews in Germany, 45,000–50,000. The JDC was shipping about fifty tons of clothing weekly into Poland west of the Curzon line. A significant conclusion in Harrison’s notes appears on July 20: 100,000 Palestine certificates would be ample for survivors in Germany and Austria.30 A separate report reached Schwartz on the same day from the JDC’s Reuben Resnick. Yantian, of the Jewish Relief Unit, had visited the American zone, including Salzburg, Linz, and Ebensee, together with Munich and Augsburg, while Resnik visited Villach, Klagenfurt, and Spital in the British zone. Large numbers of Jews had returned to Hungary, fewer to Poland, Rumania, Yugoslavia, and to the east. A substantial number, some four to five thousand, had entered Italy with a view to migrating to Palestine. Reports indicated that groups of refugees were leaving Hungary and Rumania and entering Italy. In Resnick’s view, of the groups remaining in Austria, most—mainly Hungarians— would return to their homes, while some desired to reach Italy in order to immigrate to Palestine and other countries. — 46 —

The Earl Harrison Report: Its Significance

The conditions in the camps had recently improved in general, Resnick concluded, but several major problems remained. Special and convalescent feeding, including supplementary feeding, headed the list. Clothing and the establishment of Jewish centers and camps; vocational training; the care of transients; and the provision of special medical supplies all had to be addressed. Providing employment for Displaced Persons had still not been resolved. No important efforts were made to date to use them for civilian labor units of various military government establishments. Finally, the movement out of Italy to Palestine required issuing a much larger number of immigration certificates than were presently available.31 On July 21, Harrison cabled his first report to the State Department’s George Warren, with a copy to the Secretary of the Treasury. The situation in the American zone of Austria was so serious, it began, as to impel an interim report because “action [was] required at high level.” Repatriation had not proceeded at the same rapid pace as in Germany, and the movement had now slowed down considerably. The area was seriously overpopulated, particularly with Germans and Hungarians, and no prospect appeared of approving evacuation. Military leaders feared epidemics unless the population congestions around Linz and Salzberg, as well as food and fuel shortages, were relieved. Displaced persons and particularly the subjects of his mission even now were living in “more unhappy condition and circumstances” than in most of the American zone in Germany, while the imminent approach of severe winter weather indicated real danger and suffering ahead unless remedial steps were taken immediately. Moreover, there was less indication of UNRRA action and planning than in Germany. Prompt action was particularly essential in three areas, the telegram ended: the evacuation of 70,000 Hungarians; the transfer of 127,000 Germans; and “drastic assistance” with respect to food and fuel supplies.32 Harrison pressed on. Leaving Frankfurt on July 22, he visited Kassel and Bad Oeynhausen. On July 23 he was in Celle, Hanover, and Bergen-Belsen, which he listed as “one of the largest and most vicious of the c.c. camps.” According to Joseph Rosensaft, the dynamic, thirtyfour-year-old chair of the newly formed Central Jewish Committee for the British Zone of Germany, some 30,000 had died there since the British Army reached its gates on April 15. “Don’t leave us in this bloody region,” he urged Harrison. The remnant could not go back to former, — 47 —

After the Holocaust

still antisemitic countries—“land soaked with Jewish blood.” Nobody seemed concerned about the survivors, who should be treated as Jews, not as “nationals,” because of what they had suffered. “Each little step” raised “constant difficulties” with the authorities. The norm prevailed: scarce clothing, few jobs or the possibility of communicating with the outside world, and a lack of variety in food. The doors of Palestine and other countries should be opened, Rosensaft emphasized, so that survivors could find homes and be with their relatives.33 At a lengthy meeting with three Jewish representatives, Harrison received a full picture on the region. Norbert Wollheim, whose wife and child had been gassed in Auschwitz, reported on several cities. Lübeck: Jews needed clothing, transport, cultural activities, and specific recognition; the same Germans retained their prewar positions. Hamburg: antisemitism “at every step.” Neustadt: insufficient food and clothing. Hanover: of 1,500 Jews liberated on April 8, thirty-one survived and ten since died; Jews were in hospitals while returning Germans get their homes back. Braunschweig: Jews, their food rations stolen and girls frequently assaulted by Polish boys, had to call on British MPs for protection. Celle: eighty-five percent of the Polish Jews did not wish to return to Poland yet were treated as Poles; Germans outside of the camp were living in much better conditions than Jews, who were living in horse stalls with sick and healthy together. Rosensaft added that Jews, constituting seventy to eighty percent of patients in hospitals, find their German doctors “very objectionable.” His conclusion: “one solution— emigration.”34 Rabbi Isaac Levy, attached to the British forces reaching BergenBelsen, observed that he had attended 23,000 burials since liberation, ninety percent of which were Jews. The “unwanted” survivors represented the “first claim upon the conscience of people of US and UK.” Were the democratic nations condemning the policies and actions of the Nazis toward the Jews?, he queried. Authorities continued to ask him what was the nationality of survivors, but one had to think in terms of persons, not numbers. Levy, Rosensaft, and Wollheim agreed that most Jews wanted to go to Palestine; those who returned to Hungary and Rumania thought that they had a better chance to reach Palestine from there. They were afraid of improving present camps, because it might give the impression that a solution to their plight had been found. Military officials, not recognizing that Jews were in German — 48 —

The Earl Harrison Report: Its Significance

camps because they were Jews, seemed to think that Jews “must have committed some offence” (Harrison’s emphasis). Food had improved in Bergen-Belsen, they agreed, but continued hunger could not be satisfied. Survivors were haunted by the uncertainty of how long they would stay.35 On the morning of July 24, Harrison reached the most traumatic point of his trip. “Seldom have I been so depressed,” the diary began. He spent only seven hours going through Bergen-Belsen, the largest of the DP camps, “but it seemed like a life-time.” Officially, he had been told that no need existed for visiting the camp because it had been burned down, but he found 14,000 people there, including 7,200 Jews, still confined behind barbed wire. Building #1, with its “fiendish” gas chambers and crematoria, had been destroyed, “but the rest is bad enough.” One loft, about eighty feet by twenty feet, housed eighty-five people. For Harrison, the last two weeks in Germany and Austria had made it clearer than ever that the end of the war would not make the slightest difference in meeting responsibilities toward war problems during 1946 or diminish the necessity for the Allied Relief agencies. Harrison’s spirits were only raised by recalling the US Welfare and War Chest campaigns and the charitable workers at home—so different from “man’s degradation of man, so much evidence of which I’ve seen the last two weeks.” This long entry concluded: “Thinking of America and her generous givers almost blotted out Belsen. Think I’ll go to bed.”36 On July 28, before reaching London via a few more stops in Germany, then on to Brussels, Paris, Geneva, and Bern, Harrison dispatched a long report from Zurich to the Secretary of the Treasury (although Morgenthau had departed ten days earlier). In general, he found “complete confirmation of disturbing reports” concerning Jews in the SHAEF zone of Germany. It appeared that the survivors numbered closer to 50,000 than the 100,000 figure which Treasury’s John Pehle and Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy had assumed. Most authorities refused to recognize them as a separate category in spite of “admitted greater suffering,” and equally refused to recognize statelessness, preferring to treat all groups by nationality alone and to force repatriation by maintaining unpleasant surroundings and conditions. A high percentage of Jews, especially Poles, wished a prompt evacuation from Germany, preferably to Palestine. If this were not possible within the reasonable future, greater and special attention should definitely — 49 —

After the Holocaust

be given to their billeting. City housing was obviously scarce owing to destruction, but many intact villages and rural areas presented possible prospects. Unfortunately, military government personnel seemed reluctant to inconvenience the German civilian population for the benefit of displaced persons either through requisitioning apartments or portions of houses; their rationale was that they must live with the German population, while the DPs’ stay was probably temporary. This policy “needs drastic change from the top,” Harrison stressed. If, as likely, taking over buildings would not meet all requirements, he urged that a program of separate camps for Jews be pushed more vigorously. Jews themselves wanted it as second best to evacuation, and in no other way could the special needs of those who have “suffered most and longest” be met without repercussions and charges of preferential treatment. One completely Jewish camp at Feldafing, with more than five thousand survivors, was working beautifully. SHAEF had accepted the concept of special camps for non-repatriables, but its policy was not being pushed hard enough and was given lip service at many points in the field where, in fact, repatriation continued to be the military’s only interest. Many present quarters were unsuitable for winter occupancy. In Harrison’s view, it was highly desirable that UNRRA take over the management of camps, especially for non-repatriables, at the earliest possible date. At the same time, UNRRA was a big organization, and it needed to weed out a lot of personnel. The military, while professing eagerness, had UNRRA assume responsibility, yet they were not giving it adequate assistance in such matters as headquarters and transports. UNRRA’s assumption of operations was important, among other reasons, because of the great need, but arranging the supplemental services of private agencies and action upon proposals was terribly slow. Finally, tracing and opening up communication with relatives should be pushed as aggressively as possible in order to prevent the “complete breakdown” of morale among Jewish families, who had been separated for years. Sporadic efforts by Jewish chaplains and the JDC had helped, but official recognition and assistance were sorely needed. These are only a few highlights, Harrison concluded, sent now in the hope that actions could be taken to indicate to the relatively small number of survivors that they have “in fact been liberated as well as saved.”37 Vinson, Morgenthau’s successor, lost little time in bringing a copy of Harrison’s cable to the attention of Grew of the State Department. — 50 —

The Earl Harrison Report: Its Significance

Summarizing its contents as well, Vinson then added: “I am sure you will agree that prompt steps should be taken to remedy the distressing situation which Harrison has reported, and I should like to be advised as to what action is taken.” He also decided to send a copy of Harrison’s cable to the War Department. The US War Refugee Board’s Florence Hodel, still with the Treasury Department, sent a copy of the cable to Morgenthau “because of your deep interest in the Earl Harrison mission,” along with a copy of Vinson’s letter to State and War. Treasury also sent the cable to London, where the department’s Harold Glasser was instructed to discuss it with the appropriate UNRRA officials there. Hodel informed her former boss that they would follow the matter and continue to press for action “as long as we can.”38 The top echelon of the War Department, both Chief of Staff of the US Army George C. Marshall and Secretary of War Henry Stimson, soon cabled Eisenhower of Harrison’s preliminary findings. On August 3, Marshall asked Eisenhower to verify the accuracy of Harrison’s conclusions, and to furnish the War Department the results of his investigation. Along with Grew and Vinson “extremely concerned about its implications,” Stimson pointedly noted to USFET commander Eisenhower the importance “we attach to this problem and request that everything possible be done to improve present situation.” Receiving Stimson’s telegram on August 10, Eisenhower, who had just turned down Stephen Wise’s request that he appoint a Jewish liaison officer on the grounds that such personnel were selected “on a nationality basis,” wired Stimson the same day that he would appoint a Jewish chaplain as his “special advisor on affairs dealing with displaced persons.” He suggested that the War Department select some “broadgauge” Jewish representative to serve as investigator and adviser. It was impossible to consider every Jew as stateless, Eisenhower angrily added, and the tenor of the July 28 report was “completely different” from what Harrison had transmitted to his headquarters. Still, he conceded Harrison’s allegation that “this headquarters makes no differentiation in treatment of displaced persons.” As to other criticisms, Eisenhower informed Stimson of SHAEF’s official policy regarding stateless nonrepatriables and displaced persons; USFET directives giving priority in adequate housing to Jews; the creating of special centers for Jews along the model of Feldafing; the functioning of a Central Tracing Bureau to — 51 —

After the Holocaust

unite relatives and families; and the making of arrangements to have UNRRA assume “maximum operating responsibility” by October 1.39 Harrison had actually emphasized to Eisenhower’s top aides in Frankfurt the major points contained in the report of July 28. To General Clarence A. Adcock, in charge of Civil Government, and General Stanley M. Mickleson, in charge of displaced persons, he pointed out that the non-repatriables, who had little reason to feel liberated, presented a “sorry picture.” They still lived under considerable restraints, and there were very few distinctions drawn between the persecuted Jews and other DPs. Considerable pressure had been brought by a Military Government eager to get people back home. The authorities had so many responsibilities that they gave scant attention to issues beyond making arrangements to move people out of camps, so that everything depended on each camp commandant. Military officers hired German civilians rather than DPs, and refused to requisition homes for survivors. At many points in the field, little was known of SHAEF policies, including special camps for Jews. Tracing relatives who might be alive and providing good clothing had to be improved. JDC and other special services were needed, as well as a directive recognizing Jewish groups. In sum, Harrison informed the two generals, no policy toward Jews existed, and the US military practically refused to recognize statelessness. Apparently, his listeners had not conveyed the severe critique to their superior.40 As Harrison realized, the implementation of SHAEF’s humane and unmistakable directives depended on how Army Group officers in the field responded. In answer to Pehle’s memorandum of June 26, McCloy had noted how the US military had already taken steps to meet all of its suggestions. On August 4, in replying to complaints from Leon Kubowitzki, secretary general of the World Jewish Congress, the War Department’s Civil Affairs Division asserted that it intended to correct “some cases of neglect and injustice . . . as rapidly as possible.” The following day, Schottland delineated the many special SHAEF directives that had been issued since mid-April to indicate that “the care of displaced persons was a principal Allied objective.” Indeed, the Seventh Army in Northern Germany allowed camp residents to move about freely, little looting took place, and morale was good. By order of General Patton, however, commander of the Third Army in Southern Germany—where most of the DPs in the American zone resided, all camps were staffed by — 52 —

The Earl Harrison Report: Its Significance

armed guards. Patton’s diary reveals his view that the displaced person was not a human being, “and this applies particularly to the Jews who are lower than animals.” They had to stay behind barbed wire lest they “spread over the country like locusts, and would eventually have to be rounded up after quite a few of them had been shot and quite a few Germans murdered and pillaged.” As confirmed at the end of July by Victor Bernstein’s columns in the American newspaper PM, of which Harrison took note, the US Army had to “enforce a uniform policy everywhere.”41 Before leaving London for New York on the morning of August 5 upon completion of the mission, Harrison wrote in his own hand “a partial report” consisting of four sections. The first three noted that many Jewish displaced persons and other possible non-repatriables in Germany and Austria were living behind barbed-wire fences, often in unsanitary conditions, in complete idleness, unable to communicate with the outside world, and still in their concentration camp garb or even German SS uniforms. Many “pathetic” malnutrition cases could be found. The 2,000 calorie allotment per day often included 1,250 calories of a black, wet, and extremely unappetizing bread. Many of the buildings housing DPs were clearly unfit for winter use, and a great concern existed about the prospect of adequate fuel. Recognition of the Jews’ singular status, given “their former and more barbaric persecution,” represented their first and plainest need. They did not want to be classified according to nationality, and most wanted to leave these two countries as soon as possible. Palestine was “definitely and pre-eminently” the first choice for the stateless and those not wishing to return to their homes. UNRRA was not sufficiently organized or equipped, nor was it authorized to operate DP camps or centers on any large scale; it had not been in a position to make any substantial contribution to the situation. The military authorities, preoccupied with mass repatriation and facing housing, personnel, and transport difficulties, had shown “considerable resistance” to the entrance of voluntary agency representatives, however qualified, to help meet the DPs’ existing needs. Harrison’s conclusions and recommendations, the last and by far the longest section of the report, began with Rabbi Levy’s assertion that the Jews in Germany and Austria should have “the first claim” upon the conscience of the people of the United States and Great Britain, the — 53 —

After the Holocaust

military, and other personnel who represented them in this work. As to the pressing issue of evacuation and judged “on a purely humanitarian basis,” Harrison thought it “nothing short of calamitous” that Palestine’s gates should be soon closed under the 1939 White Paper. The Jewish Agency’s memorandum requesting 100,000 additional immigration certificates made a “persuasive showing” with regard to Palestine’s absorptive capacity and the current, actual manpower shortages there. Given Chancellor of the Exchequer Hugh Dalton’s endorsement at the British Labour Party Conference in May 1945 of Zionist claims, it would be appropriate for the American government, while permitting immigration under its own existing laws, to support “some equitable solution” allowing “some reasonable number” of Europe’s persecuted and homeless Jews to resettle in Palestine. As for some immediate temporary solution, Harrison pressed for separate Jewish camps as required by considerations of “justice and humanity” for a group that “has been depressed to the lowest depths conceivable by years of organized and inhuman oppression.” Particularly given the Potsdam Conference’s policy to convince the German people of their complete military defeat and that “they cannot escape responsibility for what they have brought upon themselves,” it was difficult to understand why, in rural areas, Germans continue undisturbed in their homes while the Jews should be compelled to live in crude, overcrowded camps. The Military Government officers “manifest the utmost reluctance or indisposition, if not timidity, about inconveniencing the German population.” They employed German civilians although equally qualified DP inmates could easily be found; gave Jews far inferior quarters to those accorded to returning civilians; kept Jews behind barbed wire under armed guard; and only allowed exit by means of passes, which at some places were “illiberally granted.” UNRRA should take over the camp’s operations as quickly as possible, with the Army providing assistance so far as housing, transport, and other items were concerned. A review of sympathetic personnel for camp commandant positions should be undertaken, and a more extensive plan of field visitation by appropriate Army Group headquarters instituted. Finally, plans for tracing family members and communication services should be accelerated to the fullest extent possible, and private agencies be given an opportunity to help in this direction.42 — 54 —

The Earl Harrison Report: Its Significance

Marshall’s reply to Eisenhower on August 15 declared that the War Department would study the response of the USFET commander’s staff in conjunction with the complete Harrison report, which would soon be available. While considering Eisenhower’s suggestion for a “broad-gauge Jewish representative,” it had approved ten special representatives of Jewish organizations to work under UNRRA’s auspices to assist with Jewish stateless and non-repatriable individuals. On August 22, Eisenhower issued an order to create separate camps in the US zone of Germany as soon as possible for stateless Jews, who should be given a high standard of accommodation. Those Jews without nationality or non-Soviet citizens who did not desire to return to their country of origin “will be treated as stateless and non-repatriable.” UNRRA teams would be requested for these centers “without delay”; these teams should have “maximum” operating responsibility and all necessary assistance by military commanders. Schottland quickly informed the Jewish Agency that its proposals to work with DPs in Germany under UNRRA supervision had been approved. Major Judah Nadich, then serving in the office of the Theater Chaplain in Paris, received his orders one week later as Eisenhower’s special adviser to investigate conditions of the Jewish DPs in Germany. He was to report to Mickelsen and Adcock, as well as assist UNRRA, Jewish organizations, and military officials as might be necessary.43 Eisenhower’s order of August 22 made no impression on British authorities, who consistently refused to recognize Jews as a separate nationality. The Foreign Office insisted that UNRRA adhere to this position, and “was strongly of the opinion that at least all persons displaced as a result of the war must be regarded as eventually or politically repatriable.” The deputy military commander of the British occupied zone in Germany objected to giving Holocaust survivors preferential treatment, asserting on July 26 that this would be unfair to “many other sufferers,” while resulting in “a large group of Jews of many nationalities” who would refuse repatriation “and constitute a continuous embarrassment.” Writing on behalf of the Chief of Staff of the British Element of the Control Commission for Germany, Major-General R. H. Dewing informed the War Office, London, three weeks later that “it is undesirable to accept the Nazi theory that the Jews are a separate race.” Jews, he emphasized, ought to be treated according to nationality in common with all other religious sects, not given special camps and liaison officers.44 — 55 —

After the Holocaust

Schwartz’s independent, lengthy report of August 19, written in the JDC’s Paris headquarters, challenged that position head-on. Although more temperate in language than Harrison’s scathing assessment, and giving more credit to the US Army’s “remarkable job” of repatriating 4,200,000 displaced persons in three months, the JDC’s European Director’s report charged that “only a small beginning” had been made to improve the non-repatriables’ needs. All were still grouped as nationals, while SHAEF directives were disregarded or did not find their way into the field. Inferior food, overcrowded camps, inadequate clothing, limited medical facilities and sanitation constituted the norm. Enforced idleness, lack of employment, few cultural activities, and non-existent means of communication were part of the “tragic aspects” of camp life. Very often, American and British Military Government detachments looked upon German civilians as “their” people and gave them preferential treatment, while the DPs were seen as “intruders who are a nuisance.” The great majority of survivors wished to go to Palestine, and not less than 10,000 had entered Italy illegally in the last several months with the hope of achieving this end. Separate camps for Jews—perhaps entire villages, with improvements in their basic requirements—should be established throughout Germany and Austria and placed under UNRRA management. The “only real solution,” Schwartz concluded, lay in the “quick evacuation” of all the non-repatriable Jews who wished to go to Palestine. In addition to the 60,000 Jews in Germany and Austria who wanted this now, another 40,000 certificates would enable Jews in the other Western countries—France, Belgium, Holland, Italy, and Switzerland— whose positions were “precarious,” to find permanent settlement there. Evacuating 100,000 survivors would also remove a problem from the military authorities who had to deal with it. To be effective, this plan must not be long delayed. The situation was urgent; it was “inhuman” to ask people to continue to live for any length of time under their present conditions. The US Army had amply demonstrated its ability to move millions of people quickly and efficiently. With the end of the Allied war against Japan in mid-August, shipping should also have become sufficiently improved to make such a move feasible. “The civilized world,” Schwartz averred, “owes it to this handful of survivors to provide them with a home where they can settle down and begin to live as human beings again.”45 — 56 —

The Earl Harrison Report: Its Significance

Harrison’s final report, repeating his partial one of August 5, added two significant points. Section five (“Other Comments”), drawing on Schwartz’s praise of the Army’s repatriation of more than 4,000,000 persons and his acknowledging the overwhelming task involved in caring for refugee groups, quoted verbatim Schwartz’s conclusion. Further, section four, after its reference to the Potsdam Conference’s declared policy vis-à-vis the German people, included this new paragraph: As matters now stand, we appear to be treating the Jews as the Nazis treated them except that we do not exterminate them. They are in concentration camps in large numbers under our military guard instead of S.S. troops. One is led to wonder whether the German people, seeing this, are not supposing that we are following or at least condoning Nazi policy.46 The striking—and excessive—insertion had apparently been taken from an earlier report by Joseph Dunner, then head of the press office in the Military Government in Munich and close to the Central Committee of the Liberated Jews. His report, handed to Lieutenant Colonel Murray Gurfein in Frankfurt, castigated the shabby treatment of Jews by Patton’s Third Army, its refusal to recognize them as a distinct people, and its effort at their forcible repatriation. In turn, the head of USFET’s Intelligence Section of the Information Control Division transmitted this indictment to Harrison, who prevented Dunner’s court-martial and Patton’s evacuation order of Jews in the Buchberg camp to Poland. Harrison’s ultimate report reached Truman on August 24.47 One month earlier, on July 24, Truman had written to Churchill of America’s “great interest” in the Palestine problem, and of the “passionate protest” raised there against the “drastic restrictions” that “deny to Jews, who have been so cruelly uprooted by ruthless Nazi persecutions, entrance into the land which represents for so many of them their only hope for survival.” He therefore expressed the hope that the British government “may find it possible without delay to take steps” to lift these restrictions, and he proposed that they could discuss the problem together “in concrete terms” at a “not too distant date.” A thoroughly exhausted Prime Minister did not reply to the dramatic step, and two days later his party lost Britain’s general election in a landslide. Labour — 57 —

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Party victor Clement Attlee chose not to be rushed in the matter, following the advice of Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin. He responded to Truman’s request to Churchill with a brief communication one week later: “You will I am sure understand that I cannot give you any statement on policy until we have had time to consider the matter, and this is simply to inform you that we will give early and careful consideration to your memorandum.”48 Before making his personal appeal, which he did without State Department knowledge, Truman had received a Jewish Agency memorandum that reached him prior to the Potsdam Conference. It called for an immediate decision “to establish Palestine as a Jewish Commonwealth,” and to grant the Agency authority to bring as many Jews as need and wish to settle there. He had also been given a letter from American Jewish Committee (AJC) president Joseph Proskauer supporting “the liberalization of Jewish immigration into Palestine, for that may become necessary for the relief of many thousand stricken European Jews.” (Proskauer also revealed Roosevelt’s private sentiments against Jewish statehood at present.) On August 16, Truman informed a press conference questioner that he had discussed Palestine with Churchill and Attlee in Germany, and that “the American view” is that “we want to let as many of the Jews into Palestine as it is possible to let into that country.” The matter would have to be worked out diplomatically with the British and the Arabs, so that “if a state can be set up they may be able to set it up on peaceful bases.” He quickly added “I have no desire to see 500,000 American soldiers there to make peace in Palestine.”49 Truman’s extemporaneous public statement, drawing the Arab world’s ire and mixed reactions in the Zionist camp, signaled a major shift in the stand of the United States on the issue. “This is the first forthright enunciation of policy by this government on that controversial question,” declared a New York Herald Tribune editorial. His qualification relating to the maintenance of civil peace is “new and important,” noted Harold Beeley, Bevin’s adviser on Near Eastern affairs. William Yale, who prepared the State Department’s memoranda for Secretary Byrnes on four possible Palestine solutions, later concluded that in August 1945 “Mr. Truman took into his own hands the formulation of United States policy with respect to a Palestine settlement.” And now the President, acting independently, had linked that dilemma to the plight of the Holocaust survivors in Europe.50 — 58 —

The Earl Harrison Report: Its Significance

Eight days after the press conference, the President had a long meeting with Harrison, who left him the final report. He handed it to Rosenman for further study. The next morning, Truman informed his cabinet that he had read the document the previous night and “it made him sick.” The three-sentence paragraph that Harrison had inserted in section four, and that Truman underlined, made a particular impression. “The situation at many of the camps, especially with respect to the Jews, was practically as bad now as it was under the Germans,” he told the cabinet. “It was a moving document,” Truman subsequently recalled: “The misery it depicted could not be allowed to continue.” As a consequence, on August 31, enclosing a copy of the report, he wrote a long letter to Eisenhower that emphasized the stinging paragraph, and stressed that SHAEF policy was not being implemented in the field. “I know you will agree with me that we have a particular responsibility toward these victims of persecution and tyranny who are in our zone,” Truman added. He also requested a response as soon as possible on the steps Eisenhower was able to take “to clean up the conditions” mentioned in the Harrison report. He noted that he was communicating directly with the British government in an effort to have Palestine’s doors opened “to such of these displaced persons as wish to go there.”51 The reprimand from Eisenhower’s commander-in-chief drew what Leonard Dinnerstein has termed an honest, but defensive, response. In a short, first reply Eisenhower assured Truman that “no possible effort is being spared to give these people every consideration toward better living conditions, better morale and a visible goal.” Indeed, he toured Feldafing with an unsympathetic Patton on September 17, and pledged the assistance of the American military until the Jews could leave Germany. His fuller report the next day, with a copy sent to Marshall, observed that the US Army had faced “the most difficult of redeployment problems.” These included maintaining law and order; services for its personnel; and the question of displaced persons with “unusual demands” covering transportation, housing, fuel, food, medical care, and security. With these complications, Eisenhower went on, “you can well understand that there have been undeniable instances of inefficiency.” Commanders of all grades were seeking these out. He was confident that a comparison of conditions now with what they were three months ago at V-E Day would show the President that “your Army has done an — 59 —

After the Holocaust

admirable and almost unbelievable job in this respect.” Most Jews, he added, want to go to Palestine. On September 20, with a directive that he dictated personally, Eisenhower ordered all subordinate commanders to quickly improve conditions for all displaced persons (the noun “Jew” went unmentioned) as regards housing, security, health, and food.52 Most significantly, Truman wrote a letter on August 31 for Byrnes to give Attlee together with a copy of Harrison’s final report, informing the British leader of Harrison’s investigation in the American and British zones in Germany. Calling Attlee’s attention to its recommendation of allowing 100,000 Jews entry into Palestine, Truman concurred in the belief that “no single matter is so important for those who have known the horrors of concentration camps for over a decade as is the future of immigration possibilities into Palestine.” Europe’s postwar peace depended in large measure upon our finding sound solutions to such issues, he declared, and “no claim is more meritorious than that of the groups who for so many years have known persecution and enslavement.” Accordingly, Truman called for “the quick evacuation” to Palestine of as many as possible of the non-repatriable Jews who wished that choice. Paraphrasing the joint conclusion of Harrison and Schwartz, he closed: “If it is to be effective, such action should not be long delayed.”53 Byrnes transmitted the communication to Attlee on September 10. Four days later, the Secretary of State informed Bevin that Truman would publicly endorse some of Harrison’s recommendations the same evening. Not yet having written his reply for Attlee’s signature, the Foreign Secretary responded that if the President pressed for the admission of 100,000 Jews to Palestine, he would announce in the House of Commons that he expected the Americans to provide four divisions to maintain order in Palestine. Byrnes quickly telephoned his chief, and persuaded Truman to hold off. The same day, former Senator Guy Gillette (D, Iowa) publicly revealed the contents of Truman’s letter to Attlee, who confidentially wired Truman that a statement favoring the 100,000 would “do grievous harm to relations between our two countries.”54 The official British response could be foretold. Truman’s July 24 request of Churchill had already set Near East specialist Beeley’s teeth on edge, indicating to him that the Zionists had been “deploringly successful in selling the idea” that even after Allied victory immigration — 60 —

The Earl Harrison Report: Its Significance

to Palestine represented for many Jews “their only hope for survival.” Wishing to avoid a postwar influx of Jews into Palestine, the Foreign Office’s Refugee Department had expressed the fear in March 1944 that British trials of Germans on charges of crimes against humanity committed against Jews would make it difficult for Jews to return to the native countries after the war. Whitehall’s expert on refugees, Ian Henderson, was convinced that the Zionists were behind Harrison’s recommendations. British military authorities in Germany rejected Harrison’s criticism, claiming that Jews were being treated exactly like all other displaced persons. Refugee Department head Paul Mason informed the Board of Deputies of British Jews that HMG ruled out Jewish liaison officers attached to military staffs, since London deemed it not possible “to treat Jewish persons as possessing a separate Jewish national status.”55 On September 16, one day after the British press reported that the 1939 White Paper would continue, Attlee’s full reply to Truman asserted that “there appears to have been little difference in the amount of torture and treatment” suffered by Jews and other DPs. If Jews were placed in a special racial category “at the head of the queue,” other groups in the camps would react violently against them. Immediate relief could be given for 35,000 Jews with two camps in North Africa. As to Palestine, HMG also had to consider the Arabs and the “easily inflamed” 90,000,000 Muslims in India. In refusing the 1,500 Palestine certificates available this month, Attlee added, the Jewish Agency insisted on the immediate granting of 100,000 quite regardless of its effect on the situation in the Near East. “It is hoped,” a more cautious Truman replied the next day, that we can work out a successful program “which would provide for the Jews and other displaced persons in Europe some measure of relief at an early date.” He added that he would take no further action until Byrnes’s return to Washington.56 The State Department’s release on September 30 of Harrison’s final report, along with Truman’s letter to Eisenhower, elicited predictable reactions. HMG announced it would make no more than 1,500 Palestine certificates available to the Jewish Agency each month. In response to Harrison’s report, Weizmann cabled him: “Greatly impressed your humane document. In these sad times sympathy brings some measure consolation.” “You have attacked the problem with vision, humanity and statesmanship,” Weisgal wrote him. The National Council of Jewish — 61 —

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Women urged its members to write to Truman, praising his firm stand. Some Refugee Department officials in Whitehall, on the other hand, wondered if Harrison could be an “impartial witness.” On October 6 the State Department officially heard that London was “unwilling to recognize Nazi attempts to deprive Jews of their German or any other nationality, or Jewish attempts to regard Jews as possessing any separate or over-riding nationality of their own or distinct from their political nationality.” The Daily Telegraph and other British newspapers editorialized that Harrison made his statement “purely on a humanitarian basis” without reference to ideological or political considerations, particularly Arab protests. Echoing Muslim capitals across the region, secretary general of the Arab League Azzam Bey announced that there should be no more Jewish immigration to Palestine or additional alienation of Arab land; he called for democratic elections and self-government with independence for the Arab majority.57 HMG especially viewed Harrison’s recommendation that the survivors be segregated pending their removal to Palestine or elsewhere outside of Europe—a policy now adopted in the US zone in Germany— “with grave concern.” That policy, read an aide-mémoire from the British Embassy in Washington to State on October 9, suggested acceptance of the Nazi regime’s contention that there should be no place for Jews in Europe. Rather, the two governments should improve conditions whereby Jews, “not the only persecuted group,” would “feel natural and right to go home.” State countered at the month’s end, observing that the mere fact that Jews who did not want to return to their home countries were presently housed in separate camps did not constitute a decision as to their repatriability; such housing had no relation, the British conclusion notwithstanding, to “the wholesale removal of European Jews to Palestine.” Washington and London should explore the possibility, the State Department urged, of “a more positive approach” to the problem of those groups of DPs who had expressed unwillingness to return to their former homes in Europe.58 Bevin took the lead when offering a “fresh approach” to his cabinet colleagues on October 4. The Foreign Secretary refused to accept Truman’s endorsement of the Harrison report that the bulk of the survivors should quickly be settled in Palestine—had not the Allies fought Hitler to rid Europe of racism? Still, a recent telegram from Ambassador Edward Halifax in Washington warned of mounting American Zionist — 62 —

The Earl Harrison Report: Its Significance

agitation, which focused on humanitarian grounds; the political pressures brought on Truman by the November congressional elections; and bipartisan calls against the White Paper in a Senate debate that sought effective relief for the “first victims of Hitler terrorism.” In Bevin’s mind, Harrison’s report was “not based on real investigation.” Bevin told Weizmann that Truman was merely trying to gain votes by his stance; the United States had to take its share of those Jews who must be removed from Europe. He suggested to the cabinet that an Anglo-American committee should, in consultation with Arabs and Jews, investigate how to ameliorate the entire DP problem and ascertain Palestine’s economic capacity to aid in the circumstances. Attlee’s cabinet ultimately accepted an innocuous draft “to examine the position of the Jews in Europe,” but the Americans insisted on adding this phrase to the terms of reference: “and to make estimates of those who wish, or will be impelled by their conditions to migrate to Palestine or other countries outside Europe.”59 The British conceded to their counterparts by October 24, but Truman’s involvement led to a delay of three weeks in announcing the committee’s formation. Halifax reported Washington’s fears that a joint declaration before the November 6 elections, announcing an inquiry that would further postpone any large-scale immigration to Palestine, would “inflame” Jewish voters and “destroy any prospects” of the Democrats’ mayoralty candidate in New York. On October 18, following a protest from Saudi Arabian monarch Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud, Truman had to backtrack on his earlier statement that Roosevelt had made no assurances to the king, but added that he still hoped the British would accept his earlier proposal for the 100,000 into Palestine. He listened to Rosenman’s suggestion that the announcement of an Anglo-American inquiry be postponed until after the US elections, and that, when it was announced, it would make clear the twinning of Palestine and the Jewish refugees. On November 13, Bevin and Truman finally announced the creation of the committee. Truman also released his letter to Attlee and declared that he still supported Harrison’s recommendation for 100,000 Palestine certificates to relieve the “distressing situation of the Jewish victims of Nazi and Fascist persecution in Europe.”60 Truman’s statement emphasized that the new committee would make possible a “prompt review” of the survivors’ “unfortunate plight” in Europe, and address questions relating to the current rate of — 63 —

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immigration into Palestine and its absorptive capacity. In separate meetings on September 29 with Zionists Wise and Abba Hillel Silver and with the AJC’s Proskauer and Jacob Blaustein, Truman had stressed that the “humanitarian factor,” not the political, should be placed foremost when dealing with Palestine. The President made the same point on November 10 when conferring with the US chiefs of mission in the Near East: If Palestine could only take some of the refugees, it would alleviate for the time being the situation in Europe, satisfy some of the demands of the “humanitarian” (again his characterization) Zionists, and give the US government an opportunity “to turn our attention to a permanent solution of the political problem.” Truman’s November 13 announcement, once more reverting to Harrison’s stress on urgency, closed with the observation that the situation faced by displaced Jews in Europe as winter approached allowed no delay in this matter: “I hope the Committee will be able to accomplish its important work with the greatest speed.” Only time would tell, yet a new chapter in Palestine’s vexed history had certainly been opened.61 The Earl Harrison report, reprinted in full by the New York Times, played a decisive role in a world seared by the Holocaust. Although not taking sufficient account of the military’s difficulties in coping with more than 7,000,000 Europeans in Germany and Austria alone who had been uprooted by World War II, its devastating critique of the US Army’s treatment of Jewish survivors living there led to a number of improvements in their daily lives. Eisenhower’s final report to Truman on October 8, based upon Nadich’s inspections (some accompanied by Schwartz and some by Klausner), acknowledged the turn. These included separate Jewish centers; unarmed DPs voluntarily performing necessary guard duties; better housing; daily calorie food intake increased to a minimum of 2,500 per person for “racial, religious and political persecutes”; and more adequate clothing and shoes. Eisenhower, angered over Patton’s opposition to denazification—comparing the controversy over Nazism to a “Democratic and Republican election fight” and commenting to the press that a strong Germany would serve as a buffer against the Soviet Union—relieved him of command of the Third Army. On October 16, Truman released Eisenhower’s report about the present condition of Jewish and other DPs, with no immediate comment to follow.62 Harrison’s findings about the refugee situation, resulting as well in a higher priority given to the problem of the Jewish DPs in — 64 —

The Earl Harrison Report: Its Significance

general, coincided with and confirmed Truman’s convictions. On July 24, one month before receiving Harrison’s report, the President had independently urged Churchill to lift without delay the White Paper’s “drastic reductions” that denied Jews, “who have been so cruelly uprooted by ruthless Nazi persecutions, entrance into the land which represents for so many of them their only hope for survival.” The Harrison report, urging that 100,000 survivors be settled in Palestine without delay, persuaded him further to send a similar request to Attlee. To Zionists, non-Zionists, and anti-Zionist US Near East chiefs of mission alike, Truman emphasized the need on humanitarian grounds to aid survivors of the Holocaust as soon as possible, with Palestine to be their principal haven. Congressional elections only delayed the administration’s public endorsement of an Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine. Truman hoped that, once the 100,000 had been granted admission there, the findings of the Committee members would lead to a long-range solution endorsed by the United Nations. The British refused to accept Harrison’s linkage of the survivors’ pressing needs with the Palestine conundrum that HMG had continued to face ever since receiving the mandate on July 24, 1922. Their negation of Jewry’s national identity, which they adhered to consistently during and now since the Holocaust, ruled out the possibility of their approving special Jewish centers or attaching Jewish advisers to their military command in Europe. Unlike the American military administration, they refused to allow Jewish refugees into their zone in Germany because the new arrivals would likely press for Palestine entry. When first proposing to Byrnes a joint Anglo-American Committee on October 16, Bevin had specifically omitted Palestine as a haven for these DPs. Echoing the spirit of Attlee’s reply on September 16 to Truman, he informed the House of Commons on November 13 of the Committee’s formation by reiterating that “Jews” (he intentionally avoided saying “the Jewish people”) should not be driven out of Europe and that Palestine alone could not solve the Jewish problem. The Balfour Declaration, Bevin asserted, lacked moral validity. He then told American reporters that “if the Jews, with all their sufferings, want to get too much at the head of the queue you have the danger of another anti-Semitic reaction through it all.” It would not be the last of Bevin’s expressions in this respect. The lack of sensitivity displayed, coming soon after the near annihilation of Europe’s Jews, triggered anti-British — 65 —

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demonstrations in Germany and Austria DP camps, as well as Wise’s judgment that Bevin was “an enemy of the Jewish people; he is a foe of human justice.”63 The Zionists, understandably, embraced the report’s fundamental premise, joining as it did the “surviving remnant” with the biblically covenanted Promised Land. Already on July 25, 1945, with members of the Jewish Brigade, the Jewish Agency’s Dobkin, and the indefatigable Klausner in attendance, the first conference of the Sh’eirit HaPleita demanded “the immediate establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, the recognition of the Jewish people as an equal with all the Allied nations, and its inclusion in the peace conference.” The survivors’ “decisive leadership groups,” to use Ze’ev Mankowitz’s phrase, were fully wedded to this ideal as the only hope for European Jewry’s rescue and rehabilitation. The first Zionist Congress to convene after World War II, representing not only seventeen countries, but also (as Weizmann put it to Morgenthau) “the pervading ghosts of our five million or more dead,” resolved unanimously one week later to demand “the speediest settlement” of the remnant and sovereignty in what Jews for millennia had called Eretz Israel. HMG’s decision to continue the White Paper after the Holocaust directly triggered the establishment in October of the yishuv’s United Resistance Movement against the mandatory power. After visiting Zeilsheim that same month, where ecstatic hundreds greeted Ben-Gurion with the Zionist anthem HaTikva and received his assurance that Palestine’s Jewish community would bring them home to a warm welcome, the Jewish Agency Executive chairman wrote in his diary that the yishuv and its strength, America, and the DP camps in Germany constituted Zionism’s three major forces. Under his leadership, the survivors would be forged into a “political factor” of prime importance.64 Morgenthau, whose initiatives had led directly to the Harrison mission, became an ardent advocate for the immediate admission of at least 100,000 of the homeless, stateless Jews into Palestine. Accepting a gold medallion from B’nai Brith on November 7 for his outstanding contributions to the war effort and to refugee relief, Morgenthau insisted that Palestine was the one harbor “where they can be assured of achieving at once the status of welcome and respected citizens.” He noted that Harvey Gibson of the American Red Cross, having inspected refugee camps at — 66 —

The Earl Harrison Report: Its Significance

Eisenhower’s invitation, recently agreed with Harrison’s conclusion regarding the survivors’ overwhelming wish to immigrate to Palestine. Truman’s request of Attlee, Morgenthau declared, was “a thoroughly statesmanlike and a thoroughly humanitarian appeal.” The entire Palestine problem should be placed under the UN’s auspices, he added, since the plight of the Jewish DPs “is the responsibility of all the peoples who fought Fascism and was a new opportunity for democracy.”65 Supreme Court Justice Frankfurter considered Morgenthau— whose “B’nai B’rith’s medallion read in Hebrew ‘Lover of Israel’”—one of “our Jews.” The former Secretary of the Treasury suspected that Truman rejected his presence at Potsdam because he was a Jew and could succeed to the presidency; this was a feeling that Morgenthau confided one year later to yishuv wartime parachutist Lieutenant Reuven Dafni. There is no indication of this in anything Truman said or wrote. Still, aside from rumors around Washington to that effect, it was a time when government institutions still supported limitations on Jews’ full participation. For example, Morgenthau could recall at least two incidents when Roosevelt had privately remarked that American Jews should abide by a quota system in terms of university admission and federal positions. Morgenthau’s subsequent book championing a tough peace against Germany failed to sway Truman or the US military, and his chairmanship of the Modern Industrial Bank did not satisfy his activist streak and search for a cause that would absorb his energy and passion. Fortunately, with the strong backing of Henrietta Klotz, Montor offered the perfect solution: the general chairmanship of the United Jewish Appeal (UJA). Under Morgenthau’s forceful leadership, and with the driving Montor serving as his right-hand man, the UJA would raise a remarkable $150 million in 1947 and more than $200 million the next year. His commitment to the yishuv’s security also made possible the tremendous success of yishuv labor leader Goldie Meyerson (later Golda Meir) in raising $50 million across the United States in February 1948 for the embattled “state-in-the-making.” Together with the JDC under Schwartz’s guidance and the vast majority of fellow-Jews and their supporters worldwide, Morgenthau’s innate concern for the survivors ultimately converted him to the Zionist cause. Weizmann, Weisgal, and others sensed this in “Talboker,” and his receptive response proved them correct.66 — 67 —

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As for Harrison, he regretted that attention had been centered on the conditions in the DP camps rather than on his major recommendation that the Holocaust’s remnant in Europe should be moved to Palestine. On this score, Harrison publicly criticized Eisenhower’s final report to Truman. Further, he observed, shifting Jews from one camp to another, while having a slight psychological advantage, was scarcely liberation. (This judgment was even harsher than a contemporary French report, summarizing the survivors’ situation: “We were liberated, but we are not free.”) “In spite of considerable misunderstanding over parts of my report,” Harrison wrote to Weisgal, “I am satisfied that some progress has been made as a result of it.”67 Harrison’s article in Survey Graphic two months later, which the JDC reprinted, called for “the last hundred thousand” stateless to be given their “enduring solution” with admission to Palestine. Openminded with respect to Palestine’s being a haven when he first set out for the DP camps in Germany and Austria, Harrison returned with the feeling that “the only sound and sensible plan” for tens of thousands rested in their movement to that country. As for the immediate present, he observed, scant provision had been made for family units in the camps, and very little done toward rehabilitation or any form of camp activities to make life more sustainable. Fresh foods were hard to come by, and a scientific determination of the nutritional needs of “this great group of deliberately starved and mistreated people” had to be made. He ended: “The least that civilization can give is new hope and opportunity to these survivors of the most barbaric persecution in the long, black record of man’s inhumanity to man.”68 Harrison’s concern for individuals in great need continued thereafter. While serving for three years as dean of the University of Pennsylvania’s Law School before returning to a law practice in Philadelphia, he became chairman of the National Citizens Committee for Displaced Persons Legislation. This proved to be the catalyst in legislation providing for the ultimate admission and resettlement of 395,000 displaced persons in the United States. In 1952, after the passage of the McCarran Act over Truman’s veto, he was appointed to the President’s Commission on Immigration and Naturalization, whose report on January 1, 1953, recommended basic changes in US immigration laws. The following year, Harrison applauded Israel’s giving more than 500,000 Jewish victims of Nazi barbarism “new life, new hope, new homes”; he also — 68 —

The Earl Harrison Report: Its Significance

commended West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, who, in endorsing the German-Israel reparations agreement, proclaimed that “crimes of genocide cannot go unpunished and the moral debt arising therefrom must be paid.” On July 28, 1955, Harrison, an American champion of humane values, closed his eyes forever.69 Harrison’s report, which Landsberg committee chair Samuel Gringauz acknowledged as sparking the shift in survivor policy from the “military police” period to the humanitarian period, would also prove encouraging for Zionist aspirations. “Obviously Harrison was a new factor in the situation,” Weizmann had astutely realized after their meeting at the end of June 1945. “Such acts as your own,” Weisgal wrote Harrison following the report’s publication, “make it possible for us to continue to live and to hope that perhaps a better world might yet emerge in which the Jewish people too will find a little solace.” At the UJA’s National Conference that December, the pro-Zionist Schwartz lauded Harrison’s understanding, sympathy, and love for the people with whom he was called upon to deal, leading the pair simply to exchange ideas from time to time before the final report to Truman. In bestowing an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters upon Harrison at the June 1947 commencement exercises of Yeshiva University, Rabbi Joseph H. Lookstein hailed “this champion of liberty, this apostle of brotherly love,” who put the displaced persons “upon the agenda of the world.” Harrison and Schwartz, followed by Simon Rifkind—appointed Eisenhower’s civilian advisor on Jewish affairs in October 1945, testified to the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry that the wish of the Sh’eirit HaPleita for new lives should be coupled to a future in Palestine.70 Truman, who (as Byrnes told Weizmann) wished to handle “the whole matter…to a considerable degree” by himself, made the same connection. Wise and Silver, co-chairs of the American Zionist Emergency Council, charged that the new Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine would “further complicate the situation, make for interminable delays, and lead to confusion worse confounded.” Urging Truman to help implement his request for the immediate admission of 100,000 survivors into Palestine as advocated in the Harrison report, and the British government to abandon or revoke forthwith the 1939 White Paper, they called on the two major Western powers to — 69 —

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fulfill the international pledge given to the Jewish people, “based on their historical connection with Palestine,” to reestablish in that country “their national home.” Yet, Truman’s memoirs record that he thought the aims and goals of the Zionists at this stage to set up a Jewish state “were secondary to the more immediate problem of finding means to relieve the human misery of the displaced persons.” In officially dissolving the War Refugee Board, he similarly had declared that steps be taken “for the immediate rehabilitation of these survivors of Nazi savagery, as well as for a humane and natural solution of their immediate resettlement.” Frankfurter cautioned the Jewish Agency representative in Washington, Eliyahu Epstein (later Elath), “not to make tactical mistakes which might harm the cause” with Truman, who, after all, was “the man who is to decide what shall be done.” Whether Truman’s basic humanitarian impulse would translate into a firm political decision remained to be seen.71

Endnotes   1. See chap. 1.   2. Weisgal to Klotz, July 6, 1945, Z5/1046, Central Zionist Archives (hereafter CZA), Jerusalem; Harrison to Weisgal, July 1945; Weisgal to Schwartz, July 6, 1945; both in Z5/991, CZA; Weisgal to Weizmann, July 3, 1945, WA; Morgenthau to Weisgal, July 18, 1945, Z5/991, CZA.   3. Jewish Agency Executive London, July 3, 1945, Z5/30017, CZA; “Conversation with Dr. Weizmann,” Earl Harrison Diary, RG-10.088, US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC; Walter Lowdermilk, Palestine, Land of Promise (New York, 1944). I thank Benton Arnovitz for making the Harrison diary available to me.   4. Jewish Agency Executive London, July 3, 1945, Z5/30017, CZA; “Conversation with Brodetsky-Locker-Linton,” Harrison diary.   5. Jewish Agency Executive London, July 3, 1945, Z5/30017, CZA.   6. Harrison-Emerson interview, Harrison diary.  7. Foreign Relations of the United States (hereafter FRUS), 1945, vol. 2 (Washington, DC, 1967), 1174–1176.   8. Conversations with Cramer and with Malin, Harrison diary.

