I This Week
D i s laced In Histo
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PETER EPHROSS
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
New York
L
A desire to erase this ignorance motivated the muse-
um's Second Generation Advisory Project to push for
the exhibit and conference.
Exhibits on the topic are also being shown at other
museums and institutions in the Washington area,
including the B'nai B'rith Klutznick Museum and the
National Museum of American Jewish Military History.
Friedman wasn't the only bride in the camps. By
1947, the 90 camps that housed Jews in Germany,
Austria and Italy had one of the highest birth rates in
the world.
"You needed to form these bonds because you had
nobody," says Regina Spiegel, who married her hus-
band, Sam, in the Fohrenwald camp in Germany.
ily Friedman wanted to wear a white gown at
her wedding in 1946, but there was one
problem: No gowns were available at her dis-
placed persons camp.
Her fiance, a cook at the Celle camp in Germany,
solved the problem. He traded two pounds of coffee to
a German pilot for a large, off-white parachute. A seam-
stress friend made a dress out of the parachute, and with
extra material, made a shirt for the groom as well:
Adding a suit borrowed from a British major, the
couple's wedding
outfits were com-
plete. On Jan. 27,
1946, they were
married in a
makeshift synagogue
near the camp in
front of more than
400 guests, most of
them survivors.
"That was the
first occasion where
people danced and
were happy,"
remembers
Friedman, who now
lives in Brooklyn.
Despite all the
information available about the
"People can't live by themselves."
Left to right: Students
Holocaust, relatively little is known
The surviving remnant of European
at a kindergarten in a
about the roughly 90 displaced persons
displaced persons camp. Jewry, or shaarit haplayta, quickly began to
For a time, the camps
camps that housed 250,000 Jews
rebuild a semblance of normalcy.
had one of the highest
between 1945 and 1951, when all but
The United Nations, the American and
birth rates in the world. British governments, and the American
one of the camps closed.
"I can't tell you how many people have
Jewish Joint Distribution Committee ran
come by and said I didn't know anything Several music and
the camps.
theater groups made up
about this history," says Steven Luckert,
But "just days or weeks after the libera-
of survivors toured the
curator of the permanent exhibition at
tion, Jews began to organize," Luckert says.
D.P. camps. During
the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
In other words, the survivors did more
World War II, many of than just survive.
He is talking about an exhibit about D.P.
The Happy Boys were
camps, "Life Reborn: Jewish Displaced
Teetering, as one of them said, "between
musicians
in the Lodz
Persons, 1945-1951," currently on dis-
hope and depression," they coped with their
ghetto in Poland.
play at the Washington museum.
situation by recreating the life and commu-
Sam and Regina
Part of the reason for this, says
nal structure they had known before the
Spiegel at their
Menachem Rosensaft, who was born in
Holocaust, cobbling together an impressive
wedding ceremony in
the Bergen-Belsen D.P. camp in 1948, is
array of religious institutions and schools,
the Fohrenwald D.P.
that the Jewish experience in the camps
political organizations and sports clubs, and
camp in Germany.
— in which individuals barely removed
theater troupes and newspapers.
from their horrific wartime experiences
Rena Berliner, who survived the war in
demonstrated a remarkable vibrancy — doesn't fit vic-
Poland, became part of a singing troupe that toured
timization stereotypes.
camps, performing such operas as Aida or Carmen
People have two images of survivors — wearing
translated into Yiddish. The purpose, she says, was
concentration camp uniforms staring off into the dis-
"bringing a little culture to people who never had any."
tance on liberation day and as grey-haired people light-
With the help of training sessions organized by the
ing candles at Holocaust commemorations — says
JDC and ORT, the vocational and educational organi-
Rosensaft, who is one of the organizers of a conference
zation, camp residents learned job skills such as sewing.
on the camps scheduled to be held in Washington
An overwhelming number of people initially wanted
beginning today, Jan. 14.
to immigrate to Palestine, but the British restrictions
on immigration there, coupled with reports about the
tough life in the Middle East, dampened enthusiasm.
"I had a cousin who immigrated to Palestine, and he
made no secret that if you wanted to be a doctor, forget
coming to Palestine," says Dr. Edmond Goldenberg,
who eventually immigrated to the United States.
Still, in the end, 142,000 of the camp residents
moved to pre-state Palestine or Israel, according
to Rosensaft, a member of the U.S. Holocaust
Memorial Council.
At least 75,000 moved to the United States after leg-
islation in 1948 opened up slots to displaced persons,
and about 16,000 went to Canada, he says.
Jews weren't the only ones housed as displaced per-
Holocaust Museum show reveals Jewish vigor in D.P. camps.
sons after the war. Britain and the United States also set
up camps for other war refugees.
In organizing the camps initially, the U.S. and
British governments — hesitant to use the same
racial classifications as the Nazis — housed all dis-
placed persons, including Jews, by their country
of origin.
As a result, Jews occasionally lived in the same
camps as refugees who had collaborated with the Nazis.
This changed after August 1945, when the
United States issued a report indicting the condi-
tions in the D.P. camps. The so-called Harrison
report referred to the camps as "concentration
camps," in which some wore striped pajamas similar
to the Nazi camp uniforms and lived mostly on
bread and coffee.
The report made two recommendations adopted
by President Harry Truman, the most important of
which was that Jews should be segregated in their
own D.P. camps, because "this was done for so long
by the Nazis that a group has been created that has
special needs."
For Lily Friedman, the camps provided an opportu-
nity for something that, more than 50 years later, she
describes as "magical."
After her wedding, she loaned her gown to her
sister and other brides — and it eventually took part
in more than 17 marriage ceremonies.
She says, "It was a miracle that we wanted to go on
with life." ❑
4.kv:
1/14
2000
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