Eli's Story by Meri-Jane Rochelson

Author:Meri-Jane Rochelson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wayne State University Press

1.This may be the same Mr. Baikovich I met once at our home, when I was a child or teenager.

2.This article was published in the Landsberger Lager-Cajtung (later titled the Landsberger Jidisze Cajtung), the newspaper of the Jews in the Landsberg DP camp. Eli saved a large collection of these papers, which now crumble at the touch. I have so far had no success in finding the article, which he mentioned often, either in his collection, online, or in microfilms at the YIVO library.

3.Dr. Nabriski and Eli were close personal friends as well as colleagues. Both Dr. Nabriski and Dr. Oleiski emigrated to Israel, where they continued their distinguished professional careers, Dr. Oleiski with ORT and Dr. Nabriski as head of gynecology at a hospital in Kfar Saba (Tory 386).

4.This and subsequent information appears in a typewritten page among his papers, a summary of information he provided to a medical certifying group.

5.YIVO file R294.2 MK.483.62 (hard copy and microform numbers) contains numerous examples of blank forms.

6.Ruth Gay, in Safe Among the Germans, includes a photograph of Föhrenwald, which eventually became the third largest DP camp in the American Zone (71–72). Landsberg was the second largest, after Feldafing.

7.Keith Lowe’s Savage Continent provides a context for less than perfect conditions, black market activities, and even attacks on former kapos in the DP camps. The horrifying conditions of concentration camps, discovered by the Allies at the time of liberation, could not be transcended overnight (78–93); however, what American and UN inspectors saw as anarchy and filth was mild and orderly in relation to much of what Lowe documents throughout postwar Europe, where refugees of many nationalities found themselves adrift.

8.Heymont disputed Srole’s allegations, saying they were either exaggerated or “founded on misinformation” (104). He conceded, however, that Srole wrote in good faith, and that his charges served their purpose of calling attention to disturbing conditions—adding that he hoped Srole would withdraw his resignation (107). I have found no evidence that Srole did so. Heymont refers to Srole as Leo, but the name on Srole’s typescript in the UNRRA archive is Lee.

9.Heymont often expressed frustration at the difficulties in obtaining such basics as brooms and toilet paper (27, 58, 71, and elsewhere). To this day, commentators criticize the US Army for the treatment of displaced persons in the camps; in 2015 Eric Lichtblau in the New York Times described displaced persons as “jailed by America.” Yet Atina Grossmann’s account reinforces the comment of one of Lichtblau’s interviewees that “[c]ompared with the Nazi camps, ‘it was heaven’” (Lichtblau; Grossman 181–82). Eli’s experience, too, suggests this more complex picture.

10.UNRRA file S-0436-42-6.

11.Heymont, writing about the first issue of the Landsberger Lager-Cajtung, notes, “We did not succeed in finding Yiddish type even though we scoured the whole American occupation zone” (42). Ruth Gay points out that in this case necessity may have been a virtue, since many of the young people in the DP camp spoke Yiddish but could not read it in Hebrew letters (72). The transliterations of

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