— 70 —

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  9. Harrison diary. For a contemporary account by an American Jewish chaplain who accompanied another group of children to France, see Robert S. Marcus, “535 Children Leave Buchenwald,” Congress Weekly, June 29, 1945. 10. Harrison diary. The Displaced Persons Branch was succeeded by the Combined Displaced Persons Executive. 11. Schwartz report, June 27, 1945, National Board, Hadassah Archives, New York City. 12. Yantian to Schwartz, Ben-Gurion, et al., June 9, 1945, S25/15200, CZA; Harrison Diary. 13. Yantian report, Harrison diary. 14. Klausner interview with the author, May 19, 1976; Alex Grobman, Rekindling the Flame: American Jewish Chaplains and the Survivors of European Jewry, 1944– 1948 (Detroit, 1993), 65–66; Klausner to Bernstein, June 1, 1945; June 11, 1945; June 28, 1945; all in Box 3, Jewish Welfare Board MSS., New York City; Nahon to Klausner, June 28, 1945, Sharit Ha-Platah, vol. 3 (Bavaria, 1945). 15. July 7, 1945, Harrison diary. One scholar states that SHAEF had repatriated about 3,869,000 refugees by July 1945. Arieh J. Kochavi, Post-Holocaust Politics: Britain, the United States, and Jewish Refugees, 1945-1948 (Chapel Hill, 2001), 15. 16. Harrison diary, with Stars and Stripes clippings, July 11, 1945 (no titles or pages given). 17. Zeev W. Mankowitz, Life between Memory and Hope: The Survivors of the Holocaust in Occupied Germany (Cambridge, 2002), 55–56. For the Brigade’s creation, see Monty Noam Penkower, Decision on Palestine Deferred: America, Britain and Wartime Diplomacy, 1939–1945 (London, 2002), 301–303. The Brigade’s contemporary memorandum called for opening wide Palestine’s gates “to the hundreds of thousands whose only hope for a rebuilt dignified existence lies in that direction” as the “only one ultimate solution.” August 6, 1945 memorandum, box 13/61, Sh’eirit HaPleita files, YIVO Archives, New York City. 18. Harrison diary. 19. Harrison diary. For Grinberg’s creating the first hospital for survivors, at St. Ottilien, see Leo Schwarz, The Redeemers: A Saga of the Jews, 1945-1952 (New York, 1953), 3–9. Sh’eirit HaPleita, the surviving remnant, was a term derived from the biblical canon of Ketuvim (Ezra 9:14; Nehemia 1:2), referencing the Jews who remained in Eretz Israel after the destruction in 586 BCE by the Neo-Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II of the first Holy Temple in Jerusalem. — 71 —

After the Holocaust

20. Harrison diary; Michael Selzer, Deliverance Day: The Last Hours at Dachau (Philadelphia, 1978). 21. Harrison diary. 22. Ibid. 23. General Impressions Germany, Harrison diary. 24. Harrison diary. 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid. 27. Ibid. 28. Ibid; Dobkin at Jewish Agency Executive Jerusalem, Sept. 18, 1945, CZA. 29. Harrison diary. 30. Schottland report, Harrison diary. 31. Resnick report, Harrison diary. 32. Harrison to State (Warren) and Treasury, July 21, 1945, Box 11,War Refugee Board (hereafter WRB) Archives, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, Hyde Park, N.Y. 33. Harrison diary. 34. Ibid. For a later memoir by Wollheim, see Michael Brenner, After the Holocaust, Rebuilding Lives in Postwar Germany, trans. B. Harshav (Princeton, 1997), 96–99. 35. Harrison diary. Levy’s wrenching reports, which were first published in the London Jewish Chronicle, were recalled by the author fifty years later. Isaac Levy, Witness to Evil: Belsen, 1945 (London, 1995). 36. July 24, 1945, Harrison diary. Survivor Paul Trepman later remembered the visit of a shaken Harrison, chain-smoking as tears streamed down his face. He could not speak. “Finally,” he whispered weakly, “But how did you survive, and where do you take your strength from now?” Mark Wyman, DPs: Europe’s Displaced Persons, 1945–1951 (Cranbury, 1989), 135. 37. Harrison to Secretary of the Treasury, July 28, 1945, box 11, WRB. 38. Vinson to Grew, August 1, 1945; Hodel to Morgenthau, August 2, 1945; both in box 11, WRB. 39. AGRAW to USFET Main, August 3, 1945, box 45, Ha-Harr (misc.) file, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Abilene, Kansas; A. D. Chandler, Jr. and L. Galambos, eds., The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower: Occupation, 1945, vol. 6 (Baltimore, 1978), 266–267; Judah Nadich, Eisenhower and the Jews (New York, 1953), 34–40. 40. Harrison diary.

— 72 —

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41. McCloy to Pehle, July 6, 1945, box 11, WRB; Moffitt memorandum, July 29, 1945, World Jewish Congress Archives, London; Kubowitzki to McCloy, July 26, 1945; Chanler to Kubowitzki, August 4, 1945; both in file 267/16, World Jewish Congress Archives (hereafter WJCA), New York City (now at the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati); Schottland memorandum, August 5, 1945, file P68/9, Abraham Klausner MSS., Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, Jerusalem; Martin Blumenson, The Patton Papers, 1940–1945 (New York, 1966), 751; Schwarz, The Redeemers, 24–25; Bernstein columns, PM, July 24, 26, and 30, 1945, in Harrison diary. For the far more sympathetic attitude of General Mark Clark, then commander of the American zone in Austria, and his staff to the survivors, see Schiff, “President Truman and the Jewish DPs,” 340–347. 42. Report, August 5, 1945, Harrison diary. For Klausner’s influence on the report, see Grobman, Rekindling the Flame, 73–74. General Lucius Clay, deputy to Eisenhower, indicated at the time that the general feeling of “war guilt or repugnance for Nazi doctrine and regime” had not yet manifested itself among the German population. Clay to Hilldring, July 5, 1946, in The Papers of General Lucius D. Clay, Germany 1945-1949, ed. J. E. Smith (Bloomington, 1974), 47. 43. Nadich, Eisenhower and the Jews, 42–49; Newman to Commanding Generals, August 22, 1945, S25/5215; Schottland to Jewish Agency, Aug. 23, 1945, A289/23; both in CZA. Jacob Trobe, director of the JDC mission in Germany, recommended Nadich after Schottland and other US Army officers found Chaplain Robert Marcus—who had been pressing Stephen Wise to recommend a liaison officer to Eisenhower—too abrasive in relations with the military authorities. Grobman, Rekindling the Flame, 76–78. 44. FRUS, 1945, vol. 2, 1178–1179, 1183–1184; Kochavi, Post-Holocaust Politics, 33–35. 45. Schwartz report from Paris, August 19, 1945, file 1025, American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee archives (hereafter JDCA), New York City. Although he briefly visited Poland, Hungary, Rumania, and Czechoslovakia at the end of July, the first Jewish representative from abroad to enter Poland after the war, Schwartz did not include impressions of this trip in his report. 46. Harrison final report, n.d., Harry S. Truman Presidential Library (hereafter HSTL), Independence, MO. 47. Schwarz, The Redeemers, 26–28; Mankowitz, Life between Memory and Hope, 57. Dunner, an active Zionist in the Blauweiss movement and elected to the Reichstag, had to flee Germany in the dead of night with only a backpack. — 73 —

After the Holocaust

He subsequently wrote to Truman, informing him that the clear majority of the 17,000 Jewish survivors in Upper Bavaria wished to go to Palestine; that it would be very easy to find American Jewish soldiers who would go to Palestine to assist the British in keeping law and order; and that the issue should be taken “out of the realm of electoral promises and dealt with in a spirit of generosity and true humaneness.” Dunner to Truman, October 25, 1945, 867N.01/10-2545, State Department records (hereafter SD), National Archives (hereafter NA), Suitland, MD. In later years, he created the Yeshiva College Political Science Department as an activist department devoted to Israel and to Jewish well-being. Ruth A. Bevan, “Transformations,” in My Yeshiva College, 75 Years of Memories, ed. M. Butler and Z. Nagel (New York, 2006), 142. 48. FRUS, 1945, vol. 8 (Washington, DC, 1969), 716–717, 719; Bevin to Attlee, July 30, 1945, Foreign Office (hereafter FO) 800/484, Public Record Office (hereafter PRO), Kew, England. 49. Jewish Agency memorandum to Truman, July 3, 1945, Z4/31587, CZA; Proskauer to Truman, July 6, 1945, Israel/Palestine files, American Jewish Committee Archives, New York; Palestine Post, September 2, 1945. 50. 867N.01/8-1945 and 867N.01/8-2045, State Department records (hereafter SD), National Archives (hereafter NA), Suitland, Maryland; Jewish Agency analysis of Truman’s statement, n.d., Z6/2302, CZA; Jewish Agency Executive London, August 17, 1945, Z5/30017, CZA; Beeley note, August 20, 1945, FO 371/453379, PRO; Yale memorandum, April 23, 1948, Box 2, William Yale MSS., Boston University, Boston. For Yale’s four memoranda, see FRUS, 1945, vol. 8, 727–733. 51. Eben Ayers diary, August 25, 1945, HSTL; Memoirs by Harry S. Truman, 164; Nadich, Eisenhower and the Jews, 113–114. Publicly, Harrison asserted that Truman had manifested a real interest in the report; that the desire of the survivors as to their future destination “revealed a definite trend” (he declined to mention Palestine); and that no substantial number expressed a wish to come to the United States. “We are known as a restrictive country,” he added. Jewish Telegraphic Agency (hereafter JTA), August 26, 1945. Harrison told Wise that he was led to believe that his report would be published immediately. Wise to Billikopf, October 3, 1945, Wise MSS., American Jewish Historical Society (hereafter AJHS), New York City. 52. Leonard Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust (New York, 1982), 45; Eisenhower to Truman, September 14 and 18, 1945, box 108, Truman file, Eisenhower MSS.; Nadich, Eisenhower and the Jews, 129–133; — 74 —

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Schwarz, The Redeemers, 38–39; Blumenson, The Patton Papers, 754; Eisenhower memorandum, September 20, 1945, UNRRA-Germany Mission, box 66,480, UN Archives, New York City. Nadich’s first reports indicated that “the general situation is slowly and gradually improving,” but “much remains to be done.” Nadich report, September 16, 1945, S6/4685, CZA. Zalman Grinberg, however, wrote the World Jewish Congress at the month’s end that living conditions in the Bavaria camps had worsened. Grinberg to World Jewish Congress, September 26, 1945, file 272/75, WJCA. A summary appeared in the Christian Science Monitor, November 3, 1945, without the author’s mordant conclusion: “Give us a chance to live, give us the right to live, give us Palestine; and if not, restore the crematories [sic] and gas chambers and exterminate us in the name of democratic justice.” Thanking the Congress for a copy of Grinberg’s letter, Harrison noted that it “verifies additional information” that he had gotten, and he concluded that “we must keep everlastingly at the whole problem unless real and substantial solutions are found.” Harrison to Kubowitzki, November 9, 1945, file 68/182, WJCA. 53. FRUS, 1945, vol. 8, 737–739. 54. Martin minute, September 18, 1945, CO 733/463-I/75872/134, PRO; Jewish Telegraphic Agency (hereafter JTA), September 14, 1945; FRUS, 1945, vol. 8, 739. 55. Beeley minute, July 27, 1945, FO 371/45378, PRO; Priscilla Dale Jones, “British Policy Towards German Crimes Against German Jews, 1939-1945,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 36 (1991): 351; Kochavi, Post-Holocaust Politics, 36–37; Mason letter, September 20, 1945, World Jewish Congress Archives, London. 56. FRUS, 1945, vol. 8, 740–741. Gillette’s leaking of Truman’s letter to Attlee, along with the elections for the New York City mayoralty in November, led the White House to issue a press release on September 29 which published excerpts from Harrison’s report and the substance of Truman’s letter. The release also stated that Attlee had not answered Truman’s communication, forcing the Prime Minister to inform the British public on October 2 that he had, in fact, done so, and that he understood that no action would be taken further until Byrnes’s return. FO 371/45380, PRO; FRUS, 1945, vol. 8, 653. 57. The Department of State Bulletin 13 (September 30, 1945): 455–463; Martin to Shertok, August 25, 1945, Z4/31263, CZA; Weizmann to Harrison, October 1, 1945, WA; Weisgal to Harrison, Z5/991, CZA; October 6, 1945, FO371/45400; Halifax to FO, October 7, 1945, FO 371/45438; both in PRO; FRUS, 1945,

— 75 —

After the Holocaust

vol. 2, 1193–1194; Winant to State, 867N.01/10-145; 867N.01/10-545; both in SD, NA. 58. FRUS, 1945, vol. 2, 1195–1196, 1199–1200. 59. Michael J. Cohen, Palestine and the Great Powers, 1945–1948 (Princeton, 1982), 60–64. 60. Cohen, Palestine and the Great Powers, 60, 64–65; FRUS, 1945, vol. 8, 771–783, 785–786, 788–789, 794–799, 800–801, 810–812, 814, 816, 819. 61. FRUS, 1945, vol. 8, 820; JTA, October 1, 1945; Zvi Ganin, Truman, American Jewry, and Israel, 1945–1948 (New York, 1979), 40; FRUS, 1945, vol. 8, 17. 62. New York Times, September 30, 1945; Nadich, Eisenhower and the Jews, chaps. 5–18; Blumenson, The Patton Papers, chaps. 41–42; New York Tmes, October 17, 1945. Colonel Ernest Witte, Eisenhower’s man in charge of DP matters at SHAEF headquarters, also authorized, with Simon Rifkind’s support, two voyages of the troop carrier Arcania to take 4,400 Holocaust survivors from Marseille to Haifa in October 1945. British pressure halted any further sailings. Jon and David Kimche, The Secret Roads: The Illegal Immigration of a People, 1938-1948 (New York, 1955), 100–105. The Jewish Agency’s Ruth Kluger (later Aliav), who spearheaded this effort, also received Eisenhower’s permission to travel freely in a US Army uniform as a colonel, whereby she rescued forty-seven Jewish children in the Eastern zone of Germany. Kluger memoir, A454, box 7/13, CZA. 63. New York Times, November 14, 1945; Angelika Königseder and Juliane Wetzel, Waiting for Hope, Jewish Displaced Persons in Post-World War II Germany, trans. J. A. Broadwin (Evanston, 2001), 39; Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 82–83. Bevin also asserted that day in Commons that Palestine, in time, would become an independent “Palestinian, not Jewish, state.” For the British stance during the Holocaust, see Bernard Wasserstein, Britain and the Jews of Europe, 1939-1945 (Oxford, 1979); Penkower, Decision on Palestine Deferred, passim. For a related British stand which challenged the US view that the survivors would have to be resettled rather than be repatriated to their original homes, see Ronald W. Zweig, “Restitution and the Problem of Jewish Displaced Persons in Anglo-American Relations, 1944-1948,” American Jewish History 78:1 (September 1988): 54–78. 64. Penkower, Decision on Palestine Deferred, 354, 356; Mankowitz, Life between Memory and Hope, passim; Nadich, Eisenhower and the Jews, 230–232; Joseph Heller, The Birth of Israel, 1945–1949: Ben-Gurion and His Critics (Gainesville, 2000), 114–115; Shabtai Teveth, Ben-Gurion, The Burning Ground, 1886–1948 (Boston, 1987), 873. The Zionist Federation of Australia and New Zealand — 76 —

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published Harrison’s report and American journalist I. F. Stone’s strong endorsement (“a revelation and a challenge”) in a separate booklet entitled European Jewry’s Plight (Sydney, n.d.). 65. New York Times, November 8, 1945. 66. Montor interview with the author, June 15, 1977; November 26, 1941; January 27, 1942; both in vol. XXX, MD; Henry Morgenthau, Jr., Germany is Our Problem (New York, 1945); Edgar Mowrer, “The Future of Germany,” New York Post, December 17, 1946; Henry Morgenthau III, Mostly Morgenthaus, 405–407, 411–414; Klotz interview with the author, March 4, 1977; Marc Lee Raphael, A History of the United Jewish Appeal (Brown University, 1982), chap. 4; Abraham J. Karp, We Are One: The UJA and the Shaping of the American Jewish Community (New York, 1981), 100-101; Monty Noam Penkower, Israel: As A Phoenix Ascending (New York, 2021), chap. 3. For the JDC’s postwar activities in Europe, see Yehuda Bauer, Out of the Ashes (Oxford, 1989). Morgenthau served as UJA General Chairman through 1950, and then chaired the board of governors of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem (1950–1951), of the American Financial and Development Corporation for Israel, and of the Israel Bond Drive (1951–1954). Tal Shahar, an Israeli moshav (agricultural community) near Jerusalem, created in 1948, was named in his honor (tal means “dew” in Hebrew, while shahar means “morning”). 67. Montor to Weisgal, October 17, 1945, Z5/991, CZA; JTA, October 18, 1945; Brenner, After the Holocaust, 10; Harrison to Weisgal, October 24, 1945, Z5/991, CZA. 68. Earl G. Harrison, “The Last Hundred Thousand,” Survey Graphic 34 (December 1945): 470–472. Deploring the fact that the American people refused to believe all the atrocities and brutalities committed by the Nazis against the Jews, Harrison pointed out to the UJA national conference that as some survivors would want to come to the United States, the National Refugee Service would continue to be needed in the future to ease the adjustment of these new immigrants. JTA, December 17, 1945. 69. Lewis M. Stevens, “The Life and Character of Earl G. Harrison,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 104:5 (March 1956): 591–602; Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, chaps. 5–9; Harrison preface to Kurt R. Grossman, Germany’s Moral Debt, The German-Israel Agreement (Washington, DC, 1954), v–vi. 70. Königseder and Wetzel, Waiting for Hope, 37; Weisgal to Harrison, October 2, 1945, Z5/991, CZA; Schwartz address, Dec. 15, 1945, Paul Baerwald files, Herbert Lehman Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia — 77 —

After the Holocaust

University, New York City; Lookstein remarks, June 24, 1947, Yeshiva University Archives, New York City (my thanks to Shulamith Berger for this information); London Office Meeting, September 24, 1945, A172/3/6, CZA. 71. Memoirs of Harry S. Truman, 166, 170–172; Epstein memorandum, October 24, 1945, L35/102, CZA. A few years later, Truman told Eliyahu Elath that his initial assistance for Holocaust survivors in Europe had been motivated by humanitarian considerations, and only Bevin turned it into a political issue. Heller, The Birth of Israel, 47.

— 78 —

3. Keeping the Borders Open: 1945–1946

On December 14, 1945, the commander of US Forces European Theater (USFET) dispatched a lengthy cable to the Adjutant General’s office in the War Department. Noting a “small but steady unauthorized immigration” from neighboring countries, the majority Polish Jews claiming to have “fled for their lives” into the American zone of postwar Germany, General Joseph T. McNarney observed that he was prepared to grant a proportion for “expellees to be received” equal to the percentage fixed by the vanquished country’s four occupying powers. He proposed to prepare to enforce by March 1, 1946, Military Law 161 governing zone entry with the use of German guards and police, under specific USFET instructions; to give haven and treatment until then to those held to be “persecuted because of race or religion regardless of whether previously voluntarily repatriated”; and to accept them together with “refugees, expellees” and other returning Germans until the zone population reached 16,500,000. He thought the inclusion of “political persecutees” unwise; repeated the proposals of US District Judge Simon H. Rifkind, then currently serving as his Special Advisor on Jewish Affairs; and concurred that the entire matter should be submitted to the State Department. Finally, McNarney supported the War Department’s view that a civilian agency should ultimately take over this task, with the United Nations Relief and Reconstruction Agency (UNRRA) administering the officially designated Displaced Persons (DPs) in the interim and the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees (IGCR) arranging for resettlement.1 This conundrum signified no novelty for five-star General Dwight D. Eisenhower. As Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force

After the Holocaust

(SHAEF) commander in World War II and McNarney’s predecessor, he had been ordered in August by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson and Army Chief of Staff George V. Marshall to examine the harsh criticisms leveled by Earl Harrison, President Harry S. Truman’s personal envoy to the DP camps, about the Army’s treatment of Holocaust survivors. Eisenhower subsequently agreed to appoint a Jew as his special advisor on affairs dealing with Jewish DPs, and ordered that separate camps with a high standard of accommodation be created as soon as possible for stateless Jews. On October 19, he promised Jewish Agency for Palestine executive chairman David Ben-Gurion to implement agricultural, vocational, and cultural training in these camps, also acknowledging that the survivors wished to go to Palestine as their only hope, a fact confirmed to him by American Red Cross chairman Henry Gibson. Although Eisenhower and his staff chief Lt. Genl. Walter Bedell Smith rejected Ben-Gurion’s request for an exclusively Jewish enclave, Smith, hearing the Jewish Agency’s reference at their final meeting to the daily influx of Jews from the East, responded that he knew antisemitism was rife in Eastern Europe, and that the US Army was duty-bound “to save these Jews.” Delighted to hear this, Ben-Gurion ordered the young Palestinian Jewish emissaries engaged in the movement of survivors not to shift Jews from the American zone elsewhere, since the top US military authorities were prepared to let Jewish refugees enter that area and see to their maintenance.2 Succeeding Marshall in early November, Eisenhower quickly asked the Joint Chiefs of Staff to urge the IGCR to undertake a broad program of resettlement for non-repatriable DPs in the US zone, Germany, and have the Secretary of War write strongly in this vein to the Secretary of State. He also defended McNarney’s position when speaking to the American members of the newly appointed Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine, and assumed full responsibility for the USFET commander’s order.3 Rifkind found a sympathetic ear in Eisenhower. Recommended for his new post with the strong support of Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson, once a fellow US District Judge and then US Circuit Judge of the US Court of Appeals before serving as Undersecretary of War, Rifkind was encouraged by both men to maintain a close relationship with the major Jewish organizations. Eisenhower’s official letter of support gave him carte blanche in talking to the relevant Army and UNRRA — 80 —

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officials. Rifkind concluded his first report to Eisenhower by praising the military’s efforts at improving camp conditions which Harrison had condemned, and stressed that the Jewish DPs’ expectation of early resettlement in Palestine was for most one of the most important factors in the maintenance of their “high state of morale.” The American Jewish community, he added, was moved by a sense of great urgency that “this remaining group of seedlings” should not be allowed to perish, but be given the opportunity to be “restored to life and creativeness.” Civilian communities should take the place of the camps or assembly centers, Rifkind advised, with the greatest measure of self-administration, democratically elected, to be installed. Eisenhower also permitted his request to allow Jews from Eastern Europe, under Soviet domination, to enter the US zone, leading Genl. Walter Bedell Smith to joke that the new regulation should be “Jew-diciously exercised.”4 War Department planning for the postwar period had begun in earnest with the establishment of the Civil Affairs Division (CAD) in April 1943 under the leadership of Major General John H. Hilldring. Awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for heroic actions during the Aisne-Marne Offensive towards the end of World War I, he had first met Marshall at an Infantry Officer Advanced Course in 1931. The two became very close while serving as administrators in the Civilian Conservation Corps of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. In 1939, after FDR nominated Marshall to become the Army Chief of Staff, Marshall called Hilldring to serve in the Planning Branch, Personnel Division (G-1) of the War Department General Staff. Promoted to Brigadier-General at the end of December 1941, he became Assistant Chief of Staff, G-1. From July 1942 onward, he was the Commanding General of the mobilizing 84th Infantry, promoted that September to Major General. In December, commanding at the request of Genl. Douglas A. MacArthur the Thirty-Second Infantry Division about to be deployed to the Pacific war theater, he suffered a serious heart attack. Told by a medical board that his heart condition should lead to immediate retirement on disability and that he just had six months to live if he did not retire, Hilldring characteristically had picked up a telephone and asked Marshall if a position were available in the Pentagon where he could further the war effort. Orders came through from the Pentagon on March 31, 1943, when Marshall selected him to be the first director of the CAD (G-5).5 — 81 —

After the Holocaust

Focused on planning the nonmilitary aspects of whatever occupations the Army would have to handle in the future, Hilldring’s division inevitably came to deal with the entire DP issue. In reply to complaints from Leon Kubowitzki, secretary general of the World Jewish Congress (WJC), confirming some of Earl Harrison’s initial findings, a CAD official asserted that it intended to correct “cases of neglect and injustice . . . as rapidly as possible.” Indeed, while SHAEF directives had accepted the concept of special camps for what it designated “non-repatriables,” units in the field chose their own course. This was especially prevalent under the Third Army commander in Southern Germany General George S. Patton, Jr., where most of the DPs in the US zone resided. A diary reflected his view that the Jews “were lower than animals” who had to stay behind barbed wire and under armed guard lest they “spread over the country like locusts.” Clearly, a uniform policy had yet to be enforced.6 Before long the CAD came to realize that IGCR headquarters in London, pursuant to the policy of the British Foreign Office but without coordination with the United States, had instructed its representatives to confine their resettlement activities to those DPs who were “definitely stateless.” That category did not include non-repatriables, who constituted the great bulk of DPs for whom Eisenhower and then McNarney had responsibility in Germany. Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin’s announcement in the House of Commons on November 13 about the creation of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine, with his comments about emigration possibilities for Jews all over the world, employing Jews in the rebuilding of Poland and Germany, and the eventual creation of a “Palestinian, not Jewish State” in the territory accorded Great Britain by League of Nations mandate in 1922, reflected Whitehall’s overall bias.7 Understandably, a very concerned Rifkind reported to Eisenhower on December 6 that the British had peremptorily stopped the movement of Jews from Berlin to their zone, from where the survivors found their way to a receptive US zone. The cabinet of Prime Minister Clement Attlee had already that September decided to restrict the survivors’ entry into Palestine to a mere 1,500 per month. Rejecting the Harrison report, it had also advised State that the two governments should improve conditions whereby Jews, “not the only persecuted group,” would “feel natural and right to go home.” Two days later, the British — 82 —

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commander-in-chief in Berlin explained to the Foreign Office that he had halted entry into his zone because the 6,000 Polish Jews who had reached that city in the previous month were neither “displaced from their homes by reason of the war” nor “refugees from persecution instigated by Germany or her allies” (sic!).8 The official British response could have been foretold, particularly given the consistent refusal of His Majesty’s Government (HMG) to recognize Jews as a separate nationality. The Foreign Office insisted that UNRRA adhere to this position, and “was strongly of the opinion that at least all persons displaced as a result of the war must be regarded as eventually or politically repatriable.” The deputy commander of the British-occupied zone in Germany had objected already in July to giving Holocaust survivors preferential treatment, asserting that this would be unfair to “many other sufferers,” while resulting in “a large group of Jews of many nationalities” who would refuse repatriation “and constitute a continuous embarrassment.” “It is undesirable to accept the Nazi theory that the Jews are a separate race,” declared Major General R. H. Dewing the next month on behalf of the Chief of Staff of the British Element of the Control Commission for Germany. HMG ruled out Jewish liaison officers attached to military staffs, Refugee Department head Paul Mason informed the Board of Deputies of British Jews, since London deemed it not possible “to treat Jewish persons as possessing a separate Jewish national status.”9 The increasing movement in December to the US zone, which McNarney had “temporarily” sanctioned, worried ICGR director Herbert Emerson greatly as having “already aggravated the general long term problem of non-repatriables.” “Preventive measures,” he advised both Whitehall and the US Embassy in London on December 13, should be taken now insofar as they might be possible to check the great exodus flow. First, the Polish government should be asked to take more active measures than heretofore in order to combat antisemitism “now prevalent” among the population, and to create conditions in which the Jews would be encouraged to stay in their own country. Second, some method of restitution to the Jews would mitigate the effect of depriving “third parties” of Jewish property, of “which they have been in possession for some years.” While appreciating theoretical objections to such a course, Emerson thought that they were outweighed by the practical advantages and the necessity of “quick and effective action.”10 — 83 —

After the Holocaust

Hilldring had already been advised one month earlier by the chief of CAD’s Economics and Supply Branch about Eisenhower’s urgent appeal to broaden the authorized scope of the IGCR’s activity, considering the plight of approximately 100,000 Polish DPs and 50,000 Balts who “do not desire repatriation to their areas of origin.” Drastic action had to be taken, Col. James C. Davis continued, if the US government were to relieve Eisenhower of “this very heavy burden,” and if it were to “fulfill its humanitarian obligations” towards these DPs now within its jurisdiction. The same day, Hilldring, at Patterson’s request, replied to Kubowitzki that the complaints raised by Kovno survivor Dr. Zalman Grinberg, chairman of the Central Committee of the Liberated Jews in Bavaria, even as Rifkind’s report had indicated a “substantial improvement” in the condition of the Jewish DPs in the US zone in Germany, would be thoroughly investigated by Lt. Genl. Lucius D. Clay, Deputy to the USFET commander.11 The very gruff Hilldring, operating as a man of direct action who believed in finding someone whom he could trust whatever the rank and then backing him to the hilt, chose Herbert A. Fierst as his particular expert on all problems relating to Jewish DPs. The thirty-oneyear-old captain, recommended for CAD work at the end of 1944 by Lt. Colonel Mark De Wolfe Howe, whom he had met in SHAEF’s Legal Functional Unit, had first come to Hilldring’s attention in the spring of 1945 through his writing a memorandum based on a SHAEF “Top Secret” report highlighting how American GIs were doing whatever they could to help Holocaust survivors, this at a time of increasing criticism from journalists and some American Jewish organizations against the US Army’s response after the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps, Hilldring had a half-page version by Fierst immediately sent to Marshall. Soon afterwards, he threw the memo on the young man’s desk, triumphantly noting with his “leather lunged voice” that the Chief of Staff had acknowledged it with the initials GCM. From then on, the Jewish graduate of Harvard College (1935) and Yale Law School (1939), who came from a strong Zionist home in the Bronx and became the first American to celebrate his Bar-Mitsva in British mandated Palestine, was the point man for the formidable CAD director on every DP matter.12 Fierst, as a consequence, served as Kubowitzki’s first address when the WJC pressed Washington in early November for a cultural delegation to the DP camps in Germany and for mail service to and from those — 84 —

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centers. The young captain expressed certainty that no Jews were now being sent back from the American zone, but considered that the question of their admission was a political one that should be taken up with the State Department. He wondered on that occasion whether UNRRA would not be ready to bring out the Jews from Poland in an orderly way, although Abe Feller, Principal Director of the UN Legal Department, thought that even if the technical difficulties of passage through the Russian zone could be overcome, the Polish government should be urged to protect the Jews rather than favor an organized exodus. When Eleanor Roosevelt’s close friend Helen Warren came back from a tour of the Jewish DP camps, describing “the most appalling and deplorable conditions” there, the desire of most, fleeing Jew-hatred, to go to Palestine, and the well-organized German propaganda aimed at splitting the Allies and fostering antisemitism, it was Fierst who prepared a memo for Hilldring on these matters for Eisenhower’s interview with Warren at the close of November.13 Come the late fall of 1945, it became apparent to Fierst that McNarney’s policy of keeping borders to the American zone open to Jews could not be expected to be established for an indefinite time in the future, if indeed for any specific time of long duration. The US military government (OMGUS), not trained in the humanitarian work of helping refugees, regarded its major responsibility as the need to root out Nazis and rehabilitate the German economy. (“We must rehabilitate German industry at a very early date,” Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy would inform the Council on Foreign Relations at this time, “if only to keep the occupation from being a consistently losing game on our part.”) Furthermore, battle weary GIs and officers wished to be demobilized as quickly as possible and return to civilian life. Their young soldier replacements, on the other hand, were drawn to the charms of German fräuleins, not the pressing needs of Holocaust survivors, and often displayed antagonism toward Jews.14 Nor did Army-UNRRA relations run smoothly. UNRRA director Lt. General Frederick E. Morgan admitted to American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) director in Germany Jacob Trobe that his workers were amateurs, only “plugging holes” and not given firm assurance of supplies in the camps they operated. With the UNRRA Council in London prohibiting that organization from furnishing basic supplies, equipment and transportation to DPs in Germany, Hilldring — 85 —

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wrote on November 26 to General Smith to make certain that McNarney retain “complete overall responsibility” for the care and handling of DPs there. Three days later, in the spirit of Eisenhower’s appeal to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Patterson officially asked Secretary of State James F. Byrnes for a status report on that department’s planning or activity for the resettlement of stateless and non-repatriable DPs now in the US zone in Germany and Austria.15 By then, Fierst had established close relationships with Rifkind, David Wahl, formerly with the Foreign Economic Administration and currently Washington representative of the different organizations making up the American Jewish Conference, and George Warrren and James E. Doyle of the State Department. Wahl he considered the most effective and helpful liaison officer that the CAD dealt with in Washington, the two meeting on a regular, often frequent, basis. Warren, State’s expert on refugee matters, he found to be a decent if “very deliberate, longwinded” person who had a good sense of what could be done to slow up the development of policy if he thought this not the desirable course. Like Warren, the young lawyer James E. Doyle, personal assistant to Byrnes, was basically sympathetic to keeping the borders to the US zones open, but not at all certain how their superiors would view the matter in the context of the situation in Germany and Austria, as well as the bitter conflict then rising between Truman, who endorsed Harrison’s recommendation for 100,000 Jews to enter Palestine, and Attlee. Davidson Sommers, an assistant to Howard Peterson, the sympathetic Assistant Secretary of War, and a former colleague at the New York City firm where Fierst had worked for one year after graduating from law school, provided additional support. So did JDC executive vice-president Moses A. Leavitt, an intense, hard-working individual with a great command of detail and a very sensitive feeling for how a sympathetic bureaucracy could be made to respond favorably to very challenging problems.16 By mid-December, the flow from Eastern Europe, particularly Poland, had increased to such an extent that the American military commanders were urging the War Department to give them specific policy guidance about what limitations should be established as to the future acceptance of Holocaust survivors. Taking the initiative in the hope that the flow of his fellow Jews could be continued on an interim basis, Fierst drafted a letter on December 19 for Patterson to send Under Secretary of State Dean Acheson, Acting Secretary while Byrnes — 86 —

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attended meetings abroad, requesting State’s views on whether or not the borders should be kept open, and whether a civilian agency should take over responsibility for handling DPs in the American zone.17 With the latest stream of approximately 550 Jews daily from Poland into the US zone in Germany, the sympathetic Hilldring quickly gave his approval. Pending a final decision, he had asked Patterson two weeks earlier for “a firm policy” as to whether that zone was to serve as a haven for “racial, religious and political refugees.” This was essentially an American problem, he explained to the Secretary of War: the Jews gravitated to the US zone; the British could be expected to oppose a haven policy “because it would emphasize the need for Palestine”; and the Polish government would object as well because it would consider such a policy as a negative reflection on itself. (In November, he had informed Eisenhower that the desire of most Jewish DPs to go to Palestine “has been widely confirmed.”) In addition, Davis had just told Hilldring that UNRRA and the IGCR had not been helpful at all as to the resettlement of any DPs, and that the “overwhelming percentage” of Jewish refugees in the US zone in Germany desired to go to Palestine. Hearing on December 20 from Joseph J. Schwartz, the JDC’s Director of European Operations, that the maximum number of refugees expected to arrive would not exceed 50,000 (Rifkind had estimated 250,000), Hilldring indicated that the Army was prepared to absorb that number. A monthly influx of 5,000, it was intimated to the Jewish organizations, would cause no military difficulties at the zone border.18 The same day, Elbridge Durbrow of State’s Division of Eastern European Affairs and two colleagues called for a halt to this mounting stream, claiming that the swelling numbers had “every appearance” of a movement being organized by Zionists or others, and could not have taken place without the approval of the Polish and Soviet Governments. This could be accomplished either by setting a date to close off entry or a ceiling of population in the US zone, which, when reached, would “terminate” the acceptance of further refugees (he proposed January 15, 1946), and then informing the Polish, Soviet, and Czechoslovak governments. If Warsaw permitted this exodus to continue, Durbrow suggested, Washington would be forced to make public the fact that 15,000 people a month were leaving Poland because of persecution or fear of persecution in that country. Such action with State and War Department approval, he concluded, would “undoubtedly” stop the flow.19 — 87 —

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The War Department, Warren informed Acheson and other colleagues at a meeting of State officials on December 21, feared that it would be again subject to criticism when the worsening of conditions soon became “unavoidable” if the influx from Poland into the US zone were to continue. Deputy Director of European Affairs John Hickerson acknowledged that the Polish government was too weak to control the “undoubted” antisemitic manifestations exhibited by its citizens, and that Warsaw was “at least passive” toward the departure of the Jews. He agreed that closing off the flow would lead Warsaw to blame Washington. No clear appraisal of Moscow’s attitude seemed possible, those present agreed, while Prague probably looked upon the movement as a problem to be solved by the Soviet, Polish, US, and British governments. The Undersecretary, disagreeing with Durbrow, cautioned against taking any decision “which would appear to be inconsistent with the spirit of the President’s directive on refugees.” The attendees finally resolved that Warren advise Hilldring that the military’s humanitarian action to grant asylum to Polish Jews was “understood” and temporarily approved, with a final planning decision to be determined after Christmas. Acheson would explain the situation to the President, while the interested divisions within State would proceed immediately on December 26 to decide upon a permanent policy.20 Acheson replied to Patterson one week later, admitting that it appeared “essential” that the US government initiate planning now toward the “ultimate disposition” of the non-repatriables, “difficult as this may prove to be under existing circumstances.” As soon as communications were available between Germany, Austria, and other countries permitting the DPs involved to communicate with relatives and friends in other countries, many would be able within a few months, assuming also the availability of shipping, to find places of residence for themselves elsewhere. In addition, the IGCR could possibly help in resettlement once UNRRA’s period of responsibility ended. At the same time, the latter effort presented political difficulties, as potential countries of immigration were unwilling at present to consider admitting persons whose movement would not have the support of their countries of origin. The State Department, Acheson closed, would do “everything within its power” to secure the expansion of the IGCR’s activities and to find other ways and means of liquidating the problem. Whatever favorable results might ensue, however, it must be expected that some — 88 —

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at least of the non-repatriables would eventually have to be absorbed in the German economy because of the lack of immigration possibilities for them in other countries.21 A cable to State on January 2, 1946, from Alexander Kirk in Caserta, where the House of Bourbon-Two Sicilies had erected Europe’s largest palace in the eighteenth century as their main residence as kings of Naples, indicated that the entire issue could not accept much further delay. The Central European Jews in Italy’s UNRRA camps and Allied Commission centers had increased from 1,500 to at least 8,000, the US Ambassador noted. Recently, more than 3,000 Jews had entered Italy. All efforts to restrict illegal entry had been of no avail. The Commission viewed this movement as part of an “extremely large organization” seeking to use Austria and Italy as a “transit camp” between Palestine and Central Europe; most of these infiltrees were young women and men, the latter training as soldiers to “turn Palestine into a Jewish country.” Recently, 101 Jews entered via the Brenner Pass from the French zone of Austria, one carrying a document with French military seals noting that “the following persons are leaving by way of Innsbruck Italy for Palestine.” The Commission and the Resident Minister, Kirk ended, have asked that the Foreign Office and the State Department request the Quai d’Orsay to induce the French military authorities to cease this illegal movement.22 Five days later, Byrnes replied to Patterson’s December 19 request with a long letter to Acting Secretary of War Kenneth C. Royall. Having given “full consideration” to the DP problem along with cables received from Berlin, Warsaw, and Caserta, his associates had concluded that the refugees from Poland feared “hostile attacks and impending persecution” on the part of the populations in their home areas, and that the efforts made by UNRRA and other agencies to improve the situation had not created “any general amelioration.” At the same time, with the numbers able to be cared for in the US zone “already exceeded,” he thought it best to close the borders as of “a date sufficiently far in the future,” such as January 25, giving them sufficient time to notify the governments of Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet Union. It appeared neither feasible nor desirable to create a US civilian organization—that would face the same problems now confronting the IGCR—to assume responsibilities that “should properly be shared by all the United Nations,” and it appeared likely that London and Washington would resolve the political — 89 —

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and organizational problems now facing the IGCR by direct negotiation this same month.23 Apparently unaware of this official response, which differed from his personal views and those of Acheson, Doyle offered his own position in a memo to Acheson on January 9, one which he marked “never submitted.” Did the government wish to prevent further migration of Polish Jews into the US zone in Germany, he queried, and if not, was there a practical possibility to carry this out? Unless the movement were halted, anywhere up to 200,000 Polish Jews (the figure obtained from Warren) would enter the US zone in Germany within the next six months to a year; many “might be motivated primarily” to constitute “a strong pressure” on the American and British governments “particularly in connection with Palestine.” The numbers would also be “a severe additional strain upon our skeleton army” in the operation of DP camps, “and another Harrison report might be forthcoming.” On the other hand, the Polish Jews’ fear of imminent physical danger should be accepted as sufficient reason for permitting their migration, irrespective of whatever were the motives of the Poles, Czechs, and Russians. If Palestine and other related questions were ever brought to a basic ultimate solution, that solution would not likely “stand or fall” because of a new addition of tens of thousands; if a solution were not ever reached, the admission of the Polish Jews “could hardly make it worse.” Finally, the political repercussions in the United States might be “unfortunate” if the government’s decision to prevent this movement became known. As to whether the movement could actually be stopped, the memo went on, while the border controls of the US zone were not wholly ineffective, they could do no more than slow the rate of entry if the Czechs and Russians facilitated continued exit from Poland. “Pretty clear evidence” showed these governments’ “initial willingness, if not a desire” to aid in this substantial migration, and they could easily continue the practice. Accordingly, Doyle recommended that neither at the US zone borders nor by inter-governmental agreement ought Washington to prevent this movement: “On the merits we would not be justified in doing so,” and even if we were, he doubted success. “We ought not uselessly to incur criticism and political liability with respect to the handling of these persons while they are in Berlin,” Byrnes’s personal assistant concluded, and State should insist that the responsibility be shared by the — 90 —

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other three governments in the zones of divided Germany to the extent that this was not already being done.24 Fierst and CAD colleagues “managed” to interpret Byrnes’s letter of January 7 to mean that the US zone border would be closed at some time in the future, the matter would be reviewed again or, at any event, adequate provisions might be made for the “consequences.” Having been told in a telephone conversation with Acheson that such an understanding embodied the policy intended by State, Hilldring conveyed this sense to USFET on January 14: Military Govt. Law 161 would be enforced when the maximum absorptive capacity of the US zone were reached, but approximately three weeks’ notice of this directive might be given to the governments of Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the USSR. At State’s request, Patterson expressed his formal approval. The State Department reply had not addressed two significant issues, Hilldring pointed out to USFET: the standard of treatment to be accorded the refugees admitted to the US zone under the foregoing policy and the War Department’s wish to be relieved of the DP burden by a civilian agency. As to the first, he asserted, these persecutees should receive the maximum assistance and support at the disposal of military resources. The Pentagon thought to close the border when the ceiling of 16,500,000 had been reached, a press release from State to be issued concurrently with its notification to the governments of its intention to do so. On the other hand, the department found State’s objection to a civilian agency unacceptable. It would therefore continue every effort, Hilldring assured McNarney, to press for “a more realistic decision.” Four days later, with USFET estimating half of the current 400,000 DPs in the US German zone to be non-repatriables by July 1, Royall emphasized to Acheson that since UNRRA had not assumed responsibility of the DPs in the US zones of either Germany or Austria, the IGCR should be urged to begin immediately resettlement possibilities for stateless and non-repatriable persons residing for the time being in those two countries.25 USFET possessed some correct information on what a weekly Intelligence Summary of mid-January 1946 termed “The Modern Wandering Jew,” or the mass movement of Polish Jews into the territory of the Third US Army. Rifkind objected to what he termed the “obscene, snide, and offensive” writing that showed its author impacted by antisemitism, such as the suggestion that abundance of food in the — 91 —

