Cries of “we want to go to Palestine” greeted a subcommittee of the Anglo-American inquiry committee on Palestine today, as it began a tour of the displaced persons camps in the American zone of Germany. Testimony was taken at Zeilsheim, the first camp visited, where the Jewish residents had erected large blue-and-white banners reading “open the gates of Palestine.”
Committee members Bartley Crum and Sir Frederick Leggett, and Judge Simon H. Rifkind, advisor on Jewish Affairs to the Commanding General of U.S. Forces in Europe, who will accompany the sub-committee on all its visits in the American zone, heard testimony that nearly 3,000 Jews were living in 215 German houses on the outskirts of the camp, which originally held only about 1,000 Germans.
Sylvan H. Nathan, New York attorney and director of the Zeilsheim camp, which is operated by UNRRA, told the probers that “these are small houses built for workers of I.G. Farben–four or five rooms. We average 12 to 15 people per house, and there are always three, four, or five people in one room. Many displaced persons come here, but we have no room for them and are forced to send them to two overflow camps.”
DISPLACED JEWS SING PALESTINE SONGS AS THEY MARCH TO HEARING
The committee met with spokesmen of various groups in the camp in a small room, while outside the building hundreds of displaced Jews marched, carrying banners and singing Palestinian chalutzim songs. Later they lined up in front of the building and stood there for two hours in a driving downpour.
Afterwards, Crum and Sir Frederick came outside with an interpreter and questioned some Jews at random. One of those questioned was a mother with a child, who, she said, was four years old, although it appeared to be only two. The mother pointed out that the child was “lucky to be alive,” since it had lived 21 months in a forest. A Jewish partisan, who was also questioned, stated that before the war he “was no Zionist,” but that since the war he had become “convinced that Jews have no future anywhere in the world, even in Socialist countries like Russia,” and that he “only hoped to go to Palestine.”
Nathan told the committee that he had polled the camp, choosing 301 persons of all types, and putting three questions to them. To the first; “Do you wish to remain hare?” he received no affirmative answers, Nathan testified. The second question asked was: “Do you wish to remain in Europe–if so, where?” Only one men replied yes. He chose England. Answering the last question: “Do you wish to emigrate from Europe–if so to what countries do you wish to go?” 289 chose Palestine and eleven the United States.
REFUGEES PREFER PALESTINE TO THE UNITED STATES
The displaced Jews were also asked: “Suppose you cannot go to Palestine, but are permitted to go to the United States, would you accept?” The replies to this question were all in the same vein–“What do you mean, we can’t go to Palestine? We must go, and we shall go–there is no other answer.” One man, Baruch Rubinson, queried as to the future of Jews in Europe, replied: “It pains me deeply to have to repeat, at this late date, the fact, which must be self-evident to the whole world, that Jews have no alternative but to go to Palestine. In the countries of Europe, the Nazis were the executors, but the peoples of Europe, regardless of nationality, aided them.”
Nathan testified that of the three meals served the displaced Jews daily, two, breakfast and supper, were the same–bread, margarine, and coffee with powdered milk.
Lunch consisted of potatoes and a hash made with grits and less than three percent meat. He stated that the calorie value of the food was 2,500 units per person.
Pointing out that the Jews wear cast-off clothing, occasionally remade for them, while they see Germans well dressed, he stressed that this was bad for their morale, particularly since the displaced Jews some times see the Germans wearing the very clothes “taken off our backs when we were put into concentration camps.” The committee also heard that the Jews were restricted to the general camp area, while German civilians were permitted to move about anywhere in the American zone, without passes.
PRODUCE OF JEWISH FARMS DIVERTED TO GERMANS; FRICTION REPORTED
In a general discussion of point of conflict between the camp inmates and UNRRA and the military government, it was pointed out that Jews, training themselves for emigration to Palestine, were working their own farm, but the produce was diverted to Germans. This was deeply resented by the Jews who found themselves again “working for the Germans.” This problem was somewhat relieved by permitting them to keep a tiny fraction of their produce. At this point Crum observed that “of course, the military government has its own problems in handling the German population” and that therefore it “seems to me the best thing is to get rid of these camps.”
As Crum and Leggett toured the camp before departing they were cheered by the inmates, who–answering the query of a single voice, which shouted in Yiddish: “Where do we want to go?”–thundered: “We want to go to Palestine, we must go to Palestine,” As the members of the commission left, the entire camp stood bareheaded, singing “Hatikva.”
Yesterday, before beginning their tour of the camps, the committee members heard Rabbi Leopold Neuhaus, speaking for the Jews in the Frankfurt area, declares that “they do not wish to remain in this land of murderers, on soil drenched with the blood of their brothers.” He also stated that young Jews want to go to Palestine, while the elderly German Jews desire to live in America.
The committee, after completing inquiries here, will spend one day in Stuttgart, three days in Munich, two days in Nuremberg and one day in Prague. It will reach Vienna on Feb. 15 where it will remain for two days, meeting with other sub-committees of the inquiry body, which are due to arrive there on the same day.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
