Letter from Al Cohen to Vivien Cohen at the end of WWII

Munich
11 Sept., 1945

Darling,

This is going to be a somewhat unusual letter. I have become aware of a situation existing here which is most serious. Before I go further, I want you to know that what is to follow is all factual information, and not rumor, hearsay, or gossip.

With the war ended, displaced persons (D.P.’s) are being returned to their own lands; the French to France, Poles to Poland, Russians to Russia. But there is one kind of “D.P.” who has no place to return to, and that is the Jew. He is not wanted!

The Jew has no place to go. He is kept at a camp, surrounded by barbed wire and guards. While in Concentration camps his hope was salvation; now he has been saved but he has been given no hope. He has been liberated but not freed! Missions and Representatives have come to Europe to investigate the plight of various peoples, but no one has come to investigate the plight of the Jew.

Last month there was a dispatch in the N.Y. Times dated August 23, stating that the Jewish children have been removed form Jewish camps and taken to France, Sweden, Switzerland, and England, through the efforts of the Jewish Distribution Committee, and that separated and scattered families are being sought in an effort to unite them. The Bavaria Central Jewish Committee, composed of Jewish Army Chaplains and civilians, and which has honeycombed Bavaria seeking lost Jews, said that not only is the dispatch a lie, but not one Jewish child has been removed from Bavaria. True, there are few left to remove; not one Polish-Jewish child under 14 years of age has been found alive.

Anti-Semitism continues, with Poland the most despicable example. She advertises herself as “A Democracy without Jews.” It may interest you to know that on last August 28-29 there was a pogrom in Cracow!

Of the one million Hungarian enemy-aliens doing force-labor here, a few thousand are Jews. After being persecuted in Hungary, these Jews are now considered an enemy of the United Nations!

Of the Jewish population in Germany, 55,000 remain; 14,000 of them in Bavaria. They have survived 6 years of attempts to exterminate them. With nothing left but the clothes on their back and many broken bodies and spirits, what provision is being made for them; how are they being brought to live decently again? As of August 4, this is the picture:--

There are 17 camps in Bavaria at which Jews are kept; some are all-Jewish, some mixed. At Feldafing, near Starnberg, where we go to play golf, there is a camp housing 2100 Jews. At Turkheim there are 450 Jews in a double barbed-wire enclosure, with vile sanitary facilities. At Buchberg there are 1000 Jews living in a gunpowder factory. When the military requires the camp or area for other purposes, where do the Jews go? They are sent to another camp. So they wander from camp to camp, never going home because there is no home to go to.

How well have they been eating? Some of the menus:--

At Mittenwald, 2 meals daily.
     Breakfast--bread and coffee.
     Second meal--Soup and beans.

There was an attempted hunger riot at this place.

At Garmisch:--
     Breakfast--300 to 750 grams bread daily. Butter or
              margarine, 4 oz. per week, and coffee.
     Dinner--Bean soup every day, never changes. Horsemeat,
              [ ] oz. per person; sometimes canned meat.
     Supper--[ ] liter soup.

However the food situation is improving.

Clothes? Many are still wearing the striped suits they had to wear in the Concentration camps. They never got other clothes. A well-dressed person is probably a thief, he must have stolen the garments! An obliging Army officer contributed blanket material, which was made into clothing.

Cleanliness? Four cases of soap were promised by the International Red Cross, 4 cases for 14,000 people! When they were called for, they sent only two. There is no soap, no tooth paste, no razor blades, no shaving cream, and usually no decent place to wash. Most of them sleep on straw-stuffed mattress covers.

You may have read of all the good the I.R.C., the I.D.C., and the U.N.R.R.A. are doing. If they are going good, it hasn’t reached this far. I.R.C. may issue reports of its accomplishments, but not of its neglect. Up to August 4, U.N.R.R.A. has not given one garment or committed one act of relief or rehabilitation of the Jew in Bavaria.

I said August 4 because I know the facts only to that date in regard to these organizations. They may be doing something now, but it will take them a long time to catch up, and the need is immediate (and urgent)!

Only the hospitals shine. When the Americans moved in, hospitals were set up for the victims of Nazi cruelty, and their work is something to be proud of. The German P.W. hospitals at Starnberg and Feldafing are models. The German patient is well fed, sleeps in a bed with white sheets, in immaculate surroundings. Why should a Jew have to wait till he is a hospital case before he is treated as a human? They can’t even keep their barracks clean because they have no soap, no disinfectant.

I’ll tell you something about the Ghetto system. The Nazis crowded the Jews into the vilest part of a town and threw a wall around them. After a while the Nazis would ask for a specific number of intellectuals; they need them for work in museums and universities. These intellectuals were removed and disposed of, killed! Then the children were taken, many of them thrown out of third story windows alive, to waiting wagons below. Then the noose was drawn tighter, to exterminate the residue. During all this time, the Jews managed to smuggle in food, managed to help some to escape, to smuggle one child in and out three times so it could see its family. This they did with a wall about them, in the face of armed guards; but we, with all our resources and facilities, cannot help them. It doesn’t make sense!

The only solution was to take matters into one’s own hands, as the prisoners of the Ghettos did. The Bavarian Central Jewish Committee was created, and it is trying to revive the Jew. At the present time the Jews of America have a unique opportunity to help, not by contributing money, which may be used elsewhere, but to contribute directly to the suffering Jews in Bavaria!

From now until Christmas, parcels may be shipped to soldiers oversees without requests. The needs fall into four categories, listed in order of importance.

1. Clothing:--Men’s and women’s (almost all the children are dead) new clothing only, no rags! It’s going to be a tough winter!

1. Toilet and sanitation articles.

3. Intellectual and recreational items (German-English dictionaries, cards, checkers, etc.)

4. Religious articles.

Remember, these are in order of importance!

Haste is paramount! Send as much as you can. Let’s not finish the job Hitler started!

I may not be here when the packages arrive, so send to Chaplain Wall, 9th Div., A.P.O. 9 c/o/P.M., N.Y., N.Y. I have already turned in a quantity of soap.

Eventually the Jew will be brought back to humanity; but then, where will he go? That’s a problem that follows right behind.

Don’t fail these people!

With all my love,

Al

Al Cohen was a sergeant in the U.S. Army Signal Corps during World War II. As the war ended, he was stationed in Munich. He attended Rosh Hashanah services held by an American Jewish chaplain, who told the congregation of soldiers about the plight of European Jewry. Al wrote the following letter to his wife, Vivien, in Woodbridge, N.J.

Vivien read the letter to the local Hadassah, and it was printed by the NY Post. Vivien organized a collection effort in her children’s clothing store, receiving and packing parcels. Vivien and other Woodbridge merchants also used monetary donations sent in response to the news article; they bought goods wholesale and added them to the shipments.

Al’s brother, Morris, was an MP on troopships sailing between New York and Scotland. He took some shipments with him personally to Scotland, where arrangements were made to send them on to Europe. People volunteered trucks to take the cartons to the docks. A sympathetic official on the ship made room in the hold each trip.