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US zone was the cause of movement along with the “firm belief” of the Poles that if Palestine were inaccessible a Jewish state would be set up in Bavaria. At the same time, the report revealed that Zionist “committees,” according to a large-scale investigation, operated two routes for the infiltrees. The first started in Lodz, proceeded to Prague, then by rail from the Czech border town of Asche (Aš) until the German border. Walking across a nine kilometer country path at night, the survivors would cross the German border, buy rail tickets to Munich, and report to the Deutsches Museum, where the Central Committee had been founded on July 1, 1945. Small groups on the second route would board Russian trucks going into Germany as far as Berlin. Posing as German nationals expelled from Poland, they would obtain rail transportation to the US zone. Transports leaving Berlin would stop off at the British DP transient camp of Friedland/Leine, would be given official railway tickets to Munich, then cross the border at the town of Heiligenstadt.26 UNRRA’s Chief of the Reports and Analysis Branch, following his extensive tour at this same time of DP camps in Germany and Austria, together with questioning a large number of UNRRA and Military personnel, gained even more accurate details on “Jewish infiltrees.” J. B. Krane reported that the movement into Berlin, done in orderly groups (a hint to the bricha effort conducted by Jewish Palestinians), came almost exclusively on the rail route between Stettin and that city. The path taken into Bavaria had been, first, along the rail route from Poland to Prague, onward to Pilsen, and then to Hof in Germany, and the second along the rail route from Budapest to Bratislava, then to Vienna to Linz to Salzburg and lastly to Munich. Leaders of convoys stated that the JDC had financed these journeys. The combination of circumstances—the existence of antisemitism in Poland, the current deliberations of the Anglo-American Commission on Palestine, and the knowledge that American authorities were providing at least a temporary haven in Germany—appeared to indicate that this movement was part of a deliberate plan “to bring the questions of the future of the Jews and of Zionism to a head.” (Indeed, UNRRA’s German and Austrian missions reported that a census of registered Jewish DPs in its camps, taken that month for the Anglo-American Committee, showed Palestine to be their “overwhelming” first and second emigration choice.) Whether the movement was organized or not, the more compelling fact, Krane averred, was that a large number of people existed with legitimate — 92 —

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reasons for wishing to emigrate from their countries, and who required temporary care and assistance. He concluded: “They present a challenge to the world to find a permanent home for them.”27 Finally, a conference on the morning of February 8 between Byrnes and Patterson settled the contentious matter. The latter proposed, following McNarney’s cable stamped “Secret” to Eisenhower the previous month, that on March 1 a ninety-day notice would be given that all feeding arrangements end in June, except for DPs who were victims of persecution. State personnel wished that the end would be in September, but that month’s proximity to cold weather would give ground for the plea that the persons affected would not have time to get shelter, etc. Scaling down rations proportionately, Patterson added, would lay Washington open to the charge of maltreatment of those for whom the government was responsible. Byrnes found this “entirely reasonable” but thought July 1 a better choice. Having reached this agreement between the Secretaries, Hilldring authorized McNarney to terminate his responsibility for DPs, “other than persecutees,” by July 1, 1946. In addition, the informal sense agreed upon between Hilldring and Acheson was communicated in a directive to McNarney and the sympathetic Genl. Mark W. Clark in Austria, declaring that three weeks’ notice would be given to them before the borders were to be closed.28 With the new July 1, 1946 deadline agreed upon, Hilldring sent Patterson a letter on February 13 (drafted by Fierst), incorporating McNarney’s proposals, urging Byrnes to explore “all feasible methods” of assisting persons affected by the new policy in order to readjust their lives accordingly. Recalling the suggestion made in his letter to Byrnes of November 29, the letter had Patterson again note that if the IGCR could not satisfactorily perform its resettlement functions in the near future, the US government should “unilaterally undertake to make appropriate plans” for resettling stateless and non-repatriable persons now in the US zone of Germany and Austria. Almost three months had passed, and he had not been advised that the IGCR had made any progress in this direction. Patterson therefore renewed his department’s suggestion that Washington make bilateral resettlement arrangements directly with other governments wherever it was clear that the IGCR was incapable of operating effectively. Approved US voluntary agencies should continue to provide aid in this regard, with UNRRA continuing coordination and supervision even after the July 1 deadline. As for — 93 —

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those persecuted because of race, religion, or political beliefs favorable to the Allies, it would be “extremely useful” for UNRRA to relieve the US Army of this non-military responsibility as soon as possible. Patterson looked forward to Byrnes’s reactions, the draft letter closed, as he was “extremely anxious” to advise McNarney of the amount and type of assistance which he could expect in this regard.29 Unaware of the Byrnes-Patterson understanding of February 8, WJC executive chairman Nahum Goldmann and Wahl met with Acheson, joined by Warren and Hickerson, on the morning of February 12 to ask that the US German zone border not be closed to the entry of Polish Jews until May 1. Having recently returned from a trip to Poland and Germany, Goldmann reported that many Jews, especially in small Polish towns, suffered antisemitic attacks, and those who reached Germany “unanimously” desired to go to Palestine. He suggested the May 1 date because “he had reason to hope” that the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry would report on April 1, and that it would recommend that a large number of certificates be made available immediately for the Jewish DPs in Germany, permitting the present occupants of the DP camps in the US zone to go to Palestine. He had issued a statement praising the US Army for showing “such a remarkable and sympathetic understanding” of the reasons motivating the recent, growing infiltration into the American zone, while asserting that only in Palestine, to where “the large majority” of the displaced Jews wished to go, could this problem be resolved. Acheson replied that the matter was in the hands of Byrnes, who was in consultation with Patterson.30 Wahl, reporting without delay to the American Jewish Conference, departed this meeting worried. Acheson had closed with an assurance that his visitors had “no cause for worry at the present moment,” and that advance notice would be given should any change in the status quo be decided. From other sources (most likely Fierst) he knew of the meeting between the two Secretaries, at which the military had the privilege of continuing the present situation on its own responsibility until it felt that the absorptive capacity of the American zone were reached, at which time they would be free to close the borders. Yet, with the problem of redeployment and the continuous reduction of American military personnel, Wahl cautioned that one could not feel comfortable for more than a period of weeks. He planned to inform Truman confidant Robert E. Hannegan, Postmaster General and Chairman of — 94 —

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the Democratic National Committee, of this conversation, hoping to see if the Conference could bring about a State Department directive to the military to observe the status quo until the Anglo-American Committee’s recommendations were announced. He also saw David Niles (born to the Russian-Jewish immigrant Neyhus family of Boston), an administrative assistant serving at Truman’s personal invitation, who had the President’s ear and enjoyed close ties with WJC president Stephen Wise and Supreme Court Associate Justice Felix Frankfurter. Niles promised, in turn, to speak to Acheson on behalf of their recommendation to the Undersecretary the previous day.31 Rumors that the State and War Departments had agreed to close the DP camps and leave the inmates “to shift for themselves” in Germany greatly disturbed former New York Governor Herbert H. Lehman. At a meeting with Acheson on February 16, the UNRRA Director General expressed concern that his organization, actively assisting in caring for the DPs there, would have to review this position at its Council’s next meeting in a month. Great difficulties would arise, as well, if one of the four occupying powers took such action without coordination with the other three. Acheson agreed, noting that the US Army thought that camp closings should take place as soon as possible, probably sometime in the summer. While UNRRA was performing a very important service in this regard, he added, its work was ancillary to the Army’s main obligation of setting up the camps and providing basic supplies. Under these circumstances, the ultimate decision was the US government’s responsibility. Acheson could not, therefore, promise that any UNRRA recommendations would be followed in the final decision, or that a final decision would not be made before the Council’s meeting on March 15. Nor could he commit to Lehman’s strongly urging that no action be taken by Washington acting alone or in concert with the other occupying authorities before that meeting. He did undertake to inform Lehman concerning the present status of the matter, to consult with him further, and to inform him of any definite decision which might be reached as a result of the State-War department discussions.32 In considering the border closings, State and War could not easily overlook the survivors’ predominant wish to leave for Palestine. Visits of Anglo-American Committee members to the DP camps in Germany and Austria that month convinced most about Palestine’s very strong appeal. Their tour of the camps especially influenced the Americans — 95 —

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Bartley Crum and James G. McDonald, who pressed for the immediate entry of 100,000 to the biblical Promised Land, as did Rifkind. Crum had gone so far in a press conference as to call for cleaning out the camps in Germany and letting the Jewish DPs go wherever they chose. In opposition, R. E. Manningham-Buller, with support from fellow Britisher and co-chairman John E. Singleton, wished to have Washington approve London’s closing of all borders to infiltration from Poland. The obvious weakness in Manningham-Buller’s proposal, their colleague Richard Crossman observed, was that the members had no positive proposals for emigration. Moreover, General Clark had told Crum and Crossman that US policy continued to keep the borders to its zones open and enable Jews fleeing Poland to save their lives.33 Testifying before the Anglo-American Committee, Rifkind had charged that “no practical alternative” to Palestine existed for those who wished to go there, a fact which took precedence over all political questions. Not taking “decisive action” in this matter now, he feared, would be bound to “heighten tension and demoralization” within the camps. As if in confirmation, a War Department Intelligence Summary on February 23 reported a general conviction on the part of practically all Jews in Germany that their departure from that country was not far off, leading to a feeling of “suspense and listlessness” which probably interfered with their willingness “to adapt themselves to present German conditions.” At the same time, Rifkind warned Goldmann three days later that he did not know when the border closing would take place, “but that it will, and that in the near future, I haven’t any doubt.”34 Wishing to relieve itself as soon as possible of the DP problem, the War Department did not let up on State. Accepting verbatim Fierst’s draft letter of February 13 via Hilldring, Patterson urged Byrnes on February 26 to expedite their joint agreement authorizing McNarney to terminate Army responsibility, other than for those in the “persecuted categories,” by July 1, 1946, and to have UNRRA’s administration now assume charge for the care, supply, and maintenance of that category pending resettlement. With the IGCR having made “no progress” in the last regard, he wished Washington to work with other governments directly for resettlement arrangements.35 The same day, Hilldring and Fierst met with Zalman Grinberg, accompanied by Wahl and American Jewish Conference secretary — 96 —

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I. L. Kenen. The Central Committee of the Liberated Jews in Bavaria chairman expressed gratitude for the US Army’s effort to cope with the “difficult situation” of the DP camps, and then appealed for agricultural institutions to be set up for purposes of training and providing work. Hearing from Grinberg that providing rehabilitation facilities was against present military policy, Hilldring immediately instructed Fierst to prepare a cable to McNarney and Rifkind stating the advisability of doing so. As to Grinberg’s emphasis on the need for purely Jewish DP hospitals for tuberculosis patients and maternity cases, the CAD director promised to take steps to bring this about. Leaving what Wahl termed the “extremely cordial” meeting, Grinberg felt “very elated” about Hilldring’s “more than satisfactory” response, and stated that this one interview alone was worth his trip to the United States.36 Thinking that “the most fruitful hope” for continuing the open US zone border in Germany lay with a directive from Truman himself, Wahl persuaded Goldmann on March 1 to have Hannegan raise the issue with the President on political grounds. An interim Anglo-American Committee report, pressed for by Crum, had not been issued because US co-chairman Judge Joseph C. Hutcheson and his team refused the British offer to have it call for a large number of legal Palestine immigration certificates on the condition that the American border would be closed. Yet a “serious danger” remained that the American military authorities would close the borders to the continuous infiltration of Polish Jews, as Rifkind had warned Goldmann. The WJC official immediately cabled Judge Harry M. Fisher of Chicago to reach Hannegan, Judge Louis Leventhal of Philadelphia to contact Senator Joseph F. Guffey, Elihu Stone of Boston to take the matter up with Congressman John W. McCormack, and Israel Goldstein of New York to discuss it with Senator Alben W. Barkley, each to impress immediately on Hannegan and Truman the “great outcry” to ensue from American Jews, already disappointed with regard to the administration’s stand concerning Palestine, should the border be closed. Goldmann also pointed out to them that only “a few tens of thousands” of Polish Jews might come to the American zone, many of whom had left Germany to search for relatives in Poland and were now coming back.37 With “very active pressure” again building up to close the border, Fierst “settled upon a very simple solution” for a postponement—the expected report of the Anglo-American Committee. Working his way — 97 —

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up through the various echelons of the Pentagon, he sought a directive to McNarney and Clark to keep the borders open for the time being. Fierst again found an ally in Doyle, who sent a memo to Acheson on March 6 noting that the number of Polish Jews entering the US zone had dropped to “negligible proportions.” The War Department never really wished State to say that the borders should be closed, he added, and Patterson had sent a verbal message (arranged by Fierst) indicating that War would not object if State would “informally” request that McNarney delay any decision until after the Committee’s report. Doyle recommended authorization that he make this informal request to the War Department, and that Byrnes should first be consulted because the Secretary had specifically inquired about this matter. Apart from the merits, he also thought it unwise “to incur certain political liabilities in this country unless it is necessary to do so.” As to the Anglo-American Committee, Doyle’s memo went on, if it recommended that Jewish refugees in Europe be permitted to enter Palestine, the zonal borders could be closed with the explanation that Polish Jews were free to go directly to Palestine. If it decided otherwise, the borders could be closed with the explanation that the United States could not continue to accept refugees into its zone when no prospect existed of their ultimate resettlement. In either case, attention would be focused on the Committee, “where it belongs,” and the decision to close the borders would be less likely to dissipate the good will which the Army had succeeded in building up among minority groups in the United States. “I do not think we should close the borders now or later,” Doyle concluded, but if the decision to close them stood, it should be delayed until about April 1, when the Committee’s report was due. “I agree with your recommendation, including the part that the matter should be submitted to the Secretary,” Acheson responded.38 The following day, Doyle notified Fierst verbally that Byrnes had personally approved his recommendation and authorized Doyle to notify War to that effect. “How triumphant I felt very late in the afternoon,” Fierst later recalled, when he went to the cable room with a brief telegram carrying one sentence classified “Top Secret”: “Secretaries State and War desire that if at all feasible action re closing borders to infiltrees be deferred pending recommendations of Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry.” Scrutinizing the cable, a general on duty from the Pentagon’s Operations and Plans Division advised him to wait, — 98 —

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because another had just come in from Germany strongly recommending that the borders be closed on April 15, 1946. This was a matter of the highest priority, Fierst retorted, which had been personally approved by Byrnes and Patterson, and he would take care of that incoming cable first thing tomorrow. The following day, asked by Hilldring to respond to the other cable, Fierst simply stated that the earlier cable had the approval of both Secretaries. Informed of this turn of events by Fierst, who would go unmentioned in future published accounts of the border crisis, Wahl immediately wrote a one-sentence note to Kenen: “I think this one man will deserve most of the credit for saving thousands of people who might otherwise have been subjected to suffering and death in Poland.”39 One week later, Fierst told Doyle that Patterson had learned for the first time that closing of the borders would require the use of Germans in border patrols. This “surprised and perturbed” the Secretary of War, as it appeared to him that it might have an important bearing upon whether to close the borders at all. Doyle quickly informed Acheson of Patterson’s concern. For his part, Fierst succeeded in having Rifkind, about to return to the United States after having completed a half-year tour of duty as McNarney’s Special Advisor on Jewish Affairs, temper his scheduled public remarks about various segments of the Army not extending themselves sufficiently on behalf of the survivors and infiltrees. Explaining to Rifkind the new policy just communicated to McNarney and Clark, he prevented the possibility that sharp criticism from this advisor would put so much public pressure on the US Theater Commanders and on the Army that they would use this as a reason to decline admitting additional Jews into the German and Austrian US zones. 40 Fierst also assured the WJC’s director of Relief and Rehabilitation, Aryeh Tartakower, that he was always glad to intervene in concrete cases, such as allowing German Jews to attend religious services for American Jewish soldiers. Further, he demonstrated that US Army regulations binding up to the present accorded Jews residing on territory in Germany “favorable discrimination” when compared with Germans as to food and shelter; he would have the War Department take the necessary steps if concrete cases of discrimination were brought to his attention. Fierst complained that the apparently low morale in the DP camps had led to robbery, rape and murder, leading Tartakower to — 99 —

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respond that the Jewish DPs were being accused of one crime: black market operations. The WJC, he added, was rather upset because of the great number of persons accused and condemned for such offenses, and it was afraid that no sufficient protection of their interests was available, which might result in innocents being condemned. Cases of provocation had taken place, and the WJC thought of sending an American lawyer to take care of the defense of such persons. Fierst assured his visitor that all efforts were being made to secure a fair trial of persons by military courts, and doubted whether such a step was necessary. He gave up his opposition when Tartakower retorted that that proposal relied on reports submitted by Zalman Grinberg to the WJC. Fierst was as friendly as always, Tartakower’s report concluded, and it was clear that the WJC had a good friend in him and that it could count on his cooperation.41 War continued to press State, Patterson reminding Byrnes on March 14 of their understanding that the DP camps in the US zone of occupation in Germany and Austria would be closed soon, but this would “in no way” affect the treatment accorded persecutees.” He wished confirmation that the US representative to the UNRRA Council would announce four days later the closing at sometime between August 1 and September 1. He assumed that Byrnes would resist all urgent pleas from certain Council members against the decision, and wished that the two agree on a definite date in August to be included in a government release. Byrnes replied eight days later, acknowledging that a definite date should be reached within the very near future, with no effect on “persons in the persecuted categories.” As to Patterson’s letter of February 26, State was still seeking British support to extend the IGCR’s resettlement functions to include responsibility for non-repatriables. State stood, however, by Byrnes’s response to Royall on January 7 against Washington making bilateral arrangements for resettlement directly with other governments, while agreeing that the resources of approved voluntary agencies should be utilized to the fullest extent in dealing with DPs “unable or unwilling” to return to their countries of origin.42 As to the proposed use of Germans for patrol duty in the border closings, Doyle gave Fierst his estimate of State’s probable reaction to that suggestion. He agreed that it had “certain objectionable features,” but if the closing could not be effectively done without their use, the question — 100 —

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would be then: was it essential or highly desirable to close the borders? If yes, State would probably not object on that sole reason. But if so, the department might regard their use as “a decisive adverse factor.” In any event, it appeared to Doyle that consideration of this fraught question should be deferred until it could be examined in light of the Anglo-American Committee’s report. Awaiting that document, State and War officially told the Theater Commanders on March 21 to keep the borders open, a decision taken because the departments feared that otherwise serious incidents would erupt between the US military and refugees, especially because the report had not yet been released and because (as Fierst and Doyle had persuaded their respective superiors) infiltration at that time was considerably less than had been forecast.43 Hilldring’s shift to the State Department at this time appeared to augur well for the Jewish survivors in Europe. With the entire question of coordinating government policy in areas under occupation abroad, including DPs, officially shifted to State in February, Byrnes asked him to become Assistant Secretary for Occupied Territories. Speaking “very contemptuously” to Hilldring (who reported this to Fierst) of many people in State who, in his opinion, were not practical and decisive sufficiently to run an occupied country such as Germany, Byrnes gave the Major General his full backing and confidence. Testifying before the Kilgore Senate subcommittee on war mobilization days after receiving his new post, Hilldring explained that the approximately 45,000 Jews of all national origins now in the American zone were housed in a number of large, separate centers in order to secure “specialized treatment” while remaining in Germany “temporarily.” Praising Rifkind, the JDC, and trained workers from various voluntary agencies, he noted that while the Jewish DPs awaited the conclusions of the Anglo-American Committee, “every effort” was being made to continue improvement in their conditions of food, clothing, housing, education, and vocational training. At that same hearing, the American Jewish Conference warned of increasing demoralization among the Jewish DPs in Germany, as Grinberg had reported, unless prompt action for their rehabilitation and resettlement were taken, and it hoped that the US military authorities there would continue to receive refugees from antisemitism in Eastern European countries and who overwhelmingly wished to emigrate to Palestine.44 Outranking as a Major General all of State’s office directors, Hilldring would not hesitate to make use of his position whenever it — 101 —

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was necessary, most dramatically in any matters that touched upon the question of Palestine. Fully aware of this possibility, Goldmann lost no time in extending his hearty congratulations upon the appointment, expressing the WJC’s deep appreciation for his past efforts to improve the Jewish DPs’ position, and giving assurance that the WJC would do its best to cooperate in trying to being about a quick solution of the “tragic problem” of the displaced Jews. To the delight of the American Jewish organizations, Hilldring soon asked a number of CAD personnel to join him, including Fierst. The move to the Old State Building proved fortuitous in another way, for it enabled Fierst to reach David Niles’s office there in but a few minutes. That proximity and shared understanding between the two men would prove highly significant as regards the Jewish DPs, the Palestine dilemma, and, in another celebrated case at the year’s end, the admission into the United States thanks to Hilldring’s strong intercession against a lower ranking State official of forty-eight Estonian refugees fleeing Soviet oppression.45 The killing on March 29 of thirty-five-year old Shmuel Danziger, a survivor of Auschwitz, in the Stuttgart DP camp during a raid by some two hundred German policemen vindicated the great fears voiced by Fierst, Doyle, and American Jewish organizations. McNarney soon issued an order on his own initiative preventing German police from entering all Jewish camps under his jurisdiction, and ordered a special inquiry. While a preliminary UNRRA investigation disclosed that the US military had authorized the raid on suspected black market activities, that American MPs had left the scene early, and that defenseless Jews had been shot down, the official investigation accepted the report of city German police chief Karl Weber that the armed force endeavored to avoid “any shedding of blood.” At the request of the Central Committee of Liberated Jews in the American zone, USFET authorized the peaceful demonstrations of 35,000 displaced Jews in seventeen camps throughout the zone on April 4. Calling for the immediate evacuation of all DP centers in Germany, Rifkind publicly asserted that a mass migration of European Jews to Palestine was “the only answer” that humanity could give to the Jewish people. Should the Anglo-American Committee report “fail to respond to their human cry, the results will be catastrophic,” he added.46 Two weeks later, Byrnes informed Truman and he and Patterson had agreed that the DP camps in Germany and Austria be closed in — 102 —

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August, except for “persecuted groups,” who would be permitted to remain in the camps. The chief reason, he explained, was that the War Department could not finance indefinitely the operation of these camps, and no reason existed to believe that they could be closed with less difficulty next year than now. This would give the inhabitants time to make some living arrangement before the winter. The British and such groups as the Federal Council of Churches, the National Catholic Welfare Conference, the American Federation of Labor, and the Congress of Industrial Organizations wished the camps to stay open until most of the DPs had returned to their homes and a solution were found through the IGCR or a new UN organization for resettling those who remained. Yet, Byrnes closed, it was not expected that significant results regarding resettlement could be achieved much before the spring of 1947.47 At about the same time, Fierst gave a memo to Rifkind for his appointment with Truman that month. Noting the “current explosive situation” despite improvements to the survivors’ condition in the US zone, it proposed “a rapid mass evacuation” to Palestine, as recommended by the President last September, as “the only solution.” The borders should be kept open to Jewish refugees, and immediate planning for the evacuation of the 100,000 initiated by the relevant government departments. A report on April 15 by the former director of UNRRA’s DP operations in the Eastern Military district of the US zone in Germany, which D. N. (Niles) initialed, made the same point. Four days later, in the presence of Fierst and Sommers, Petersen made it very clear to a delegation from the American Jewish Conference and the WJC that the borders had never been closed, and that McNarney had been “so satisfied” with Rifkind that he would likely approve a successor to that special advisory post. It was obvious, concluded Wahl, that the War Department had nothing but “the sincerest regret and discomfiture” over the Stuttgart tragedy and the whole situation,” and was bending every effort to see that such incidents were not repeated.48 The War Department wished to close the camps in August owing to its fear that they would be inundated with Jewish refugees soon after the Anglo-American Committee report’s publication, but a sympathetic Truman disagreed. He had Byrnes inform Patterson on April 23 that the President had thought it “unwise” to do so before the special UN committee on refugees reported to the General Assembly in September and the Assembly had an opportunity to act upon this — 103 —

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report. He therefore asked that the order for the closing of the camps in August not be issued.49 As soon as the Anglo-American Committee dispatched copies of the report directly to Truman and the British government on April 20, Crum sent a lengthy cable to Niles stressing that the President should designate someone (he suggested McDonald) to implement its recommendations, particularly for the admission to Palestine of the 100,000 as soon as possible in 1946 and the abrogation of the 1939 White Paper severely curtailing Jewish immigration there. Unbeknownst to Acheson, militant American Zionist leader Abba Hillel Silver, advised by Crum and McDonald not to criticize the Committee’s other major recommendation—that until Arab-Jewish “hostility” disappeared the mandatory should continue to rule pending the execution of a UN trusteeship, consented if Truman would publicly hail the 100,000 recommendation while saying that he would consider the long-term proposals at a later date. On April 29, Crum saw Truman, who agreed to this approach. Although having at first accepted Byrnes’s advice that the Chief Executive not issue any statement before consulting with Bevin, Truman did so the following day along the lines of Crum’s suggestion.50 The intertwining at this critical stage of the Jewish refugees in Europe and the future of Palestine left the survivors suspended between past and future. Attlee announced to the House of Commons on May 1, when the Anglo-American Committee’s report became public, that the mandatory could hardly admit so large a number as 100,000 into Palestine until the illegal Jewish military formations there had been disbanded and their weapons surrendered. Truman’s political position on the Promised Land dilemma in all its ramifications had yet to be finalized. The War Department desired to close the borders promptly, fearing that there would be “a considerable influx” of Jewish refugees into the US zones due to public news of the Committee’s recommendation of the 100,000. Byrnes disagreed, writing to Patterson on April 29 that the Committee had specifically stipulated that “no advantage in the obtaining of a certificate should be gained by migrating from one country to another,” and that preferential treatment should be given to Jewish DPs now to be found in Germany, Austria, and Italy. Detailed discussion of the various matters which concerned War should be deferred, the Secretary of State advised, until the report was released in full.51 — 104 —

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Acheson, whose advice Truman greatly appreciated during Byrnes’s absence on various conferences in Europe, disagreed with the War Department’s proposal. Armed with a memo from Hilldring (drafted by Fierst), he received Truman’s approval on May 2, confirmed at a Cabinet meeting the next day, that the zone borders remain open as long as possible, especially for the acceptance of infiltrees seeking haven and for the purpose of joining up with other family members. Political considerations, including the Jewish vote and that of US citizens of Polish origin and the Catholic community, had merged with the President’s humanitarian impulses. McNarney was instructed that only the most “critical circumstances,” Wahl reported to the American Jewish Conference based upon information he received from Fierst, would be honored in closing the borders temporarily. These included an unmanageable, large-scale influx “far and beyond” the normal current infiltration. The newest government decision, Wahl added, was the first positive evidence of the “excellent development resulting from Hilldring’s new position and the attitude that he takes.”52 Acheson’s memo to Truman included his suggestion that the best way to take the question of border closings out of the realm of controversial discussion on the Anglo-American Committee’s report was to have an informal, confidential conference with a few key Jewish leaders and the Secretaries of State and War, the meeting to be confined to that particular issue. Their cooperation would be sought in discouraging large future movements by making known in Jewish circles in Central and Eastern Europe the “complications” which would result. That idea, originating with Fierst and presented by Hilldring to Acheson in his own name, had first met with the Undersecretary’s skepticism. Acheson doubted that unity could be found with the American Jewish leaders in light of his rather extensive experience in dealing with them. He was willing to try, however, and asked Hilldring to prepare a memo with this suggestion for him to give Truman. Fierst did so at Hilldring’s request, and, once Acheson asked Hilldring on May 3 to do what was necessary with the War Department to carry out the Cabinet’s decision, Hilldring assigned Fierst the task of arranging the meeting as soon as possible. “Unfortunately,” the young captain wrote to Rifkind, the “sedate atmosphere” of the State Department had not stopped the situation from “boiling seriously” in his short period there. “I, too, am trying to restrain the ‘Army,’” he added, “or should I say ‘officially’”?53 — 105 —

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On May 8, Acheson and Patterson sat down with Wise, Goldmann, Goldstein, Silver representative Emanuel Neumann, JDC chairman Edward Warburg, American Jewish Committee executive chairman Jacob Blaustein, and Hadassah DC representative Denise Turover. Following the gist of Fierst’s memo, Acheson declared that as long as infiltration continued at the present rate of about 5,000 per month, in addition to the 65,000–70,000 currently in the German and Austrian US zones, this could go on indefinitely. At the same time, given the danger that publication of the Anglo-American Committee report’s recommendation about the 100,000 might stimulate a large-scale influx of survivors, the leaders present were asked to exercise “a calming influence” and make it known in Jewish circles in Central and Eastern Europe that it was not now “a favorable time” for large-scale movement towards Germany and Austria. If it were found necessary to close the frontiers, Patterson asserted, the Jewish groups would first be advised. Stressing the desirability of maintaining a friendly relationship between the DPs and the Army, Hilldring noted that while “we must hold out hope” for the other 400,000 Jewish refugees estimated in the report who wished to or were compelled to leave Europe, it was “most desirable” to concentrate on securing the 100,000 certificates.54 A “highly successful” conference, Fierst wrote to Rifkind, the mere presence of “our friends” and their cooperative attitude major factors in postponing “the evil day.” Considering the meeting “remarkably tranquil” and that he believed it would be “fruitful,” Hilldring received Acheson’s approval to inform McNarney and Clark to keep the borders open for the present, and that another such meeting would take place in the near future. He also pledged to Ben-Gurion that the borders would remain open so long as what the Jewish Agency leader termed the “infiltration” of Jewish refugees continued in the neighborhood of 5,000 per month. Fierst, given the assignment by Hilldring to bring what the Assistant Secretary termed “gentle pressure” on the Jewish leaders to use their influence in this regard, talked extensively with Philip Bernstein, executive director in World War II of the National Jewish Welfare Board’s Committee on Army and Navy Religious Activities and now Rifkind’s successor, before he took off for Europe. He kept in frequent touch as well with Wahl, telling him in confidence that Loy Henderson, director of State’s Near Eastern and African Affairs desk, cautioned Hilldring against making too much speed in implementing — 106 —

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the transfer to Palestine of the 100,000 because the Arabs were offering tremendous resistance and threatened to cut off American oil contracts. Hilldring had replied, “To hell with oil and to hell with the Arabs as allies!” He would not tolerate “playing ball” with the Arabs at the expense of the DPs and using oil as an excuse.55 That outburst coincided with Hilldring’s memo a few days earlier to Acheson, convinced as he was that Attlee’s stipulations for the 100,000 showed that the British were stalling, “as anticipated,” considering that the Anglo-American Committee had made this an unconditional recommendation. The US military and political interests in Germany and Austria required that Washington press for immediate implementation of the issue. The answer to Arab opposition and Britain’s negative attitude, he continued, might very well be demonstrations by Jewish DPs and “scathing comments” by Jewish leaders and organizations in this country. Accordingly, he suggested that Acheson propose to Truman that the White House release a public statement stressing the “urgent necessity” of immediately going forward on the 100,000, with the US government offering to transport these survivors. The net cost would be no more, and perhaps even less, than the expense of maintaining the Jewish DP camps in Germany and Austria for another year.56 Gordon P. Merriam, State’s Chief of the Division of Near Eastern Affairs, sharply disagreed, noting to Acheson on May 8 that Hilldring’s suggestion apparently failed to take into account any aspect of “the complicated Palestine problem” other than the European. American interests in the various Arab countries in the Near East were of an importance “certainly commensurate” with our interest in the future of the occupied zones in Europe; the Arabs had given every indication of the intention to “resist” the 100,000 recommendation. The US had many political and educational interests in these countries, and its trade and petroleum interests could not be neglected. Moreover, removing 100,000 would be a temporary solution at best, as the Army expected an influx of Jewish DPs from the Soviet zones to “continue unabated and soon fill the vacuum.” Last but not least, Washington had committed itself on various occasions to consult with both Arabs and Jews before taking any action involving a change in the basic situation in Palestine, and if any part of the report were put into operation by the government without such consultation, it would no doubt spark British resentment, and be regarded as “a breach of faith,” which could not fail to have repercussions of “a very serious nature.”57 — 107 —

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Merriam’s argument, buttressed by Henderson’s own memo to Acheson along similar lines advising that Truman not make a unilateral statement regarding the 100,000, prevailed. On May 8, following Acheson’s advice, Truman informed Attlee of his intention to consult with the Jewish and Arab organizations and governments, and then, after consulting with London, issue a statement on the Anglo-American Committee recommendations. In light of the “urgency” regarding the 100,000 unanimously recommended by the Committee, he sincerely hoped that these consultations could be completed at “the earliest possible moment.” One week later, Niles informed Goldmann that Truman did not mean to include the 100,000 in the consultation procedure with London, but State “did get it in.”58 At this point, Hilldring’s latest order to the USFET commanders in Germany and Austria to keep the zone borders open met with no objection. While praising the “gallantry” of the British Army’s Jewish Brigade during the Allied wartime campaign in Italy, Clark assured Jewish Agency political director Moshe Shertok (later Sharett) that the US Army was “doing all to improve the situation of the Jewish people.” Deeply impressed by the Anglo-American Committee’s unanimous report, McNarney wrote to Hutcheson that if the British approved the recommendations, it would constitute one of the “great accomplishments” for the solution of a “most distressing problem here in Europe, namely, a home for these people who were the principal targets of nazism [sic].” Through the efforts of Hilldring and his staff, Wahl held discussions with General Harold R. Bull, McNarney’s Chief of Staff, which resulted in cancelling the plan in January of a highly placed Third Army general to issue an order declaring the Central Committee of Liberated Jews illegal. Hearing from Fierst that the Committee was a democratic, independent organization and about the special type of person Zalman Grinberg was, Bull returned to Germany with a plan for establishing that body in an advisory relationship to the Theater Command.59 Peterson went further in a nation-wide broadcast about Germany and the occupation. With Hilldring alongside, he stated that an assurance of “a reasonable life” outside Germany and Europe offered the only solution for the Jewish displaced persons. The majority of observers, declared the Assistant Secretary of War, had reported the desire of most of the Jewish DPs to go to Palestine. As reported in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on May 20, the same day that 1,104 survivors arrived in Haifa — 108 —

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from the port of La Spezia as legal immigrants thanks to Yehuda Arazi, the intrepid and resourceful commander of the Mosad L’Aliya Bet in Italy, Peterson asserted that so long as the Holocaust survivors continued to remain in camps in Germany “even under the best of conditions,” there was an increased danger of “breakdown of morale, violent protests and even large-scale suicides.”60 On June 5, as the result of a meeting between Byrnes, Henderson, Hilldring, and Acheson, Truman cabled Attlee that Washington had plans to set up a special group to handle the British prime minister’s detailed memorandum on how to implement the Anglo-American Committee’s recommendations. As the situation of the survivors “continues to cause great concern,” he thought it “highly desirable” that examination of the matter should begin “immediately.” The United States would take responsibility for their transport to Palestine and help as to temporary housing. Two days later, Attlee repeated his insistence that the entire Committee report, including the political and possible military consequences relating to the 100,000, had to be considered. Truman refused to budge, and on June 11 he announced the creation of a Cabinet Committee on Palestine and Related Problems for consultation in London with British experts regarding the report, the initial American team to be composed of one representative each from the State, War, and Treasury Departments. Fierst and Wahl found a favorable reception with the Treasury appointee, as well as with a CAD associate and a member of Hilldring’s State staff. The latter two individuals met with Fierst to draft an implementation plan for the 100,000 which Fierst then reviewed with Wahl and Eliyahu Epstein (later Elath), the Jewish Agency’s representative in Washington.61 On June 11, Truman received Patterson’s report on the US oneyear military occupation of Germany, including the observation that if action on the admission of survivors to Palestine were delayed, protests and demonstrations in the DP camps (including suicides and large-scale attempts to cross borders to Switzerland and France) “are to be expected.” Estimating the Jewish DPs at about 55,000 and 7,000 in the German and Austrian US zones respectively, the Secretary of War indicated that some evidence showed the rate of influx “already increasing” since publication of the Anglo-American Committee report. American Zionist leaders heard correctly that a secret plan, drafted by Henderson for Acheson, had been prepared for the guidance of the US — 109 —

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representatives to the new Cabinet Committee about the movement of the 100,000, phasing the transfer operation at a 20,000 per month basis beginning July 15. Byrnes took for granted the admission of the 100,000 as an “immediate step,” the worried British Ambassador to Washington cabled Bevin, who had just told a Labour Party Conference (without consulting the Foreign Office) that the American campaign for the 100,000 was proposed “with the purest of motives: they do not want too many Jews in New York.” The Americans were ready to supply the necessary shipping and bear at least half of all expenses incurred in settling them in Palestine, noted Lord Inverchapel, adding that Byrnes was under “very strong pressure” from the US Congress and outside it.62 In her newspaper column entitled “Crisis for Jews,” Eleanor Roosevelt observed that same month that there were 100,000 Jews in Europe who had to find homes immediately, and that they wanted to go to Palestine. (She had recently returned from a visit to a few DP camps, where for the first time had come to realize, as she wrote in an earlier column, “what that small land meant to so many, many people.”) The Arabs threatened “dire things,” while the British talked about the impossibility of increasing their military force in that much contested land. “But surely,” the highly regarded widow of Truman’s predecessor concluded, “our Allied chiefs of staff could work out some form of military defense,” while she could not believe that the Arabs, an intelligent people, were “without mercy any more than we are.” The sooner the job about the DPs was done, the better “there and everywhere,” she wrote to Truman. In agreement, the President replied on June 20: “We are working on this program as hard as we can. It is a difficult problem to solve.”63 By the end of June, Bernstein, having been in Germany four weeks, estimated the number of Jewish infiltrees at the rate of approximately 10,000 per month. As agreed upon in his meeting with the American Jewish leaders who attended the May 8 meeting with Acheson and Patterson, he had conveyed to the appropriate Jewish organizations and bricha leaders in Europe that infiltration should be held to “manageable proportions” of 5,000 to 6,000 per month. This met with the approval of Chaim Hoffman (later Yahil), the Jewish Agency’s representative in Europe, who found Bernstein to be “a good Zionist” with excellent ties to the military authorities. Yet, whereas in May the net known increase stood at 4,732, it was likely that in the month of June it would reach at — 110 —

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least 10,000, and that a similar rate would obtain in the period of July through September. This was due, Bernstein wrote to Kenen on June 28, not only to the greater ease of movement in the summer months, but also to the increasing violence of “uncontrolled” antisemitism in Poland and the “desperate hope” of early migration into Palestine. Closing the borders at this time, in his judgment, would be “unnecessary, unwise and inhumane,” and it would not work because obstacles could not deter these people “fleeing for their lives.” Because borders remained closed in the past, millions of Jews had perished after Hitler came to power He ended on a somber note: “This must not happen again.”64 “Harrowing” reports of growing and violent antisemitism in Poland, joined to 150,000 Polish Jewish repatriates from Russia arriving destitute and finding living conditions “practically hopeless,” led Bernstein to advise the US military authorities that they had to prepare for a total of from 40,000 to 50,000 Jewish infiltrees over the summer months. In addition, considerable distrust and hostility toward the Central Committee of Liberated Jews had developed, and he recommended to McNarney its official recognition. The US Army had formulated plans for the large movement of refugees to Palestine, he wrote to Kenen on June 29; that movement would be expedited without delay “whenever the green light is given.” (Assuming that the Anglo-American Committee recommendations would be adopted and probably 40,000 certificates granted for the US zone, the Jewish Agency’s Hoffman and C. J. Taylor, deputy director of the US zone in Germany, had recently reached an agreement with representatives of voluntary agencies on what was necessary for emigration movements to Palestine.) To date, the Special Advisor on Jewish Affairs ended this letter, he had received the helpful and effective cooperation of the military authorities.65 Given the increase in the number of Jews leaving Eastern Europe, McNarney had asked the War Department on June 23 to stem the tide. This could be done by either sealing the borders to Jews coming from the British and French zones in Germany and Austria, or withholding from Jews arriving from the east the status of DPs the moment that the population in the camps reached 100,000, which, he estimated, would happen in September. On June 13, as an example, the Ninth Division had properly refused the train movement from Salzburg to Munich which had not been cleared in time by the military authorities. By the end of the year, the USFET commander thought, the number of Jewish — 111 —

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DPs in the US zone in Germany would reach beyond 200,000. He also anticipated hostility towards these refugees from not only the non-Jewish DPs and the local population, but also from American soldiers. At a meeting on July 5, the Secretaries of State and War agreed to accept McNarney’s proposals. Once the borders closed, infiltrators would not receive the same treatment given to DPs, although they would not be deported to their countries of origin.66 Fiorello LaGuardia, former Mayor of New York City and now serving as Lehman’s successor, thought that UNRRA had to “step in and take drastic action” before the whole DP program would “blow up.” To the IGCR’s Emerson he spoke emphatically of the danger of leaving the DPs in Germany for any length of time in their present “unsatisfactory” situation. The popularly called “Little Flower” thought it essential that they should get back to work promptly, and have the problem removed as far as possible from the hands of the military. While Emerson declared that repatriation was now practically “exhausted” as a solution and that resettlement overseas took “a great deal of time,” LaGuardia thought to replace General Morgan with three civilians (a Britisher, an American, and a Russian) of world standing and past association in social and humanitarian activities, who would immediately canvas possibilities in talks “straight from the shoulder” with Poland, Russia, Yugoslavia, and other countries concerned.67 With the most optimistic estimate that more than 630,000 DPs would not be repatriable, he recommended to Byrnes on June 26 that, along with LaGuardia’s appeal that all countries take an equitable share in admitting these DPs, the 120,000 available US immigrant quotas be promptly used to this end. Taking such a lead, he added, might induce Bevin to reconsider his decision regarding the 100,000 recommendation of the Anglo-American Committee. Noting that UNRRA’s termination date stood at December 31, 1946, LaGuardia urged that the rapid deterioration in the physical condition and morale of these “unhappy people” mandated “a sensible, constructive and humane approach.”68 The pogrom in the Polish south central city of Kielce on July 4, 1946, accentuated the plight of Europe’s Holocaust survivors, the remnant bereft of home and family, which the Jewish DPs themselves termed Sh’eirit HaPleita. In the space of a few hours, triggered by a false rumor that nine-year-old Henryk Blaszczyk had been kidnapped by Jews at the Jewish Committee headquarters at 7 Planty Street for the — 112 —

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purpose of ritual murder, a mob led by local police, workers, and soldiers brutally attacked the Jews living there, women and children behaving with the same ferocity as men in focusing on victims’ heads and genital organs. By the day’s end, forty-two Jews were killed, most beaten by rocks, clubs, pieces of iron and steel into unrecognizability, and another forty wounded, with about thirty more murdered in a frenzy that spread across the area. One week after the dead were buried in a mass grave, the Communist government executed nine of the attackers. The savage assault sparked intense fear in the already traumatized postwar Polish Jewish community, victim of about 1,500 killings during 1945–1946, even as Cardinal August Hlond, Catholic Primate of Poland, blamed the Jews for their political association with the regime. A mass exodus began to the west, to reach over 75,000 in the next two months.69 US Ambassador Arthur Bliss Lane soon reported that following the Kielce pogrom, the earlier daily rate of approximately seventy per week had mushroomed to ten times that number towards the month’s end. Evidence indicated that the numbers involved might total a hundred thousand. An UNRRA official’s eyewitness account, he added, revealed that the Jews crossed the frontier with the connivance of Polish and Czech border guards, and were transported by Czech rail to Bratislava. The JDC assisted with food and other help in Czechoslovakia. At Bratislava, Soviet personnel facilitated transit to the US zone in Austria, and the military authorities there sent them on to Germany.70 The numbers pouring into the US zones (20,000 in July alone) greatly worried the War Department. It had agreed with State one day before the Kielce pogrom to authorize McNarney to close the borders to the US zone in Germany to infiltrees from the British and French zones “as the situation requires.” In conjunction with Clark, the USFET commander was also authorized to seal the borders to the US zones when the number of Jewish DPs reached 110,000. Now the military faced a probable stream of many thousands, aided in their movement by intrepid Palestinian bricha emissaries and friendly Czech authorities. UNRRA investigative specialist J. B. Krane reported on July 10 that while Jewish infiltrees were being admitted “in theory” at six points only at the US zone—one at the Austrian-German border and five points along the Czech-US zone border, people were still crossing at other points. Current Army reports indicated an average of 3,000 to 4,000 officially passing through the border, but on July 7 alone 300 — 113 —

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arrived in Munich and some 1,200 south of that city at Rosenheim. The same day, 1,000 infiltrees reached Funk Kaserne, UNRRA’s Emigration and Repatriation Center in Munich, and that evening an additional 350 had come. With consequent overcrowding in inadequately ventilated, hygienic rooms and limited child welfare professionals, the issue also involved “a fundamental moral question of the Army’s and UNRRA’s obligation to the victims of fascism.” Given all this and the growing resignation of UNRRA personnel, Krane concluded that the team situation in the US zone must be regarded as “desperate.”71 With State and War pressing under these circumstances for another meeting with the American Jewish leaders, Fierst arranged the gathering for July 22, at which only Blaustein was present from the original group. Lt. Col. W. R. Buster of the War Department described the infiltration picture in great, detailed accuracy with the use of maps and charts drawn from classified documents. Hilldring explained along with Patterson that if the influx from Poland and Czechoslovakia were not slowed down considerably, the United States would have to close the borders. The monthly cost of food, clothing, and other expenses for the 91,000 Jewish DPs now in the US zones in Germany and Austria came to $2 million. Given his estimate that if the current rate of infiltration continued, the number would reach more than 110,000 in another month, McNarney had recommended that the American border be closed on September 1 to Jews fleeing from Eastern Europe. The American government “has no choice” but to do so, asserted Acheson. The usually reserved Blaustein, backed by Leavitt, strongly protested by “putting it squarely” to his friend Patterson that this was a unique moment in history, that the Jews who survived the Holocaust were fleeing intense antisemitism in Poland and searching desperately for their last opportunity to live a reasonable, decent life for themselves in what time remained to them, and that the War Department should not think only in terms of dollars and centers or the difficulties which the Jewish DPs or infiltrees might be causing in the US zones. While visibly moved, Fierst recalled years later, Patterson did not announce that he had changed his mind.72 Four days later, Byrnes informed Truman of the Secretaries’ decision that McNarney was authorized to close the US zone borders against DP and former persecutees infiltration from the British zone in Germany and the French zones in Germany and Austria (where they were in no danger) if and when he believed it to be “necessary or wise.” On the other — 114 —

