Munich
11 Sept., 1945
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.
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.
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.
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