“Come on, Eli, Izaak,” Reilly said, bending down. “We gotta get you out of this cold, muddy prison camp and let some doctors fix you up.”
Reilly waved for a stretcher, and two corpsmen were quick to respond. One of them patted Izaak on the head and said, “You go with the other kids, little guy. We’ll take care of your pops.” But Izaak wouldn’t leave his father.
Reilly placed his hand on the corpsman’s shoulder. “Martin, how many of these kids still have a parent? This boy needs to stay with his father. Let’s make an exception this time.”
Martin pulled Reilly aside and whispered, “His father’s in bad shape. He’s probably not going to make it. A lot of them aren’t.”
“All the more reason to let his son stay with him,” Reilly answered.
The corpsman shrugged and placed Eli on the stretcher. Eli looked up at Reilly and in little more than a hoarse whisper, through cracked lips, he said, “A dank, a sheynem dank.” The two corpsmen carried Eli with little Izaak in tow toward a line of white canvas-covered trucks bearing Swiss license plates with Red Cross stenciled on the transom. Reilly smiled and rejoined his squad.
CHAPTER THREE
REIMS, FRANCE
MAY 1945
On the seventh day of May, 1945, at 2:41 Central European Time, Generaloberst Alfred Jodl sat on a wooden chair in a redbrick schoolhouse and signed his name to a two-page document. He paused for a moment, lifted his eyes and passed the document across the table to General Walter “Beetle” Smith, General Eisenhower’s chief of staff. The paper, entitled Act of Military Surrender, recited, “We the undersigned, acting with authority of the German High Command, hereby surrender unconditionally to the Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force and to the Soviet High Command, all forces on land, sea and in the air who are at this date under German control.” Beneath the signature line, he simply scribbled “Jodl.”
In Europe, the war had ended. Inmates of the concentration camps, like those liberated from Buchenwald, found themselves free from their prisons but adrift in unfamiliar and disparate locales. The Allies, in anticipation of this day, had formed an organization entitled United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency (UNRRA) to provide housing, food, clothing, medicine and basic necessities to the war’s displaced survivors. It was primarily an American undertaking. It called for camps and housing areas to be established in Germany, Italy and Austria.
The great majority of the Jews who were liberated from Nazi prisons and concentration camps sought the protection of the United States Army and gravitated to the displaced persons camps established in the American Zone. Föhrenwald, meaning Pine Forest, set in the wooded foothills of Bavaria, was one of the largest American camps.
FÖHRENWALD DISPLACED PERSONS CAMP
AMERICAN ZONE
JUNE 1946
The door of the small wooden house on Florida Street swung open, and a twelve-year-old boy with a mop of brown hair burst into the room. Thin as a stick but full of energy, he yelled, “Papa, guess what?”
Eli smiled. “What is it, Izaak?”
“Mr. Abrams came to school today to teach us about writing and stuff, and after class he asked if Josh and I could help him deliver his newspapers tomorrow afternoon.”
“The camp newspaper? You mean the Bamidbar?”
“Yes, the Bamidbar. We’re hoping he pays us with chocolate like he did last time.”
Eli laughed and patted him on the head. “Chocolate. My businessman. You can go with Mr. Abrams, but don’t eat all the chocolate at once and come home as soon as you’re finished. Homework, you know?”
Izaak sighed. “I know, I know.”
“How do you like your new teacher?”
“She’s okay, I guess. She says she’s from Eretz Israel. She speaks Hebrew and Yiddish. And English, of course. The lessons are hard.”
“Well, you understand Yiddish, don’t you?”
“Sure, but not much English or Hebrew. Those languages are strange to me, but Mrs. Klein says I’m doing well. The English letters are a lot like the Polish letters, so I can write them. I can even draw some of the Hebrew letters. Better than a lot of kids. Some of the kids in my class can’t read or write anything. They’ve never been to school. Especially the ones who were hiding.”
Eli proudly hugged his son. He had been through so much and was rebounding so well. “Okay, deliver Mr. Abrams’s newspapers and come right home. I’ll leave a sandwich for you. I have a camp committee meeting tomorrow night, so I’ll be home late.”
“But you’ll tuck me in when you get home, no matter what time it is, right?”
“Absolutely. Always do.”
* * *
The Föhrenwald camp committee convened in the assembly hall on Roosevelt Place. On the agenda this evening was the troubling housing shortage. Meetings were attended by the camp’s administrators, an UNRRA representative and several interested residents. There was always an opportunity for people to raise grievances and it was often a spicy affair. On this night, though the news was generally disturbing, a certain revelation would rock Eli to his core.
Camp Director Bernard Schwartz, a burly man from eastern Poland, gaveled the meeting to order. “All right, settle down, everyone. We have serious matters to discuss tonight. Let’s get right to the housing issue. Harry?”
A tall thin man with tufts of white hair rose with a sheaf of papers in his hand. He rattled the papers for all to see. “We are now up to 5,600 residents, and even with the additional structures we’ve converted from commercial space, we’re 2,000 over our capacity. All of you know this little village was originally built to house workers for I. G. Farben’s factory, and they had 2,500 residents. Some of our families are now sleeping five in a room, double-decker beds. We desperately need to construct more housing.”
The UNRRA delegate shook his head. “I’m sorry, Harry, but expansion is not in our plans. Föhrenwald is meant to be a temporary solution to house survivors until they find their permanent home.”
Harry stood his ground. “Tell the U.S., Canada and Britain to issue visas, Martin, and there wouldn’t be a single person left at Föhrenwald. In the interim, we need building supplies and materials. We can’t have our people sleeping on top of each other; we need to expand our housing. I know that Eli Rosen has the experience to manage new construction projects, but UNRRA has to supply the materials.”
The delegate answered solemnly. “I’ll take the matter up with my superiors, but I know what they’re going to say; it’s not in the UNRRA budget to build cities in Germany. And they will tell me that the camp population is increasing far beyond expectations. They’ll tell me the birth rate is out of control.”
“Oh, come on, Martin.”
“He has a point,” said a voice in the back. “At the hospital we are delivering six to nine babies a month. There are two hundred women currently pregnant in this camp. Our population is increasing rapidly. We must make accommodation for them.”
“It’s inevitable,” Bernard said. “Our people have been liberated and they want nothing more than to rebuild normal lives. They’re finding partners, relationships, marriages—all those aspects of humanity which were denied to them in the camps. And normal lives mean children. We should all appreciate that children are essential to reconstructing our personal and collective identities. I agree with Harry. We need to build more housing.”