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hand, he was not to deny the entry to the DP camps in the American zone of refugees from East and Central Europe. Niles passed this information on to a few key senators. A letter on July 31 from Hilldring to Wahl, hoping that he and the Conference would assist in limiting “to the very minimum” the influx into the US zone, relayed in confidence the Secretaries’ decision. Fierst repeated Hilldring’s request when seeing Wise and Ben-Gurion during his trip to Germany and Austria right after the conference; he found both leaders to be “extremely cooperative and understanding.”73 A number of influential congressmen such as House Majority Leader John W. McCormack, contacted by the Jewish organizations, intervened with Truman to keep the borders open. Two weeks later, in response to Senator Harley M. Kilgore’s letter to the White House urging that the zonal borders not be closed to Jewish persecutees, Acheson noted to the President the results of the July 22 meeting. Under pressure from the Zionists, Truman had recently rejected the Cabinet Committee’s plan of provincial autonomy for Palestine and, with the Congressional mid-term elections only three months ahead, State and War chose not to press on him the latest request from McNarney and Clark to close the borders. Despite Bernstein’s appeal to the USFET commander after a week’s visit to Poland that 100,000 Jews be permitted to enter the US zones during the coming months, McNarney, yielding to British pressure, had on August 6 called publicly for a halt to all “organized” movements of Jews into the zones. Sharp condemnation from Jewish groups and particularly Washington’s understandable concern about possible serious clashes between the refugees and US troops trying to seal the borders forced him to retreat. On August 21 McNarney announced that the Army would facilitate the entry of Jews from Poland and Czechoslovakia into the American zone.74 Relying upon Bernstein’s figures that 100,000 Jews could be expected to cross into the US zones within the coming year, McNarney asked the War Department in mid-August to consider moving this number to various parts of Europe. State responded by appealing to the governments of Poland and Czechoslovakia to regulate the movement, and to the Italians to accept 25,000 Jewish refugees from Germany. The British strenuously objected to the latter, however, realizing that Italy was the most convenient base for clandestine sailings to Palestine. Hoping to stem the flow, they announced on August 12 that henceforth — 115 —

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the Royal Navy would deport all “illegal” Jewish immigrant boats to Cyprus. Attlee would also reject LaGuardia’s support for the 100,000, along with the UNRRA director’s calling for Polish Jews to enter the British zones, the prime minister repeating HMG’s stance that that exodus was an “artificial movement engineered largely with a view to forcing our hands over Palestine.” Washington finally abandoned its request of Rome, given the lack of funds and the War Department’s preference for keeping the DPs in areas where the US military had control of supplies.75 The large-scale flight from Poland westward did not stop throughout the month. The British legation in Czechoslovakia, the Soviet-controlled government which on July 25 under Premier Klement Gottwald and Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk had officially approved transit so long as the Jews did not remain there, reported anxiously that a steady stream of 1,800 Jews was entering from Poland, that about 35,000 had arrived between July 1 and August 9, and that another 75,000 were shortly to be expected. Whitehall had even asked Soviet assistance a little earlier to settle Jewish refugees in Birobidzhan, Moscow’s sponsored homeland in Central Asia for Jews, only to hear Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Vladimir Dekanozov brutally reply thus: “We’ve got enough. You’ve got the whole empire to put them in.” As for the arrival of almost 23,000 Polish Jews in Vienna and another approximately 3,500 from Hungary and the East, State urged the Polish government to resettle Jews in Lower Silesia. Ambassador Lane could not “escape the belief” that Warsaw intentionally allowed the wholesale illegal departure of Polish Jews to the American zones in Austria and Germany. Given, as well, the “almost unanimous” desire of these Jews to leave the country, he very much doubted whether the Provisional Government would take effective steps to prevent or curtail the exodus.76 August 23, 1946, marked a watershed in the entire drama. Earlier that morning, Ben-Gurion and Wise received the Central Committee’s agreement to support the Jewish Agency’s crucial decision at meetings in Paris’s Hotel Royal Monceau to accept the partition of Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state if the British offered it. In the same Frankfurt USFET headquarters where the vast I.G. Farben cartel’s operational center had dominated Nazi Germany’s economy, the Committee delegation of Samuel Gringauz, Boris Pliskin, Leon Retter (later Aryeh Nesher), and Samuel Sneig also received word from Bernstein that — 116 —

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McNarney would most likely legalize their existence as speaking for the Jewish DPs, and that he had approved in principle the publication of an edition of the Babylonian Talmud. Rabbi Sneig, formerly Chief Chaplain of the Lithuanian Army, was so enthusiastic about realizing his pet project that he hardly reacted to Bernstein’s news that Army headquarters had, even in this trying period, approved extra rations for the Jewish DPs during the coming High Holy Days.77 A luncheon hosted by McNarney the same day witnessed Wise and Bernstein praising the US Army for the liberation of Europe’s Jews and for the asylum it continued to grant the survivors, Wise seeing this as “a symbol of the spirit of democracy and freedom associated with the United States of America, which sustains these people with hope.” Taking pride in the fact that since V-E Day, 100,530 Holocaust survivors had been granted haven and care in the US zone in Germany, McNarney added that he had authorized Clark to send 19,000 recent Jewish infiltrees into that zone from Austria and a similar movement of Polish Jews from Berlin. He had continued to authorize a higher caloric content of food rations to them because of “their special sufferings and needs,” and, impressed with the “growing sense of responsibility and self-discipline among the DPs,” he intended to give them great opportunities of self-administration not only as inherent in the democratic process, but also as a means of restoring “a sense of human dignity and self-respect to those who suffered cruel persecution at the hands of the enemies of democracy.”78 Exactly one year had passed since Truman first received Harrison’s report, which elicited the President’s subsequent recollection that “the misery it depicted could not be allowed to continue,” as well as his pressing for the immediate entry of 100,000 of the Holocaust remnant into Palestine. Wahl concluded that McNarney’s remarks at the luncheon, their tone featured by the New York Times in “a very happy spirit” under the caption “Jews Laud Army for Refugee Care,” were brought about only by very hard work through Hilldring’s office in the State Department. It was the Assistant Secretary for Occupied Territories who had called together Acheson and Patterson after the first disturbing news of McNarney’s declaration on August 6, which resulted in a “firm and clear directive” to the USFET commander against closing the borders. While “his heart and soul” were devoted to keeping the borders open to a people unwanted by the community of nations, Hilldring had told Wahl — 117 —

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at the time, it might be necessary to have another meeting with the American Jewish leaders in the near future to insure this objective.79 McNarney would, indeed, recognize the Central Committee on September 7, but Byrnes’s speech in Stuttgart’s Opera House one day earlier, calling for Germany’s being allowed to create a self-sustaining economy and to take “an honorable place among the members of the United Nations,” appeared ominous. The ultimate fate of the Sh’eirit HaPleita, who had “turned their backs on despair and rage,” and that of the Palestine quandary remained shrouded in uncertainty. The long battle for Jewish survival in a post-Holocaust world, one facing the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States and their respective allies, had yet to be won.80

Endnotes   1.

USFET to AGWAR, December 14, 1945. Simon H. Rifkind MSS, New York City. My thanks to the late Judge Rifkind for granting me access to his private papers.   2. Monty Noam Penkower, Palestine to Israel: Mandate to State, 1945–1948, vol. 1, Rebellion Launched (New York, 2019), 38, 42–43, 51, 92; Zeev W. Mankowitz, Life between Memory and Hope: The Survivors of the Holocaust in Occupied Germany (Cambridge, 2002), 66. For the Harrison report, see chap. 2.  3. Penkower, Palestine to Israel: 122–123; Davis memo for Hilldring, November 6, 1945; Lovett to Commanding Generals, November 1945; both in Rifkind MSS.   4. Simon H. Rifkind interview with the author, July 25, 1974; Rifkind report, November 1, 1945, Rifkind MSS.   5. Troy J. Sacquety, “Major General John Henry Hilldring,” Veritas 12:1 (2016).  6. Herbert A. Fierst interview with Charles S. Kennedy, July 16, 1996, The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project, Library of Congress, Washington, DC; Penkower, Palestine to Israel, 37–38.  7. Davis memo for Hilldring, November 6, 1945, Rifkind MSS.; Penkower, Palestine to Israel, 98. For the initial steps taken by the CAD and other Army branches relating to Germany, see Earl F. Ziemke, “Improvising Stability and Change in Postwar Germany,” in Americans as Proconsuls: United States Military Government in Germany and Japan, 1944–1952, ed. R. Wolfe (Carbondale, 1984).  8. Penkower, Palestine to Israel, 49, 75, and 113. — 118 —

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  9. Ibid., 50–51. 10. Ibid., 113–114. 11. Davis memo to Hilldring, November 6, 1945, Rifkind MSS.; Hilldring to Kubowitzki, November 6, 1945, P68/2, Abraham Klausner MSS., Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, Jerusalem. 12. Fierst interview with Kennedy, July 16, 1996. His father, Lithuanian born, became the treasurer of the Zionist Organization of America; his mother was the daughter of the chief rabbi of Canada. 13. Office Committee meeting, November 9, 1945, file 2a/11, World Jewish Congress (hereafter WJC) Archives, New York City (now at the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, OH); Memo for Eisenhower, November 17, 1945, with HAF note, November 17, 1945, CAD 383.7, July 30, 1945–November 1945, SCC I, RG 165, National Archives (hereafter NA), Suitland, MD; Helen Warren, The Buried Are Screaming (New York, 1948). 14. Herbert A. Fierst, “A View of the Jewish Problem from the Pentagon and State Dept., 1945–1948” (1972–), series 5, Fierst MSS. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC; McCloy remarks, December 4, 1945, Records of Meetings, Council on Foreign Relations Archives, New York City; Klausner to Karlbach, March 11, 1946, file U154/11, WJC; Richard Joseph, “Why So Many GIs Like the Germans Best,” Reader’s Digest 48 (March 1946): 5–8. 15. Trobe conference with Morgan, November 15, 1945, Sh’eirit HaPleita files, box 11/54, YIVO Archives, New York City; Hilldring to Smith, November 26, 1945, Rifkind MSS. 16. Fierst, “A View of the Jewish Problem.” 17. Ibid. Also see David Engel, Bein Shihrur L’Bricha: Nitsolei HaShoa B’Polin V’HaMa’avak al Hanhagatam, 1944–1946 (Tel Aviv, 1996). 18. Penkower, Palestine to Israel, 122–123; Yehuda Bauer, Flight and Rescue: Brichah (New York, 1970), 89, 194. The JDC was strongly influenced by Schwartz, a committed Zionist. Having aided Earl Harrison and spent much time on the Continent, he had already pressed the JDC at its December annual meeting to meet the great needs of the survivors, in light of “the revolution in which we have lost five-sixths of our European population,” with “a glad hand.” Schwartz address, December 9, 1945, Paul Baerwald MSS., Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York City. The JDC’s subsequent activity is examined in Yehuda Bauer, Out of the Ashes: The Impact of American Jews on Post-Holocaust European Jewry (Oxford, 1989). 19. Ibid., 123. 20. Ibid., 123–124. — 119 —

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21. Acheson to Patterson, December 28, 1945, CAD 383, 7 (December 1, 1945– February 28, 1946), sec. 2, RG 165, NA. 22. Kirk to Byrnes, January 2, 1946, ibid. 23. Byrnes to Royall, January 7, 1946, ibid. It has also been suggested that Byrnes, who had recently agreed to the establishment of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine, “certainly did not want more Jewish DPs in the American zones.” Arieh J. Kochavi, Post-Holocaust Politics: Britain, the United States, and Jewish Refugees, 1945–1948 (Chapel Hill, 2001), 137. 24. Fierst, “A View of the Jewish Problem.” 25. Ibid.; Hilldring to USFET, January 15, 1946; Royall to Acheson, January 19, 1946; both in CAD 383.7 (December 1, 1945–February 28, 1946), sec. 2, RG 165, NA; Adcock to Eisenhower, January 18, 1946, Rifkind MSS. 26. Weekly Intelligence Report, January 23, 1946, file P68/6, Abraham Klausner MSS., Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, Jerusalem; Rifkind memo, February 26, 1946, Rifkind MSS. For the plight of children at the time among these infiltrees, see Lynne Taylor, In the Children’s Best Interest: Unaccompanied Children in American-Occupied Germany, 1945–1952 (Toronto, 2017), 118–139; “Infiltration of Jewish Children,” June 25, 1947, box 66,646, UNRRA, UN Archives (hereafter UNA). 27. Krane to Chief of Operations, Germany, January 18, 1946, box 66,021; January 31, 1946 report, box 66,483; both in German Mission; February 7, 1946 report, box 52,093, Austrian Mission; both in UNRRA, UNA. The bricha movement, begun by Jewish survivor partisans from Poland and Lithuania even before V-E Day, was aided by Jewish chaplains, the JDC, and by Jewish Brigade soldiers attached to the British Army. In October 1945, emissaries from Palestine, directed by the strong-willed Shaul Meirov (later Avigur) from headquarters in Paris, arrived to create an organized exodus from Eastern and Central Europe to the American zones in Germany, Austria, and Italy. See Abba Gefen, Portsei HaMahsomim (Tel Aviv, 1961); Bauer, Flight and Rescue; Ephraim Dekel, B’riha: Flight to the Homeland (New York, 1972); Bauer, Out of the Ashes; Alex Grobman, Rekindling the Flame: American Jewish Chaplains and the Survivors of European Jewry, 1944–1948 (Detroit, 1993); Yohanan Cohen, Ovrim Kol Gevul: HaBricha, Polin 1945–1946 (Jerusalem, 1995); Mark Wyman, DPs: Europe’s Displaced Persons, 1945–51 (Ithaca, 1998); D. Schiff and A. BenNatan, eds., Habricha: Escape and Flight from Europe to Eretz Israel, 1945–1948 (Tel Aviv, 1998); Y. Rappel, ed., Brichim Shel Shtika, Sh’eirit HaPleita V’Eretz Yisrael (Tel Yitshak, 2000). For a contemporary report by the JDC’s representative on his organization’s help in Austria to the bricha, see Rice confidential — 120 —

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report, March 1, 1946, JDC Archives, New York City. To assist the bricha organization in Poland, the JDC secretly transmitted $245,000 in direct grants during the spring and summer of 1946 to the bricha via the Jewish Agency office in Geneva. Schwartz once estimated the JDC’s total assistance to bricha reached $10–$12 million during the years 1945–1948. Rappel, Brichim Shel Shtika, 23. For JDC payments in 1946 alone towards bricha, see General Jewish Agency 1945–1946, JDC Archives. 28. McNarney to Eisenhower, January 1946, Rifkind MSS.; Patterson memo for Hilldring, February 8, 1946; Hilldring memo, February 13, 1946; both in CAD 383.7 (December 1, 1945–February 28, 1946), sec. 2, RG 165, NA. For Clark’s views, see Mel Schiff, “President Truman and the DPs 1945-1946, The Untold Story,” American Jewish History 99:4 (October 2015): 340–347. 29. Patterson to Byrnes, attached to Hilldring memo, February 13, 1946, CAD 383.7 (December 1, 1945–February 28, 1946), sec. 2, RG 165, NA. 30. Acheson-Goldmann meeting, February 12, 1945; Goldmann statement, January 9, 1946; both in 840a.48 Refugees/3–1446, State Department Archives (hereafter SD), RG 59, NA. 31. Wahl memo to American Jewish Conference on February 12, 1946 meeting, A431/18, Central Zionist Archives (hereafter CZA), Jerusalem. 32. Lehman-Acheson meeting, February 16, 1946, Box 4, William L. Clayton MSS., Harry S. Truman Presidential Library (hereafter HSTL), Independence, MO. 33. Penkower, Palestine to Israel, 160; Kochavi, Post-Holocaust Politics, 138. 34. Rifkind Memo, February 18, 1946, General Correspondence, James McDonald MSS., Herbert H. Lehman Collections, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York City; “Intelligence Summary,” February 23, 1946, German Mission, Box 66.484, UNRRA, UNA; Rifkind to Goldmann, February 26, 1946, Z5/920, CZA. 35. Patterson to Byrnes, February 26, 1946, 800.4016 D.P./2-2646, SD, NA. 36. Wahl memo, February 26, 1946, A431/22, CZA. 37. Wahl memo, March 1, 1946; Goldmann to Fisher, Leventhal, Stone, and Goldstein, March 1, 1946; Goldmann memo, March 6, 1946; all in A431/8, CZA. 38 Fierst, “A View of the Jewish Problem.” 39. Ibid.; Wahl to Kenen, March 7, 1946, A431/2, CZA. For his service with the CAD, Fierst received an Army Commendation Ribbon from Eisenhower in January 1946 and a Legion of Merit Award from Hilldring two months later. 40. Fierst, “A View of the Jewish Problem.” For Rifkind’s final report to McNarney, released with the War Department’s approval, see Report, April 8, 1946, S25/5232, CZA. — 121 —

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41. Tartakower memorandum, March 20, 1946, file 2a/15, WJC. 42. Patterson to Byrnes, March 14, 1946; Byrnes to Patterson, March 22, 1946; both in 800.4016 DP/3-1446, SD, NA. 43. Fierst, “A View of the Jewish Problem”; Kochavi, Post-Holocaust Politics, 138. 44. Fierst, “A View of the Jewish Problem”; Jewish Telegraphic Agency (hereafter JTA), March 7, 1946. 45. Fierst, “A View of the Jewish Problem”; Goldmann to Hilldring, March 1, 1946, Z6/268, CZA. For the case of the Estonian refugees, see series 2, Fierst MSS. 46. Chap. 4. 47. Fierst, “A View of the Jewish Problem.” 48. Ibid.; Wahl memo, April 19, 1946, A431/2a, CZA. 49. Byrnes to Patterson, April 23, 1946, WDSCA 383.7, RG 165, NA. 50. Penkower, Palestine to Israel, 190–195. 51. Ibid., 210; Byrnes to Patterson, April 29, 1946, 867N.01/4-2746, SD, NA. 52. Fierst, “A View of the Jewish Problem”; Acheson to Truman, May 2, 1946, 840.48 Refugees/5–246, SD, NA; Kochavi, Post-Holocaust Politics, pp. 138–139; Wahl memo, May 3, 1946, A431/3, CZA. 53. Acheson to Truman, May 2, 1946, 840.48 Refugees/5–245, SD, NA; Fierst, “A View of the Jewish Problem”; Fierst to Rifkind, May 2, 1946, Rifkind MSS. 54. Fierst, “A View of the Jewish Problem.” 55. Ibid.; Ben-Gurion to Paula, May 20, 1946, David Ben-Gurion Archives, Sdeh Boker, Israel; Wahl memo, May 3, 1946, A431/3, CZA. 56. Foreign Relations of the United States (hereafter FRUS), 1946, vol. 7 (Washington, DC, 1969), 501–502. Another indication of Hilldring’s personal sentiments vis-à-vis the Holocaust survivors and Palestine as their choice of haven (seconded by Patterson) is his speech to the UJA’s national conference at the end of that year. JTA, December 2, 1946. 57. FRUS, 1946, vol. 7, 597–599. 58. Penkower, Palestine to Israel, 216–217; Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation, My Years in the State Department (New York, 1969), 173. Acheson’s memoir makes no mention of the entire border issue during this period. 59. Clark to Shertok, May 14, 1946, Z5/814; McNarney to Hutcheson, May 13, 1946, S26/9600; Wahl to Kenen, May 10, 1946, A431/3; all in CZA. John Whiting, Director of the US zone in Germany, could now inform the Legal Advisor that the Third Army chief and General Bull had informed him that “persecutee” could also include members of a group which had been persecuted. That would apply to Jews now infiltrating from other parts of Europe,

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he noted, though they not have been persecuted. Whiting to Legal Advisor, June 4, 1946, Box 66,483, UNRRA, UN. 60. JTA, May 20, 1946; Jon and David Kimche, The Secret Roads: The “Illegal” Movement of a People (New York, 1955), chap. 10. Hilldring still hoped to resettle DPs in the US zone on a unilateral or bilateral basis, which drew skepticism from a member of State’s Bureau of International Organization Affairs (OA). With a memo to OA deputy chief Duward Sandifer and director Alger Hiss of Special Political Affairs (SPA), P. M. Barnett urged that the whole international picture required that a plan be formulated on a broader basis than simply the US zone or even the British zone. Barnett memo, May 22, 1946,840.48 Refugees/5–2246, SD, NA. The Mosad L’Aliya Bet was a branch of the Jewish Agency’s paramilitary organization Hagana, focusing on immigration to Palestine in violation of British restrictions. 61. Penkower, Palestine to Israel, 227–230; Wahl to Kenen, June 5, 1946, A431/3, CZA. 62. Patterson to Truman, June 11, 1946, PSF 157, HSTL; Penkower, Palestine to Israel, 229–230. 63. Eleanor Roosevelt, “Crisis for Jews,” New York World-Telegram, June 22, 1946; Roosevelt to Truman, June 16, 1946; Truman to Roosevelt, June 20, 1946; both in file 4560, Eleanor Roosevelt MSS., Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, Hyde Park, New York. For her shift in attitude, including a strong support for a Jewish state in Palestine when serving later on the US delegation at the UN General Assembly, see Monty Noam Penkower, The Holocaust and Israel Reborn: From Catastrophe to Sovereignty (Urbana, 1994), chap. 11. 64. Bernstein to Kenen, June 28, 1946, DPs—Immigration 1946–48, American Jewish Committee Archives, New York City; Hoffman memo, June 19, 1946, S25/10164, CZA. For Hoffman’s later reminiscences, see Chaim Yahil, “Peulot HaMishlahat HaEretz Yisraelit B’Sh’eirit HaPleita, 1945–1948,” Yalkut Moreshet 30 (November 1980): 7–40, and 30–31 (April 1981): 133–176. 65. Bernstein to Kenen, June 29, 1946, DPs—Immigration 1946–48, American Jewish Committee Archives, New York City; Notes of Jewish Council meeting, June 11, 1946, box 66,483, Germany Mission, UNRRA, UNA. 66. McNarney to War Department, June 23, 1946, CCS 383.6, RG 218, NA; Kochavi, Post-Holocaust Politics, 139–140. 67. Caustin memo, June 13, 1946, Box 2738; LaGuardia to Gale, June 26, 1946, Box 2739; both in Fiorello LaGuardia MSS., LaGuardia Community College, New York City. The Yugoslav political police and army viewed the bricha as an anti-British movement, which aroused their sympathies. Kimche, The Secret Roads, 94. — 123 —

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68. LaGuardia to Byrnes, June 26, 1946, Poland, UNRRA, UNA. 69. Penkower, Palestine to Israel, 240. 70. FRUS, 1946, vol. 5 (Washington, DC, 1976), 174. 71. Wahl to Grossman, July 22, 1946, A431/8, CZA; Krane report, July 10, 1946, Box 66,021, UNRRA, UNA. The Austrian point occurred where the railroad crossed from Salzburg to Munich. The five points along the Czech-US zone border included Hof, Selb, Tirschenreuth, Furth-im-Wald, and Pocking. 72. Dwork to Kubowitzki, July 22, 1946, file 275/16, WJC; Wahl to Grossman, July 22, 1946, A431/8, CZA; Fierst, “A View of the Jewish Problem.” The other Jewish leaders present were Wahl, the JDC’s Moses Leavitt, the WJC’s C. Irving Dwork and Ignacy Schwartzbart, the American Zionist Emergency Council’s DC representative Benjamin Akzin, the American Jewish Committee’s Simon Segal, and Hadassah president Judith Epstein. 73. FRUS, 1946, vol. 5, 175; Fierst, “A View of the Jewish Problem.” 74. Wahl to Grossman, July 23, 1946, file 275/16, WJC; Fierst, “A View of the Jewish Problem”; Kochavi, Post-Holocaust Politics, 141; Bauer, Flight and Rescue, 248–249; Bernstein memo to McNarney, August. 2, 1946, Philip Bernstein MSS., Rochester, New York (courtesy of Rabbi Bernstein), now in the Rush Rhees Library, University of Rochester. For Truman’s decision not to accept the Morrison-Grady team’s plan of provisional autonomy, see Penkower, Palestine to Israel, 245–249. 75. Kochavi, Post-Holocaust Politics, 141–142, 178; Bein to Schwartz, August 22, 1946, file 207A, WJC. 76. Kochavi, Post-Holocaust Politics, 177; Kimche, The Secret Roads, 90–93; Michael R. Marrus, The Unwanted: European Refugees in the Twentieth Century (Oxford, 1985), 338; FRUS, 1946, vol. 5, 178–187. For additional developments in Austria the same month, see FRUS, 1946, vol. 5, 185–186; Bauer, Out of the Ashes, 116. 77. Bauer, Out of the Ashes, 121; Leo W. Schwarz, The Redeemers, A Saga of the Years 1945–1952 (New York, 1953), 153–155. For the Jewish Agency’s deliberations in Paris that August, endorsing “the establishment of a viable Jewish State in an adequate area of Palestine,” see Penkower, Palestine to Israel, 251–253. For the publication of the Babylonian Talmud, see Gerd Korman “Survivors’ Talmud and the U.S. Army,” American Jewish History 73:3 (March 1984): 252–285. 78. Fierst, “A View of the Jewish Problem.” According to Fierst’s later evaluation of the period from V-E Day to 1950, of the 200,000 Jewish DPs under US

— 124 —

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Army care, 145,000 settled in Israel, 46,000 in the United States, and 9,000 elsewhere. Series 2, DPs and the US Military, Fierst MSS. 79. Harry S. Truman, Memoirs by Harry S.Truman, vol. 1, Years of Decision (New York, 1955), 164; Wahl to Grossman, August 27, 1946, A431/12, CZA. Also see John H. Hilldring and Velma H. Cassidy, American Policy in Occupied Areas (Washington, DC, 1947). 80. Schwarz, The Redeemers, 155–156; New York Times, September 7, 1946; Mankowitz, Life between Memory and Hope, 303.Thanks to Fierst’s suggestion to Niles for Truman’s consideration, Hilldring would later serve as the President’s representative on the US delegation at the UN, where he took a key role in its ultimate support of the General Assembly’s vote on November 29, 1947, in favor of Jewish statehood in a partitioned Palestine. See Monty Noam Penkower, Palestine to Israel: Mandate to State, 1945–1948, vol. 2, Into the International Arena (New York, 2019), 447–448, 509, 511, 516, 560, 511, 704. Following Hilldring’s burial in Arlington Cemetery after his death on January 20, 1974, Fierst praised his “extraordinary role in preserving Jews who survived the Holocaust,” played by the man who often referred to himself as “just a simple soldier.” Near East Report 18:5 (January 30, 1974): 19.

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At 6:15 on the morning of March 29, 1946, the Jews living in Center 664 of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Association (UNRRA) Team 502 camp on the outskirts of Stuttgart, part of the American-occupied zone in post-World War II Germany, were awakened by extraordinary noises in the street. Looking out of their windows in a series of apartment houses on upper Reinsbergstrasse, these approximately 1,400 Holocaust survivors, their Jewish identity hidden under the Allied designation “Displaced Persons” (DPs), saw a shocking vision that Friday. Some 200 German policemen appeared with a sound truck and a few dogs straining at their leashes. From the truck an order was broadcast in Polish that a raid was in progress, authorized by the US Military Government. The green-uniformed police armed with US Army carbines, the police officers and civil agents with pistols, blocked all entrances to the Jewish center and the single houses. Motor vehicles supplied with loud speakers drove along the streets, proclaiming that all inhabitants were to leave their billets immediately except for women having babies up to one-year-old and those sick confined to bed. Vividly recalling the nightmarish scenes of Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS) soldiers brutally evacuating the wartime ghettos of Poland with the aid of Ukrainian collaborators, the residents had no idea what would happen next. Doors were kicked open and residents roughly handled. Thinking that, as had occurred in the recent postwar past, they would be removed to another restricted camp, most began to bundle their belongings. No one could explain the presence of German police, given an American ordinance that this could only occur under the direct supervision of the US military authorities. In fact, only eight American Military Personnel (MPs) appeared with no

A Murder and Its Aftermath

officer in charge, showing scant interest in what was transpiring and soon disappearing from the tumultuous scene. A troop of German policemen came to the guard room of the Jewish DP police and summoned those on duty to surrender the five weapons stored there. Dr. Schechter, commander-in-chief of the camp police, refused to do so, declaring that he had received them from the American authorities, and was only allowed to give them back to those forces. When he locked up the arms, the Germans occupied the guard room. Meanwhile, other troops entered several Jewish lodgings, some taking packets of cigarettes, clothing, and boxes of canned food. Photographs and wall paper were torn from apartments, the curtains to the Bialik Library ripped down by a policeman who remarked “this is too nice for you.” The chairman of the Jewish committee, Marek (Meyer) Gutmann, intended to leave his room in order to communicate with the UNRRA and US military authorities, but two German policemen prevented him. Finally, accompanied by a German policeman, he was permitted to go to a Red Cross ambulance nearby. Eighteen-year-old Kurant Benesch, told by a German secret agent to “make haste, make haste, damned Jew, today we shall make an end with you,” eventually went downstairs after a scuffle only to be “beaten to blood” by several policemen. Trying to defend himself, he was handcuffed, much like several others in different Jewish dwellings. Benesch’s neighbors rushed to his side; a Jewish militiaman attempted to release him. The Germans fired and wounded the militiaman in the leg. Aroused by the sound of shooting and the sight of blood, the Jews cried, “Clear out the murderers!” Men and women ran to their houses and grabbed cans, pots, and sticks, calling for resistance against the invaders. At the sight of the angry advancing Jews, the Germans retreated to nearby Rotenwaldstrasse with their rifles at the ready. In the street, small groups of Jews continued to congregate, furious at the hostile attitude exhibited by the German police, together with the beatings, the plunder of private property, and the chaining of innocents. The absence of UNRRA and MP personnel added to the sense of abandonment “from the outside.” The humiliation suffered, so read the subsequent report of the Central Committee of the Liberated Jews in the American Occupation Zone of Germany, made clear “all their tragic situation and excited in the highest degree their state of mind.” Sparked — 127 —

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at the first shots fired by the police, even in the direction of apartment windows, many Jews began to run away, seeking shelter in the halls of nearest buildings. “Get out from our houses,” “do not let them enter our homes,” and other cries were heard. Several of the policemen had told Jews that they were ordered beforehand to load their guns and keep them in readiness for shooting during the raid. Twenty-six Jews were placed under arrest and taken away. About two hundred men and women moved toward the police cordon at Rotenwaldstrasse, hurling bottles and pots. The Germans fired another volley and wounded three more men, one of whom later testified that he heard one of these policemen say “today is your payday.” Shmuel (Samuel) Danziger was about to throw an empty gasoline can. Walking over to him from behind, German police sergeant Hoch fired at his head with a pistol from less than ten feet away. The thirtyfive-year-old Radom native, who had recently returned from a sanitarium in Paris to join his pregnant wife, Rivka née Mandelbaum, and his two children, instantly dropped to the pavement. Having survived incarceration in the camps of Auschwitz, Mauthausen, and Gusen, Danziger died instantly. At that moment, American MPs arrived with an armored car. Ordered to withdraw immediately, the German police did so. The police cars left behind by the Germans were then demolished with Molotov cocktails by the Jews. Danziger’s funeral took place that same afternoon. As part of the security precautions taken now by the US Military Government, the Jews of the UNRRA camp were not permitted to march to the cemetery. Instead, they were driven in a convoy of sixty Third Infantry Division trucks through the city streets to the Jewish burial grounds of the Bad Constatt cemetery, in Stuttgart’s oldest city district. The cemetery of this suburb, an area once visited by Caesar’s Roman legions because of its healthful waters and later a meeting place for Europe’s nobility, had been contracted between the city and the Jewish community in the 1930s, with the first Jew interred there in 1940. Danziger, a confirmed Zionist reared in Jewish traditions by his father, Noah, a Hebrew scholar and teacher in pre-war Radom, was buried with military honors.1 The tragic denouement of what occurred in what was then popularly known as the “Radomer Center,” owing to the fact that the majority of its inhabitants were Jews formerly from Radom, begins appropriately in that Polish city. Located in Kielce province sixty-two — 128 —

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miles from Warsaw, it first attracted Jewish visitors to the sessions of the Sejm or to the tribunal of the treasury between 1613 and 1764. The Jewish settlement only began to develop after 1814, the 25,159 Jews present in 1931 reaching 23.3 percent of the city’s population. Playing a considerable role between the two world wars in the development of local commerce and industry, both as entrepreneurs and as workers, their organizations included a merchants’ and artisans’ bank; trade unions; numerous welfare institutions, including a hospital and an old age home; yeshivot; synagogues and Hasidic shteiblakh; various schools; newspapers and five libraries.2 In 1939, more than 30,000 Jews, comprising 33 percent of the total population, lived in Radom. The German Wehrmacht entered the city on September 8, and immediately subjected the Jews to persecution. During the first months of the Nazi occupation, about 2,000 Jews from the Poznan and Lodz provinces were expelled to the city. That December, 1,840 local Jews were expelled to the smaller towns in the Kielce province. In August 1940, about 2,000 young men and women were deported to slave labor camps in the Lublin district, where almost all of them perished. In March 1941, a decree for the establishment of the ghetto was issued, and by April 7, the entire Jewish population was concentrated in two separate ghettos. At the beginning of 1942, the Nazis conducted a number of terror operations within the ghettos, among them an “action” of February 19 (“Bloody Thursday”), when 40 to 50 men were shot in the large ghetto, and on April 18 another 21 men were shot and 60 deported to the town of Oświęcim (Auschwitz). On the night of April 27–28, about 70 men were killed in both ghettos and another 100 deported to the concentration camp in Auschwitz. On August 5, 1942, the smaller ghetto was liquidated by a special unit of the German Security Police aided by Ukrainian collaborators, about 600 older people and children were shot at the assembly point, and more than 8,000 people from both ghettos deported to the Treblinka death camp. On August 16–17, the larger ghetto was liquidated, 1,500 who tried to resist were shot on the spot, and 18,000 from both ghettos sent to the gas chambers of Treblinka. Within the part of the ghetto that was transformed into two slave labor camps, only about 4,000 Jews remained. On December 4, some 800 inmates of the large ghetto were deported to Szydłowiec in the Kielce district and later murdered. On January 13, 1943, another 1,500 prisoners from there — 129 —

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were deported to Treblinka. On November 8, about 100 prisoners were shot and the remainder transferred to the smaller forced labor camp in the city. On July 26, 1944, most, joined by about 1,000 Jews evacuated from the Majdanek death camp, were deported to Auschwitz, where only a handful survived. The last 300 prisoners were liberated by the Soviet Red Army on January 16, 1945.3 At the time of the mass deportations in August 1942, hundreds of Jews in the area, mostly those who had escaped from Radom, fled to the forests to organize guerrilla units. Almost all of the partisans fell in battles with the Germans. A few dozen who fled Radom reached Warsaw and took part in the Polish Warsaw uprising in August and September 1944. In the whole Radom district, 380,000 Jews lost their lives during the German occupation. Many Jews settled in Radom for a short time after World War II, numbering 1,198 in the summer of 1945, and set up a district Jewish committee, a house of prayer, and a shelter. This number quickly diminished, however, due to the hostility of the Polish population, including beatings, assault and murder. They were, in the words of the first UNRRA director in Stuttgart, “unwilling strangers in an unhappy land.”4 The “Radomer Center” opened its doors under UNRRA auspices on August 25, 1945. Some survivors of the Vaihingen concentration camp, a subcamp of Natzweiler-Struthof ninety miles from Stuttgart, had been taken by French liberators after seven weeks of health recuperation to the US zone of occupation in Germany. Chaplain Abraham Haselkorn of Poughkeepsie, New York, was instrumental in securing Schloss Langenzelle, ten miles from Heidelberg, an ideally located place in the country, for their convalescence. By then, many of the liberated Radomers felt strong enough to set out in search of their families. Those who remained in Langenzelle castle attempted to organize their daily lives. A committee was selected to care for the distribution of American food supplies, to maintain order and discipline, and to introduce some recreation and cultural activity. Most of the men took advantage of the Hebrew and English courses; some were attracted by the swimming and boating facilities at the nearby lake. Many high-ranking officials and guests from the United States, including Jewish Agency for Palestine political director Moshe Sharett (then Shertok) and Earl Harrison, President Harry S. Truman’s special envoy to inspect the Jewish DP centers, visited and expressed their — 130 —

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satisfaction at the progress made by the survivors towards a new life. Radomers freed from other Nazi camps began to arrive at Schloss Langenzelle to join their relatives and friends. Many separated couples were reunited there. In a short time, the quarters became overcrowded, unsuited for family life. American officials Miss Ostrey of the UNRRA and Mr. Hatler of the US Military Government showed a deep concern for the Jews, and did their utmost to make them as comfortable as possible. Come August, they secured apartment buildings in Stuttgart for the DPs, with the necessary conveniences and essential items of furniture. Jews liberated from camps in Germany, Austria, and Hungary heard about the unusual comforts provided by the UNRRA in Stuttgart, and they flocked daily to the center’s office for registration. After some time, the population reached about two thousand men, women, and children, the majority people originally from Radom. The UNRRA administrators of the center, whose first director was Harry V. Lerner of Omaha and then Washington, DC, showed great understanding of the unique problems of these Holocaust survivors now living on German soil. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) supplemented the limited rations allotted by the US military authorities. In contrast to other DP camps, where food was served in communal halls, the Stuttgart residents received individual food rations for preparation in their own kitchens. In this way, at least, some semblance of home life was preserved. The Radomers in Stuttgart were given a free hand in directing the internal affairs of the center. The Central Committee, considered the official representation of the camp, immediately began to organize some aspects of life in these new surroundings. The major goal of the rehabilitation work was to prepare the people for emigration to Palestine, then under British Mandate, where they might rebuild their broken lives. In cooperation with the UNRRA, a health center was organized containing a clinic and a ten-bed hospital. The staff of volunteers, consisting of five doctors and five nurses, provided medical care for nearly two thousand people. As a means of preventing diseases, periodic inoculations and check-ups were compulsory. One of the center buildings on Reinsburgstrasse was equipped to serve as a school for the growing number of young people and children. Opened as a primary school with 36 students, the Bialik School, named in honor of Zionism’s first national poet, grew in scope with the addition — 131 —

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of a high school whose enrollment rose to 125 students with a teaching staff of 18. The school was accredited by both the Military Government and the Jewish Agency. Its graduates were later accepted to many high schools and colleges in their newly adopted countries. At its peak enrollment, the school had 300 students with 19 instructors. In 1946, the school was taken over by ORT (Organization for Rehabilitation and Training), which enlarged the courses and supplied the necessary equipment. Students were trained as electricians, locksmiths, automobile repairmen, dental technicians, photographers, cinematographers, and bookkeepers. The courses for women included dressmaking and millinery. With the assistance of the Jewish Agency, the Central Committee also organized vocational courses for men and women. A seventeen-member choir was organized in the center. Arrangements were made with Radio Stuttgart to use their facilities for special holiday programs, featuring the choir and appropriate shows prepared by the Bialik School children. The first Hanuka program was broadcast throughout Germany. On Jewish holidays and festivals, the students gave dramatic presentations in the Stuttgart Theater. The first High Holy Day services after the Holocaust were held in the Stuttgart Opera House and attended by center residents and Jewish members of the United States occupation forces. The Radomer Center had the distinction of having published the first Yiddish magazine in postwar Germany. At first, all twenty-three pages were hand-printed and reproduced by an offset press. The second issue, done in the same manner a month later in January, 1946, contained sixty pages. Receiving wide distribution, Ojf Der Frei (Free Again), attained considerable notice beyond Stuttgart; Yiddish type was acquired later. At the end of September 1945, then Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces (SHAEF) commander Dwight D. Eisenhower, in charge of US Army headquarters in Europe, made an inspection tour of the Stuttgart DP center and voiced his satisfaction with the varied rehabilitation projects undertaken. Overruling a local US military officer, he permitted the people to cook their own meals in the apartment kitchens rather than in a large communal hall, thus preserving some illusion of home life. One month later, Jewish Agency executive chairman David Ben-Gurion paid a visit, and discussed with the Central Committee plans for an underground immigration to Palestine to counter the highly — 132 —

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restrictive British entry quotas. In February 1946, Eleanor Roosevelt was warmly greeted by the center population, during which time she showed an interest in the people’s aspirations. The residents also welcomed the visits of Congressman Jacob Javits of New York, representatives of Jewish welfare organizations, and members of the Palestinian Jewish Brigade, as well as a host of renowned entertainers and writers, primarily from the United States.5 Significantly, a three-day visit in early February to the Stuttgart camp and four others in the US zone by Bartley Crum and Frederick Leggett of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine found that almost all of the Jewish residents whom they had interviewed desired to go to Palestine. A vote organized in these locations by the UNRRA showed that of 19,311 refugees, 18,702 wanted to go there, 393 to the United States, 13 to Germany, and the remainder elsewhere. UNRRA director Harry Lerner told the two visitors that it was impossible to organize Stuttgart camp life along any lines other than Zionist. Camp chairman Gutmann declared that “if the democratic world had really wanted to deal properly with Hitler, he would not have won his war against the Jews to such an extent.” In his view, the survivors of the Holocaust felt that, since “70 percent of Hitler anti-Semitism remains in Germany,” their only ultimate security lay in building a home of their own in Palestine, where the Jews could defend themselves against any Arab violence. All Jewish refugees should be released from DP camps immediately, Crum concluded, for they “will be ruined spiritually and psychologically” if they were not enabled to settle in permanent homes.6 Overtures elsewhere on behalf of Jewish DPs during the last week of March 1946, coupled with such promising developments in the Stuttgart camp, gave little indication of what transpired on March 29. Two days earlier, at an UNRRA council meeting held in US zone headquarters in Germany, the director of field operations had reported that the commanding general of the Third Army, in charge of the southern part of the country where most of the Jews in the American zone resided, would likely approve the creation of self-supporting farms in the Jewish DP camps. A meeting was scheduled for March 29 at Frankfurt to pursue the matter further. Other issues that were raised that Wednesday included the use of ration coupon books, the lifting of Army curfew in light of the approaching holiday of Passover, and the setting up of collection points for the future movement of Jewish — 133 —

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children to Marseille and from there to Palestine. Simon H. Rifkind, Federal Judge on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and currently advisor to Eisenhower on Jewish affairs, informed the American Jewish Conference in New York City of his receiving positive assurances that the request for farm lands would be granted by the US authorities. He also advised two executives of the World Jewish Congress that while Jewish advisors were not “so necessary” in Germany at present, it was very important to have a prominent leader from the American Jewish organizations who could influence the military authorities.7 At the same time, an UNRRA representative at the March 27 council gathering had noted a number of incidents in the past few days against DPs and Allied personnel, leading those present to agree that the matter was “somewhat serious and worthy of consideration.” It was decided to place this matter on the agenda for the next meeting. One day earlier, the Central Committee of the Liberated Jews in the American Occupation Zone had warned UNRRA director General Frederick E. Morgan of antagonistic incidents by Army and UNRRA personnel toward Holocaust survivors in Bamberg and Fürth. American chaplain Abraham Klausner, a “father figure” for the more than 30,000 emaciated survivors found at the Dachau concentration camp shortly after it was liberated in April 1945, reported to the JDC in New York City that forceful actions by the Army to transport Jews out of these two cities, and particularly what had just transpired in Stuttgart, gave him the feeling that “we face our most serious problem at this time. The great tragedy is that we have no one here in Europe to go bat for us.”8 Nor were these isolated incidents. On February 6, 1946, German police had stopped Jews in Lampertheim and searched their luggage, while American troops forced protesting Jews off the street and conducted a series of unauthorized raids on the houses where Jews were living. One week later, a raid on the Jewish DP camp in Zeilsheim against alleged black market activity, carried out by several MPs and German civilian police who took clothing, bolts of cloth, cigarettes, shoes, watches, and candy, was followed by the discovery that the cigarettes and food items had been given to workers in the camp and had come from Red Cross packages. In late February, a Jew was murdered in Munich; the Central Committee’s official mouthpiece Unzer Veg (Our Way) reported a month later that “another victim,” Yaakov Greenblatt, — 134 —

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had been killed in Gruenwald near Munich. An assault on March 29 by two German policemen against four young Jewish DPs in Munich coincided with the publication by German officials of a statement that all Jews in that city had to turn in their ration cards and were to be fed by the UNRRA, as well as a declaration from the German Labor Offices specifying who was to be covered by that organization and who was required to work. The same day, German policemen in Holzhausen attacked with rubber truncheons a group of young Jews who were out searching for discarded machines or engines to be used in connection with their newly created vocational school.9 Meeting on March 31, the Central Committee of the Liberated Jews in the American Occupation Zone of Germany lodged a formal protest to the US Military Government. Taking account of what had just taken place in Stuttgart, together with related occurrences elsewhere, it charged that the local authorities were acting “directly in opposition” to the orders issued by Truman, Eisenhower, and other leading American personalities, which “requires a preference granted to the Jewish population and a betterment of their situation.” Instead, “the German population is always privileged and the political, moral, and specific economical [sic] interests of the Jews are sacrificed.” “Under the mask of struggling against black market or of investigating [a] few weapons, they lead an antisemitic rush expressed through violations of individuals . . . and communities.” Jews had now become “martyrs under the free American flag.” The various instances cited proved that “the successors of Nazism are still alive and lead further the bestial Nazi-work through various ways.” Asking if such actions reflected the “liberation” of the remaining survivors, providing the necessary conditions for the rehabilitation and healing of “the profound wounds of the Jewish people,” the Central Committee called upon “the world’s conscience” to fulfill certain demands. First and foremost, the pain of the Holocaust’s remaining victims had finally to come to an end, and the gates of Palestine should be opened, “where we shall build ourselves our life.” Until then, US officialdom had to forbid the entry of the German police into the Jewish DP camps; arm the Jewish police in order to guarantee the lives of the Jews in Germany; the Jews should only be under the jurisdiction of American military authorities; and no emigration action should be taken against the will of the Central Committee. It awaited the world’s reply.10 — 135 —

