by Ruth Gruber
From New York City, we traveled by train to Fort Ontario, a former Army camp located in Oswego, New York, closed in by a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. The sight of the fence terrified some of the refugees. One of them turned on me. “Mother Ruth, how could you do this to us? We escaped from such camps in Europe, and you bring us into the great America and put us in another camp?”
My efforts to explain that all Army camps in America are surrounded by a fence were failing when a woman said, “Don't let some of these people upset you. We're glad there's a fence. We feel safer inside.”
The people lived inside the camp, with permission to go into town for six hours at a time, but they had no legal status. They were not prisoners of war. They were not enemy aliens. They were not immigrants with proper visas. They were “guests of the President,” which gave them no rights at all. But the schools of Oswego opened their arms to the children, and these children brought America and the Bill of Rights into the camp.
Two days after Yom Kippur, Eleanor Roosevelt drove down from Lake Placid with her good friend Elinor Morgenthau, the wife of Henry Morgenthau, Jr.
The refugees welcomed her into their barracks. Several of us joined her for lunch and then escorted her to the auditorium, where our singers and performers entertained her. She was especially moved by Leo Mirkovíc, who had been the leading baritone singer of the Zagreb National Opera, and who sang “Feegar-o, Fee-gar-o, Fee-gar-o” with such gusto that she stood up to applaud. In her syndicated daily column, “My Day,” Mrs. Roosevelt described Leo's singing: “An opera singer from Yugoslavia sang for us, and I have rarely enjoyed anything more.”
After the performance, she climbed onto the stage. Even before she spoke, the people applauded enthusiastically. I saw her smile with gratitude. She spoke in English, and though most of the people could not understand a single word, they felt her compassion and caring. She ended her column that night: “Somehow you feel that if there is any compensation for suffering, it must someday bring them something beautiful in return for all the horrors they have lived through.”
On April 12, 1945, word ran through the camp: the president is dead. The refugees went into mourning. They walked to the grounds of the old fort where two men raised the flag of the country they had grown to love. Their musicians played “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and Leo Mirkovíc sang Sibelius's “Prayer of Peace.” The people wept and I wept with them. They were in America because of this American president. Their father, their protector, was dead.
As the Allied victory neared, a dark shadow fell over the refugees. They had signed a paper before boarding the ship in Naples promising that they would return to their countries of origin as soon as the war was over. They would have signed anything to escape the terror and the bombings in Europe. But to what would they be returning?
With help from people like Ickes and Eleanor Roosevelt, we fought the State Department, Justice Department, and Treasury Department, who were determined to send the refugees out of the country. Ickes told me, “We have to fight the bureaucrats.” He sent me to New York several times to ask my friends on the Times and the Herald Tribune to write editorials explaining why these one thousand refugees should be allowed to stay. The editorials were strong, but the climate was still unchanged.
By November, with the war over, the people were beginning to panic. “Go back to the camp,” Ickes told me, “and see what you can do to calm them.” I left immediately.
As always, many greeted me with their theme song, “Don't Fence Me In.” Artur Hirt, a former Polish judge, accosted me: “The paper we signed in Italy, that we would go back at the end of the war, doesn't hold. The Poland I would have to go back to is no longer Poland. My part of it is Russia. I don't want to go to Russia. I hate the Communists. I hate Stalin. Where should I go? I warn you, we can't hold out much longer.”
Others told me, “We can't go back. Our wives are dead. Our husbands are dead. Our parents and our children are dead. The blood of our families is on the streets.” The camp came together in the auditorium to hear my report on the stage:
Some of you tell me you think you are forgotten. That is not true! Every day conferences are taking place, government officials are meeting, letters are being written from one branch of government to another. Your cause is being defended with all the eloquence and passion our friends can command.
