Bavarian Cabinet Bans Return of Jewish Dp’s to Munich Camp

The Bavarian Cabinet today decided to ban the return to Bavaria of Jewish displaced persons who left Germany for Israel after the war. In announcing this decision, Prof. Theodor Oberlaender, Bavarian State Secretary for Refugees, said that 386 Jewish DP’s had come to Germany “illegally” in recent years and that the majority of them are at present in the only Jewish DP camp in West Germany, located at Foehrenwald, near Munich.

The Bavarian State Secretary, who was at one time a high ranking Nazi in German-occupied Ukraine and Crimea, claimed that 600 Jewish DP’s are now en route from Israel to Germany and that many more are now in Italy and Austria waiting for an opportunity to enter Germany.

When the Foehrenwald camp was placed under German administration in 1951 by the U.S. authorities, it was considered a test case of the goodwill of the Bavarian authorities. Knowing that they were being watched, they appointed a camp manager who was himself a non-Jewish victim of the Nazis and who surrounded himself with a staff sympathetic to Jews. The Jewish DP’s in the camp were more or less satisfied with the administration of the camp and registered no serious complaints.

The policy of “creating order in Foehrenwald” which has been announced by Secretary Oberlaender is taken as an indication that the Bavarian authorities are adopting a new attitude toward the only Jewish DP camp in Germany. This policy, it is feared will result in friction between the camp administration and the Jewish DP’s, some of whom have returned from Israel, but only in the expectation of being able to collect compensation payments due them, or to be able to proceed from Germany to Canada or the United States.