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Four-star Lt. General Joseph T. McNarney, the current Military Governor of Occupied Germany as successor to Eisenhower, whom Truman had named US Army Chief of Staff to replace George C. Marshall in November 1945, responded by issuing an order preventing German police from entering all Jewish DP camps under his jurisdiction. Also serving as Commander-in-Chief of US forces in the European Theater, he had earlier proven sympathetic on humanitarian grounds to the infiltration of survivors from Poland into the American zone of Germany. McNarney understood that the Stuttgart crisis had to be resolved quickly lest the tension spread to other DP centers. As if to bear this out, a report from Munich on March 31 related that a Jewish refugee and an American soldier at the Seidlung camp nearby were stabbed two days earlier after the refugees had reportedly attacked a Polish guard at the camp. The DPs charged that several shots had been fired into their quarters, and claimed that the Pole was responsible. US military police arrested three German girls, a Polish WAC (Women’s Army Corps), a Polish MP, and four refugees.11 McNarney’s order satisfied American Jewish Congress president and veteran Zionist spokesman Stephen Wise, who had privately suggested this move to Rifkind, but that did not go far enough for fellow Jew Emanuel Celler. The feisty US Congressman from Brooklyn demanded that summary action be taken against all US Army personnel guilty of “abuse of discretion” in the Stuttgart camp raid. He also urged that the German police involved, “with their Nazi methods,” be summarily punished. High military authorities in Washington refused to comment on the raid, however. A spokesman in Washington for the Civil Affairs Division of the War Department told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on March 31 that no report has been received as yet from the military authorities in the Stuttgart area, and that no such report has been requested.12 In point of fact, McNarney had officially requested a special inquiry, which was to be conducted—the order only issued on April 9 from Lt. General Geoffrey Keyes—by Col. Edward G. Farrand, the Third Army’s Deputy Chief of Staff, and Lt. Col. John D. Cone, DP officer of the Third Army. While preparation of that report went forward, a preliminary UNRRA investigation disclosed that the raid in Stuttgart on suspected black market activities and the illegal printing of German food ration coupons had been authorized by US Major Robert Stimson, Military — 136 —

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Government Detachment Commander for the city, and Captain Bond, his Public Safety Officer, without notifying the UNRRA team of the pending operation as required by a US military directive of March 7. (The Military Government Detachment of Stuttgart stated, in response, that they had not as yet received the document in question.) The results of the raid, the UNRRA memorandum emphasized, “has undermined the faith of the Jewish DPs in the type of treatment that they will receive from U.S. Army units.” “Shakedowns in different camps” had taken place, but while the maintenance of law and order was essential, the method and treatment of the DPs given by members of the raiding parties called for criticism. The US Army’s attitude should be questioned on additional grounds, the early UNRRA report went on. On several occasions, statements had been made that such and such a DP camp would be closed or expected to be closed, with Army officials urging the occupants to return to “their own countries.” Simply put, this reflected “a veiled threat.” Recently, an American DP officer posted such a notice, adding that the governments of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were urging that the Holocaust survivors return to their countries. Finally, the US Army in many cases desired to move groups of DPs to different camps, thereby creating a “situation of unrest.”13 David Clearfield, the UNRRA Deputy Director at the Stuttgart camp, was more explicit. Shortly after the raid, he informed an Associated Press reporter that during the two-hour riot, the German police had shot down “defenseless” Jews, who had not returned fire. Moreover, there were no hidden weapons among the DPs, a fact the US military subsequently confirmed. Shortly before Clearfield made this charge, Major Stimson said that the German police reported they had been fired upon first, and he would investigate. Stuttgart UNRRA Director Harry Lerner, who rushed to the camp before the end of this worst riot since American troops took over their zone of Germany, repeated that the Jews had no weapons in the camp. Clearfield added that the cigarettes and candy seized had been acquired legally, the Jews having just been given them in Red Cross packages, and that the eight American MPs who originally accompanied the raiders had left and not returned for one full hour.14 Lerner’s official report on April 1 related how he and Clearfield had reached the area after Danziger had been killed, saw him lying in the — 137 —

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street, and that the German lieutenant in charge invoked Captain Bond as the American official on whose authority he had conducted the raid. Although asked by Lerner to withdraw his men as “an inflammatory factor” and that the police’s mission could not be accomplished under present circumstances without further bloodshed, the officer refused to do so. Deciding that he personally could not improve the situation, Lerner went to the UNRRA offices. Following a telephone call from Clearfield, some MPs arrived at about 8 a.m. Eventually, the DPs withdrew to their quarters and the German police left the area. Lerner had not received prior notice of any attempted raid or “shakedown” at the DP center.15 Field Supervisor Ralph D. Metzger, ordered by UNRRA Deputy District Director Codding to proceed to the scene of the riot, took testimony from Lerner and Clearfield on March 29. Other than adding the German lieutenant’s remark to Lerner that the American MPs had left to secure additional troops, Metzger reported that about 11 a.m., General Hobart R. Gay arrived in order to hear what had occurred. Hobart’s assessment was severe: “very poor judgment had been shown in sending such a large force of German police to conduct this search accompanied by such a small force of American military personnel, and that a thorough investigation would be instituted at once.” Gay authorized a sufficient number of trucks for practically the entire camp population to attend Danziger’s funeral under escort of the Military Police and District Constabulary. A military guard was maintained at the DP camp until the morning of March 31.16 General Keyes, the newly appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Third Army, had issued an order on February 6, 1946, stating that the German police, in assistance with American MPs, had the right to enter DP camps in order to “control” a camp and “remove unauthorized property when evidence proves it to be such.” He did so “to uphold law and order.” Receiving this directive, Lerner had met with several officers in the local US Military Government, noted that the order was “discretionary,” and obtained their agreement as to the use of American personnel together with the use of DP police if desired. This document and Keyes’s order were published in the UNRRA Stuttgart camp center. As late as March 30, the Assistant Adjutant General at Third Army headquarters informed the Office of Military Government for Bavaria that with the exception of those camps under Soviet internal administration, — 138 —

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Military Government would specifically authorize German police under the supervision of US military personnel to enter DP camps to carry out “searches and seizures,” to “apprehend suspects,” and to secure evidence “upon presentation of reasonable proof “ of the necessity for “the maintenance of public order.”17 A full week before the special investigation that McNarney had requested reached its conclusion, the Director of Intelligence for the US Zone submitted his own periodic report on April 5. In his view, the Stuttgart killing “was not an isolated incident,” preceded, for example, by a few cases in Germany of blatant antisemitism. These included the merchant who would not give lumber for the coffins of two Jewish boys who were killed in an automobile accident and the US military halting a small-scale riot between Germans and Jews on March 28 at Oberrimsingen. Stuttgart German Police Chief Karl Weber, asked if he did not think the job of raiding DP camps had better be left to Americans, replied thus: “The German police knew better than Americans what they were looking for and how to find it.” For “thirteen years and longer,” he went on, the German police “knew what to look for” in their “raids against the Jewish people.” In light of these striking phenomena, the Director of Intelligence’s report reached a trenchant conclusion: “Too much stress cannot be laid on the terrific disillusionment which exists in the minds of all people who were liberated from Nazism. . . . No amount of American orientation or American indoctrinated democracy can purge the minds of the German people of the antisemitism which was fostered during the years of Nazi power.” 18 The initial German reports immediately after the camp riot appeared to confirm the latter contention. According to local police information given to the Stuttgarter Zeitung, the first shot came from a corner house, which in turn was answered by German fire. The hurling by DPs of jerry cans, stones, milk cans, and pieces of iron led to police shooting for about ten minutes, which included the killing of Danziger. The police Press Agency’s official report, submitted to the US Military Government, stressed that the block of Jewish apartments in the upper Reinsburgstrasse had been the center of an “extensive black-marketing” in various goods, which caused “serious disturbances in the food supply schedule” for the city. Knowing that a number of “inmates” in the houses were in possession of weapons, the police ordered at the start of the raid that almost all assemble on the ground floor of each house. At about — 139 —

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7 a.m. a great number of “Poles” (the word “Jew” went unmentioned) violently attacked the police, who retreated to the public gardens in order “to prevent bloodshed from the very beginning.” Having no choice but to fire against the advancing mob, the chief of the Schutzpolizeiabteilung gave the order to shoot “in the air.” As the “Poles” continued to press forward, direct shots were fired by the police to protect themselves. One Pole (unnamed), who had previously “repeatedly hit with a can” a policeman, was killed and some others wounded. Ultimately, the German police quitted the area at the order of the American MPs.19 A very lengthy report on April 1 to Col. Farrand from police chief Karl Weber, the same individual who had earlier remarked that “for thirteen years and longer” the German police “knew what to look for” in their “raids against the Jewish people,” completely exonerated the conduct of his men that March 29. In his telling, the majority of the “inhabitants of the Israelitic [sic] quarters “almost exclusively” engaged in the black market; often took “an aggressive attitude” towards the German population and especially the shopkeepers in the neighborhood; and the “general conditions” in which they lived “made a not ineffective propaganda in the sense that Hitler was right with his antisemitism.” Moreover, the city’s inhabitants had concluded that the “Poles,” notwithstanding the fact that they had been “persecuted,” could not have “a clear conscience, otherwise they would not refuse to return to their native country.” Shopkeepers reported the continuous, illegal slaughtering of cattle; many “Poles” had weapons. Instances of the stealing of ration cards abounded, as did the molesting of German civilians. The American military knew of these circumstances and approved on March 28 of the raid. In the police chief’s judgment, “a thorough [police] action was indispensable.” The next morning, Weber continued, 120 Protection Police and 100 Criminal Police advanced on the area, the few accompanying MPs “obviously having no detailed directives as to their participation in this action.” Despite instances of assault and some “Poles” urging inhabitants not to obey the order, the police tried “by correct and loyal conduct in every respect and by kind persuasion” to get residents to leave their apartments. Superficial searches disclosed some cans of cognac; some beef; a German automobile with trailer but no license plate; a cow and two horses “obviously” provided for an illegal slaughtering; cigarettes; coffee; eggs; ration tickets from a theft in Frankfurt; sugar; and — 140 —

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several pairs of new shoes. A big crowd, mostly men, put the policemen to flight into the upper Reinsburgerstrasse, while a “Pole” fired several pistol shots from building 187 about the time that the “tumult became stronger.” Several warning shots were then fired in the direction of that window. The MPs, who could have countered the crowd’s aggression, “remained inactive.” Some shots were fired at the police from other windows, which led to the police firing for about thirty seconds (not ten minutes as reported in the city’s newspaper). Those wounded might have been shot at from the windows. The mass “organized rebellion” could only have been prevented by a strong MP detachment, “ready to act.” The police did not use their firearms against the crowd “directly,” for otherwise “numerous Poles would have been injured or killed regarding the number of shots fired off.” In Weber’s view, counter to some assertions, the police did not apply “SS methods,” firing only in self-defense and endeavoring to avoid “any shedding of blood.” That accusation was “a serious injustice towards the goodwill that was proved by the new policemen” engaged in the action. The six police dogs did not enter any homes, and in only one case was a dog used, without resort to biting, to free a policeman from the mob. The police remained certain that the strong resistance encountered arose from the fact that a thorough search would have shown “numerous Poles” to be “recognized incontestably as black market traders and partially as criminals.” The MPs’ “insufficient” protection of the German police and the omission of any further measures against the “Poles,” in particular “omitting the final completion of the search operation,” deeply disappointed the police while “enormously” convincing the “Poles” of the value of their own police and of the support which they continued to enjoy from the Military Government. In conclusion, Weber stressed that no reason existed to give the impression that “the Stutgartters had made themselves guilty of a great offence representing a relapse into the time of the Nazi regime.”20 The report on April 5 by a Board of Officers to the commanding officer of the US Army’s Thirty-First AAA Brigade briefly summarized the raid, including the fact of one camp inhabitant killed (the murder of Danziger did not appear at all in Weber’s detailed account, nor did the word “Jew”), along with three DPs and twenty-eight German police injured. It concluded that the raid “was justified and legally executed.” The proximate cause of the riot was the belief of the camp inhabitants — 141 —

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that the German force had no authority to enter, the hatred felt towards the German uniformed police, and the paucity of American military personnel used in this raid. The police “acted throughout the engagement with admirable restraint and consideration.” The DP camp was “poorly disciplined, organized and supervised,” and “strong evidence” existed that it was “a center of lawlessness and black market activity.” On behalf of his colleagues, Col. W. M. Steward recommended to Farrand that McNarney’s order against the use of German police in future raids on DP camps “be rescinded,” and that a directive set the minimum numbers of US military personnel, German uniformed police, and German detectives in a proportion of 3:2:1. In addition, the cleaning up of conditions of lawlessness and the possible replacement of all or parts of the UNRRA Team No. 502 now in charge should be considered. Finally, closer liaison ought to be maintained between tactical military commanders and officials of Military Government, with the impetus coming from tactical commanders.21 One week later, Farrand presented his findings to General Keyes, reporting on the “incident” which occurred on March 29, with “a particular view” of replacing the UNRRA officials at Camp 664 if warranted by the results of the investigation. Agreeing with Steward’s conclusions, having read the reports of Weber and others, he noted that Major Stimson, asked by Captain Bond to authorize the raid, had received further support to do so from Lt. Gudaitus of the DP Control Section, Thirty-First AAA Brigade in Stuttgart. Stimson justified his not giving prior warning to the UNRRA officials on the assumption that his notification to Gudaitus was sufficient, and that he feared the raid would be a failure due to possible leakage of the information if Lerner had been notified beforehand. Lerner’s earlier response to Keyes’s order of February 6 explained why the inhabitants of the DP camp “had a very good reason” to believe that the German police had no right to be within their camp on the morning of the raid. Lerner had properly appointed about twenty-five camp police to maintain order, but should not have permitted a “kangaroo court” of residents to sit in judgment upon cases of minor importance. No cause for criticism was found as regards supply discipline, issuance of rations, messing, and sanitation. Both Lerner and Clearfield were “emphatic” that they knew nothing of black market and counterfeiting activities within Camp 664, and that any such activities on a large scale were taking place elsewhere in Stuttgart, outside the — 142 —

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camp. They admitted, however, that some illegal practices could well be carried out within the camp buildings and still be unknown to the camp authorities. The three-man board, Farrand concluded, decided that Lerner, a young and inexperienced man to handle such “a delicate situation,” was not “suitable” as the director. A Jew, the board felt that he was not “temperamentally suited” to the position, although it must be said that, faced with a most difficult problem, he had worked very hard to carry out his mission. No reason for criticism was found as to Clearfield and the other members of Lerner’s staff. The raid, although justified, “was very poorly handled.” The eight American MPs had not been instructed as to their duties, and did nothing which would have assisted in preventing the riot which took place. Lacking information of the authorized action beforehand, the DP Control Section of the Thirty-First AAA Brigade had assumed that it was no more than “another raid,” similar to many others which had taken place without incident in Stuttgart and vicinity. Lerner and his staff should be retained, but the UNRRA center in Camp 664 should be assigned a director “of more advanced age and of a more stable temperament.” Finally, although not called for by Keyes’s directive to the board, its members wished to recommend that every possible effort be made to remove the camp from its present location. It was located in the residential section of Stuttgart, surrounded by Germans, made up of a number of large apartment houses, and lacked any possible means of real control. Accordingly, the board thought that if Camp 664 would continue to remain there, it would be “an increasing source of trouble.”22 Following the issuance of McNarney’s order forbidding German police from entering Jewish DP centers, life at the Stuttgart camp appeared to return to normal. A day later, one American officer attached to the US occupation forces summed up the situation as follows: If the Military Government had not granted permission to the Germans to enter, “there would have been no trouble, and nobody dead at the camp.” German police commissioner Weber, on the other hand, defended the actions of his men, and expressed the opinion that his department had suffered a “loss of prestige, because it had not been permitted to complete the raid.” He told newsmen that he wished the Military Government would permit his police to return to the camp and take up where they were forced to stop after the fatal shooting. He also — 143 —

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deplored the blow to his own prestige resulting from the funeral cortege of twenty-five truckloads of Jews, which made its way from Camp 664 through the city to the Bad Constatt cemetery on Friday afternoon. The survivors, however, were “still aroused” over the raid and its aftermath. Small knots of Jews stood around, heatedly discussing the presence of soldiers and armored cars used by patrolling troops. One of these groups buttonholed the Jewish Telegraphic Agency correspondent and indignantly demanded to know “why the guns of the armored cars are pointed at us.” “We aren’t criminals,” they shouted. At that moment, the American officer in charge of the troops in the vicinity arrived, and the DPs took up their complaint with him. He immediately ordered the armored cars turned around. Shortly thereafter, he cut the number of sentries down to eight, and sent the cars away. Fels Friedman, a former resident of Radom and a prisoner in Auschwitz, declared that she had recognized one of the German police as a guard at that camp. Another DP told of having heard a local policeman say “your day is over and soon we’ll take over again.” Camp Committee chairman Gutmann observed that an American MP had failed to get the police to withdraw after the first volley of shots, and that the Stuttgarter Zeitung had helped instigate the raid by terming the camp a “black market center.”23 The Stuttgart raid stirred Jewish adviser Rifkind to take a clear, public stand on the future of the Holocaust remnants in Europe. Speaking in New York City at an American Jewish Conference reception in his honor soon thereafter, he praised the courage and devotion of the US Army, from generals to enlisted men, for their efforts in behalf of survivors currently on the Continent. Were it not for them, there would be no Jews in Central Europe today, he said. Rifkind reported that “after doubt and hesitation, the Army is making plans to make farm areas available for those of the Jewish young men who desire to prepare themselves for agricultural life in Palestine.” Calling for the immediate evacuation of all DP centers in Germany, he asserted that a mass migration of European Jews to Palestine was “the only answer” that humanity could give to the Jewish people. Should the current Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine “fail to respond to their human cry, the results will be catastrophic,” the speaker emphasized. Rifkind expressed his personal sorrow at Danziger’s murder, disclosing that he had once met and spoken in Germany with the victim. He welcomed McNarney’s order regarding the entry of German police into Jewish DP — 144 —

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centers, and voiced the hope that the presence of these police would be abolished altogether.24 The events in Stuttgart had immediate ramifications in Europe. Acceding to a request from the Central Committee of Liberated Jews in the American Zone of Germany, US Army headquarters authorized the peaceful demonstrations of 35,000 displaced Jews in seventeen camps throughout the zone on April 4, following the Jewish traditional period of initial mourning for one week after Danziger’s murder. These were held within the camp areas according to provisions contained in Army Ordnance Number 1. Cordons of US troops were thrown around several of the camps. At Munich, the Jews attempted to march out of their designated area, but were turned back at the gates. All of the assemblies dissolved “without any disorder or incident,” noted the official Army release. Concurrently, a two-day conference of the Jewish DP centers in the zone was called to protest the forced transfer of Jewish DPs, as well as the treatment of Jewish refugees by German police.25 At the Zeilsheim camp, representatives of the liberated Jews in Greater Hesse considered methods of establishing better relations between the US troops and the survivors in the DP camps. The conference also discussed plans for securing eight farms in the region for the purpose of teaching various methods of farming. In addition, the representatives heard a report from sixty harassed Jews who recently had arrived there from Breslau, the capital of what was formerly German Silesia and now renamed Wrocław in Polish territory, about the widespread antisemitism in that city. They revealed that 1,200 Jews had left Breslau for Thuringia, in the Russian zone, at the invitation of the Soviet-sponsored German government there.26 Danziger’s death prompted the American Jewish Conference to urge US Secretary of State James F. Byrnes to prosecute the officially termed “denazification” process in the American zone with increased vigor. The raid on Camp 664, declared Henry Monsky, chairman of its Interim Committee and president of B’nai B’rith, “compromised the fair name of the United States and the democratic principles for which we, as Americans, fought in World War II.” Admitting that antisemitism and other Nazi doctrines still persisted among elements of the German people, Byrnes pledged that there would be no relaxation of the denazification program. Maj. General O. P. Echols, replying as director of the Civil Affairs Division of the War Department, declared that all aspects — 145 —

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of the Danziger case were being carefully investigated, and he called attention to the new, more rigid enforcement of denazification recently put into effect. Yet, while the US Army was providing food and sufficient housing to maintain the DPs, observed Philip Bernstein, former chairman of the Army and Navy Religious Activities committee of the Jewish Welfare Board and soon to be appointed Rifkind’s successor, it was not “equipped by training or function to deal sympathetically and effectively” with psychological and spiritual problems confronting the displaced persons.27 The situation hardly changed in the next several months. Louis Levitan of Detroit, Michigan, succeeded Lerner as UNRRA director; Camp 664 remained in place. Yet in April a fourteen-year-old boy was killed in Regensburg, and at the month’s end a riot broke out in the Landsberg camp. This was triggered by a false rumor that a twelve-yearold Jewish boy had been murdered in the nearby woods by Germans, led to the injuring of eighteen local Germans, the use of many US tanks and machine gun posts to quell thousands of rioting DPs, and the arrest of nineteen Jewish men. A military court sentenced the defendants to three months, but they were spirited out long before then by a Hagana team dressed in British uniforms, brought to Genoa, and put on an “illegal” ship that reached Palestine safely. The appeal by the Central Committee of Liberated Jews to Byrnes and British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, urging that the Anglo-American Committee’s recommendation for 100,000 Palestine certificates to be given without delay to the survivors, came to naught. The Kielce pogrom on July 4 sparked a mass exodus from Poland into the US zone, raising the number of Jewish DP residents in Germany and Austria to a quarter million. Bernstein, acting with McNarney’s encouragement, obtained White House approval to keep the borders open. Three weeks after that pogrom, Isaac Feldberg was killed and several Jews wounded, together with five Germans injured, as a result of a gun battle between DPs and German police and civilians near the Föhrenwald camp, about fifteen miles from Munich.28 Dire conditions increased the pressure from survivors to enter Palestine. They had to contend with continued incarceration in the DP camps, decreased indigenous food supplies, and a slow flow of immigration to the United States despite Truman’s directive the previous December for the admission of 3,900 a month and preference given to DPs. Former New York City Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia, now UNRRA — 146 —

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Director-General, heard on his visit to the Föhrenwald and Feldafing camps that the overwhelming majority of residents wished to emigrate to Palestine. By February 1947, the soft-spoken but decisive McNarney, who had some months earlier granted official recognition to the Central Committee of Liberated Jews, giving it legal status to negotiate with the US Army and UNRRA on behalf of all survivors in Germany, publicly declared that ninety-five percent of the Jewish DPs wanted to go there. In view of their determination, he asserted, the only way to settle the Jewish problem was to allow them to immigrate to Palestine. With his authorization, Bernstein tried to persuade Bevin that all the Jews in the US zone in Germany should be permitted to enter Palestine, emphasizing that there was a strong residue of antisemitism in Germany and that “these people must not be forced to spend another winter there.” His mission ended in total failure.29 The Jewish DPs’ lot in Germany did not improve. In March, more than 130,000 participated in 231 meetings throughout the US zone, protesting the fact that they were still hemmed in behind barbed wire nearly two years after liberation. Returning the next month to the United States in order to assume his new post as senior American officer attached to the UN Military Staff Committee, succeeded in the European Theater by General Lucius Clay, McNarney declared that “displaced” Jews in Germany could not be absorbed into the local economy and that their transference to Palestine was “the only solution.” A poll showed that about seventy-five percent wished to leave for that country, he noted. Two weeks later, more than 500 survivors in the northern Bavarian town of Regensburg staged an orderly demonstration before the community synagogue to protest the hangings by the British mandatory authorities of members of the Irgun and Stern group undergrounds in Palestine. Smaller demonstrations were held in Stuttgart, Kassel, and Pocking. At the month’s end, 1,200 Jewish DPs demonstrated peacefully before the British consulate in Frankfurt to protest these hangings and to demand free immigration to the Holy Land. Responding that June to news of UNRRA’s impending liquidation, McNarney warned an emergency conference of the United Jewish Appeal (UJA) that antisemitism was still rife in some parts of Europe, and that the position of the surviving remnants of European Jewry was moving rapidly toward a crisis. He hoped that the UN would “achieve a just solution to the problem of — 147 —

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Palestine “so that the wishes of the majority of the 250,000 Jews in the DP camps to emigrate there may be fulfilled.”30 The majority recommendation by the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), which had heard the Stuttgart camp residents overwhelmingly press for admission there, to partition the contested country into a Jewish and an Arab state delighted McNarney. The Jews had “every right to be hopeful that that report signaled “the beginning of a new deal for the Jewish people,” he declared in October. Warning that trouble would “flare up” among the frustrated DPs unless action were taken in the near future, he noted that in talking with literally thousands of Jews in Germany, he realized that they had “but one thought and that is to go home, home to them is Palestine. Come what may, hunger, hardship, breaking up of families or even death, they are sustained by the single hope which can be expressed by the single word—Palestine.” Following the UN General Assembly vote on November 29, 1947, to endorse partition, McNarney expressed his trust when addressing Bernstein’s Reform congregation in Rochester, New York, that “no obstacles will be placed in the way of swift implementation” of the Palestine decision, and he recommended that American citizens “make known their willingness” to admit Europe’s displaced persons into the United States. Pointing to the record of Jews in the US Army during World War II and the graves with Stars of David in American military cemeteries across Europe, he remarked: “Perhaps because Jews have always been victims of tyranny, they have a better understanding than many as to the real meaning of decency.”31 The following months, however, brought additional frustration to the DPs in Stuttgart and elsewhere. Palestine continued to remain off limits. Radomer Camp inmates who had tried to reach Haifa Bay aboard an “illegal” aliya bet vessel were stopped by the British Royal Navy and interned in Cyprus; those aboard the Exodus 1947 had ended up in Germany. At the end of January, 1948, Israel Gluz died from bayonet wounds and forty other Jews were arrested in a US Army raid on the Heidenheim DP camp. A Military Government officer in Stuttgart admitted that printing equipment seized in the raid could not have been used for printing counterfeit money, the reason that had been advanced for the raid. He said that two small presses found in the camp were probably used to print leaflets. One week later, Philip Auerbach, Minister for Persecutees in the Bavarian Government, observed that most Germans — 148 —

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who were known to be Nazis were still living in comfortable houses, and they should be evicted in favor of “the Nazis’ worst victims” if there was a housing shortages in the Neu Freimann DP camp area. Shortly thereafter, a series of German attacks took place on two Jewish restaurants and a Jewish butcher shop in Munich, leading a US military spokesman to remark that “nobody is silly enough to believe that the Nazis or Nazism have been eliminated from Germany.”32 Certain of that truth, a small group of young men in the Stuttgart DP center spared no time or energy in a self-imposed task of finding their former Nazi oppressors. Tuvia Friedman of Radom, having obtained the aid of three more Radom men after arriving there in 1946, traveled to the British zone of occupation in pursuit of Radom’s top criminals: SS and Police Leader Herbert Boettcher and his right-handman, SS Obersturmbannführer Wilhelm Blum. They were identified by the Radomers in a prisoner-of-war camp and consequently handed over to the Polish government by the British authorities. After a lengthy trial in Radom, the Germans were sentenced to death and publicly hanged. During that same time, Friedman was instrumental in bringing to trial in Germany and Austria many former SS men and guards who had committed crimes against the Jews in Radom and vicinity. Others of Camp 664 located and brought to trial the former Kommandant of the Vaihingen concentration camp, Obersturmführer Wilhelm Lautenschlager, as well as the brutal SS officer Frick of the Szkolna street camp in Radom. Residents of the Stuttgart center testified at the trial in Rastatt against former Nazi medical officer Adam Dichmann of the Vaihingen concentration camp and four notorious SS guards. The French court sentenced five of them to death and the others to long prison terms. As late as 1947, the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg could not find any witnesses against SS General Oswald Pohl, chief administrator of all concentration camps in the Third Reich. Responding to an appeal in the press made by the office of the American prosecutor, Camp 664 inmate Alfred Lipson traveled to Nuremberg and was put on the witness stand. Owing to his testimony, Oswald Pohl was the only one of a group of seven SS generals to be sentenced to death and hanged in the Landsberg prison.33 Ben-Gurion’s declaration of the independence of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948, brought spontaneous singing and hora-dancing in the streets of Stuttgart, lasting through the night. Official celebrations — 149 —

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with parades and banners, attended by 3,000 Jews and government representatives, brought a wave of elation and pride to a people that had endured exile and persecution for millennia. This joyous scene in Camp 664 and similar ones throughout other DP centers especially resonated with the 30,000 Jewish “illegals” detained by the British in Cyprus, who assumed that they would soon reach the new sovereign commonwealth less than 300 miles away. (The last ones would only be released in February of the following year.) Haim Hoffman (later Yahil), the Jewish Agency director for Germany and Austria, had predicted in February that 75,000–100,000 DPs would leave Europe in 1948, to be followed by 100,000–150,000 the next year, thus completing the emigration of Jewish DPs from the European Continent. In fact, an average of close to 200,000 immigrants a year would come to Israel during the country’s first three and a half years, including an increasing number from Africa and Asia, in effect doubling the Jewish population.34 By November 1948, William Haber, then advisor on Jewish affairs to the US military command in Europe, could announce that the “present situation of the displaced Jews in Europe may now be termed as the liquidation phase.” Observing that about 4,000 survivors had been going to Israel monthly, he predicted (optimistically) that at this rate the DP camps would be emptied by October 1949. Until then, approximately thirty percent of the 15,000 DPs in the American zone of Germany, most camps administered to a large degree by the Jews themselves, were engaged in some form of work, training, or special services, preparing for their future.35 Come 1949, not all was well in Germany. That March, an American Jewish Congress rally urged the US Senate to investigate “the resurgence of Nazi influence” in the former epicenter of Hitler’s Third Reich. Three months later, Senator Claude Pepper (D, Florida) pledged to introduce into the Foreign Relations Committee a resolution demanding an inquiry into the failure of the denazification program in the American zone. Unexpectedly, Committee chairman Tom Connally (D, Texas) asked the American Jewish Congress delegation from twenty states this question: “We gave you Israel, now what else do you want?” In turn, the group issued a statement warning of “alarming reports from Germany that the denazification program has completely collapsed, and that Nazis have once again infiltrated governmental agencies and educational institutions.” — 150 —

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Pepper joined hands with colleagues Guy M. Gillette (R, Iowa), Robert C. Hendrickson (R, New Jersey), and Irving M. Ives (R, New York) in introducing a resolution about the failure of denazification. A decision to wind down that program had been taken by American Military Government officials in April 1947, due to negative German public opinion, in favor of “reorientation.” Two weeks later, Carl F. Zietlow, special adviser to the US Military Government, announced plans for combating racial and religious prejudice in ten major German cities and several dozen smaller communities with the aim to “promote better human relations within German communities.” By the end of this summer, he added, there would be at least 120 active leaders on committees for interfaith councils in Munich, Stuttgart, Wiesbaden, and Frankfurt, and that six new councils would be developed next year in Berlin, Bremen, Nuremberg, Karlsruhe, Kassel and Augsburg.36 Stuttgart witnessed one unique Jewish celebration that same year. Strengthened by General Clay’s encouragement, funds from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, with the US Army guaranteeing that the German economy would contribute the necessary remainder, enabled a printing press in that city to make the plates for the first volumes of the Babylonian Talmud. Its title page contained drawings of a Nazi labor camp and a sandy beach in Israel. Thanking the US Army for its major role in rescuing European Jewry from total annihilation in the Holocaust years and then bearing “the major burden of sustaining the DPs of the Jewish faith,” Chief Rabbi of the US Zone Samuel A. Snieg made a declaration in English. The special edition (750 sets of nineteen volumes), he pronounced, “will remain a symbol of the indestructibility of the Torah.”37 Fortunately, the Radomer Center in Stuttgart did not have to witness the fate of the new US effort at denazification in Germany. The Bialik School, which had greatly impressed Eleanor Roosevelt, closed in 1949. On June 13, Camp 664 came to an end, and the remaining DPs of Stuttgart were transferred to Heidenheim, fifty-six miles away. The majority of the Radomers came to Israel’s shores—not all readily welcomed; hundreds enlisted in the Israeli Army. Thirteen of these young men made the ultimate sacrifice during the beleaguered state’s War of Independence (1948–1949) and the Sinai Campaign of October 1956. Others settled in New York City, Montreal, Toronto, Paris, and Melbourne. Understandably, wherever they settled, the scars of the — 151 —

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Holocaust were forever imprinted on many survivors. The Jews of Radom made their last public appearance in August 1950, four months before the formal termination of the Central Committee, returning there for the unveiling ceremony of a monument commemorating the years of the German occupation and erected where that city’s synagogue had once stood.38 Five years later, at an extraordinary national conference of the UJA in Washington, DC to mark the tenth anniversary of V-E Day and the Holocaust survivors’ emergence at last into freedom, all the former US Military Governors in the US zone in Germany and their advisers on Jewish Affairs sat at one dais. Earlier that weekend, its chief officers had bestowed on now President Eisenhower an ancient oil lamp from Israel’s soil in recognition of his “distinguished humanitarian service to victims of Nazi tyranny,” the antique clay lamp symbolizing twenty centuries of Jewish history “in which each generation renewed its devotion to freedom’s ideals.” McNarney delivered a moving speech, stating that the Bible, “an important symbol of man’s finest hopes and aspirations,” had played a major role in the upbringing of Truman and Eisenhower, “and created an atmosphere of understanding on their parts.” His remarks, reminisced Bernstein assistant Herbert Friedman (installed on that occasion as the new UJA executive vice-chairman), reflected McNarmey’s belief that humankind could “transcend its more primitive destructive instincts.” McNarney’s words struck a vibrant chord among those assembled that historic afternoon. Taking note that no “displaced” Jews were left in Central Europe and that every fifth citizen in the new, democratic Israel was once a DP inmate, he declared that only the word “miracle” could properly explain the bringing to life of so many “living skeletons” who seemed about to draw their last breath when Allied soldiers had reached the Nazi camps. It was obvious, he went on, that the Jewish DPs’ symbol of a tree stump from which sprouted a lone but living twig had grown again into “a sturdy trunk fed by roots that are deep and undying.” The US Army’s humane treatment in Germany of the survivors, along with the UJA’s efforts since then on their behalf, represented very real contributions to the winning of the peace. The Army and the American people, McNarney concluded, demonstrated to millions of Germans “that democracy is more than a word and the United States is more than a mechanized civilization, but affords the average man the — 152 —

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opportunity to live in dignity, safety, and to share in the good things of life.”39 His stirring tribute had come far too late for Radom’s Shmuel Danziger, the first Jew officially killed in Germany after the Holocaust. For so many others who ultimately reached a secure haven, their gratitude would be everlasting.

Endnotes   1. Central Committee report on March 29, 1946, file 170, G-Sh’eirit HaPleita MSS., YIVO Archives, Center for Jewish History, New York City; Leo W. Schwarz, The Redeemers: A Saga of the Jews, 1945–1952 (New York, 1953), 107–108; Sefer Radom, ed. Yitzhak Perlov (Tel-Aviv, 1961), 392–393. For photographs of the raid, see box 66518, UNRRA records, United Nations Archives (hereafter UNA), New York City. The entire incident goes almost unmentioned in scholarship on the Jewish DPs, including the study by Tamar Lewinsky, “Polish-Jewish Displaced Persons in Occupied Germany,” in Jewish Presence in Absence: The Aftermath of the Holocaust in Poland, 1944-2010, ed. F. Tych and M. Adamczyk-Garbowski (Jerusalem, 2014), 95–124.  2. Sefer Radom, 17–275; www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/radom-poland.  3. Sefer Radom, 277-363; Shmuel Krakowski, “Radom,” Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, vol. 3 (New York, 1990), 1219–1221. For extensive study of the Radom District in the Holocaust, see Jacek Andrzej Młynarczyk, Judenmord in Zentralpolen: der Distrikt Radom 1939–1945 (Stuttgart, 2007); and Robert Seidel, Deutsche Besatzungskpolitik in Polen: der Distrikt Radom 1939–1945 (Munich, 2006). Additional documentation can be found in these files at the Yad Vashem Archives (hereafter YVA), Jerusalem: O.33, files 6364 and 8850; O.6, files 424, 433, and 434.  4. Sefer Radom, 372–373, and English section, 90; Sebastian Piątkowski, “Radom,” trans. A. Grojec, in YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, vol. 2 (New Haven, 2008), 1512–1513.  5. Sefer Radom, 381–391; Schwarz, The Redeemers, 40.  6. Jewish Telegraphic Agency (hereafter JTA), February 12, 1946. Crum soon emerged as a fervent pro-Zionist advocate on the joint committee and championed that cause in public and with President Truman. Monty Noam Penkower, Palestine to Israel: Mandate to State, 1945–1948, vol. 1, Rebellion Launched, 1945–1946, vol. 2, Into the International Arena, 1947–1948 (both New York, 2019), passim. — 153 —

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 7. UNRRA US Zone Council meeting, March 27, 1946, Box 66,484, UNRRA records, UNA; Kenen to Grinberg, March 29, 1946, file 167, G-Sh’eirit HaPleita MSS., YIVO Archives; Minutes, March 29, 1946, file 1-A/20, World Jewish Congress Archives (henceforth WJC), New York City (now in the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, OH). My gratitude to the late Gerhart Riegner for permission to examine these records.  8. UNRRA US Zone Council meeting, March 27, 1946, Box 66,484, UNRRA records, UN Archives; Grinberg to Morgan, March 26, 1946, box 18/118, Sh’eirit HaPleita MSS., YIVO Archives; Klausner to JDC, March 29, 1946, Germany-DPs 1946, American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (hereafter JDC) Archives, New York City. Also see P68/8, Abraham Klausner MSS., Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, Jerusalem; Abraham J. Klausner, A Letter to My Children, from the Edge of the Holocaust (San Francisco, 2002).  9. Reports: February 6, 1946; February 13, 1946; March 31, 1946; Police report, March 31, 1946; Zisman to Squadrilli, April 12, 1946; all in April 1946 documents, box 66,480, UNRRA-German Mission, UN Archives; Zeev W. Mankowitz, Life between Memory and Hope: The Survivors of the Holocaust in Occupied Germany (Cambridge, 2002), 258. 10. Jewish Committee at Pocking to the Military Government at Griesbach, received April 4, 1946, box 66,480, UNRRA-German Mission, UN Archives. 11. Jewish Telegraphic Agency (henceforth JTA), March 31, 1946. 12. Minutes, April 1, 1946, file 1-A/20, WJC; Penkower, Palestine to Israel, vol. 1, 113 and 122; Wise to Rifkind, April 1, 1946, file 1-A/20, WJC; New York Times, March 31, 1946; JTA, April 1, 1946. 13. Report, “Cooperative Raid by German and Military Police,” March 26, 1946, box 66, 480, UNRRA-German Mission, UNA. UNRRA director Lt.-General Frederick Morgan privately opined that responsibility for the “actual attack” lay “squarely” with the US Army, whose current new generation of soldiers were “in the main, young, untrained, and inexperienced in the ways of the world,” some of these “good boys are pretty quick on the draw.” Morgan to Holtzman, April 11, 1946, file 6/12, Fanny B. Holtzman MSS., American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, OH. Within two weeks, additional reports testifying to “actual mistreatment” of DPs by German police reached the UNRRA Deputy Director in Munich. 14. AP report, “Jewish DPs Fight Raid by Police,” March 29, 1946, Box 66,518, UNRRA records, UNA. 15. Lerner Statement, April 1, 1946, box 66,518, UNRRA records, UNA. — 154 —

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16. Metzger to District Director, April 1, 1946, box 66,518, UNRRA records, UNA. 17. Knecht to Office of Military Government for Bavaria, March 30, 1946, box 66,518, UNRRA records, UNA. 18. Director of Intelligence report, April 5, 1946, box 66,518, UNRRA records, UNA. 19. Stuttgarter Zeitung, March 30, 1946; Press Agency Official Report, March 29–30, 1946; both in box 66,518, UNRRA records, UNA. 20. Weber Report, April 1, 1946, box 66,518, UNRRA records, UNA. 21. Steward Memorandum to Commanding Officer, Thirty-First AAA Brigade, April 5, 1946, box 66,518, UNRRA records, UNA. 22. Farrand Memorandum to Commanding General, Third US Army, April 11, 1946, Box 66,518, UNRRA records, UNA. 23. JTA, April 1, 1946. 24. JTA, April 3, 1946. For the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine, see Penkower, Palestine to Israel, vol. 1, chap. 3. 25. JTA, April 5 and 7, 1946. 26. JTA, April 7, 1946. 27. Monsky to Byrnes, April 5, 1946, box 66,518, Germany Mission, UNRRA records, UNA; JTA, April 12 and 29, 1946. For a pioneering overview of how survivors responded to their existence in DP camps after V-E Day, see Mankowitz, Life between Memory and Hope. 28. JTA, May 5, 1946; July 26 and 28, 1946; Mankowitz, Life between Memory and Hope, 259–260; McNarney statement, August 25, 1946, Germany: Misc. 1946 folder, JDC Archives, New York City; Herbert A. Friedman, Roots of the Future (Jerusalem, 1999), 68–73, and chap. 9. For the possible closing of the borders at this time, see Penkower, Palestine to Israel, vol. 1, 240–241, 256. 29. JTA, August 4,1946, October 8, 1946, November 19, 1946, February 7 and 18, 1947; March 29, 1947; McNarney letter, September 7, 1946, Germany: Posthumous Marriage—Central Committee, 1946–1948, JDC Archives; Schwarz, The Redeemers, chap. 19; Friedman, Roots of the Future, 91–93; Penkower, Palestine to Israel, vol. 1, 361–362. For Bernstein’s first public statement at length about the Holocaust survivors and their insistence on living in Palestine, which he characterized as “the major hope,” see his speech, October 1, 1946, General: August-December 1946 folder, JDC Archives. 30. JTA, April 7, 23, and 27, 1947; June 9, 1947. Clay first gained the DPs’ appreciation when publicly rebuking, in his statement to the UNSCOP team, the charge from Bavarian Minister of Economics Rudolph Zorn that the Holocaust survivors were responsible for Germany’s vast black market. JTA, August 7, 1947. — 155 —

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31. JTA, Oct. 13, 1947; Dec. 16, 1947. 32. Sefer Radom, 393; JTA, February 2, 8, and 10, 1948. For the Exodus 1947, see Aviva Halamish, Exodus, HaSippur HaAmiti (Tel Aviv, 1990). 33. Sefer Radom, English section, 89–90; O.33, file 10000; O.51, file 289; O.53, file 73; M.9, files 515 and 516; and M.9, file 762; all in YVA; Tuvia Friedman, The Hunter (New York, 1961). Friedman also related in that autobiography his fifteen-year pursuit and instrumental part in the eventual capture in Argentina of Adolf Eichmann, the individual most responsible for implementing the Nazis’ “Final Solution of the Jewish Question,” by agents of the Israeli Mossad in May 1960. 34. Sefer Radom, English section, 89; JTA, February 2, 1948; Moshe Sicron, “The Mass Aliya—Its Dimensions, Characteristics and Influences on the Structure of the Israeli Population” [Hebrew], in Olim U’Ma’abarot 1948–1952, ed. M. Naor (Jerusalem 1986), 34. 35. JTA, November 18, 1948; August 4, 1948. 36. JTA, March 18, 1949; June 7, 9, and 29, 1949. Also see Tom Bower, The Pledge Betrayed: America and Britain and the Denazification of Post-War Germany (New York, 1982); Alexandra F. Levy, “Promoting Democracy and Denazification: American Policymaking and Germany Public Opinion,” Diplomacy and Statecraft 26:4 (December 2015): 614–635. 37. Friedman, Roots of the Future, 98–100; Gerd Korman, “Survivors’ Talmud and the US Army,” American Jewish History 73:3 (March 1984): 252–285. 38. Sefer Radom, 407–410, 429–446; Piątkowski, “Radom,” 1512–1513. 39. Friedman, Roots of the Future, 178 and chap. 21. Earlier studies providing valuable information on the larger subject include Mankowitz, Life between Memory and Hope; Eva Kolinsky, After the Holocaust: Jewish Survivors in Germany after 1945 (London, 2004); Angelika Koenigseder and Juliane Wetzel, Waiting for Hope: Jewish Displaced Persons in Post-World War II Germany (Evanston, 2001); Mark Wyman, DPs: Europe’s Displaced Persons, 1945–1951 (Ithaca, 1998); Michael Brenner, After the Holocaust: Rebuilding Jewish Lives in Postwar Germany, trans. B. Harshav (Princeton, 1997); Alex Grobman, Rekindling the Flame: American Jewish Chaplains and the Survivors of the Holocaust (Detroit, 1993); Abraham S. Hyman, The Undefeated (Jerusalem, 1993); She’erit HaPletah, 1944–1948: Rehabilitation and Political Struggle, ed. Y. Gutman and A. Saf, trans. R. Mandel (Jerusalem, 1990); and Yehuda Bauer, Out of the Ashes: The Impact of American Jews on Post-Holocaust European Jewry (Oxford, 1989).