You have an important mission. You are the first DPs [Displaced Persons] who were brought to this country. You are the vanguard. What the government decides should be done for you may influence what the world will do for hundreds of thousands of other DPs. Your struggle is their struggle, your agony their agony. Like you, they want the right to live in a land they dream of, with decency and dignity, without hunger and without fear.
We must not give up hope. My philosophy is that wherever there is a door, it can be opened. There are still a few doors. Let me assure you that every one of us who loves you and has faith in you is working tirelessly, day and night, to do two things: to shut the camp down so you can work, move around, and live as free human beings again; and to get you into the country legally under the quotas.
That day, at the Statue of Liberty, you told me the air of America smells like free air. Believe me, we want you to breathe it.
On December 23, as a Hanukkah and Christmas present, President Harry Truman announced on the radio that the refugees could stay. They were ecstatic.
Whether it was because of their culture or their love for education or their passion for America, the refugees gave back to America everything America gave them and more.
Dr. Alex Margulis, from Yugoslavia, who became chief of radiology at the University of California in San Francisco, helped create the CAT scan and saved thousands of lives. “Oswego,” he told me, “was one of my most wonderful experiences. We young people were happy. It was an island of plenty.”
Rolf Manfred, from Berlin, who was one of the creators of the nuclear-armed Minuteman missile carried by America's Polaris submarines, turned his back on these instruments of death, and was sent by our government to teach third-world countries the uses of energy for peace.
Leon Levitch, the pianist who organized the choir and accompanied the singers who performed in the camp, became a composer of orchestral and chamber music.
Leo Mirkovíc, the baritone from the Zagreb National Opera, became the cantor of the Brotherhood Synagogue on Manhattan's Gramercy Park.
Irene Danon, who came, like most of the others, penniless, is now a real estate tycoon in Los Angeles, a painter, and a poet.
Zdenka Ruchwarger Levy, who trained as a nurse in Yugoslavia, worked full-time on the ship coming to America, then served in a physician's office and is now married to David Levy, a salesman, whom she met on the Henry Gibbins. He was one of those who persuaded Eleanor Roosevelt to help open the college in Oswego to the camp's teenagers.
Margaret Spitzer Fisse became a teacher in the San Francisco schools.
Gloria Bass Fredkove, whose mother, Eva Bass, had an unforgettable voice, worked for years in legal offices as a legal secretary and sang in a synagogue choir.
Paul Arnstein worked in the U.S. Public Health Service as a veterinarian. “I feel,” he reminisced, “that the Oswego experience should never be forgotten. We are one small group of people who were supposed to be exterminated in Europe, survived, and who came to America.”
Paul Bokros worked as an electronics engineer in secret projects in the Department of Defense and in the conquest of space.
Eva Kaufman Dye, the daughter of the camp's official photographer, Branko Kaufman, became a schoolteacher in California.
Dr. David Hendell became a dentist and teacher at Columbia University and one of the pioneers in bonding teeth.
Edna Tusak Loehman taught environmental economics at Purdue University and traveled to Israel to develop water-sharing projects between Israelis and Palestinians.
Manya Breuer, who had been saved by nuns and who starred in every camp production,
settled in Los Angeles, where she sang in operettas and became a consultant to art galleries. Manya often bursts into tears.
“But when I sing,” she assured me, “I stop crying.”
Climbing aboard the Henry Gibbins, I was greeted by a group of Holocaust survivors still in their concentration camp clothing. They had each been allowed to take only one small piece of baggage on board.
Akindly young medic improvised a pharmacy on the refugees' deck of the Henry Gibbins. He had pills and other medications for bellyaches, headaches, sunburn, scratches, and anxiety. We had a hospital on the ship with refugee doctors and nurses, but many of the passengers preferred the medic's sympathetic hands-on treatment. Even little boys found him so caring that they set up the chessboards we gave them alongside his outdoor pharmacy. Many of his pills were merely placebos, which many times worked better than the brand-name drugs. I often congratulated him on his steady stream of miraculous cures.
