14
Friday, December 13, 1985 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
CLOSE-UP
HOW DO
YOU GET
TO BE
A HERO
AFTER
THE WAR.
BY ELSA A. SOLENDER
Special to The Jewish News
The young soldier knew he wasn't
supposed to read the papers that he
handled during World War II at Fort
Knox. He was a warrant officer in charge
of classified documents. But the envelopes
came open. Everyone read them. The
soldier began to learn what was happen-
ing to Jews in Europe.
"The Army knew — they knew every-
thing," recalls Theodore Feder. He decid-
ed to get overseas to help Jews. When he
achieved his objective — just before the
war ended in 1945 — it was the beginning
of a 40-year career in the "international
Jewish civil service," the American Jewish
Joint Distribution Committee (JDC).
The Hebrew University in Jerusalem
recently honored Ted Feder with its Paul
Baerwald Award as one of the unsung
heroes of the post-war era. Feder retired
last year from the JDC after having
attained the rank of its director-gen-
eral. Over the past four decades, he had
served the organization in Germany,
Eastern Europe, Iran and Israel as well
as in the corridors of the United Nations ,
at Geneva. In Baltimore recently to
brief professionals at the Associated
Jewish charities on overseas develop-
ments, Feder recounted some aspects of
his career in an interview with The
Jewish News.
Feder came from what he calls a "pre-
Zionist" family in Milwaukee. In fact,
when Golda Meir — who had immigrated
to Milwaukee as a child when her family
fled the Russian pogroms — decided to go
to Denver and prepare herself to make
aliyah to Israel, she related in her auto-
biography how she borrowed the money
for a bus ticket from a friend, Sarah Feder,
Ted's elder sister.
"I still accuse my sister of having tap-
ped the till at our father's delicatessen to
get the $18.25 to give Golda for the ticket.
Where else could a university student have
gotten such money?" he asked.
Feder himself first remembers the late
Israeli prime minister as the friend of his
sister who used to walk him to kinder-
garten in Milwaukee. Later, as machned
(director) of Malben, the JDC operation in
Israel, he would often meet Meir. Sarah
Feder herself moved to Israel some time
later. And she was not the first "pre-
Zionist" in the family
"When I met the late Israeli Prime
Minister Zalman Shazar," Ted Feder
recalled, "I learned that he came from
Stolpze, the same shtetl in White Russia
that my parents came from. He was a
great one for being able to bring up the
genealogy of people he knew. When I
visited him the first time as a JDC profes-
sional, he said, 'Oh, you're Sarah Feder's
brother? Let me tell you about your fam-
ily.' And he related the history of my
mother's entire family. And then he said,
`Did you know your mother was a Zionist
in Stolpze?, It seems she ran an under-
ground hotel for Jews who were leaving
the area to go to Palestine.
"So you see," said Feder, "I come by my
interest in Jewish affairs honestly."
Once Feder learned what was happening
in Europe during the war, he was deter-
mined to use his social work background
to help Jews. He had majored in socioogy
and psychology at the University of
Missouri and had done graduate work at
New York University before being drafted
into the Army. His chance came in Sep-
tember 1944 when the Army offered to
discharge people with social service
backgrounds if they would go overseas
with the United Nations Relief and Rehab-
ilitation Administration (UNRRA) to help
nations and people injured by the war.
"I put in for UNRRA," Feder recalled,
"and they took me on. But they lost my
passport. So it wasn't until the day that
the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima
that I finally departed for Europe."
It wasn't an inspiring or heroic journey.
"I was in the company of 300 or so ex-
Army chaiacters who had taken this op-
portunity of going overseas to get out of
the Army. But the war had actually ended.
I don't think any of them had a sober mo-
ment from the time we left till the time we
disembarked eight days later in Plymouth,
England. They were all drunk and disap-
pointed — they could have been dis-
charged in a few weeks if they hadn't
volunteered."
Feder was sent to Germany via France.
One bright note was that when he was sent
to UNRRA headquarters in Karlsruhe, he
ran into Rabbi Max Braude. He had met
Braude while the rabbi attended chap-
laincy school at Fort Knox. Braude, now
deceased, eventually became the overseas
director of the Organization for Rehabilita-
tion and Training (ORT) and a close friend
of Feder's throughout his career.
"Max Braude organized the first ser-
vices for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur
in Germany after the war," Feder remem-
bers. "And I helped him set up the lighting
for them in Heidelberg."
Feder soured very quickly on UNRRA's
appro= ch to aiding war victims. "I was
disgusted," he said, "when it came to
UNRRA's official policy helping ex-
Wehrmacht and SS members, but most of
all I objected to the attitude of the U.N.
towards forced repatriation."
Russian Jews were turned over to Rus-
sian authorities. While Polish Jews were
not exactly forced to return to Poland,
they were given free food parcels if they
did go back to their native country.
"Jews were hovering in the camps, try-
ing to decide whether to go back or not,"
Feder said. "It was a very unsavoury
situation. Hundreds and thousands of
East Europeans were 'shoveled' back east,
and the United Nations was responsible."
Feder began trying to figure out how to
extricate himself from the U.N. operation.