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5. Nathan Rapoport and Poland’s Landscape of Holocaust Memory

Exactly five years after the start of the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt on the eve of Passover, April 19, 1943, the government of Poland prepared to unveil a monument to its victims. The memorial was to coincide with similar ceremonies at the mass murder sites of Oświęcim (which the Germans called Auschwitz) and Treblinka. A commemorative tablet was also to be unveiled on a building alongside a railroad siding in Warsaw and its adjacent square, the Umschlagplatz at the edge of the ghetto on the corner of Zamenhof and Niska streets from which approximately 265,000 of the city’s Jews had been packed in sealed freight cars with little water and poor ventilation, and deported at SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler’s order in July 1942 to their deaths sixty-two miles away in Treblinka’s three gas chambers. To help meet the memorial’s cost of 100,000,000 zlotys ($250 million), the government had contributed 10,000,000 zlotys, and the Jews of Poland an additional 18,000,000, the remainder covered by a few Jewish communities worldwide. For Jews living outside of the capital, the Polish railway system had placed on sale 5,000 reduced-rate tickets for them to arrive at the prime ceremony. The country’s central post office had issued a special stamp of two fighters holding rifles, along with a cancellation marking the occasion for use on all mail handled in Warsaw on April 19. All attendees were to receive a silver medal struck by the Jewish Central Committee of Poland. A delegation of many Jews who had fought as partisans against the Nazi German army during World War II was expected to participate as well, joined by Jewish delegations from several foreign countries.1 Nathan Rapoport, sculptor of the monument, had long looked forward to this historic day. Born in 1911 to a large, poor working-class

After the Holocaust

Warsaw family of Hassidic background, he joined the Zionist left-wing HaShomer HaTsa’ir party early on. Trained as an architectural apprentice, he attended the city’s Academy of Art, where he won awards for sculptural work. Refusing on principle to let the Polish government submit his “The Tennis Player” for exhibition in Berlin as part of the 1936 Olympics, he returned the prize money. Two years later, he placed third in a competition for a monument to the socialist mayor of Villejuif and editor of L’Humanité. That same year, Rapoport received a scholarship to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and to travel in Italy, where Michelangelo’s figurative sculptures attracted his attention. In Paris, Rapoport was influenced by various artistic forms besides those of François Rude, Auguste Rodin, and the classics, including Cubism and Expressionism, before returning, due to a shortage of funds, to Warsaw in June 1939. Unsuccessful in his attempt to join the retreating Polish army when Hitler’s Wehrmacht invaded Poland three months later, Rapoport fled east into Soviet-controlled territory. Joining a collective of 120 Jewish artists who had found refuge in Bialystok, he was later transferred to Minsk by an impressed Communist Party Arts Committee in search of works for a “Ten Years of Art in Belarus” exhibition. The move saved his life, for none of his colleagues survived the killing of thousands of Jews by SS Einsatzgruppen mobile killing units and Ordnungspolizei (Order Police) battalions soon after the German occupation of Bialystok. While in Minsk, Mikhail Kulagin, Second Secretary of the Central Communist Party, commissioned several of his works for state projects, including a large model which Rapoport hoped “might give a symbolic expression of a whole nation in chaos.” When the Germans captured the capital of Belarus on June 28, 1941, Rapoport and his wife, Sima, were evacuated to Almaty, a border city near Iran. After two years, he was shipped to a forced labor camp in Novosibirsk, the city in the southwestern part of Siberia then hosting many factories relocated from European Russia because of the rapid advance since June 22 of more than three million invading German soldiers in Operation Barbarossa. Fortunately, Rapoport was freed five months later by Kulagin, now governor of Novosibirsk, and moved into a studio, where he received a commission as state sculptor. While he was creating busts of Russian generals, partisans, and workers, heroes of what Stalin termed The Great Patriotic War against — 158 —

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Hitler’s armed forces, “dreadful rumors” began reaching Rapoport’s circle of intellectuals in Novosibirsk at the end of 1942 about the systematic slaughter of Jews, brought by fleeing refugees and news obtained through the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. He started on a “vague romantic form” of a model consisting of two figures, a Moses-inspired prophet and a figure in the guise of Liberty. Restless and hearing more information about the Nazi camps and ghettos, he shifted the model to “a means adequate to commemorate the tragedy of my people.” Seeking the truth about what later would be termed the Holocaust, he traveled to Moscow with a small plaster model, the first form of what would become the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt monument. Spurred on by a report from historian Ber Mark about the “epic uprising” of a few hundred fighters armed only with pistols that commenced on April 19, 1943, against the third and final mass deportation, he completed the model just when news arrived that the 2,000 Waffen-SS under General Juergen Stroop’s command had finally burned down the ghetto, block by block, and declared victory against the rebels on May 16 by blowing up the magnificent Great Synagogue on Tłomackie St. With the site in Warsaw now a “wilderness,” Rapoport decided to build a wall as a support to the memorial and as a symbol of the vanished ghetto, with the front relief dedicated to the combatants of the revolt and the rear to represent the deportations. “One can imagine,” Rapoport wrote years later, “how difficult it was to plan a work of such emotional impact.” Notwithstanding the predominantly abstract style that dominated the current artistic climate, he chose to emphasize the Jewish hold on “the tree of life,” to “give back, at least spiritually, what had been taken away by deadly destruction.” Seeking to recreate shadows of mothers and fathers, young and old—“the epic and tragic end of their lives should be remembered for generations to come”—Rapoport’s initial design for the Moscow Arts Committee struggled to walk the line between satisfying both the Stalinist authorities and the Jewish public. Ironically, while the model was condemned by some postwar critics as being too Stalinist and not sufficiently Jewish, the Soviet bureaucrats deemed it to be “too narrow in conception, too nationalistic” (that is, too Jewish). Stung by this rejection, the same one, as he found out from the Jewish-Soviet journalist and propagandist Ilya Ehrenburg, that had stifled publication of The Black Book of Soviet Jewry on the Nazi slaughter of Russia’s Jews, he — 159 —

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moved to Novosibirsk in mid-1943, vowing to continue his model while completing projects for the state. Rapoport and his family returned to Moscow at the war’s end. Repatriated to Warsaw in early 1946 along with his wife and child, he presented a new design to the city’s Jewish Committee. The Central Committee of Polish Jews, first created in Lublin with Stalin’s approval in late July 1944 and focused on registering survivors of the Shoah, by then the accepted Hebrew term for the Holocaust, had already determined to build a monument to the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt. Moving to Lodz in March 1945 as the Central Jewish Historical Commission, the organization ultimately relocated its headquarters to Warsaw in May 1947 and was transformed into the Jewish Historical Institute. An earlier shrine, dedicated in Warsaw on April 16, 1946 by the committee, had been limited to a small memorial tablet at 18 Mila, headquarters of the ŻOB—Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa, or Jewish Fighting Organization. This consisted of a large red sandstone disc placed in a flower bed on the spot where the revolt against the second German mass deportation had begun on January 18, 1943 (four days later the surprised Germans halted this Grossaktion), and where commander Mordecai Anielewicz had died on May 8 in the underground bunker along with the main body of ŻOB fighters. The inscription in Hebrew, Polish, and Yiddish read: “To the memory of those who died in unparalleled and heroic struggle for the dignity and freedom of the Jewish nation, for a free Poland, and for the liberation of mankind. The Remnant of the Jews of Poland.” The Jewish Committee agreed now to Rapoport’s urging to build the monument nearby. It took almost a year to find funding for the sculptor’s memorial, aided in large part by Adolf Berman. A Po‘alei-Zion Left activist who had directed a charity organization for orphans in the Warsaw Ghetto, Berman was one of the founders of the Antifascist Bloc (precursor to the ŻOB) before moving to the “Aryan” side beyond the ghetto to become secretary of ŻEGOTA, the underground Polish Council for Aid to Jews. Owing to his connections and non-Jewish appearance, the Warsaw University trained psychologist helped rescue Jews surviving in the city after the ghetto’s liquidation and save the written documents that had been hidden outside its walls, including the last of the chronicles recorded by historian Emanuel Ringelblum for the Oneg Shabbos clandestine archive before his murder. With Poland’s liberation, Berman — 160 —

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became chairman of the Central Committee of the Jews of Poland and a member of the Polish parliament. He made an initial bequest for the memorial, which was supplemented by the Central Committee, the World Jewish Congress, and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (the “Joint” or JDC). Rapoport now turned to the Warsaw Arts Committee with his model. Rejecting the prevailing contemporary climate favoring nonrepresentational modes of art, Rapoport plaintively asked himself: “Could I have made a rock with a hole in it and said ‘Voila! The heroism of the Jewish people?’” His revised clay maquette model in the winter of 1947 was accepted by Warsaw’s Art Committee after several days’ deliberation. Sensitive to Stalin’s hostility to the Jews, aware that plans were afoot to relocate the Polish capital across the Vistula River, and wondering if the present scarcity of materials could be used to reconstruct the entire city around a Jewish monument, the members finally gave in to Rapoport’s passionate plea that “the blood which was spilled here cannot wait to be remembered for even one day.” They set down one provision: it must be completed in time for the fifth anniversary of the ghetto rebellion, less than a year away. An unpredictable political climate and increasingly tight borders, it was hinted darkly, would not allow for permission after that date.2 With no studio space or resources available in Warsaw, Rapoport moved to Paris early that spring. He faced considerable challenges to create what would become a monument towering at thirty-six feet. Slowly coming personally to terms with the unprecedented scope of the Holocaust, including the murder of his mother and sister and all others of the extended Rapoport family, he spent much time searching for materials that would adequately suit his vision. When banker Guy de Rothschild refused to fund the large model’s casting, claiming that he had “no need for Poles” while there were enough French heroes for whom monuments had not been erected, Rapoport’s HaShomer HaTsa’ir contacts succeeded in a campaign to raise the needed sums.3 Space in Warsaw presented no difficulty. The land surrounding the projected memorial at the corner of Zamenhof and Gesia streets, the latter already renamed M. Anielewicz St., was essentially rubble and debris, an empty square in the heart of the former ghetto. The wall of Rapoport’s monument would recall the eleven-and-a-half feet high walls stretching about eleven miles that had encased the ghetto, but also the — 161 —

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Western Wall in Jerusalem, thereby having “framed the memory of events in Warsaw in the iconographic figure of Judaism’s holiest site.” It would also suggest a singular, great tombstone, with four menorot at the corners to reference both the Holy Temple Mount in Jerusalem and the successful Maccabean revolt (167–160 BCE), celebrated annually on the eight days of Hanuka, against the Seleucid empire and the Hellenistic influence on Jewish life. The pair of lions at the sides of each seven-branched menorah would also recall the image often placed on the curtain of the Holy Ark in synagogues everywhere. Mark Leon Suzin, a Holocaust survivor and an architect who had designed the 1946 memorial tablet at 18 Mila, was commissioned to design and construct the base of the monument. Unable to do so with the mountain of debris surrounding the chosen site, he decided to incorporate the ruins into the base. Given the limited mechanical equipment at his disposal, Suzin had tons of concrete and reinforcement poured over the base. At the end of 1947, as the foundry was casting the bronze part of the sculpture in Paris, Rapoport and Suzin traveled to Sweden at the advice of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, where they found huge labradorite granite blocks in a Swedish quarry. These were the very blocks which Arno Breker, Hitler’s favorite sculptor whose neo-Classical figures expressed Nazi ideology of the supreme Aryan race, had ordered for use in the planned monument in Berlin honoring the Führer’s victory in World War Two. These massive stone blocks, purchased by the World Jewish Congress’s Swedish branch and the Jewish communities of South Africa and Argentina, would frame the figures on both sides of the memorial. Immortalizing the bravery and sacrifice of those Jews who had fought back in six weeks of full-pitched battles against the German armed forces which stormed the Warsaw Ghetto’s remaining 55,000– 60,000 inhabitants, Rapoport presented a colossal tableau weighing 4.5 tons of seven figures in bronze. The sculptor’s models were live heroes of the HaShomer HaTsa’ir in Palestine, then living in Paris. Reflecting the school of socialist realism, the figures gathered around the central one of twenty-four-year-old Anielewicz. The head of the ŻOB and of the HaShomer HaTsa’ir underground is held high, his set expression both sorrowful and determined. He alone gazes straight ahead, his naked chest clearly emaciated and his head and right arm bandaged, but his arms and neck remain muscular, his coat thrown open and trousers torn, with his right hand gripping a handmade grenade. — 162 —

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This powerful and commanding presence is surrounded by three young fighters bearing weapons and looking determinedly off into the distance, contrasting with the patriarchal bearded, aged figure kneeling to Anielewicz’s right. A fallen warrior lies in the foreground at the commander’s feet. A firestorm swirls in the upper part of the scene, threatening to consume a woman (recalling Rude’s 1836 sculpture of a woman urging others on to battle in his frieze La Marseillaise on Paris’s Arc de Triomphe) and child, their hands upheld in despair. In the end, the eye always comes to rest on the dominant, central figure of Anielewicz, the proletarian marching forth as both worker and partisan to lead his comrade fighters. The base, of black marble, carried this inscription in Hebrew, Yiddish, and Polish: “The Jewish Nation—To its Fighters and to its Martyrs.” For the rear of his monument, Rapoport chose a radically different approach with the inscription “To the Valley of Killing.” Rather than the high relief of the front side, the frieze of “The Last March” was done in bas relief, a much flatter representation. Here a group of twelve Jews, recalling Samuel Hirszenberg’s epic painting Golus (1904) of an endless line of Jews trudging in stoic resignation to their left from somewhere in eastern Europe across a barren snow-covered landscape, is shown on their final journey to oblivion. Utterly resigned to their fate, shoulders and heads bowed, the majority of these martyred figures shuffle forward. An elderly man, in the middle of the scene, with a talit (prayer shawl) covering his head, is seen holding a Torah and appears to be reaching out to a divine presence. At the head of the procession, another bearded Jewish man, powerless and cowed, is leaning heavily on a walking stick. The helmets and rifle bayonets of three German soldiers are seen in the background. The contrast with the front side is further accentuated by the portrayal here of mainly women, one heavily pregnant, and children. Their anguish and despair are palpable. One child, glancing backwards, offers the only full frontal facial expression in the sculpture, a baleful look with an almost accusatory gaze.4 Rapoport’s team pressed on to put the finishing touches in time for the first major heroes’ and martyrs’ memorial in Europe. Fearing that Soviet soldiers might stop the ninety pieces of statuary at the border if he shipped it overland, he sent them via waterway to Warsaw, where the cargo arrived in the last week of March 1948, along with the cut stone from Sweden. The Polish stonecutters in Warsaw had not finished — 163 —

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the bas relief in the rear of the monument when Rapoport arrived, so, together with five others, he carved the back side while the statuary in front was being installed. As the day of April 19, 1948, arrived, his monument remained the only standing structure in Warsaw’s moonscape of ruin, rubble piled sixteen feet high, covering hundreds of acres that had been leveled by the Germans after the revolt’s end.5 Standing in full robes before more than twenty thousand spectators in the blazing Monday sun that bathed a city where once had lived a half million Jews, Rabbi Dreistmann of Poland opened the ceremony by reciting the mourners’ traditional prayer. Joined in the Kaddish by most of the twelve thousand survivors present, alongside former partisans, visiting Jewish dignitaries from twenty countries, politicians, and local spectators, he discretely had the edifice covered with sheets during the recitation, apparently not to give this monumental graven image as per the Second Commandment the sense of sacred space. Among the representatives of the government were Premier Jósef Cyrankiewicz, Minister for Justice Henryk Swiatkowski, and Minister without Portfolio Władysław Baranowski. A large delegation from the yishuv, Palestine’s Jewish community, included ghetto partisans Yitzhak Zuckerman (Warsaw), Abba Kovner (Vilna) and Chaika Grossman (Bialystok); former commander of the Hagana General Staff and Marxist-Zionist Mapam leader Moshe Sneh; Poalei Zion activist Yaakov Zerubavel; Abraham Levinson of Labor’s Histadrut educational center, former member of the Polish parliament, and co-editor of the Yiddish literary quarterly Di Goldene Keit; and the Symbolist poet Avraham Shlonsky. From the United States came Zachariah Shuster of the American Jewish Committee, Moses Beckelman of the Joint Distribution Committee, Max Steinberg of the Jewish National Workers Alliance, David Pergament of the World Federation of Polish Jews, and Lewis Neikrug of the Hebrew Immigration Aid Society. Noah Barou, accompanied by colleagues Alex Easterman, Gerhart Reigner, and Sidney Silverman, led the World Jewish Congress (WJC) delegation.6 The monument itself, commemorating as well the more than 3,000,000 Polish Jews who had perished in the Holocaust, was then unveiled. Swiatkowski, addressing the meeting, declared: “In the name of the Polish Sejm and people, I pay tribute to the heroic deeds and battle of the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto.” Then, with a nod to the yishuv’s current war for sovereignty as the British mandate on Palestine neared its — 164 —

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close in May, he pledged that “in the future the Polish Government will give assistance to the fight of the Jewish people for liberty.” Berman, presiding over the Warsaw gathering, pointedly drew a similar connection, declaring that “the Polish who fought for the honor of the Jewish nation will, if necessary, voluntarily offer their “blood as a contribution to the liberty and statehood of Palestine Jewry.” There were a few angry references by others to the “treachery of Anglo-Saxon imperialism,” but most of the crowd seemed to be permeated with the idea put forward by one speaker who said: “The sacrifice of the dead commands us to live on. Nothing can and nothing will destroy the Jewish people.” Full military honors were paid. For his outstanding achievement, Rapoport was awarded the government’s Order of Polonia Restituta medal, featuring a gold Maltese cross enameled in white with a white eagle on red background. Hundreds of red banners of Socialist and Communist youth fluttered overhead, together with the green of the peasants, and many blue-and-white Zionist flags with the Star of David. A special choir of 250 orphaned Jewish children sang partisan hymns and battle songs.7 Speaking in Yiddish the day before at Warsaw’s great Roma Musical Theatre as head of the WJC’s European executive, Barou had praised the heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, and stressed “the determination of Jewish democracy,” including those 250,000 Holocaust survivors in Europe’s Displaced Persons camps, to continue the fight against Nazism and Fascism. Noting that 1.3 million Jews had fought in the armed forces of the Allies against Hitler and his satellites, including over 30,000 from Palestine, he charged that 6,000,000 Jews had been sacrificed by the wartime Allied nations “amidst friendly demonstrations and expressions of sympathy.” This lack of “genuine interest in Jewish suffering and extermination” was now being displayed at the United Nations’ deliberations in Lake Success, New York, he continued, with only one of the three Great Powers (a hint to the USSR, as opposed to the United States and Great Britain) remaining faithful to the General Assembly’s decision of the past November to partition Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state. Our meeting here today, Barou had pressed on, was a challenge to humanity, with Jewry to find its place “in the roll call of progressive mankind” to defend human and Jewish rights. Having lost one-third of their people in the Holocaust, world Jewry had to unite to wage the — 165 —

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battle that the surviving remnant would not perish. Paying “homage to the madness of the brave” fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto, he closed with the hope that “we shall be privileged and capable of following their example in the struggle for the survival of human and Jewish ideals.”8 Convinced from the beginning, however, that these ceremonies were intended as well to convey a definite political message, Shuster, the American Jewish Committee’s European director, decided not to actively participate in any of the public meetings scheduled. Together with the JDC’s Beckelman and William Haber, Advisor on Jewish affairs to Genl. Lucius Clay, Commander-in-Chief of the American military forces in occupied Germany, he quickly realized that the keynote struck now by the Jewish Central Committee and many others at the height of the Cold War between Moscow and the West was that the ghetto fighters’ battle against Nazism was being “replaced by Anglo-Saxon imperialism.” The left-wing groups occupied the major place among the Jewish delegations from various countries, especially France, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Rumania, as was the case with the yishuv’s labor representatives. The delegates from the major American Jewish organizations concluded that their “neutral voices” would “inevitably be drowned” by the general left-wing and anti-Anglo-American statements, “and we would merely become tools of a game to which we were opposed.” Unfortunately, Barou’s group “played the game,” Shuster wrote to his superior in New York, for the simple reason that they sought a “mutual rapprochement” which would allow them to seek entry into Eastern Europe’s Jewish communities. Yet the Communist leaders, he observed, saw in the WJC a platform to disseminate their ideas and thus influence Jewish communities in other spheres of the world. Whether the WJC affiliates of the Western countries would muster enough courage and understanding to counteract the “dangerous implications of this political line” remained to be seen.9 Most revealing that day was Yitzhak Zuckerman’s long speech in Polish before the teeming crowd. One of two secretaries-general of the country’s merged Dror-HehHalutz youth movement (1938), the charismatic activist, code name “Antek,” had become a member of the staff headquarters when the ŻOB was created three months after he and colleagues had first joined the HaShomer HaTsa’ir and Akiva pioneer groups on July 28, 1942, to resist further deportations as the Jewish Combat Organization. Hearing reports for some months of the — 166 —

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SS Einsatzgruppen units’ machine gunning Jews in the East and of the deportations of thousands across all of Poland, they realized, in the words of his later memoir, that “this was the beginning of the end, a total death sentence for the Jews.” Taking part in the first armed attack against the Germans on January 18, 1943, “Antek,” Anielewicz’s deputy, was ordered to cross over in early April to the Polish side of Warsaw as the ŻOB’s liaison officer with the fighting organizations belonging to the Polish underground. During the ghetto revolt, Zuckerman made efforts to supply arms to the fighters, and in the final days of the rebellion agreed to a rescue team led by nineteen-year-old Simcha Rotem that made its way through the sewers into the ghetto to bring others to safety, including ŻOB leader and Dror member Zivia Lubetkin. Together with some survivors, he subsequently provided aid to Jews yet alive in Poland, unsuccessfully appealed for help from the Allied world for the remnants of Polish Jewry, and commanded a group of Jewish fighters during the Warsaw Uprising of August 1944 against the German military. Liberated along with Lubetkin, his future wife, by the Soviet forces in January 1945, Zuckerman took part in resurrecting the HehHalutz movement and in the mass exodus of Jews from Poland to the west in 1946 and 1947 known as the underground bricha. Leaving for Palestine in early 1947, he, joining Lubetkin, was among the founders of Kibbutz Lochamei HaGeta’ot and its museum, established to perpetuate the memory of the fighters and the study of the Holocaust.10 Before departing for Eretz Israel, Zuckerman had taken part in two small memorials in Poland for his fallen comrades. The tall, mustached figure with untamed forelock cannot be missed in a rare photograph when standing at the center with somber members of the Warsaw “Kibbutz 1” at a commemorative meeting in the cold of 1945, flower bouquets alongside one sign reading “Honor to the Fallen Heroes.” Another, that same year, set up a big stone with an inscription on the bunker at 18 Mila. This spot, chosen at his suggestion, was located across from the Judenrat (Jewish Council) office. On that rainy day, a very sick Zuckerman, speaking on behalf of the Jewish community, along with a Polish general, delivered remarks at the unveiling of the marker. Having broken down when the Red Army entered Warsaw, seeing “the vacuum left after the murder of my people,” he could not get rid of the past. Ever since, confronting every day “the lava of the — 167 —

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extinguished volcano,” Zuckerman concluded a long delayed memoir thus: “I was late in everything.”11 Now, standing before the unveiled Rapoport monument, the thirtythree-year-old Zuckerman tried for the first time in public to present an accurate picture of the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt, its “heroic and tragic history written in blood and tears.” The rebellion’s first stage, he began, featured a struggle between a ghetto leadership espousing accord with the Germans based on economic/political reasons and our circle, proponents of battle. The former pointed to the German need to exploit Jewish labor, enabling survival until the change in the international situation, and to the appeasement of Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakai and others during the Hellenistic period under the Roman conquest of Palestine. Noting the Nazis’ “precise program to destroy the Jews” that had begun in 1941–1942 and would “continue to the end,” Zuckerman and his group argued that the Jewish response had to be armed warfare. Our stand, proven correct, was accepted in 1943 by all the Jews of Warsaw, he declared. The second stage occurred, Zuckerman went on, within the ranks of the Jewish Fighting Organization as to the framework of the struggle. Was this to take place where it was most convenient for the Jews or where it was most necessary, without taking account of losses? Was it to take a partisan form or to be converted into “a steady Jewish war” against the German conqueror everywhere, including on the “Aryan side”? While some of the fighting camp called for the first proposal, we of the HehHalutz championed a “continuous struggle” on all fronts. The ŻOB would carry out the latter stand successfully on December 22, 1942, in Kraków’s popular Cyganeria café. A stormy argument also arose in the Warsaw Ghetto between those who insisted that the Jews could not fight alone, as they were part of the Polish community, and our group of socialist-Zionists. The Germans, we argued, were “dictating” for the Jews the war’s shape, which was occurring at an earlier time from that to be directed against the Polish population. If we would not “pay back” the Germans in turn, they would “destroy us in one shot.” History, he asserted, confirmed our appraisal, and in April 1943 this became “the legacy” of all in the ghetto. In the conversations that occurred when weighing the possibilities of the projected struggle, Zuckerman declared, we considered the fight “hopeless.” This was the evaluation in 1942, when there were about a — 168 —

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half million Jews present in the ghetto, and certainly in April 1943, when there were 40,000 Jews. The situation in Warsaw differed from the regions of Vilna and Belarus, he observed. There the “breaking” of the ghetto walls and escape to the partisans was possible. Given the lack of nearby forests in Poland, such attempts by us would have failed from the start. The original idea, Zuckerman emphasized, was to fight against the German forces “at all costs,” even when it was known that the struggle was lost from a strategic perspective. Ours was intended to be a battle “in the name of the people’s honor, in the name of an honorable death.” That is how we understood the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt in April 1943. Herein, his speech ended, laid the greatness of the idea of the revolt: “It was not only for Jewish history but also for the history of humanity at large.”12 Having curbed his inner Holocaust demons and steered away from the Cold War rhetoric of some other speakers on the platform that day, Zuckerman had one more task before heading home. After depositing with the yishuv delegates a container of Palestinian soil at the base of the monument, he went with a few fellow partisans to unveil a memorial stone at Dzielna 34, address of the ghetto’s Dror kibbutz commune, not far away. Its inscription, in Hebrew, Yiddish, and Polish read “Here the Jewish Fighting Organization was established.” The date, July 28, 1942, six days after the first mass deportations of 5,000–6,000 Jews daily from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka had begun, was also given. Later, Zuckerman’s memoir noted, Polish officials would take down the memorial, “thus showing a contempt for the historic place.” They did, however, leave the plaque on the bunker at 18 Mila, the ŻOB’s last stand.13 The same day, a Museum of Jewish Martyrdom was opened by the Jewish Historical Institute, featuring photographs and other graphic evidence portraying the life of the Jews of Poland in the various Nazi ghettos. These included torn and blood-stained Torah scrolls, prayer shawls, and items made from parchment ripped from several Torahs. A picture gallery featuring the paintings of fifty Jewish painters who had died at the hands of the Nazis was also opened, as was a library containing the volumes retrieved from seventy-five famous Jewish libraries destroyed during the war, and other rare literary materials. Commemorative meetings were held in many other Polish cities, while the government radio broadcast special memorial programs in Warsaw, — 169 —

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Kraków, and other major cities. The next day, the entire Warsaw press devoted large sections of their editions to coverage of the ceremony for the unveiling of Rapoport’s monument. The American and World Federations for Polish Jews released the text of a cable to the Jewish Central Committee, its members “paying tribute to the memory of the martyrs who fell in defending the freedom of the world and the honor of the Jewish nation, and solemnly pledging “to dedicate ourselves to the task of building the Jewish state in Palestine and to help rebuild Polish Jewry in Poland.”14 The yishuv press, preoccupied with on-going battles for Jewish sovereignty against native Arab and guerilla forces from neighboring Muslim countries, gave the event scant coverage. The Religious-Zionist newspaper HaTsofeh, contrasting Hitler with the Warsaw Ghetto fighters, declared that the monument’s Swedish stones intended to commemorate “the victory of the unclean” will now commemorate “the courage of the pure.” HaShomer HaTsa’ir’s Al HaMishmar simply noted that a memorial ceremony was held, attended by three hundred representatives from twenty countries, for the 700,000 (sic) Jews imprisoned in the ghetto, of whom only a few hundred survived. The General Zionists’ HaAretz highlighted Adolf Berman’s call, repeated by leftist non-Zionist speakers at the monument’s dedication, for a united front for a Jewish state in Palestine, and his statement that Polish Jewry had collected ninety-two million zloty for defense and was ready, if needed, to give up their lives “so that Eretz Israel will not be turned into a new ghetto.”15 The Histadrut’s Davar featured a large meeting of the same day in Tel-Aviv’s HaBimah Theater, called for by the Yad Vashem institution of the Va’ad HaLe’umi in memory of the Warsaw Ghetto fighters. A distinction was made on that occasion between the ghetto’s “war for revenge, the fight for the right to die with honor,” with the yishuv’s “war for the right to live, for an honorable life in a Hebrew state.” The creation of that commonwealth, asserted Va’ad HaLe’umi head David Remez, was “the one compensation” for the huge sacrifices that “the wandering nation gave unwillingly in the last world war.” The Palestine Post, on the other hand, chose to observe that a delegation of the Jewish Central Committee had recently drawn the attention of the Polish Minister for Public Administration to the destruction of Jewish cemeteries in the areas of the country where Jews were left. Noting the minister’s promise — 170 —

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to protect these “places of a religious nature,” the newspaper viewed the report as a melancholy reflection “on the last stage of a millennium’s history,” the decaying cemeteries all that remained of a great and flourishing community, “one of the greatest spiritual centers of life in the Diaspora.”16 Soon thereafter, Barou wrote to the WJC’s Office Committee in New York City that the Jewish Central Committee had the full support of its government and institutions, whose speeches at the monument’s unveiling showed clearly that it was making “sincere and great efforts” to help Jewry’s postwar attempts at self-organization. The memorial and the opening ceremony were “most dignified and impressive,” the religious ceremony, insisted upon by the Committee, “most moving.” The military awards granted to the surviving ghetto fighters, the procession with thousands of flags and banners, which took many hours, was “unforgettable.” The Central Committee especially appreciated the WJC’s Swedish branch and the efforts of its leader Hillel Storch, whose contribution Berman had publicly acknowledged one day earlier, towards the memorial’s eventual establishment. In the private and public conversations which followed the official ceremony, Barou pointed out, he made it “absolutely clear” that the WJC could not survive on “negatives and criticisms,” and could not have resolutions passed “against Anglo-American imperialism (except perhaps in a resolution about Palestine)” without simultaneously being faced with a resolution against Eastern European and Russian Communism. The Congress had a positive program, he emphasized to all during this trip to Poland, one of its main points an “unlimited fight against Fascism and Reaction, racialism and Anti-Semitism.” At the WJC’s forthcoming Second Session in Montreux, therefore, everyone present had to maintain the unity of world Jewry, living under very different regimes, by offering a positive program in the fight for Jewish rights and survival; nothing else would save the Congress as an international organization. Happily, he and the colleagues who had attended the Warsaw Ghetto memorial dedication were encouraged to see that the WJC was “a living reality and not an abstract idea in Jewish life.”17 One month later, Beckelman reported to a JDC staff meeting in Paris that he had found the ceremonies “very impressive.” Every Polish organization of any importance was represented, with fully fifteen to twenty percent of the attendance non-Jewish indicating the extent of — 171 —

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the general participation of the Polish population. He was much encouraged by the progress of Jewish life in Lower Silesia, Poland’s “dividend” from the recent world war, and that a remarkable change in Poland could be discernable from the conditions that had prevailed shortly after the murderous pogrom of July 4, 1946, in Kielce. It seemed probable, he added, that the Jews in Poland could increasingly earn a satisfactory living, and those who might wish to emigrate “will do so in an orderly fashion.” The “predominating note,” Beckelman concluded, was that of “a stabilized and orderly society.”18 Returning after a two-week trip to Poland, the American Jewish Committee’s Shuster held a more pessimistic view of the future of its estimated 80,000 remaining Jews. While a “substantial proportion” there was now engaged primarily as members of producers’ cooperatives and as small artisans, the religious component was weak and the Communists (reflecting government support) dominated the Jewish Central Committee and most other local committees. The Polish Jew still constituted qualitatively an important reservoir of Jewish energy and way of life, “carried on partly by the forces of a thousand-year tradition and partly by a deep feeling of kinship with Palestine and other forms of Jewish renaissance.” At the same time, despite the government’s firm stand after the Kielce pogrom, antisemitism among the Polish masses had probably even increased after the war in light of the presence of many Jews in government, the old anti-Jew tradition, and the negative attitude of the reactionary Catholic clergy. The average Jew expressed “an ardent and unequivocal desire” to leave Poland, Beckelman reported. This sentiment arose from the fear of being “trapped again” by another world conflict or by the overthrow of the present regime; the deep feeling of loneliness on the part of many Jews; the desire by young people to go to Palestine; and the lack of desire by some to live in “an almost totalitarian regime” with a powerful Secret Police and where the jails were supposed to contain 80,000 political prisoners. Contact with Polish Jewry, Shuster concluded, must be intensified, for theirs is still “one of the most vital communities in Europe.”19 Berman invited Shuster to visit Poland more often and to exchange correspondence with the Jewish Central Committee on matters of “mutual interest,” but Zuckerman, thinking the Committee chairman a “legalist,” had long despaired of a vibrant Jewish life in — 172 —

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Poland under a Communist regime or any other rule. For the rest of his life, he kept a loving eye on the development of the Beit Lochamei HaGeta’ot museum. Appearing as a witness in the State of Israel’s trial of SS Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann in 1961 on charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and crimes against the Jewish people, Zuckerman resolutely stood throughout when facing the individual most responsible for implementing the Nazi government’s “Final Solution of the Jewish question.” Describing in some detail the events that led to the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt and its aftermath, he read to the District Court in Jerusalem’s Beit Ha’Am a letter dated April 23, 1943, the last communication which he had received from Anielewicz. The ŻOB commander, calling for grenades, rifles, machine guns, and explosives, wrote him that only a few individuals would hold out against the German onslaught, and he ended thus: “The main thing is the dream of my life has come true. I’ve lived to see a Jewish defense in the ghetto in all its greatness and glory.”20 At the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt, Zuckerman was interviewed by the Israeli press, which posed this final question: What were the military and strategic lessons to be learned from the uprising? There was no need to analyze it in military terms, he replied, given the revolt of less than a thousand people with few weapons against a mighty army, and “no one doubted how it was likely to turn out.” Yet “if there is a school to study the human spirit, there it should be a major subject.” The “really important things,” Zuckerman concluded, were “inherent” in the force shown by the young fighters, after years of degradation, to rise up against their destroyers and “determine what death they would choose: Treblinka or Uprising. I don’t know if there’s a standard to measure that.” Given his constant brooding over the methodical, relentless destruction of Polish Jewry and only about a dozen of his fighter comrades having lived to see the liberation, the statement by “Antek” in an interview for Claude Lanzmann’s epic documentary Shoah, is understandable: “If you could lick my heart, it would poison you.” Seeking some comfort in bouts of alcohol while forever haunted by the ghosts of millions murdered, Zuckerman taped his reminiscences during sixty sessions of conversation, insisting that they see print only after his death. On June 17, 1981, a heart attack proved fatal, burial following on the grounds of his beloved kibbutz.21 — 173 —

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Rapoport, having completed his monumental tribute to a Jewish revolt that had lasted longer than the Polish Army’s entire stand against the German blitzkrieg of September 1939, settled in the reborn State of Israel soon thereafter. His Warsaw memorial persuaded the Bund (Jewish Socialist Party) to commission a statue of Anielewicz in Paris’s Bagneux Cemetery, which Rapoport completed not long thereafter. He would never take leave of the Holocaust years, which he, wife, and daughter Nina had incredibly survived. Certain facts had unequivocally surfaced by then: On September 30, 1946, the concluding verdict of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg had acknowledged the murder by the Nazis and their disciples of 6,000,000 Jews; on April 8 and 9, 1948, the US Military Tribunal declared that approximately four Einsatzgruppen units numbering approximately 2,400 men had murdered 2,000,000 innocent, unarmed civilians, mostly Jews, in Russia and the Baltic region, and it concluded that “a Jew was killed simply because he was a Jew.” More than ever, the sculptor now felt driven to devote the remainder of his days to memorializing the annihilation of Europe’s Jews, their lives obliterated in anonymity and ash.22 The sculptural style that prevailed in Soviet Russia of Heroic Realism, Rapoport’s own label for his work, enabled the new Ramat Gan resident to soon gain an exceptional reputation among left-wing political activists in Israel’s first decade. At a time when the country chose to link the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt and other armed rebellions against the Germans with the “new Jew,” the valorous young, native-born sabra soldiers of its War for Independence, often dismissing the Holocaust’s victims as passive “sheep to the slaughter” and confirming Zionism’s “negation of the Diaspora,” his winning design for Yad Mordechai (the kibbutz named in Anielewicz’s memory) integrated the ŻOB commander with a suitable memorial for that HaShomer HaTsa’ir commune’s fallen against the Egyptian Army in May 1948. The kibbutz fighters had retreated but held the invaders long enough so that Tel Aviv could gather its own defenses and remain sovereign, this event seen by Israelis as not only heroic but miraculous. Unveiled at Yad Mordechai on the eighth anniversary year of the revolt, Rapoport’s image of Anielewicz serves as the primary representation of Holocaust commemoration to bestow meaning for the coming generations when confronting the murder of millions on Europe’s bloodsoaked soil. The muscled combatant, modeled on a kibbutz member, — 174 —

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clutches a grenade, with the May 1948 destroyed water tower located in the background. A museum nearby includes a reconstruction of the 18 Mila bunker, the exhibit titled MiShoah L’Tekuma (From Holocaust to Revival). Two years later, Rapoport’s sculpture for Kibbutz Negba, “Defenders of the Negev,” would portray a strong pioneer and a nurse, workers of that HaShomer HaTsa’ir commune, and a young man with a rifle standing against far more numerous armed Egyptian forces in July 1948. The graves of the fallen are at their feet, behind them a rake, wheat sheaves, clusters of grapes, and olive branches. Again, these huge figures watching the landscape represent the values of military heroism, their victory simultaneously one of war and of ideology.23 Feeling out of place with the shift in Israeli art toward the abstract, Rapoport moved to New York City’s Upper West Side in 1959, where he opened a second studio and studied iron welding. (He would become a naturalized US citizen six years later.) Even as the Eichmann Trial began a complete turnabout in the Israeli collective consciousness visà-vis understanding survivors and victims, including a broader sense of heroic “resistance” against Nazi dehumanization and death, Rapoport kept to the figurative, representational style. In 1964, his “Monument to the Six Million Martyrs,” dedicated at Philadelphia’s Holocaust Memorial Plaza at Arch and Sixteenth streets at the intersection of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, depicts the flame of a bush burning but not consumed (recalling Exodus 3:2), with several bodies writhing in suffering. A man raises his hands in prayer and one pair of hands holds a Torah scroll, while fists clutch daggers near the top of the sculpture. At the apex, the flames become the blazing candles of a menorah. Four years later, to mark the twentieth anniversary of the State of Israel’s founding, Rapoport’s cast two sets of “Job” for Dr. Murray and Sylvia Fuhrman, one of which they donated to Yad Vashem. The other was eventually moved from their home to New York City’s Forest Park (Queens). The artist intended the five-foot bronze with concentration camp number on one arm, its agonized face looking to the heavens and feet sinking close to despair, to convey the universal suffering and ultimate test of faith that was endured by all who experienced the Holocaust. More symbolic was Rapoport’s “Menorah/Tree of Knowledge” for the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rechovot (1969), suggesting both a menorah with six branches, the seventh at a diagonal in the center, and — 175 —

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a tree with oranges interspersed among its branches. From the side, a dove is evoked spreading its wings in mid-flight or a hand extended to the heavens in prayer, while a frontal view looks like a human figure bent backward, arms spread to the sides, and its waist encircled by electrons or satellites.24 Returning to his linkage of the Holocaust and the rise of the State of Israel, Rapoport created for Bnai B’rith the country’s largest sculpture with “The Scroll of Fire” (1971). Its dedication marker reads “In Memory of the Martyred Six Million and in Reverent Celebration of Israel’s Rebirth.” Overlooking the Martyrs’ Forest of the Six Million on Mt. Kisalon in the Judean hills outside of Jerusalem, that location comprised of six million trees (1.5 million cypresses to recall the Jewish children murdered in the Shoah), the right scroll or pillar includes images of Jews being deported, German helmets and bayonets, the Warsaw Ghetto in flames along with an angel bearing a Molotov cocktail, a bearded man clenching a rock, and a mother and children ascending heavenward. Survivors, their eyes looking upwards in hope, are placed near a small boat that represents the thousands who challenged British law in attempting to reach Israel in the pre-State days; a Jewish man kisses the reached soil. The left scroll shows an olive tree, its renewed branches formed from human bodies, then a child holding a cluster of grapes and a pregnant woman, all depicting the next generation that will be born in freedom. Jerusalem’s reunification in the 1967 Six-Day War is depicted by the blowing of a shofar and a menorah (symbolic of that seen in Rome’s triumphal Arch of Titus, built eleven years after its legions’ sack of Judaism’s holiest city in 70 CE). It is carried by a group of soldiers, with a small, bearded man representative of the Prophet Elijah to signal the Messiah’s eventual coming. The prophetic promise of Jewish return to the covenanted Promised Land (Ezekiel 37:12) is inscribed, one in Hebrew and one in English, in separate areas inside the scrolls. A small plaque, placed near the eight-meter scroll’s hinting at Jews being known from time immemorial as “the People of the Book,” conveys a message by Rapoport: “My words have been made of bronze and stone. They are silent, heavy and longstanding.”25 Rapoport’s contribution towards shaping Israel’s collective memory of the Shoah came to its fullest fruition four years later. As early as September 1947, he had conveyed his efforts to build a — 176 —

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monument (what he called “a type of mausoleum”) to the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt to Mordekhai Shenhavi, the first individual to have proposed a plan to Palestine’s Jewish National Fund in September 1942 that the Holocaust victims be commemorated. Shenhavi, his past HaShomer HaTsa’ir instructor in Warsaw and the individual who also proposed to yishuv officials the name Yad Vashem (inspired by Isaiah 56:5), agreed with Rapoport’s appeal that a copy of the monument be erected in Eretz Israel. Paradoxically, the sculptor wrote this Kibbutz Mishmar HaEmek pioneer, Warsaw’s Jews were no more but Jewish gravestones and his monument remained there. Rapoport expressed his additional fear that the memorial would likely be damaged or even destroyed because of ongoing antisemitism in Poland. Yet lack of support and funds for Yad Vashem, which had other priorities at the time, along with opposition from some rabbinic circles, brought progress to a halt. Rapoport’s plaster model, at last purchased by Yad Vashem in January 1956, was shipped from Paris. It then lay in Jerusalem, abandoned, in a trunk. Finally, with financial support from WAGRO, established in 1963 to represent former Warsaw Ghetto fighters in the United States, and a renewed initiative in 1973 from Yitzhak Arad, a former Soviet partisan from Lithuania and the new chairman of the Yad Vashem directorate who wished to give to the victims an equal place alongside the fighters, Rapoport got a commitment from American businessman and Warsaw Ghetto survivor Leon Jolson to cover the cost of recasting and building the monument subject to changes requested by Yad Vashem.26 On January 14, 1975, Rapoport’s “Revolt of the Ghettos” was unveiled on the southern section of Yad Vashem’s Memorial Hill, part of the Mount Herzl complex that serves as Israel’s national cemetery. According to Shmuel Spektor, the institution’s secretary-general who handled the negotiations with the sculptor, Rapoport had concluded that the second part of the Warsaw original should be mounted individually. “The Last March” would follow to its right in April 1976, aimed to coincide with Yom HaShoah V’HaGevura (Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day), that date the result of a government decision in 1959 to implement an April 1955 law to commemorate the Shoah each year on the 27th day of Nisan in the Jewish calendar. The two statues would face Warsaw Ghetto Plaza, with a biblical quotation placed between them: “In thy blood, live” (Ezekiel 16:6). In the — 177 —

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background stood a red brick Wall of Remembrance, built with that specific color at the artist’s request to symbolize the European Jewish graveyard and the ghetto, the separate statues reflecting a public’s awareness after the Eichmann trial that both fighters and victims, holding on to humane values in Jewry’s darkest hour, merited heroic tribute. From this broad plaza, the country’s official Holocaust ceremony would take place henceforth, soldiers standing at rigid attention, fulfilling Shenhavi’s insistence in May 1945 that “this everlasting memorial can and should be built only in the place where the Jewish national pulse is felt.”27 The two recast statues in Jerusalem of this Warsaw Ghetto imagery, located not far from the long rows of soldiers’ graves on Mt. Herzl’s military cemetery, ably reflected the meta-narrative “from Holocaust to revival” that began to dominate Zionist discourse ever since Yad Vashem’s creation on August 19, 1953. The State of Israel’s Declaration of Independence, read in Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff House by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion on May 14, 1948, had determined the new commonwealth to be the ultimate response to the Holocaust when asserting that “the catastrophe which recently befell the Jewish people—the massacre of millions of Jews in Europe—was another clear demonstration of the urgency of solving the problem of its homelessness by re-establishing in Eretz Israel the Jewish State.” That commemorative space in Yad Vashem now joined the two historical events in national, collective ceremony. Rapoport’s evocation of the ghetto’s armed resistance had finally enabled those combatants to be recognized in “the official landscape of Holocaust memory.” Coming not long after the Yom Kippur War of October 1973, when the image of the youthful, brash sabra as a “Superman” was shattered as Israeli TV showed for the first time images of weak, humiliated soldiers in captivity, the country’s pretense of military invincibility was shattered, “and the status of the survivors’ rare survival emerged,” it became possible for a joint monument of remembrance including victims to be formed. Already in the late 1960s, the description added to Yad Vashem’s Pillar of Heroism, first created by Buki Schwartz after the Six-Day War, had included the words “those who gave up their lives” as “heroes of courage and rebellion.” One manifestation, Mooli Brog has astutely observed, was that the ceremony for Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day now followed the format of Yom HaZikaron (Memorial Day) for the fallen soldiers — 178 —