I couldn't help but take pictures of the children. Many were happy to have their photographs taken. They looked upon this voyage as a great adventure, but others were sad and brokenhearted. You could always tell who came with a family and who was an orphan. You read it in their eyes.
Mathilda Nitsch saved countless Jews from Yugoslavia. She was a Roman Catholic who ran a boardinghouse in Croatia, where she hid Jews, stole passports, and sent the Jews to her friends in Italy. She was caught and imprisoned in an ice cellar, where water dripped for ten days on her head, but she refused to betray the Jews she was hiding.
The Mediterranean sun was so oppressive that I asked the bosun to hang a few tarpaulins to provide at least one shady spot on the deck.
Two ships sailed on each side of us carrying Nazi and Fascist prisoners of war. The officer in command of the whole convoy was told that he must protect those ships as well as ours. Thirty Nazi planes flew over us, but did not attack us. Miracles were happening.
I stood on deck and asked one of the officers, “Why didn't they drop bombs on us? Why didn't they sink us?” He said, “Obviously, they had another mission.”
When hysteria was mounting among the wounded soldiers who were blaming the refugees for the Nazi planes flying over us, one soldier called out, “Quiet everybody,” and they were quiet for a little while. He later said to me, “I'm a Jew, and I want to tell you I'm proud of what you're doing.”
I decided to show the soldiers who these refugees were. Once we were out of the Mediterranean and in the Atlantic, we put on a show for them. We had several gifted singers, some of whom had sung in Paris nightclubs. The soldiers saw those girls and began to yell, “Hubba hubba. Look at that tomato. Bring them back.”
At the beginning of the voyage, the refugees and the American wounded were segregated on the ship. The captain of the Henry Gibbins warned me to prevent the crew and refugees from fraternizing. But after the show, the captain gave up. You couldn't keep the soldiers off our deck. They came every day, bringing cookies and chocolate for the children and Army jokes for our young women.
Day and night the refugees told me their stories. Some were reluctant to speak at first, but soon they began to pull me aside, determined to bear witness to the horrors that had been done to them. Listening to their stories of survival, I had an epiphany. I realized that for the rest of my life I would use my tools—my words and images—to fight injustice.
We gave children books in rudimentary English to prepare them for their new life in America. I felt the way to help the people was to teach them a little English, so the bosun hung up a big blackboard and I began writing on it. “How do you feel?” “I feel fine,” they replied. I heard those words in eighteen accents even when they were leaning over the railings, seasick.
During one of my classes, an Army major in charge of the refugees warned me, “Tell the people that the name of the ship is top secret and they must never tell anyone where our ship came from.” I followed orders and added my own interpretation. I instructed the refugees, “When you get to America you must tell everybody the name of the ship you sailed on is a secret. And when they ask, ‘Where did you come from?’ tell them you came from the North Pole.” Months later I learned that when their teachers in America asked them what ship they came on, they all answered, “The name of the ship is Secret.” And when asked, “Where do you come from?” they replied, “From the North Pole.”
When the Henry Gibbins arrived in New York Harbor on August 3, 1944, one of our rabbis asked me if he could say a prayer. I said, “Of course.”
He knelt down on the deck and kissed it. He prayed and we prayed with him. Then he said, “Now that we have reached the land of freedom, we must never believe the lies the Nazis tell about us, that wherever we go we bring evil. It's not true. We bring truth and we bring the blessings of the Torah. And now that we are here in this land of freedom, we must be filled not with hatred, but with love.”
At home in Brooklyn, I called Ickes right away and said, “We've landed. Now I'd like to leave tomorrow morning for my office.” “No, you better wait there,” he said. “You know the refugees. I have another job for you. The Army insisted this mission was top secret, but the Times and the Trib and the Washington Post made such a fuss that the Army had to back down. They're going to hold a press conference, and you've got to run it.”
The next morning, I taxied to the Empire State Building. Two men from the War Relocation Authority (WRA) were waiting for me.