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of the Israeli Army (IDF). Further, the ceremony held at Yad Vashem until 1976 was henceforth transferred from the Ohel Yizkor, the Hall of Remembrance commemorating the murdered in the Holocaust, to the Warsaw Ghetto Plaza, with IDF soldiers positioned right next to the image of the ghetto fighters.28 Feeling his mission to be “the troubadour,” singing to make his people remember the Holocaust and related Jewish history by creating statues of bronze or stone “that stand for a very long time,” Rapoport returned to his crammed New York City atelier to create “Jacob Wrestling with the Angel.” Commissioned for Toronto’s Jewish Community Center, the sculptor viewed the piece as symbolizing his people’s commitment to fighting for and at times challenging their destiny. That intense, night-long struggle (Genesis 32:23–33), compressed in a single moment, shows the angel, with wings in an embracing, curving sweep, benevolently reaching out an imposing hand over the biblical patriarch’s head, subtly making the priestly sign to foreshadow Jacob’s receiving his blessing. In another sculpture, created for the Park Avenue Synagogue in New York City, Rapoport returned to an image suggested in his “Scroll of Fire.” “Korczak’s Last Walk,” recalling the famed Jewish educator striding quietly on a long march at the head of two hundred children of his Warsaw Ghetto orphanage to the deportation train on August 5, 1942, rather than abandon his charges, was placed on the outside entrance to the school of that house of worship.29 In an interview at the end of 1981, Rapoport explained that because he saw creation as “a form of prayer,” he would listen to Jewish liturgical music to get into the mood while he became totally at one with the clay until “no detail had to be altered any longer.” This was certainly the case with the fifteen-foot, highly evocative “Liberation” (1985), commissioned by the State of New Jersey to be erected in Jersey City’s Liberty State Park within sight of the Statue of Liberty, America’s greatest ideological icon, across the waters of New York Bay. A young American GI, his eyes on the ground, walks forward while carrying one emaciated Holocaust survivor in his arms to freedom. Two years later, the oftrepeated but apocryphal folktale of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem built on the spot where two brothers, one rich but childless and the other poor but with children, clandestinely brought each other grain in the dead of night stirred Rapoport to create the “Brotherhood of Man.” This bronze, presenting two men embracing each other, was dedicated on — 179 —

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May 7, 1987, at the grounds of Ramat Gan’s Magen David Adom Blood Center. Six months before its being moved to Israel, the statue had stood in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza at the United Nations headquarters in Manhattan.30 “Brotherhood of Man,” which Rapoport had hoped when first thinking about that project six years ago might be placed on the borders between Israel and Egypt, would be his last work. A few days later, he received the Herbert Adams Memorial Medal from the National Sculpture Society for his achievements in American sculpture, joining his earlier Joseph Handleman Prize in the Arts from the Jewish Academy of Arts and Sciences in New York. On June 4, 1987, Rapoport died of a heart attack in St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center. Funeral services were held in Ramat Gan four days later. His “Brotherhood of Man” stood nearby.31 Rapoport’s most famous sculpture achieved iconic status as the artistic symbol beyond all others of Jewish armed resistance during the Holocaust. Already in 1950, the Jewish National Fund issued a postcard of the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt memorial. An Israeli postage stamp to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the revolt showed a Jewish fighter, drawn from one detail of that statue, along with the inscription “These I Remember” (Psalms 42:5). Ten years later, a Berlin memorial depicting a Jewish star in barbed wire read “to the martyrs and heroes of the ghetto uprising.” Even as many also came to realize that the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt was the first large-scale urban civilian rebellion against the Germans in World War II, the State of Israel issued a stamp in the memory of Anielewicz (1983) and one of Zuckerman and Lubetkin (1984). The Polish government, which had issued stamps showing the front of Rapoport’s statue (ca. 1956) and of a rebel with a rifle and handgun in front of a burning ghetto (1963), went further twenty years later. Highlighting the memorial’s defiant fighters, a stamp designed especially for the fortieth anniversary of the revolt included the letters ŻOB along with the broken wall of the Warsaw Ghetto. As for Yad Vashem, Rapoport’s relief of the ghetto’s armed rebels functioned as a symbol for Israel’s national institution of Holocaust commemoration. It was placed on the cover of the 1967 Yad Vashem information pamphlet. This would be reprinted until the 1990s.32 Over the years, prominent dignitaries felt obligated to pay their respects to the Warsaw monument. Most memorable was that of — 180 —

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Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany Willy Brandt, who arrived there on December 7, 1970, from a visit to the Polish Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Sober and expressionless, he walked slowly to the monument, laid a wreath, and then spontaneously knelt at its base. Seven years later, prior to bringing Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat together for peace talks at Camp David, US President Jimmy Carter came there to bow his head, a reverent gesture that, like Brandt’s, made page one of the New York Times. In June 1983, John Paul II, returning to his country of birth as the first ever Slavic Pope, stopped at the memorial for a moment of silent prayer before a crowd of 20,000, a stop that had not been on his formal schedule. He also visited the Pawiak prison museum in the former Jewish ghetto district, a courtyard festooned with memorial plaques from relatives of the 100,000 people murdered at the site or deported to Nazi death camps from there.33 Two months before John Paul II’s brief visit to the memorial, Rapoport’s monument had become the scene of an especially bitter struggle between the Communist-led government and the Solidarity trade union movement. At the stroke of noon on April 19, 1983, the Polish authorities began the fortieth anniversary commemoration of the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt. Before a crowd of 1,000, a military guard of honor slowly marched forward, banks of red and white Polish flags and wreaths brought to the base, led by a member of the state-controlled veterans association Union of Fighters for Freedom and Democracy. This was followed by the mingling of the Polish anthem with Israel’s HaTikva. At the close, the mourners’ Kaddish prayer was intoned after the many soldiers disappeared, and the Zionist national anthem was again sung.34 At the same time, with hundreds of Polish police having outlawed an unofficial gathering there one day earlier to mark the anniversary, Solidarity supporters flashing victory signs before being forcibly dispersed, more than 1,000 people then gathered at the 18 Mila St. memorial. They turned it into a rally for the Solidarity union before being scattered by jackbooted policemen armed with submachine guns. Sixtytwo-year-old cardiologist Marek Edelman, the Bund representative on the ŻOB and the only known survivor of the rebellion still living in Poland, had called in Solidarity’s newspaper for a boycott of the official ceremony. The well-regarded human rights activist, placed under police — 181 —

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surveillance and ordered not to leave his home in Lodz, declared that in light of the suppression of Solidarity and our “social life in its entirety overshadowed by degradation and oppression,” the state commemoration would be “an act of cynicism and scorn.”35 The American Jewish Committee announced that it would not attend the official commemoration either. The Polish government had chosen to politicize the event, it declared, “as manifested in a spate of vitriolic anti-Israel editorials” and the “presence in positions of prominence of people associated with the anti-Semitic campaign during the time of the Gomulka regime.” The latter objection, hinting to what had led to the departure of some 13,000 Jews during 1967–1968, the result of a domestic assault aimed to purge Jews from all positions of influence and leadership that had evolved from a Cold War anti-Israeli policy in reaction to the overwhelming Arab defeat in the Six-Day War, was strengthened especially with the recent news that a representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), dedicated to Israel’s destruction by armed struggle and recognized by the United States and Israel as a terrorist organization, would be present to lay a wreath at the memorial to the martyred victims. “Given this flagrant insult to the dead as well as to the living,” the Committee’s statement ended, “we have recalled our representative and cancelled all plans to participate.”36 Some thought otherwise. The Union of American Hebrew Congregations, led by Rabbi Alexander Schindler, disclosed that its delegation had a “friendly and satisfying” one-hour meeting “of brothers” a few days earlier with Joseph Cardinal Glemp, Primate of Poland, and that he had received Polish assurances that a PLO representative would not be allowed to officially participate in a wreath-laying ceremony at the monument. Greville Janner, Labour MP and president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, also expressed his organization’s need to express its “solidarity with the Polish Jewish martyrs on a human and profound level,” his “admiration for the superb security measures taken on our behalf,” and that the government saw to it that the PLO would not “turn this significant occasion into a farce.”37 Nevertheless, the Palestine Liberation Organization representative did place a wreath on the memorial in a separate ceremony later that afternoon, to which diplomatic delegations were invited. Some of the Jewish delegations expressed anger, Mayor Shlomo Lahat of Tel Aviv, a senior member of the Israeli delegation, declaring that the PLO’s — 182 —

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participation was a betrayal of the assurances which the Polish authorities had given the previous week. He declared that the PLO “murderers have found a way to desecrate the holy memory of the heroes of the Ghetto,” and announced that he would protest to the Polish authorities over the PLO’s participation. The same day, some of the heads of delegations met with Prime Minister Wojciech Jaruzelski in a private two-hour session. It was reported that Jaruzelski had given them unqualified assurances of total support for Jewish institutions, places of worship, cemeteries, and the cultural aspects of Jewish life. In the end, four members of the Israeli delegation cut short their visit, forty others remaining to visit four Nazi death camp sites in Poland. The delegation officially protested the PLO’s placing of a wreath, calling it a “cynical act and a desecration of the memory of the victims” of the Nazis. Warsaw media ignored the incident, while government officials explained in private contacts with the Israelis that the PLO’s action had been done without the knowledge of the authorities, and that a PLO wreath placed on the monument on the morning prior to the memorial ceremonies had been removed before the ceremonies began.38 One year after Rapoport’s death, tensions over the political reality in Poland and its connection to his monument had escalated. Pressing for a site to commemorate the Warsaw Uprising of August-October 1944 against the Germans, painfully aware that the Red Army had camped quietly across the Vistula River while 180,000 Poles died in their valiant resistance, Solidarity leader Lech Wałęsa pointedly enlarged the Poles’ national sense of themselves to include memory of the Jews. “In this land of so many uprisings,” he declared in a letter before a crowd of 10,000 who assembled at the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt statue to commemorate the rebellion’s forty-fifth anniversary despite a government ban, “the uprising of the Jewish fighters was perhaps the most Polish of all uprisings,” and he begged forgiveness for the “painful excesses” of antisemitism in Poland. Earlier, at Warsaw’s Jewish cemetery at Okopowa St., several thousand Poles and Jews, some of them ghetto survivors, gathered to unveil a monument to the preeminent Bund leaders Henryk Erlich and Wiktor Alter, who were murdered during World War II at Stalin’s order. On that occasion, Edelman asserted that the cenotaph in their honor made the cemetery “a symbol of the shame of inhuman totalitarianism all over the world.” — 183 —

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Several hundred representatives of world Jewish organizations chose to attend a week of government-sponsored ceremonies, including the dedication of a memorial at the site of the Umschlagplatz. Edelman had refused to take part in these official events, saying that participation dishonored the ghetto fighters in light of the repressive character of General Jaruzelski’s dictatorial government. Yet Kalman Sultanik, a Holocaust survivor from Poland and vice president of the World Jewish Congress, declared: “I respect everyone’s right to commemorate as he sees fit. But we came here for a commemoration, first of all, of the ghetto. This is such a broad and important issue, and this is unfortunately taking away from that importance, by directing it to something that is only minor.” At about the same time, meeting in the Polish parliament to award ninety-seven Yad Vashem’s Righteous among the Nations of the World medals to non-Jews who had rescued Jews during the Holocaust, Moshe Bejski, a justice of the Israeli Supreme Court and another Polish survivor, told the recipients: “You, just people, were unknown and you acted secretly. Risking your lives, you performed your duty toward other people—you contributed to saving the conscience of mankind.” Virtually none of the several thousand Israelis currently in Poland for a government-sponsored commemoration took part in the unofficial events, after the Polish authorities warned them that they could not guarantee their safety. The Communist authorities denounced the independent gatherings, charging that Solidarity leaders exploited them for political ends. They feared apparently that that banned movement would commemorate the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt “by actually re-enacting it.” Indeed, the Polish Workers’ United Party’s Trybuna Ludu editors viewed the ghetto revolt commemoration occurring “at a time of wide upsurge of interest in Poland in the centuries-old Polish Jewish history, in the role of Polish Jews in cultural, economic, and social life, in our common fate.” As James Young later observed, that is what precisely happened in 1988, when the ceremony at Rapoport’s monument ended in an anti-government strike at the Gdansk shipyards six weeks later.39 And on December 9, 1990, Wałęsa won the presidential election, defeating Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki and other candidates to become Poland’s first freely elected head of state in sixty-three years, and the first non-Communist head of state in forty-five years. — 184 —

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Three years later, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin publicly linked the ghetto revolt and the Holocaust to Israel’s rising from “the ashes of the martyrs” to be the realization of “the last dreams and hopes of the six million who are no more.” Addressing the assembled in Warsaw for the fiftieth anniversary of the uprising, he asserted that “the courage of the ghetto fighters was the cornerstone of the State of Israel.” Paying his country’s respects to the “handful who survived” that and other rebellions without a chance of defeating the Nazis, he averred that the ghetto rebels “kept alive the embers of honor,” the “last asset of one thousand years of Polish Jewry which were consumed by fire but their honor did not perish.” Although “our faith in mankind proved false” and “our hearts continue to rage,” Rabin went on, Israel had no desire for revenge. Nations must examine their past and learn its lessons. Holocaust denial and racism continued to persist, but the Jewish state “will defend every Jew and serve as a refuge for Jews everywhere.” Standing before Rapoport’s monument to honor those Jewish Poles who tried to “strike at the Nazi beast,” the former IDF Chief of Staff during the Six-Day War called for an end to violence and to war, and ended with the words of the last prayer often recited by those who perished in the Holocaust: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.”40 Four days earlier, Pope John Paul II had defused a major controversy by telling fourteen Carmelite nuns to move from their convent at Auschwitz in the same building that had stored canisters of Zyklon B for the gassing of more than one million Jews at Auschwitz-II (Birkenau) three kilometers away, and where a twenty-three-foot wooden cross had dominated the skies for almost five years since 1984. The protests of Jewish and other leaders had until then achieved nothing, Cardinal Glemp even taking the occasion of a visit in August 1988 at the Jasna Góra Monastery in Częstochowa, the shrine of the country’s most revered religious icon, to warn Jews, whose “power lies in the mass media that are easily at your disposal in many countries,” not “to talk to us from the position of a nation raised beyond all others” and “to offend the feelings of all Poles, and our sovereignty.” This brought to mind the utterance of August Cardinal Hlond at the time of the Kielce pogrom, where Poles, spurred on by the medieval blood libel charge, killed fortytwo Jews and seriously wounded forty others, that that savage attack and antisemitism in Poland were due to a great extent to Jewish cooperation with the postwar Communist regime. The persistent Catholic — 185 —

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strain of Jew-hatred, together with Polish officials still claiming Jew and Gentile in Occupied Poland as equal victims of the Final Solution, each losing three million lives, could not be easily dismissed.41 Two years later, a monument was unveiled near Rapoport’s statue to honor those Poles who had risked their lives in the ŻEGOTA relief council, sponsored by the London-based Polish government-inexile, to rescue Jews from December 1942 onwards. Righteous Among the Nations of the World medalist Władysław Bartoszewski, Poland’s Foreign Minister and the last surviving member of ŻEGOTA’s executive, stressed that the group’s creation had been a common activity of Christians and Jews, helping “the most vulnerable.” American and Israeli ambassadors spoke, with prayers offered by Chief Rabbi of Warsaw Menahem Joskowicz and Bishop Stanisław Gądecki, president of the Polish Episcopate’s Commission for Dialogue with the Jews. The modest black stone, with inscriptions in Polish, Hebrew and English summarizing the organization’s activities, had been commissioned by a group of Americans, mostly Polish, and designed by Warsaw artists Hanna Szamlenberg and Marek Moderau.42 Jan T. Gross’s Sąsiedzi (Neighbors), a study by the Princeton University historian of the massacre on July 10, 1941, of the Jewish community in Jedwabne village in northeast Poland by their non-Jewish neighbors, forced the country to examine a significant aspect of its past. That introspection had begun with the showing of Lanzmann’s Shoah in 1986 and an article the following year by distinguished Jagiellonian University literature professor Jan Błoǹski, who had called for his fellow Poles to acknowledge their antisemitic history in order to “gradually cleanse this doomed land.”43 What to say about a distinct people that had vanished from its soil, one-tenth of Poland’s population of thirty five million on the eve of World War II? A vigorous two-year debate ensued from the time that Gross’s book appeared in Polish (2000) and then in English translation (2001), with local historians divided over its factual charges and the mainstream Polish press expressing consensus regarding the basic accuracy of the author’s findings. The volume inspired film director and screenwriter Władysław Psikowski to produce his 2012 dramatic film Pokłosie (Aftermath), claiming that Gross’s book “was the source of my knowledge and shame.” Cardinal Glemp described the book’s thesis as “incontestable” and Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski asked his — 186 —

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countrymen to “seek forgiveness for what our compatriots have done.” Other Polish publications, on the other hand, accused Gross’s book of being a “part of international campaign aimed at damaging the image of Poland and preparing ground for restitution of Jewish property.”44 For years to come, controversy over Holocaust commemoration in Poland continued unabated. At the seventieth anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt, an official ceremony was held in the vast plaza square between the Rapoport statue and the new Museum of the History of Polish Jews. Sirens wailed and church bells rang throughout the city to mark the date. In attendance were Polish President Bronisław Komorowski and Prime Minister Donald Tusk, as well as Israeli Education Minister Shai Piron and the legendary ghetto fighter Sima Rotem. Three years earlier, the government had erected a monument over the manhole at 51 Prosta St., where Rotem had emerged from the sewers with the fighters he had led out of the ghetto. My comrades and I, Rotem declared now, launched the uprising to “choose the kind of death” they wanted, the rest of the ghetto’s remaining Jews expecting the same fate as the majority who had been killed by then. Yet to this day, he added, I keep thinking whether we had the right to make the decision “and by the same token to shorten the lives of many by a week, a day or two.” Although first feeling “utterly helpless” when facing the tremendous German firepower and a huge infantry force of 2,000 men, Rotem confided, “an extraordinary sense of spiritual uplifting” followed, the moment we had been waiting for . . . to stand up to this all-powerful German.” At the same hour, a half-mile away, a small group gathered under leaden skies at the entrance to Warsaw’s huge Jewish cemetery for an alternative memorial. Carrying bunches of bright yellow daffodils, they laid the flowers on the grave of Marek Edelman, who had died at the age of eighty-eight in October 2009. The group, most now in their sixties and seventies, had come together for decades to mark the anniversary of the uprising. Until his death, the Lodz doctor was usually with them, laying a bunch of daffodils at the towering, dark monument to ghetto heroes. For years, he had received yellow flowers, usually daffodils, from an anonymous person on the date of that anniversary. Eventually the flowers became a symbol of the remembrance. The group placing flowers on Edelman’s grave this year included several Polish Jews forced to leave the country during the Communist regime’s antisemitic — 187 —

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campaign of 1968, along with former dissidents and Solidarity activists. Throughout the city, young volunteers handed out paper daffodils for people to wear on their jackets or lapels. All over Warsaw, people could be seen sporting the symbol, which was reminiscent of the yellow Star of David that the Nazis had forced Jews to wear.45 POLIN, the new museum facing the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt monument, which was officially opened on April 22, 2013, had also sparked controversy. While celebrating the rich, millennial history of Polish Jewry, its future permanent exhibits were also intended to confront the country with its own dark chapters of Jew-hatred. Many nationalistic citizens preferred an image of Poland as a model of heroic resistance to centuries of past oppression, both by Germans and Russians. Many grew up under a communist regime that dictated whose suffering should get attention. Further, historian Krzystof Jasiewicz of the Political Studies Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences, although provoking widespread academic protest, drew considerable support in online forums for recently claiming in a magazine article that “the Jews worked for centuries to bring the Holocaust about. . . . The scale of the German crime was only possible because the Jews themselves participated in the murder of their own people.” Another debate arose over the idea of raising a memorial to Polish Righteous among the Nations of the World (6,000, the largest number from any country, officially recognized by Yad Vashem) right next to the museum, critics arguing that it would lead some to falsely believe that most Poles acted as rescuers of Jews during World War II. That June, a monument to Anielewicz’s last stand at 18 Mila was vandalized, the words “Jude Raus” (“Jews Out”) crudely painted there.46 The grand opening ceremony of the POLIN museum with its multi-media core exhibition on October 26, 2014, drew Polish President Komorowski, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin (on his first foreign visit), Polish Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz, Sejm members, several foreign delegations, and well over 1,000 guests. The museum’s name in Hebrew means “here you will rest,” Komorowski observed, appropriate because until its partitioning in the late eighteenth century, the country was “a safe haven and a generally friendly place.” Ever since Poland won its freedom twenty-five years ago, it strove to “put right the account of history that has been corrupted, manipulated and distorted in so many ways during the non-democratic communist era.” Only “parallel stories — 188 —

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of greatness and smallness, heroism and cowardice, sacrifice and crime, life and death,” Komorowski concluded, “can bring the idea of Polin back again.” Although Jews were torn away from Poland, Rivlin responded, “it is difficult or even impossible to tear Poland away from Jews.” Polish society was becoming “more and more courageous” in confronting its past and its future, he declared, and only through this kind of courage “shall we be able to write—and we have already started that process—a new, promising chapter of our mutual history which we have shared throughout centuries.”47 Four years later, on March 8, 2018, Polish President Andrzej Duda made an emotional plea for forgiveness for the Gomulka government’s violent purge against the country’s Jews, placing flowers on a memorial at Warsaw University. Poland was not to blame, asserted Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, saying that it was the Communist regime forced on the Polish people “that treated the Jews so badly back then.” At the same time, this fiftieth anniversary of the mass expatriation of half of the Jews then living in Poland coincided with the present-day controversy surrounding the government’s Holocaust law. The latter decreed that suggestions that Poland bore responsibility for Nazi crimes in the country were a criminal offense. Israel, the United States, and Polish historians feared that it could lead to a complete denial of Polish crimes against their fellow Jewish citizens during World War II. The current Holocaust debate had triggered a new wave of agitation against Jews in the media and the internet, declared historian Dariusz Stola, director of the POLIN museum. There were similarities to the antisemitic slogans and lies perpetrated in 1968, Stola told DW, Germany’s international media outlet. Comments on social media had included such assertions as “The Jews and Israel have the liberal lobby in Brussels [headquarters of the European Union’s executive branch] on a leash,” and “Too bad, that not all Jews emigrated in 1968. Now they are showing off again.”48 The following month, Poland marked the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt, daffodils again widely worn throughout the city. Open Republic, an association fighting antisemitism and xenophobia, announced that it would stage an “independent” gathering in opposition to what it called the “hollow nationalist pomp” of the government, recalling how the prime minister, allied with the ruling Law and Justice Party’s illiberal, nationalist policies, had paid tribute earlier — 189 —

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that year to a Polish wartime insurgency unit that had collaborated with the Nazis. That commemoration in Warsaw was the first major anniversary without any survivors of the revolt in attendance, although several surviving noncombatants who had been in the ghetto as children commemorated the loss of their loved ones and their community. Among those present that day was eighty-seven year old Marian Kalwary, a Polish survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto. In an interview with The Associated Press, he said that he was horrified to see violence in the world today and what he asserted was the rise in Poland of the same nationalistic views that drove Nazi Germany into starting World War II and the Holocaust. “I am terrified by the rebirth of fascism and nationalism and I can see nationalism being glorified and put on a pedestal as something noble,” Kalwary declared. “Nationalism is being confused with patriotism.”49 A separate ceremony, held on July 22, 2018, honored Szmul Zygelbojm, the Bund representative on the National Council of the Polish government-in-exile, who had committed suicide in London on May 12, 1943, when word came of the liquidation of the last Jews in Warsaw, among them his wife Manya and son Tuvia. In a “cry of protest” against the world’s “indifference” during the Holocaust, his final letter read, Zygelbojm had hoped that taking his life would “shock” the Allied governments into action now, perhaps “the last moment for the remnants of Polish Jewry.” The head of the local Jewish History Institute, sociologist Paweł Śpiewak, asserted that Zygelbojm’s name needed to be recalled because it was not found in major Holocaust history books and there was no street in Israel named after him. The March of Remembrance, held by the Institute each year since 2012, began at Warsaw’s Umschlagplatz Monument, participants placing yellow ribbons with Jewish names on a barbed wire fence that symbolized the ghetto’s isolating wall. Joining hundreds of residents that Sunday, Israeli ambassador Anna Azari remarked that the memory of Zygelbojm should be a lesson for the present and for the future. The march came one month after the fallout over an agreement, signed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Polish counterpart Morawiecki on June 27, which Poland saw as exonerating it of accusations that Poles had any meaningful role in corroborating in the Holocaust. The declaration, which drew sharp international criticism and was castigated by Yad Vashem, Netanyahu’s coalition partners, — 190 —

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President Rivlin, and opposition members of the Israeli Knesset, was part of an agreement that ended the diplomatic spat between the two countries over the controversial Holocaust Law passed by the Sejm in February that made any individual accusing the Polish nation of being “responsible or co-responsible for Nazi crimes committed by the Third Reich” open to a prison term of up to three years. The declaration was issued just minutes after the Polish parliament passed amended legislation to make such accusations a civil (facing major fines) rather than a criminal offense. President Duda signed it into law, right-wing Prime Minister Morawiecki conceding that his government had to take into account the “international context.” The declaration also stated that the term “Polish death camps” was “blatantly erroneous,” and that the wartime Polish government-in-exile in London “attempted to stop this Nazi activity [the killing of Jews] by trying to raise awareness among the Western allies to the systematic murder of the Polish Jews.”50 Three months later, the Polish government handed over the site for a future Warsaw Ghetto Museum, the former children’s hospital that had been within the ghetto’s walls and was now to be found in the capital’s main business district at 61 Śliska St./60 Sienna St. Scheduled to be opened in 2023 to mark the eightieth anniversary of the ghetto uprising, the key was ceremoniously given by a government official to historian Albert Stankowski, who signed a long-term lease. Fragments of a plaque could be found on the floor, listing the names of donors of the original Bersohn and Bauman Children’s Hospital, which had been established in the late nineteenth century by the two Jewish families. One of the stories which the future museum would tell was of the harrowing decision that some Jewish doctors had made to give many children fatal overdoses of morphine in order to spare them worse deaths in Treblinka. “This museum will be very important for all Jews because it is a symbol of the Shoah and the extermination of the Jewish people,” director Stankowski remarked. “But even more importantly, it has a universal message important for the whole world. It shows what can happen when people are dehumanized.”51 As the seventy-fifth anniversary of the liberation of AuschwitzBirkenau by the Red Army on January 27, 1945, approached, marked since 2005 by the UN General Assembly as International Holocaust Remembrance Day, it was clear that the Polish government had not come to peace with commemorating the Holocaust. After being told — 191 —

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that he would not be allowed to speak at a related event in Yad Vashem but Russian president Vladimir Putin would, Duda chose to stay home. His move came amid anger in Poland over Putin’s recent comments accusing Poland of complicity in the start of the Second World War, purposely neglecting the Soviet Union’s August 23, 1939, non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany and the subsequent invasion of Poland by both powers on September 1.52 Some historians and survivors saw Poland’s recent Holocaust Law having encouraged other European nations with far more sinister Holocaust records to attempt to whitewash their own participation in the unprecedented mass murder of Jews. Poland’s stance particularly influenced neighboring Lithuania, where complicity with the “Final Solution” was both widespread and a major reason why 96.4 percent of the country’s approximately 220,000 Jews were wiped out. As Efraim Zuroff and Ruth Vanagaite have shown in their recent study Our People, this highest percentage of victims among the large European Jewish communities included the fact that some 90 percent of them were shot near their homes, in many cases by their neighbors at a time when fewer than 1,000 Germans were stationed in this small country during the Nazi occupation. Trying to counter that narrative, a Lithuanian lawmaker for the ruling party of Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis had announced the previous month that a committee he headed was drafting legislation declaring that neither Lithuania nor its leaders participated in the Holocaust.53 The position taken by Poland and Lithuania reflected rising nationalism across the Continent. In 2014, Latvia had introduced a law stipulating up to five years in jail for those who denied the role of “the foreign powers that have perpetrated crimes against Latvia and the Latvian nation.” No mention was made of the involvement of Latvian police units in murdering nearly all of the country’s 70,000 Jews, concludes Andrew Ezergailis, as many as 30,000 killed by about four hundred men in the SD Commando unit led by Viktor Arajs. After the war, German SS veterans continued to march annually through the streets of Riga, the capital, flanked by ultranationalist activists. In 2015, the Ukrainian parliament passed a law that praised “anti-communist partisans,” including Nazi collaborators, and criminalized uttering “insults” about their memory. This, notwithstanding Martin Dean’s incontrovertible findings that the local police (organized by the SS in Schutzmannschaft — 192 —

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battalions) in the villages of Ukraine and Belorusssia, greatly outnumbering German manpower in these areas, brutally drove Jewish neighbors from their homes, guarded them closely on the way to their deaths, and some distinguished themselves as ruthless killers.54 On April 19, 2020, Warsaw sirens wailed and Jewish prayers were said for the heroes of the 1943 ghetto uprising, but the annual memorial observances were scaled down that Sunday and moved to the internet. The worldwide coronavirus pandemic and the need for social distancing “forced us to change the formula” for commemoration, declared POLIN museum director Zygmunt Stępiński. Poland’s chief rabbi since the early 1990s, American-born Michael Schudrich, recited prayers at the monument to the ghetto fighters. Prime Minister Morawiecki and representatives of Jewish and Polish organizations laid wreaths. They all wore face masks and kept themselves at a distance from each other. President Duda and Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski also sent wreaths. History lectures and virtual visits to ghetto sites were offered on the internet, mainly by the POLIN museum. Commemorative concerts were broadcast on Radio POLIN and on Poland’s state radio.55 More than seventy years after Rapoport’s iconic monument was first unveiled in Warsaw, it is most likely that his memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt will continue to serve as the official center of Holocaust commemoration in a country still confronting its past. Although the legendary fighter in that historic rebellion, Simha Rotem, passed away in December 2018 at the age of ninety-four and the number of survivors continued to dwindle rapidly, Poland’s Jewish community has concurrently witnessed the beginnings of vibrant rebirth in centers like Kraków, Warsaw, and Lublin. Jewish schools, cultural events, and kosher restaurants all reflect what Polish international journalist and Jewish activist Konstanty Gebart has called “Living in the Land of Ashes.” Yet thousands of the country’s nationalists marched to the US Embassy in Warsaw on May 11, 2019, to protest Washington’s pressure on Poland to compensate Jews whose families had lost property during the Holocaust; Poland remains the only country in the European Union not to have legislated on property restitution for Holocaust victims. Swastikas are regularly sprayed on Jewish cemetery gravestones.56 In July 2020, President Duda, supported by the media and the influential Roman Catholic Church, running a radicalized nationalist campaign that had homophobic and antisemitic overtones, narrowly won a — 193 —

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second five-year term in a bitterly fought election against Trzaskowski, the liberal mayor of Warsaw. Three months later, the Polish Senate passed a law, authored by the ruling right-wing Law and Justice party leader Deputy Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyński, to end its $1.8 billion kosher and halal meat export industry in 2025. The same October, the former governor of Lublin, Przemysław Czernek of the Law and Justice party, was selected to become Poland’s education and science minister. He had called in 2019 for the removal of the memorial created by artist Dorota Nieznalska. The memorial, which Czernek deemed “a Polish scandal,” featured a heap of charred logs arranged in the shape of a burning stake with signs denoting places where Poles had killed Jews during and after the Holocaust.57 With internecine warring between political factions in this predominantly Catholic country of 38 million, including some 20,000 Jews, a reality that coarsens the public discourse and results in more public acts of vandalism and verbal abuse, the Oświęcim Jewish Museum decided to conduct a month-long program in November of educational activities to sensitize teachers and activists to the dangers of exclusion. Announced two days after dozens of people from more than forty-nine countries sent greetings on his 101st birthday to Józef Walaszczyk, one of the last surviving Righteous Among the Nations of the World who had saved more than fifty Jews in Poland during World War II, this initiative aimed via the internet to warn that “Auschwitz did not fall out of the sky” and to teach responses to discrimination and intolerance.58 Talking about the “Jewish problem” remains a great challenge in Poland. Antisemitism has not disappeared, while prevalent universalizing of the Holocaust refuses to acknowledge that the Jews, not the Poles, faced annihilation, and that the majority of Poles were either apathetic or overtly hostile to their Jewish neighbors when one people was targeted in World War II for death with no reprieve by the Third Reich and its collaborators. “There can be no reconciliation without remembrance,” declared President Richard von Weizsaecker, the son of convicted Nuremberg war criminal Ernst von Weizsaecker, to the West German Bundestag on May 8, 1985, convened that day to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe and of “National-Socialist Tyranny.”59 As the twenty-first century dawns, decades after Nazi terror darkened a continent and, fueled by racist ideology, destroyed European Jewry, it is time for a full, honest healing to begin. — 194 —

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Endnotes  1. Jewish Telegraphic Agency (hereafter JTA), April 9 and 14, 1948. The Great Deportation from the Warsaw Ghetto, begun on the eve of Tisha B’Av (the traditional Jewish day of mourning for the destruction of the first and second Holy Temples in Jerusalem), lasted from July 22 to September 12, 1942.   2. Nathan Rapoport, “Memoir of the Warsaw Ghetto Monument,” in The Art of Memory: Holocaust Memorials in History, ed. James E. Young (New York, 1994), 103–107; Rapoport interview, Yediot Acharonot, April 9, 1976; Saul Jay Singer, “Nathan Rapoport and the Warsaw Ghetto Monument,” Jewish Press, July 24, 2019; Marc Kornblatt, “Nathan Rapoport Remembers the Uprising,” Congress Monthly 50:3 (April/May 1983): 13–14; James E. Young, “The Biography of a Memorial Icon,” Representations 26 (Spring 1989): 60–106. The Black Book of Soviet Jewry about the Holocaust in the USSR, edited by novelist Vasily Grossman and Ehrenburg, was scuttled by the Soviet authorities in early 1947 as anti-Soviet for insisting on the uniqueness of Jewish suffering above and beyond the rest of Soviet citizenry; it did not appear in Russia until 2014.   3. Mooli Brog, “Netsurim B’Homot HaZikaron: Andartat Geto Varsha K’Seimel ‘HaShoah V’HaGevura’, B’Polin U’V’Yisrael,” Alpayim 4 (1997): 151, note 15.   4. Liz Elsby, “Rapoport’s Memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising—A Personal Interpretation,” https://www.yadvashem.org/articles/general/warsawmemorial-personal-interpretation.html.   5. James E. Young, The Texture of Memory Holocaust Memorials and Meaning (New Haven, 1993), 170.   6. Ibid., 170; JTA, April 18 and 20, 1948. The US Holocaust Memorial Museum (Washington, DC) has a nine-and-a-half minute film, entitled “Rocznica Getta,” showing the march to the dedication ceremonies. RG 60.4334, film ID 2746.  7. JTA, April 20, 1948; Young, The Texture of Memory, 170; Sydney Gruson, “Warsaw Unveils Ghetto Memorial,” New York Times, April 20, 1948.   8. Barou address, April 18, 1948, file C3/358, Central Zionist Archives (hereafter CZA), Jerusalem, Israel. Silverman, British MP, spoke briefly in English at the memorial ceremonies, with Riegner speaking in French for all the foreign delegations at a reception hosted by the Lord Mayor. Easterman was the main spokesman, again in Yiddish, for the WJC delegation that met with the Foreign Minister Zygmunt Modzelewski. The latter pledged that Poland would “stand firm” in giving the Jews full support in regard to Palestine. Barou

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to Office Committee, April 29, 1948, MS-361, box B53, folder 7, American Jewish Archives (hereafter AJA), Cincinnati, OH.   9. Shuster to Slawson, May 7, 1948, P-Poland files, American Jewish Committee Archives (hereafter AJC), New York City. Also present as Jewish representatives from abroad were A. M. Sul of YKUF (Yidisher Kultur Farband), a Communist-oriented Yiddish cultural organization in the United States, and Major Abraham S. Hyman, assistant to Haber. 10. Yitzhak Zuckerman (“Antek”), A Surplus of Memory: Chronicle of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, trans. and ed. B. Harshav (Berkeley, 1993); Israel Gutman, The Jews of Warsaw, 1939–1943 (Bloomington, 1980); Yitzhak Zuckerman, “The Jewish Fighting Organization, ŻOB: Its Establishment and Activities,” in The Catastrophe of European Jewry, ed. Y. Gutman and L. Rothkirchen (Jerusalem, 1976), 518–548; Zivia Lubetkin, B’Yemei Kilayon Va’Mered (Tel Aviv, 1981). 11. Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, editor-in-chief Israel Gutman, vol. 4 (New York, 1990), 1741; Zuckerman, A Surplus of Memory, 676–678. The Judenrat was a Jewish Council set up by the Germans in occupied Europe to implement Nazi policies in the ghettos. In most instances, each council tried to delay or lighten punitive measures, while others believed that if they would comply with German demands, the Germans would see how productive they Jews could be and alleviate the persecution. Some council leaders sacrificed certain elements of the community for others, hoping to save the rest. In a few cases, Judenräte members took advantage of their privileged positions for personal gain, leading to much animosity and criticism on the part of the Jewish communities. In several cases, Judenräte members planned and took part in armed resistance to the Nazis. 12. Zuckerman speech, April 19, 1948, in Polish with Hebrew translation, file 01702, Beit Lochamei HaGeta’ot, Israel. The ŻOB grenade attack on the café in Kraków, in response to the second Aktion of October 27–28, 1942, which deported 7,000 Jews from the ghetto to the death camps of Belzec and Auschwitz-Birkenau and shot 600 Jews on the spot, left about 11 Germans killed and many more injured. 13. Zuckerman, A Surplus of Memory, 677. 14. JTA, April 20–21, 1948. 15. HaTsofeh, Al HaMishmar, HaAretz, all April 20, 1948. 16. Davar and Palestine Post, both April 20, 1948. The Yad Vashem executive board, replying to an invitation to the monument’s dedication, indicated that its representative could not attend because of the current war in Palestine. At the same time, it saw the survivor remnant in Poland “natural partners” to the — 196 —

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institution’s intention to create the Jewish nation’s central Holocaust memorial in Eretz Israel. Borg, “Netsurim,” 164. 17. Barou letter, April 29, 1948, MS-361, AJA. For Storch’s rescue activities during the Holocaust, see Monty Noam Penkower, The Jews Were Expendable: Free World Diplomacy and the Holocaust (Urbana, 1983), chap. 9. 18. Beckelman report, European Executive Council, May 24, 1948, 1945–1954, New York Collection, folder 817, American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Archives, New York City. For the Kielce pogrom, in which fortytwo Jews were brutally killed, another forty wounded, and about thirty more murdered in a frenzy that spread across the area, see Jan T. Gross, Fear: AntiSemitism in Poland after Auschwitz (New York, 2006), chaps. 3–4; Zuckerman, A Surplus of Memory, chap. 15. 19. Shuster to Lawson, May 7, 1948, P-Poland files, American Jewish Committee Archives, New York City. 20. Zuckerman testimony, copy in Yad Vashem, Israel. 21. Zuckerman, A Surplus of Memory, vii–xiii. 22. World Jewish Congress report, May 17, 1948, C6/116, CZA. 23. Alec Mishory, Secularizing the Sacred: Aspects of Israeli Visual Culture (Leiden, 2019), chap. 14; Anita Shapira, Land and Power: The Zionist Resort to Force, 1881– 1948 (New York, 1992), 321–342; Dina Porat, Hanhaga B’Milkod, HaYishuv Nokhah HaShoah 1942–1945 (Tel-Aviv, 1986), 435–493; Hana Yablonka, Achim Zarim: Nitsolei HaShoah B’Medinat Yisrael, 1948–1952 (Jerusalem, 1994), 9–154; Idit Zartal, HaUma V’HaMavet, Historiya, Zikaron (Tel Aviv, 2002); Maoz Azaryahu, “Water Towers: A Study in the Cultural Geographies of Zionist Mythology,” Ecumene 8:3 (July 2001): 317–322. The statue of Anielewicz may also recall the biblical narrative of David’s standing unafraid against the giant Philistine warrior Goliath, armed only with a sling to cast a stone (Samuel 1:17). 24. Richard Jaffe, Nathan Rapoport’s Sculptures and Monuments (New York, 1980). For the Eichmann Trial’s impact, where survivors gave their testimony in public for the first time, see Yehiam Weitz, “Political Dimensions of Holocaust Memory” in The Shaping of Israeli Identity, ed. R. Wistrich and D. Ohana (London, 1995), 141, and the broader study by Hanna Yabonka and Moshe Tlamim, “The Development of Holocaust Consciousness in Isarel: The Nuremberg, Kapos, Kastner, and Eichmann Trials,” Israel Studies 8:3 (Fall 2003): 1–24. 25. Yael Adar, “Scroll of Fire,” www.gemsinisrael.com/the-gems/the-judean-hills/ scroll-of-fire/. Nearby is a poem on the martyrs by Nobel Prize for Literature recipient Nelly Sachs. — 197 —

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26. Mooli Brog, “‘Zekher Halom L’Vrakha’: Mordekhai Shenhavi V’Ra’ayonot HaHantsacha HaRishonim Shel HaShoah B’Eretz Yisrael, 1942–1945,” Yad Vashem Studies 30 (2002): 297–336, trans. in Shoah Resource Center, www. yadvashem.org; Batya Donner, Natan Rapoport, Oman Yehudi (Jerusalem, 2014), 168–171; Mooli Brog, “‘Even MiKir Tizak’: HaHantsaha HaMonumentalit Shel HaShoah B’Nof Yisrael,” Masoa 33 (2006): 93–109. Other than the red brick wall and the separate statues, the one obvious change was the draping of Liberté’s right breast in deference to Jerusalem’s religious sensibilities. Historian and Minister of Education Ben-Zion Dinur, then also chairman of Yad Vashem, had wanted the statue placed in the Ohel Yizkor. This proposal was rejected owing to rabbinic reservations on grounds of halakha (traditional Jewish law) associated with placing a statue there. Doron Bar, “Holocaust and Heroism in the Process of Establishing Yad Vashem (1942–1970),” trans. A. Greenberg, Dapim: Studies on the Holocaust 30:3 (2016): 181–182. 27. Donner, Natan Rapoport, 171–174; JTA, February 19, 1963; Brog, “In Blessed Memory of a Dream,” www.yadvashem.org, 27. The 27th of Nissan (corresponding to May 2, 1943), a compromise date to mollify Orthodox rabbinic objections against it occurring during the joyous Passover season, became an “institutional” tool for forming the collective consciousness. The choice of that date had been first passed by the Knesset on April 12, 1951, following a resolution proposed by Holocaust survivor MK Mordechai Nurock. Israel’s first museum dedicated to the Shoah, called the Chamber of the Holocaust and located on Jerusalem’s Mt. Zion, was inaugurated on December 30, 1949, by the state’s Ministry of Religion. The Chief Rabbinate, which earlier had set the 10th of Tevet fast day in the Hebrew calendar (corresponding to that year’s December date) as the national day henceforth to say the traditional memorial prayer for all Holocaust victims whose date of death is not known (HaKaddish HaK’lali), chose this site because of its proximity to what some claim is King David’s tomb. Other than exhibits of religious artifacts from the Holocaust, the museum includes urns with ashes of victims from thirty-six Nazi death camps and tombstone-like plaques memorializing more than 2,000 Jewish communities destroyed during the Holocaust. Doron Bar, “Holocaust Commemoration in Israel during the 1950s: The Holocaust Cellar on Mount Zion,” Jewish Social Studies 12:1 (Fall 2005): 16–38. 28. Mooli Brog, “Victims and Victors: Holocaust and Military Commemoration in Israel’s Collective Memory,” Israel Studies 8:3 (Fall 2003): 65–81; Bar, “Holocaust and Heroism,” 168; Ronnie Stauber, HaLekach LaDor: Shoah U’Gevura BaMachshava HaTziburit BaAretz B’Shnot HaChamishim (Jerusalem, — 198 —

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2000); Dalya Ofer, “Mah V’Ad Kama L’Zkor Min HaShoah: Zikhron HaShoah B’Medinat Yisrael BaAsor HaRishon L’Kiyuma,” in Atzmaut: 50 HaShanim HaRishonot, ed. A. Shapira (Jerusalem, 1998), 171–193. Also see Anita Shapira, “HaShoah: Zikaron Prati V’Zikaron Tziburi,” Zemanim 57 (1997): 4–13; Naima Barzel, “Tefisat HaGevurah BaShoah: Bein Zikaron Leumi Kolektivi LeZikaron Leumi Mufrat,” Dapim LeCheker HaShoah 16 (2001): 86–124. In the redesigning of Yad Vashem in 2005, Moshe Safdie’s minimalist Wall in Tribute to the Survivors greets visitors at the entrance, along with the biblical inscription “I will put my breath into you and you shall live again, and I will set upon you my own soul” (Ezekiel 37:14). 29. Kornblatt, “Nathan Rapoport Remembers the Uprising,” 13; Evelyn Tauben, Canadian Jewish News, November 10, 2020; B. J. Lifton, The King of Children: A Biography of Janusz Korczak (New York, 1988). Rapoport’s linking the Holocaust to the State of Israel reborn is shown in the statue placed above that of Korczak, showing two soldiers with a menorah held aloft and angels blowing the trumpet of victory. 30. Freema Gottlieb, “A Talk With Nathan Rapoport: Monument to Survival,” Hadassah Magazine, Dec. 1981, 24-25. 37; Ari Zivotofsky, “What’s the Truth about . . . the Legend of Two Bothers and the Temple Mount?,” Jewish Action 74:1 (Fall 2013): 92–94; New York Times, June 6, 1987. 31. Gottlieb, “A Talk with Nathan Rapoport,” 37; JTA, June 8, 1987. An unfinished work “Exodus,” a bronze abstract sculpture with a metal base depicting a group of men, women, and children crowded into a boat, recalled the famed Exodus 1947 passengers who defied the Royal Navy in their attempt to reach Palestine against British restrictive immigration laws. This work, its exact date unknown but assumed to be prepared in the 1950s, is located in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (accession no. 2005.22), which also has a Rapoport personal archive (RG 95-80) together with his prints and sketches (RG 94-4). 32. Natasha Goldman, “Israeli Holocaust Memorial Strategies at Yad Vashem: From Silence to Recognition,” Art Journal 65:2 (Summer 2006): 102–122. 33. New York Times, December 8, 1970, and December 31, 1977; UPI, June 18, 1983. 34. JTA, April 20, 1983. 35. JTA, April 18 and 20, 1983; John Kitner, “Polish Police Ban March on Uprising,” New York Times, April 18, 1983. 36. JTA, April 18, 1983. For the antisemitic campaign under Communist Party leader Władysław Gomulka, see Dariusz Stola, “Anti-Zionism as a — 199 —