“Pick out the refugees who should be interviewed,” they told me.
“Get me a typewriter.” I typed up the case histories from my notebook and had them mimeographed.
The refugees spent the night aboard the Henry Gibbins, sleepless with anticipation. The next morning, they were transferred to a boat to Hoboken, where the press was waiting. One by one I presented the refugees; they were terrified. They had never been interviewed in their lives.
Mathilda Nitsch said, “I don't know what to say.”
I said, “Don't worry, Mathilda. Whatever you say, they'll love.”
When we arrived at the Emergency Refugee Shelter at Fort Ontario in Oswego, each family was given a one-room renovated barrack and then told to come to a long table where they were given their first towel and bar of soap. One toilet and shower were at the end of every hall. I arranged for volunteers from the National Council of Jewish Women to sew shower curtains to give the people some privacy, something many had not known for over a decade. Their meals were cooked in large kitchens. Because it was a government project, it had to be ecumenical. The refugees spent their first month in quarantine while the Army interrogated them. They remained at Fort Ontario for eighteen months.
Sarah Frajerman stood with her son and daughter outside their barracks, wearing the ID label the Army had given each adult aboard the Henry Gib-bins. The labels were marked “casual baggage.”
Sarah told me, “Bedsheets! Imagine having bedsheets for the first time in years!” She later gave birth in the camp to her fourth child, Harry. The life juices that for many of the women had dried up in the concentration camps returned at Oswego.
Only the press and government officials were allowed in the camp during a monthlong quarantine. Once the quarantine was over, Dillon Myer, the head of the WRA, came with other Washington officials to deliver welcoming speeches. Myer asked me to be one of the speakers.
Many of the refugees smiled at me as I took their pictures from the platform.
The Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine and the Nuremberg Trials
1946
With the war over in Europe, the newspapers began printing photographs of skeletal survivors, their faces ravaged with hunger and fright, their sunken eyes reflecting the evil they had witnessed. Why didn't we know during the war that six million Jews were being murdered? Why was the story hidden by The New York Times and all the periodicals that followed its lead? Why could they print on their front page a story of a child falling down a well, while on a back page in one or two obscure paragraphs, the note that
90,000 Jews were murdered within one day in Poland?
To ease the pain and guilt of having done little or nothing, some found comfort in believing that as soon as the camps were liberated, the survivors rushed out and tore down the cynical sign Arbeit macht frei (Work Makes You Free).
That is not what happened at all. Those survivors who were able to walk either hitchhiked or caught a train to return to their former homes. But the ghosts of their families hovered over the streets. Too often, when they knocked on their own doors, they were greeted by a neighbor who had moved in and was carrying a shotgun. “What? Are you still alive? Why didn't they burn you or turn you into soap?”
In Kielce, Poland, forty-two survivors returned home and all of them were murdered.
So the Jews of the Holocaust learned that they could no longer live in the homes and the lands they had once loved. Thousands made their way back to their former enemy, Germany, to find refuge in the DP (Displaced Persons) camps run by UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration).
They had a new dream. They knew American soldiers and social workers were running those camps, and they believed that Americans would help them get to Palestine.* But the way to the Holy Land was blocked by Britain, which refused to give visas to most of the Holocaust survivors.
It was one of the ironies of history. In 1922, after the Great War, the League of Nations gave Britain the mandate to govern Palestine and to help establish it as a national home for the Jewish people. After Hitler came to power in 1933, Britain allowed thousands of German Jews to take refuge in the Holy Land.
Then, when Arabs attacked not only Jews but the British soldiers serving in Palestine as well, Britain sent one of its best Army officers, Gen. Charles Orde Wingate, to suppress the Arab riots. But as Britain's need for Arab oil grew, the policy of the Foreign Office changed. In 1939, just as Hitler shut all escape routes from Germany, the British government issued a White Paper. Its purpose was to limit Jewish immigration into Palestine during the next five years, then end it.