After the Holocaust

Multipurpose Policy Instrument: The Anti-Zionist Campaign in Poland, 1967–1968,” Journal of Israeli History 25:1 (2006): 175–201; Feliks Tych, “The March ’68 Antisemitic Campaign: Onset, Development, and Consequences,” in Jewish Presence in Absence: The Aftermath of the Holocaust in Poland, 1944– 2010, ed. Feliks Tych and Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska, trans. G. Dąbowski and J. Taylor-Kucia (Jerusalem, 2014), 451–472. 37. JTA, April 18 and 20, 1983. 38. JTA, April 20–21, 1983. 39. John Tagliabue, “Polish March Lauds Heroes of ’43 Ghetto,” New York Times, April 18, 1988: Young, The Texture of Memory, 179. 40. Rabin address, April 19, 1993, https://mfa.gov.il/MFA/PressRoom/1993/ Pages/RABIN%20SPEECH%20AT%2050TH%20ANNIVERSARY%20OF%20 WARSAW%20GHETTO.aspx. 41. New York Times, April 15, 1993; Monty Noam Penkower, The Holocaust and Israel Reborn: From Catastrophe to Sovereignty (Urbana, 1994), chap. 13. 42. JTA, September 28, 1995. In 2006, a new obelisk placed at the intersection of Mila and Dubois streets, designed by the same two artists, included fifty-one names that had been identified from the estimated one hundred fighters at the 18 Mila headquarters. 43. Andrzej Bryk, “Polish Society Today and the Memory of the Holocaust,” in Remembering for the Future, ed. Y. Bauer et al., vol. 3 (Oxford, 1989), 2365–2376. 44. Jan Tomasz Gross, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland (Princeton, 2001); Joshua D. Zimmerman, ed., Contested Memories: Poles and Jews during the Holocaust and its Aftermath (New Brunswick, 2003); Antony Polonsky and Joanna B. Michlic, eds., The Neighbors Respond: The Controversy Over the Jedwabne Massacre in Poland (Princeton, 2004); Marek Chodakiewicz, The Massacre in Jedwabne July 10, 1941: Before, During and After (Boulder, 2005); Israel Bartal, Antony Polonsky, and Scott Ury, eds., Jews and Their Neighbors in Eastern Europe Since 1740 (Oxford, 2012); A. H., “A Difficult Film,” The Economist, December 19, 2012; Darius Libionka, “The Debate Around the Jebwabne Massacre,” in Tych and Adamczyk-Garbowska, Jewish Presence in Absence, 847–896. A related controversy arose after Jan Grabowski published Judenjagd (2011), with an English translation (Hunt for the Jews) two years later by the Indiana University Press, focusing on the “hunt for the Jews” in a rural county in southeastern Poland by their neighbors. Grabowski, whose Jewish father participated in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, estimates that about 200,000 Jews were killed by Polish police and local citizens during the Holocaust. — 200 —

Nathan Rapoport and Poland’s Landscape of Holocaust Memory

45. Ruth Ellen Gruber, “An Alternative Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Memorial,” Times of Israel, April 23, 2013; Times of Israel, December 22, 2018. 46. Vanessa Gera, “Museum Exhibits to Celebrate Centuries of Jewish Life Confront Poles with Their Country’s Own Dark Chapters of Anti-Semitism,” Times of Israel, April 13, 2013; Nissan Tzur, “Polish Prof. to be Axed for Anti-Semitic Views,” Jerusalem Post, June 2, 2013; JTA, June 20, 2013. In 2020, Jasiewicz would be employed at the Polish Academy Institute in the Department of Eastern Problems Analysis. 47. Haaretz, October 28, 2014. 48. “Poland Marks 50 Years since 1968 Anti-Semitic Purge,” DW, March 8, 2018, https://www.dw.com/en/poland-marks-50-years-since-1968-anti-semiticpurge/a-42877652. That August, the POLIN museum would feature a month-long exhibit highlighting the Gomulka government’s 1968 campaign against Jews, with the final panels examining the continued presence of Polish antisemitism, especially online and in right-wing publications, which surged after the law was passed in 2018 making it a crime to blame Poland for Holocaust atrocities. “Today, 50 years after March [1968] events, the mechanism of hunting for and stigmatizing the ‘others’ has been put into motion yet again,” the exhibition text warned. Rob Gloster, “In Warsaw, the Chilling Tale of 1968 Anti-Semitic purges,” Jewish News of Northern California, August 24, 2018. 49. Monika Scislowska and Vanessa Gara, “With Daffodils, Poland marks 75th anniversary of Warsaw Ghetto Uprising,” Times of Israel, April 19, 2018. 50. BBC, “Poland Holocaust Law: Government U-turn on Jail Threat,” July 27, 2018; Times of Israel, July 23, 2018; Aviva Ravel, Faithful unto Death: The Story of Arthur Zygielbaum (Montreal, 1980). Zygelbojm’s remains were eventually brought to the United States and interred at the Mt. Carmel Cemetery in Glendale, Queens County, New York, in 1961, the monument briefly noting “chose martyr’s death.” In May 1996, a plaque in his memory was dedicated at the corner of London’s Porchester Road and Porchester Square, near where he had died. A granite memorial to Zygelbojm was incorporated in a building at 5 S. Dubois St. in Muranów, a housing project built after World War II on the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto. In 2008 a plaque was added to the building in Chelm, Poland, where he had lived. 51. Times of Israel, October 19, 2018. 52. Anne Applebaum, “Putin’s Big Lie,” The Atlantic, January 5, 2020; The Guardian, January 9, 2020. The Russian leader would soon express his views in a leading American bimonthly conservative international affairs magazine. — 201 —

After the Holocaust

See Vladimir V. Putin, “The Real Lessons of the 75th Anniversary of World War II,” The National Interest, June 18, 2020. 53. Cnaan Liphshitz, “Following Poland’s Lead, Lithuania Proposes Controversial Holocaust Law,” Times of Israel, January 20, 2020; Efraim Zuroff and Ruth Vanagaite, Our People: Discovering Lithuania’s Hidden Holocaust (Lanham, 2020). Lithuanian MP Valdas Rakutis of the Homeland Union Conservative Party, who heads the parliamentary committee for National Struggle and Historical Memory, went so far on International Holocaust Remembrance Day (January 27, 2021) as to publicly accuse the Jews of being “Holocaust perpetrators.” US Ambassador Robert Gilchrist found this assertion “shocking” for “shamefully” espousing such a distortion, and his German counterpart, Matthias Sonn, found this blaming of the victims “utterly unacceptable.” https://layoftheland. online/2021/02/10/distorting-the-truth/. 54. Andrew Ezergailis, The Holocaust in Latvia, 1941–1944: The Missing Center (Riga and Washington, DC, 1996); Martin Dean, Collaboration in the Holocaust, Crimes of the Local Police in Belorussia and Ukraine, 1941–44 (New York, 2000). For a far wider perspective, see Yehuda Bauer, “Creating a ‘Usable’ Past: On Holocaust Denial and Distortion,” Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs 14:2 (2020): 209–227. 55. Times of Israel, April 19, 2020. 56. Times of Israel, December 22, 2018; Yardena Schwartz, “40 Miles From Auschwitz, Poland’s Jewish Community Is Beginning to Thrive,” Time, February 27, 2019; Konstanty Gebart, Living in the Land of Ashes (Kraków, 2008). 57. Times of Israel, July 13, 2020; October 10 and 24, 2020. 58. The First News, November 15, 2020; JTA, November 13, 2020. 59. Iwona Irwin-Zarecka, Neutralizing Memory: The Jew in Contemporary Poland (New Brunswick, 1989); Yisrael Gutman and Shmuel Krakowski, Unequal Victims: Poles and Jews during World War II (New York, 1986); James M. Markham, “Facing Up to Germany’s Past,” New York Times Magazine, June 23, 1985.

— 202 —

Index

A

Abdullah, Emir, 7 Abramov, Alexander, xiii Acheson, Dean, 86, 88, 90-91, 93-95, 98-99, 104-110, 114-15, 117, 122n58 Adcock, Clarence A., 52, 55 Adenauer, Konrad, 69 Aftermath (Pokłosie), 186 Akiva movement, 166 Akzin, Benjamin, 124n72 Al HaMishmar, 170 Alfondschule, 42 Aliav, Ruth – 76n62 aliya bet, 21, 148 Aliya rebellion, 8 Allach, 38 Alter, Wiktor, 183 Am Yisrael Chai!, x American Christian Palestine Committee, 5 American Federation of Labor, 103 American GIs, 84 American Jewish Committee, 16, 29n16, 58, 106, 124n72, 164, 166, 172, 182 American Jewish Congress, 39, 136, 150 American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee ( JDC) – xvin9, 19, 30n32, 32, 85, 131, 151, 161 American Red Cross, 66, 80 Anderson, Clinton, 3 Angelus Novus, vii, xii-xiii Anglo-American Commission (of Inquiry) on Palestine, 92, 155n24 Anielewicz, Mordecai, 160, 197n23 Anschluss, xvin9 Antek. See Zuckerman, Yitshak Antifascist Bloc, 160

Anti-Semitism, xii, 19, 34, 40, 44, 48, 80, 83, 85, 91-92, 101, 111, 114, 139-40, 145, 147, 172, 177, 183, 185, 189, 194, 201n48 Arab League, 5, 62 Arad, Yitshak, 177 Arajs, Viktor, 192 Arazi, Yehuda, 109 Arcania, 76n62 Arc de Triomphe, 163 Arendt, Hannah, vii Attlee, Clement, 58, 60-61, 63, 65, 67, 75n56, 82, 86, 104, 107-9, 116 Auerbach, Philip, 148 Augsburg, 38, 44, 46, 151 Auschwitz, x, 38-40, 48, 102, 128-30, 144, 185, 194 Auschwitz-Birkenau, ix, xiv, 185, 191, 196n12 Autobahn, 44 Avigur, Shaul. See Meirov, Shaul Azari, Anna, 190 Azzam Bey, 62

B

B’nai Brith, 66 Babylonian Talmud Babylonian Talmud, 117, 124n77, 151 Bad Constatt cemetery, 128, 144 Bad Oeynhausen, 47 Bagneux Cemetery, 174 Balfour Declarationix, 34, 65 Balfour, Arthur James, 23 Balts, 40, 44, 84 Bamberg, 46, 134 Baranowski, Władysław, 164 Barkley, Alben W., 97 Barnett, P.M., 123n60 Barou, Noah, 164-66, 171

Index

Bartoszewski, Władysław, 186 Baruch, James, 24 Bataille, Georges, xiii Bauer, Yehuda, 119n18, 202n54 Bavaria, 39, 42, 74n47, 75n52, 84, 92, 97, 138 Beckelman, Moses, 164, 166, 171-72 Beeley, Harold, 58, 60 Begin, Menahem, 181 Beit Ha’Am, 173 Beit Lohamei HaGetaot, 173 Bejski, Moshe, 184 Belarus, 158, 169 Bell, Daniel, 25 Ben Zakai, Yohanan, 168 Ben-Gurion, David, viii-ix, 22, 38, 66, 80, 106, 115-16, 132, 149, 178 Ben-Zvi, Yitshak, xiii, xvin9 Benesch, Kurant, 127 Benjamin, Walter, vii-viii, xii-xiii, xivn1 Bergen-Belsen, x, 7, 47-49 Bergson, Peter. See Kook, Hillel Berman, Adolf, 160, 165, 170-72 Bermuda Conference on Refugees, ix, xvn4, 6 Bernstein, Bernard, 16 Bernstein, Philip, 39, 106, 110-11, 115-17, 14648, 152, 155n29 Bernstein, Victor, 53 Bersohn and Bauman Children’s Hospital, 191 Bevin, Ernest, 58, 60, 62-63, 65-66, 76n63, 78n71, 82, 104, 110, 112, 146-47 Bialik Library, 127 Bialystok, 158, 164 Bible, xii, xvi, 152 Bible Lands Museum, xii Biddle, Francis, 4, 12-13 Birkenau. See Auschwitz-Birkenau Birobidzhan, 116 Black Book of Soviet Jewry, 159, 195n2 black market, 100, 102, 134-36, 139-42, 144, 155n30 Blaszczyk, Henryk, 112 Blaustein, Jacob, 64, 106, 114 Blitzkrieg, 174 Blum, Wilhelm, 149 Board of Deputies of British Jews, 10, 61, 83, 182 Boettcher, Herbert, 149 Bogenhausen, 42 Brandt, Willy, 181 Bratislava, 92, 113 Braunschweig, 48 Breker, Arno, 162 Bremen, 151

Breslau, 145 Bretton Woods Conference, 25 Brewer, W., 41 Bricha, 92, 110, 113, 120n27, 123n67, 167 British Cabinet Committee on Palestine, 8 British Labour Party Conference (1945), 8, 54 British Royal Navy, x, 148 British War Office, 10, 55 Brodetsky, Selig, 34-35 Brog, Mooli, 178 Brooklyn Federation of Jewish Charities, 21 Brotherhood of Man, 179-80 Buchenwald, x, 13, 36, 40 Budapest, 46, 92 Bulgaria, 34, 44, 166 Bull, Harold R., 108, 122n59 Bund, 174, 181, 183, 190 Burszteyn, Chaim, 38 Buster, W.R., 114-46 Byrnes, James F., 32, 22-23, 33, 58, 60-61, 65, 69, 75n56, 86, 89-90, 93-94, 96, 98-105, 109110, 114, 118, 120n23, 145

C

Cabinet Committee on Palestine and Related Problems, 8, 109 Cairo University, 21 Camp 664, 142-46, 149-51 Captain Bond, 137-38, 142 Carter, Jimmy, 181 Caserta, 89 Celle, 43, 47-48 Celler, Emanuel, 136 Central Committee of Polish Jews, 160, Central Committee of the Liberated Jews in Bavaria, 84, 97 Central Committee of the Liberated Jews in the American zone of Germany, 145 Central Jewish Committee for the British zone, 47 Central Jewish Historical Commission, 160 Central Office for Jewish Emigration, xivn2 Chamber of the Holocaust, 198n27 Chamberlain, Neville, ix Churchill, Randolph, 14 Churchill, Winston, 7, 11, 13-14, 22, 33, 57-58, 60, 65 Civil Affairs Division, 52, 81, 136, 145 Civilian Conservation Corps, 81 Clark, Mark W., 73n41, 93, 96, 98-99, 106, 108, 113, 115, 117 Clay, Lucius D., 73n4284, 147, 155n30, 166

— 204 —

Index

Clearfield, David, 137-38, 142-43 Colonial Office, 22 Commission on Immigration and Naturalization, 68 Committee for a Jewish Army, 6, 28n8 Cone, John D., 136 Congress of Industrial Organizations, 103 Congressional elections (1946), 63, 65 Congressional resolution on Palestine (1944), 6 Connally, Tom, 150 Control Commission for Germany, 16, 55, 83 Council on Foreign Relations, 85 Cramer, Lawrence, 36 “Crisis for Jews,” 110 Crossman, Richard, 96 Crum, Bartley, 96-97, 104, 133, 153n6 Cyganeria café, 168 Cyprus, 116, 148, 150 Cyrankiewicz, Jósef, 164 Czech border, 92, 113 Czernek, Przemysław, 194

D

Dachau, x, 7, 38-42, 134 Dafni, Reuven, 67 Daily Telegraph, 62 Dalton, Hugh, 8, 54 Danziger, Rivka, 128 Danziger, Shmuel, xi, 102, 128, 137-39, 141, 144-46, 153 Darmstadt, 42, 45 Davar, 170 Davis, James C., 84, 87 Dean, Martin, 192 Defenders of the Negev, 175 Deggendorf, 46 Dekanozov, Vladimir, 116 Demand Rescue of Doomed Jews, 6 Democratic Party plank on Palestine, 6 denazification, 64, 145-46, 150-51 “Der Shteyn,” – xvn7 Deutsches Museum, 92 Dewey, John, xi Dewing, R.H., 55, 83 Di Goldene Keit, 164 Dichmann, Adam, 149 Dinnerstein, Leonard, 59 Dinur, Ben-Zion, 198n26 Displaced Persons (DPs), x, 1, 3, 8, 10, 12, 15, 17, 20, 32, 36-37, 43, 47, 50-53, 56, 59-61, 68-70, 71n10, 79, 108, 126, 146, 148, 165 Division of Near Eastern Affairs, 107 Dobkin, Eliyahu, 45-46, 66

Doyle, James E., 86, 90, 98-102 DPs (see Displaced Persons) Dreistmann, Rabbi, 164 Dror, 166-67, 169 DuBois, Jr., Josiah E., 1-2 Duda, Andrzej, 189, 191-93 Dunner, Joseph, 57, 73n47 Durbrow, Elbridge, 87-88 DW, 189 Dwork, C. Irving, 124n72

E

Easterman, Alex, 164, 195n8 Ebensee, 38, 46 Echols, O.P., 145 Edelman, Marek, 181, 183-84, 187 Eden, Anthony, 8 Egypt, 180 Ehrenburg, Ilya, 159, 195n2 Eichmann Trial, 175, 178, 197n24 Eichmann, Adolf, xivn2, 156n33, 173 Einsatzgruppen, 158, 167, 174 Eisen, 44 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 7, 10, 12, 15, 25-26, 31n45, 32, 37, 51-52, 55, 59, 61, 64, 67, 68-69, 73nn42-43, 76n62, 79-82, 84-87, 93, 121n39, 132, 134-36, 152 Elath, Eliyahu, 70, 78n71, 109 Emerson, Herbert, 9, 35-36, 83, 112 Epstein, Eliyahu. See Elath, Eliyahu Epstein, Judith, 124n72 Erlich, Henryk, 183 Estonian refugees, 102, 122n45 European Division, 20 European Jewry’s Plight, 19, 77n64 Evian Conference on Refugees, viii, xvin9, 27n1 “Exodus” – 199n31 Exodus 1947, 148, 199n31 Ezergailis, Andrew, 192 Ezra, 71n19

F

Falferis, Colonel, 41 Farrand, Edward G., 136, 140, 142-43 Federal Council of Churches, 103 Feldafing, 42, 50-51, 59, 147 Feldberg, Isaac, 146 Feller, Abe, 85 Fierst, Herbert A., 84-115, 119n12, 121n39, 124n78, 125n80 “Final Solution of the Jewish Question,” x, 156n33, 173, 186, 192

— 205 —

Index

Fisher, Harry M., 97 Föhrenwald, 146 Foreign Office, 9, 55, 61, 82-83, 89, 110 Fort Oswego, 3 Frankfurt, 20, 39, 41-42, 45-47, 52, 57, 116, 133, 140, 147, 151 Frankfurt School, vii Frankfurter, Felix, 13, 16, 20, 23, 32, 67, 70, 95 Freienberg, 38 Frick, SS officer, 149 Friedland/Leine, 92 Friedman, Fels, 144 Friedman, Herbert, 152 Friedman, Tuvia, 149, 156n33 Fürth, 134 Funk Kaserne, 41, 114 Furth-im-Wald, 124n71

G

Gądecki, Stanislaw, Bishop, 186 Garmich-Partenkirchen, 43 Gaston, Herbert, 25 Gay, Hobert R., 138 Gebart, Konstanty, 193 General Assembly vote on Palestine, 125n80 genocide, xii, xiv, 69 German police, 102, 126-28, 134-46, 154n13 Germany, postwar, 26, 79, 132 Gestapo, vii Gibson, Harvey, 66 Gibson, Henry, 80 Gilchrist, Robert, 202n53 Gillette, Guy M., 60, 75n56, 151 Glasser, Harold, 51 Glemp, Joseph, Cardinal, 182, 185-86 Goldmann, Nahum, 94, 96-97, 102, 106, 108 Goldstein, Israel, 97, 106 Golus, 163 Gomulka, Władysław, 182, 189, 199n36, 201n48 Gort, Lord, 22 Gottwald, Klement, 116 Grabowski, Jan, 200n44 Great Britain in the Holocaust, 76n63 Great Britain, view of Holocaust survivors, 76n63 Great Patriotic War, The, 158 Greater Hesse, 145 Greenbaum, Edward, 24 Greenblatt, Yaakov, 134 Grew, Joseph C., 5-6, 11-12, 14, 16-17, 20-21, 32, 50-51

Grigg, Edward, 8 Grinberg, Zalman, 42, 71n19, 75n52, 84, 96-97, 100-101, 108 Gringauz, Samuel, 69, 116 Gross, Jan T., 197n18 Grossaktion, 160 Grossman, Chaika, 164 Grossman, Vasily, 195n2 Gudaitus, Lt., 142 Guffey, Joseph F., 97 Gurfein, Murray, 57 Gusen, 128 Gutmann, Marek (Meyer), 127, 133, 144

H

HaAretz, 170 Haber, William, 150, 166, 196n9 Hadassah, 13, 37, 106, 124n72 Hagana, 123n60, 146, 164 HaKaddish HaK’lali, 198n27 Halifax, Edward, 62-63 Hamburg, 48 “Hannah,” xvin8 Hannegan, Robert E., 94, 97 Hanover, 47-48 Hanuka, 132, 162 Harrison Report, 33, 55, 59, 62, 64-65, 69, 82, 90 Harrison, Earl, x-xi, 1, 5, 12, 32, 47, 51, 64, 80, 82, 119n18, 130 Haselkorn, Abraham, 130 HaShomer HaTsa’ir, 158, 161-62, 166, 170, 17475, 177 HaTikva, x, 66, 181 HaTsofeh, 170 Hebrew Immigration Aid Society, 164 HehHalutz, 166-68 Heidelberg, 42, 44, 130 Heidenheim, 148, 151 Heilbrunn, 45 Heiligenstadt, 92 Henderson, Ian, 61 Henderson, Loy, 22, 106, 108-9 Hendrickson, Robert C., 151 Herbert Adams Memorial Medal, 180 Heroic Realism, 174 Hickerson, John, 88 Hilldring, John H., 88-117, 122n56, 123n60, 125n80 Himmler, Heinrich, 157 Hirszenberg, Samuel, 163 Hiss, Alger, 123n60

— 206 —

Index

Histadrut, xiii, 164, 170 Hitler, Adolf, ix-xi, 7, 9, 18, 34, 44, 62-63, 111, 133, 140, 150, 158-59, 162, 165, 170 Hlond, August, Cardinal, 113, 185 Hodel, Florence, 2, 51 Hof, 92, 124n71 Hoffman, Chaim, 110-11, 123n64, 150 Holocaust, passim Holocaust Law, 189, 191-92 Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day, 177-78 Holocaust survivors, x, xvn5, 9, 11, 32, 55, 58, 76n62, 78n71, 80, 83-86, 109, 112, 117, 122n56, 126, 131, 134, 137, 152, 155nn2930, 165 Holy Temple Mount, 162 Holzhausen, 135 Hotel Royal Monceau, 116 Howe, Mark De Wolfe, 84 Hunt for the Jews, 200n44 Hutcheson, Joseph C., 97, 108 Hyman, Abraham S., 196n9

I

Ibn Saud, Abdul Aziz, 7, 63 Ickes, Harold, 4 IGCR. See Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees immigrants, 8, 34, 77n68, 109, 150 Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees (IGCR), xvin9, 1-15, 27n1, 32, 35-36, 39, 79-112 International Fund and Bank, 26 International Holocaust Remembrance Day, xiii, 191, 202n53 International Military Tribunal, xii, 149, 174 International Red Cross, ix, 46 Inverchapel, Lord, 110 Iraq, 5 Irgun, 6, 147 Israel Museum, xiii Israel, Declaration of Independence, 178 Israel, War of Independence, 151 Italian Jews, 39 Italy, x, xvn5, 38-39, 41, 43, 46-47, 56, 89, 104, 108-9, 115, 120n21, 158 Ives, Irving M., 151

J

Jabotinsky, Vladimir (Ze’ev), viii Jackson County, 18 Jackson, Robert H., xii, 23

“Jacob Wrestling with the Angel,” 179 Jacobson, Edward, 24, 31n43 Janner, Greville, 182 Jaruzelski, Wojciech, 183-84 Jasiewicz, Kryzystof, 188, 201n46 Jasna Góra Monastery, 185 Javits, Jacob, 133 JDC. See American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Jedwabne Massacre, 186 Jewish Agency Jewish Agency for Palestine, vii, 7-8, 13, 21-22, 38-39, 45, 54-55, 58, 61, 66, 70, 80, 106, 108—111, 116, 121n27, 123n60, 124n77, 130, 132, 150, 162 Jewish Brigade, x, xvn5, 41, 43, 66, 108, 120n27, 133 Jewish Central Committee, 157, 166, 170-72 Jewish children, 36, 38, 76n62, 165, 176 Jewish Committee (Poland), 38 Jewish Fighting Organization, 160, 168-69 Jewish Historical Institute, 160, 169 Jewish National Fund, 177, 180 Jewish National Home, ix, Jewish National Workers Alliance, 164 Jewish powerlessness, ix Jewish Relief Unit, 38, 46 Jewish settlement in Radom, 129 Jewish soldiers in World War II, 74n47, 99 Jewish survivors, 8, 13, 19, 30n30, 37, 64, 74n47, 101 Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 74n51, 108, 136, 144 Jewish Welfare Board, 29n16, 39, 106, 146 “Job,” 175 Joint. See American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Jolson, Leon, 177 Jordan Valley, 34 Joseph Handleman Prize in the Arts, 180 Joskowicz, Menahem, 186 Judenjagd, 200n44 Judenrat, 167, 196n11

K

Kaczyński, Jarosław, 194 Kafka, Franz, ix Kalwary, Marian, 190 Kaplan, Eliezer, 21 Karlsruhe, 42, 44, 151 Kassel, 47, 147, 151 Katzki, Herbert, 39

— 207 —

Index

Kazin, Alfred, xi Kenen, I.L., 97, 99, 111 Keyes, Geoffrey, 136, 138, 142-43 Kibbutz Ketura, xvin8 Kibbutz Negbam, 175 Kielce pogrom, 113, 146, 172185, 197n18 Kilgore Senate subcommittee, 101 Kilgore, Harley M., 115 Kirk, Alexander, 89 Kisalon, Mt., 176 Klagenfurt, 46 Klausner, Abraham, 39, 4264, 66, 73n42, 134 Klee, Paul, vii Klotz, Ben, 41 Klotz, Henrietta, 11-12, 17, 27, 67 Kluger, Ruth. See Aliav, Ruth Kook, Hillel, 28n8 Kopacz, Ewa, 188 Korczak, Janusz, 199n29 “Korczak’s Last Walk,” 179 Komorowski, Bronisław, 187-89 Kovner, Abba, x, 164 Kovno, 42, 84 Kraków, 168, 170, 193, 196n12 Krane, J.B., 92, 113-14 Kristallnacht, viii, xivn2 Kubowitzki, Leon, 52, 82, 84 Kulagin, Mikhail, 158 Kwaśniewski, Aleksander, 186

L

Levinson, Abraham, 164 Levitan, Louis, 146 Levy, Isaac, 48, 53, 72n35 Liberation, 179 Linton, Joseph, 34 Linz, 38, 43, 46-47, 92 Lipson, Alfred, 149 Lithuania, 120n27, 137, 177, 192, 202n53 “Living in the Land of Ashes,” 193 Locker, Berl, 34 Lodz, 92, 129, 160, 182, 187 Lookstein, Joseph H., 69 Lowdermilk, Walter, 34 Lower Silesia, 116 Lubetkin, Zivia, 167, 180 Lübeck, 36, 48

M

La Marseillaise, 163 La Spezia, 109 LaGuardia, Fiorello H., 112, 116, 146 Lahat, Shlomo, 182 Lampertheim, 134 Landsberg, 41-42, 69, 146, 149 Lane, Arthur Bliss, 113, 116 Lanzmann, Claude, 173, 186 “Last March,” The, 163, 177 Latvia, 137, 192 Lautenschlager, Wilhelm, 149 Law and Justice Party, 189, 194 League of Nations, ix, 11, 35, 82 League of Nations High Commissioner for Refugees from Germany, 11 Leavitt, Moses A., 86, 114, 124n72 Leggett, Frederick, 133 Lehman, Herbert H., 95, 112 lend-lease, 25 Lerner, Harry V., 131, 133, 137-38, 142-43, 146 Leventhal, Louis, 97

MacArthur, Douglas A., 81 Maccabean revolt, 162 MacDonald, Malcolm, ix Magdeburg, 40 Majdanek, 130 Malin, Patrick, 36, 39-40, 70n8 Mannheim, 42, 44 Manningham-Buller, R.E., 96 March of Remembrance, 190 Marcus, Robert S., 71n9, 73n43 Mark, Ber, 159 Marshall, George C., 51, 55, 59, 136 Marshall, George V., 80-81, 84 Martyrs’ Forest, 176 Masada, xvn8 Masaryk, Jan, 116 Mason, Paul, 9, 61, 83 Mataroa, x Mauthausen, 7, 43, 128 Mazowiecki, Tadeusz, 184 McCarran Act, 68 McClelland, Roswell, 10-16, 21, 39 McCloy, John J., 15, 20, 49, 52, 85 McCormack, John W., 97, 115 McDonald, James G, 11, 16, 29n19, 96, 104 McKim, Edward D., 4-5 McNarney, Joseph T., 79-80, 82-83, 85-86, 91, 93-94, 96-99, 102-3, 105-6, 108, 111-115, 117, 136, 139, 142-44, 147-48, 152 Meir, Golda, xiii, 67 Meirov, Shaul, 120n27 Menorah/Tree of Knowledge, 175 Merneptah Stele, xii, xvn8 Merriam, Gordon P., 107-8

— 208 —

Index

Messiah, xiii, 176 “Methuselah,” xvin8 Metzger, Ralph D., 138 Meyerson, Goldie. See Meir, Golda Mickleson, Stanley M., 52 Mila 18, 160, 162, 167, 169, 175, 181, 188, 200n42 Minsk, 158 Mishmar HaEmek, 177 MiShoah L’Tekuma, 175 Moderau, Marek, 186 Modzelewski, Zygmunt, 195n8 Monsky, Henry, 145 Montor, Henry, 18-19, 30n32, 32, 67 Monument to the Six Million Martyrs, 175 Morawiecki, Mateusz, 189-91, 193 Morgan, Frederick E., 85, 112, 134, 154n13 Morgenthau Plan, 2-3, 16, 23-26, 31n45, 33 Morgenthau, Jr., Henry, 1-4, 9-16, 20-27, 29n17, 32-35, 49, 51, 66-67, 77n66 Morrison-Grady plan, 124n74 Mosad L’Aliya Bet, 109, 123n60 Mount Herzl, 177 Munich, vii, 42, 45-46, 57, 92, 111, 114, 124n71, 134-36, 145-46, 149, 151, 154n13 Museum of the History of Polish Jews. See POLIN

N

Nadich, Judah, 55, 64, 73n43, 74n52 National Catholic Welfare Conference, 103 National Citizens Committee for Displaced Persons Legislation, 68 National Coordinating Committee Fund, 30n32 National Council of Jewish Women, 61 Natzweiler-Struthof, 130 Near Eastern and African Affairs office, 22, 106 Nebuchadnezzar II, 71n19 Negation of the Diaspora, 174 Nehemia, 71n19 Neighbors, 186 Neikrug, Lewis, 164 Nesher, Aryeh. See Retter, Leon Netanyahu, Benjamin, 190 Neu Freimann, 149 Neumann, Emanuel, 106 Neumarkt, 46 Neustadt, 48 New Palestine, 18 New York Herald Tribune, 58 New York Times, 64, 117, 181 Nieznalska, Dorota, 194

Niles, David, 95, 102-4, 108, 115, 125n80 Nordhausen, 7 North Africa, 34, 61 Novosibirsk, 158-60 Nuremberg, 44, 46, 149, 151, 190, 194 Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, xii, 149 Nurock, Mordechai, 198n27

O

O’Dwyer, William, 10, 16 Oberrimsingen, 139 Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion, 3 Ohel Yizkor, 179, 198n26 Ohrdrurf, 7 Ojf Der Frei, 132 OMGUS, 85 On the Concept of History, vii Oneg Shabbos, 160 Open Republic, 189 Operation Barbarossa, 158 Oranienburg, 40 Order of Polonia Restituta, 165 Ordnungspolizei, 158 ORT (Organization for Rehabilitation and Training), 132 Oświeçim, 129, 157 Oswieçim Jewish Museum, 194 Our People, 192

P

Palestine High Commissioner, 22 Palestine Jews, in the British Army, xvn5, 41, 120n27 Palestine Land Law, (1940), 35 Palestine Liberation Organization, 182 Palestine Mandate, 34 Palestine Pavilion, 19 Palestine Post, 16, 170 Palestine provisional autonomy, 124n74 Palestine Royal Commission, viii Palestine, emigration to, viii, 131 Park Avenue Synagogue, 179 Partition of Palestine, 116 Patterson, Robert P., 80, 84, 88-89, 91, 93-94, 98-100, 102-6, 109-110, 114, 117, 122n56 Patton, Jr., George S., 39, 52-53, 57, 59, 64, 82 Pawiak prison museum, 181 Pehle, John, 1-2, 10-12, 14-15, 20, 49, 52 Pentagon, 81, 91, 98 People of the Book, The, 176 Pepper, Claude, 150-51 Pergament, David, 164

— 209 —

Index

Perkins, Frances, 3-4 Peterson, Howard, 86, 108-9 Petrie, Flinders, xii Phillips, William, 5, 12, 15 Pillar of Heroism, 178 Pilsen, 92 Piron, Shai, 187 Pliskin, Boris, 116 PM, 53 Poalei Zion, 164 Pocking, 124n71, 147, 154n10 Pohl, Oswald, 149 Pokłosie. See Aftermath Poland, passim POLIN museum, 188-89, 193, 201n48 Polish Academy Institute, 201n46 Polish Academy of Sciences, 188 Polish Council for Aid to Jews, 160 Polish Episcopate’s Commission for Dialogue with the Jews, 186 Polish Red Cross, 36 Polish Workers’ United Party, 184 Pope John Paul II, 185 Portbou, vii, xii Potsdam Conference, 26, 33, 54, 57-58 Prague, ix, 34, 88, 92 Proskauer, Joseph, 16, 58, 64 Psikowski, Władysław, 186 Putin, Vladimir, 192, 201n52

R

Rabin, Yitzhak, 185 Radom, xi, 128-32, 144, 149, 152-53 Radom in the Holocaust, 153n3 Radomer Center, 128, 130, 132, 151 Rakutis, Valdas, 202n53 Ramses II, xii Rapoport, Nathan, xi, 157-94 Reams, Robert B., 20 Red Army, xiv, 38, 130, 167, 183, 191 Refugee Department, 61-62, 83 Regensburg, 46, 146-47 Reigner, Gerhart, 164 Reinsbergstrasse, 126 Remez, David, 170 Repatriation, 8, 10, 38, 41, 43, 47, 49-50, 53, 55, 57, 83-84, 112 non-repatriables, 15, 17, 30n30, 36-37, 41, 50-53, 56, 82-83, 88-91, 100 “Report to the Secretary on the Acquiescence of This Government in the Murder of the Jews,” 1

resettlement of refugees, 1, 3, 9-10, 17, 69, 70, 79-81, 86-88, 91, 93, 96, 98, 100-101, 103, 112 Resnick, Reuben, 46-47 Retter, Leon, 116 “Revolt of the Ghettos,” 177 Richmond, Milton, 39 Riegner, Gerhart, 154n7, 195n8 Rifkind, Simon H., 69, 76n62, 79-106, 121n40, 134, 136, 144, 146 Righteous among the Nations of the World, ix, 184, 186, 188, 194 Ringelblum, Emanuel, 160 ritual murder, 113 Rivlin, Reuven, 188-89, 191 Rocznica Getta, 195n6 Rodin, Auguste, 158 Roman legions, 128 Roosevelt, Eleanor, 85, 110, 123n63, 133, 151 Roosevelt, Franklin D., xvin9, 1-3, 5-7, 13, 16, 22-23, 25, 32-33, 58, 63, 67, 81 Rosenman, Samuel, l, 5, 22, 25-26, 33, 59, 63 Rosensaft, Joseph, 47-48 Rosenwald, William, 30n32 Rotem, Simha, 167, 187, 193 Rotenwaldstrasse, 127-28 Rothenberg, 43 Rothschild, Guy de, 161 Royal Navy, x, 116, 148, 199n31 Royall, Kenneth C., 89, 91, 100 Rude, François, 158, 163 Rumania, 34, 44, 46, 48, 73n45, 166 Ruppin, Arthur, viii Russia, xiii, 3, 34, 46, 111-12, 158, 174, 195n2

S

sabra, 174, 178 Sachs, Nelly, 197n25 Sadat, Anwar, 181 Safdie, Moshe, 199n28 Sallon, Sarah, xvin8 Salzberg, 38, 43, 47 Sandifer, Duward, 123n60 Sąsiedzi. See Neighbors Saudi Arabia, 5, 7, 63 Schechter, Dr., 127 Schindler, Alexander, 182 Schleissheim, 42 Schleunes, Karl, xivn2 Schloss Langenzelle, 130-31 Scholem, Gershom, xiii Schottland, Charles I., 37, 41, 46, 52, 55

— 210 —

Index

Schudrich, Michael, 193 Schutzmannschaft battalions, 192 Schutzpolizeiabteilung, 140 Schutzstaffel, 126 Schwartz, Buki, 178 Schwartz, Joseph J., 19-21, 32-39, 46, 56-57, 60, 64, 67, 69, 73n45, 87, 119n18, 121n27 Schwartzbart, Ignacy, 124n72 Schwellenbach, Lewis W., 3 “Scroll of Fire,” The, 176 Segal, Simon, 124n72 Seidlung, 136 Selb, 124n71 Seleucid empire, 162 Sh’eirit HaPleita, x, 42, 66, 69, 71n19, 112, 118. See also Surviving Remnant SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces), 7-10, 15, 17, 20, 32, 34-37, 40, 42-43, 49-52, 56, 59, 76n62, 80, 82, 84, 132 Sharett, Moshe. See Shertok, Moshe Shenhavi, Mordechai, 177-78 Shertok, Moshe, 22, 108, 130 Shlonsky, Abraham, 164 Shoah, viii, ix, 160, 176-77, 191, 198n27 Shoah (film), 173, 186 Shuster, Zachariah, 164, 166, 172 Silver, Abba Hillel, 30n32, 64, 69, 104, 106 Silverman, Sidney, 164, 195n8 Simon, Aryeh, 41 Sinai Campaign, 151 Singleton, John E., 96 Six Day War, 176, 178, 182, 185 Skvernelis, Saulius, 192 Smith, Walter Bedell, 80-81, 86 Sneh, Moshe, 164 Snieg, Samuel A., 151 Solidarity movement, 181-84, 188 Solowey, Elaine, xvin8 Sommers, Davidson, 86, 103 Sonn, Matthias, 202n53 Sosua, xvin9 Soviet-German non-aggression pact, 192 Soviet-Polish agreement, 40 Spektor, Shmuel, 177 Śpiewak, Pawel, 190 Spital, 46 St. Ottilien, x, 42, 71n19 Stalin, Joseph, 14, 158, 160-61, 183 Stankowski, Albert, 191 Stanley, Oliver, 8 Stars and Stripes, 40

State Department, 4, 7, 9, 18, 20-21, 23, 30n30, 36, 47, 50, 58, 61-62, 79, 85-86, 88-89, 91, 95, 101, 105, 117 Steinberg, Max, 164 Stępiński, Zygmunt, 193 Stern group, 147 Stettinius, Jr., Edward, 3-6, 22-23 Steward, W. M., 142 Stimson, Henry L., 3, 12, 23-24, 51, 80 Stimson, Robert, 136-37, 142 Stone, Elihu, 97 Storch, Hillel, 171, 197n17 Strasburg, 46 Stroop, Juergen, 159 Stuttgart, 42, 102-3, 118, 126, 128, 130-39, 142151 Stuttgarter Zeitung, 139, 144 Sultanik, Kalman, 184 Survey Graphic, 68 Surviving Remnant, x, 14, 42, 66, 71n19, 147, 166. See also Sh’eirit HaPleita Suzin, Mark Leon, 162 Sweden, 34, 36, 44, 162-63 Swiatkowski, Henryk, 164 Swiss Red Cross, 36 Szamlenberg, Hanna, 186 Szkolna, 149 Szydłowiec, 129

T

Tal Shahar, 77n66 “Talboker,” 17, 29n18, 32, 67 Tartakower, Aryeh, 99-100 Taylor, C.J., 111 “Ten Years of Art in Belarus,” 158 “Tennis Player,” The, 158 Theresienstadt ghetto, 46 Theses on the Philosophy of History, vii Thuringia, 145 Tirschenreuth, 124n71 Tisha B’Av, 195n1 Trans-Jordan, 7 Treblinka, 129-30, 157, 169, 173, 191 Trepman, Paul, 72n36 Trial, The, ix Trieste, 39 Trobe, Jacob, 73n43, 85 Trujillo, Rafael, xvin9 Truman, Bess Truman, Harry S., 2-27, 32-35, 41, 57-70, 74n51, 75n56, 78n71, 80, 86, 94, 97, 102-110, 11417, 124n74, 130, 135-36, 146, 152, 153n6

— 211 —

Index

Trybuna Ludu, 184 Trzaskowski, Rafał, 193-94 Turover, Denise, 106 Tusk, Donald, 187

U

U.S. Army Groups in Europe, 137 U.S. Army Ninth Division, 111 U.S. Forces European theater intelligence reports, 43, 96 U.S. GIs, 45, 84-85, 119nn13-14 U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, 195n6, 199n31 U.S. Military Government, 52, 54, 56-57, 85, 126, 128, 131-32, 135, 137-39, 141-43, 148, 151 U.S. Military Law, 161 U.S. Senate debate on the White Paper, 63 U.S. Seventh Army, 52 U.S. State Department, 4, 7, 9, 18, 20-21, 23, 30n30, 36, 47, 50, 58, 61-62, 79, 85-86, 88-89, 91, 95, 101, 105, 117 U.S. Third Army, 39, 41, 52, 57, 64, 82, 108, 122n59, 133, 136, 138 U.S. Treasury Department, 1, 3, 11, 16, 24-25, 51, 109 UJA (United Jewish Appeal). See United Jewish Appeal Ukraine, 193 Ukrainian collaborators, 126, 129 Umschlagplatz, 157, 184, 190 UN creation at San Francisco, 5 Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 182 United Jewish Appeal, 19, 30n32, 67, 69, 77n66, 77n68, 147, 152 United Nations, x, 1, 5, 8, 20, 38, 65, 79, 89, 118, 126, 148, 165, 180 UN committee on refugees, 103 United Nations Relief and Reconstruction Administration (UNRRA), 1 United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), x, 148 United Palestine Appeal, 18, 30n32 United Resistance Movement, 66 University of Pennsylvania Law School, 12 UNRRA, passim Unzer Veg, 134 USFET, 43, 57, 91

V

V-E Day, ix-x, 1, 7, 59, 117, 120n27, 124n78, 152, 155n27 Va’ad HaLe’umi, 170

Vaihingen, 130, 149 Vanagaite, Ruth, 192 Vatican, ix Vichy government, vii Vienna, 92, 116 Villach, 46 Vilna, x, 164, 169 Vinson, Fred M., 3, 24-27, 33, 50-51 Volksdeutsche, 39

W

Wagner, Robert, 5, 26 WAGRO, 177 Wahl, David, 86, 94, 96-97, 99, 103-9, 115, 117, 124n72 Walaszczyk, Jósef, 194 Wałęsa, Lech, 183-84 Wall in Tribute to the Survivors, 199n28 Wall of Remembrance, 178 Wallace, Henry, 4 War Department, 20, 51-52, 55, 79, 81, 86-87, 91, 95-96, 98-99, 103-5, 111, 113-16, 121n40, 136, 145 War Refugee Board, 1, 27n1, 51, 70 Warburg, Edward, 106 Warren, George, 14-15, 36, 47, 86, 88, 90, 94 Warren, Helen, 85 Warsaw Arts Committee, 161 Warsaw Ghetto, 160, 162, 164, 166, 168-71, 176-80, 190, 195n1, 201n50 Warsaw Ghetto Museum, 191 Warsaw Ghetto Plaza, 177, 179 Warsaw Ghetto Revolt, xi, xvn7, 157, 159-60, 168-69, 173-74, 177, 180-181, 184, 187-89, 193 Warsaw Uprising, 130, 167, 183, 200n44 Warsaw’s Great Synagogue, 159 Weber, Karl, 102, 139-43 Wehrmacht, 129, 158 Weisgal, Meyer, 11-21, 24, 32-33, 61, 67, 69 Weizmann Institute of Science, 175 Weizmann, Chaim, viii-ix, 7-8, 11, 13-22, 32-35, 61, 63, 66-67, 69-70 Weizsaecker, Ernst von, 194 Weizsaecker, Richard von, 194 Western Wall, 162 White Paper (1939), ix, 5, 7-8, 14, 16, 22, 33-34, 45, 54, 61, 63, 65-66, 69, 104 Whiting, John, 122n59 Wickard, Claude, 3-4 Wiesbaden, 41-42, 45, 151 Wildflecken, 46

— 212 —

Index

Wise, Jonah, 30n32 Wise, Stephen, 6, 29n17, 39, 64, 69, 73n43, 74n51, 95, 106, 115-17, 136 Witte, Ernest, 76n62 WJC. See World Jewish Congress Wollheim, Norbert, 48, 72n34 World Federation of Polish Jews, 164 World Jewish Congress (WJC), 13, 52, 75n52, 82, 134, 161-62, 164, 184 World Zionist Congress (1945), 66 World Zionist Organization, viii, 7 World’s Fair (1939), 19 Wrocław, 145

Y

Yad Mordechai, 174 Yad Vashem, ix, 170, 175, 177-80, 184, 188, 190, 192, 196n16, 198n26, 199n28 Yadin, Yigael, xvn8 Yahil, Chaim. See Hoffman, Chaim Yale, William, 58 Yalta Conference, 23

Yantian, Hyman, 38, 46 Yeshiva University, 21, 69 yishuv, 16, 22, 34, 45, 66-67, 164, 166, 169-70, 177 Yom HaShoah V’HaGevura, 177 Yom HaZikaron, 178 Yom Kippur War, 178 Young, James, 184 Yugoslav border guards, 123n67 Yugoslavs, 38, 40, 44, 46

Z

ŻEGOTA, 160, 186 Zeilsheim, 41, 66, 145 Zerubavel, Yaakov, 164 Zietlow, Carl F., 151 ŻOB, 160, 162, 166-69, 173-74, 180-81, 196n10, 196n12 Zorn, Rudolph, 155n30 Zuckerman, Yitshak, 164, 166-69, 172-73, 180 Zuroff, Efraim, 192 Zygelbojm, Szmul, 190, 201n50

— 213 —