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Behind the Headlines a General Who Played a Key Role in Helping Holocaust Survivors

April 24, 1984
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Obituary reports about four-star General Mark Clark, who died earlier this month at the age of 87, left unmentioned the key role he played in the rehabilitation and resettlement of Holocaust survivors in the Displaced Persons camps of post-war Austria.

In the summer of 1945, President Harry Truman was highly disturbed by media reports of mistreatment of Jewish survivors in the U.S. Army-controlled DP camps. Truman authorized Ear I Harrison, dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and Dr. Joseph Schwartz, European director of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) to investigate the situation.

They produced a scathing report that Jews were being treated with no regard “to their former barbaric persecution,” were living under U.S. military guard in “crowded, unsanitary, and generally grim conditions, ” with grossly inadequate food and little hope for an eventual solution of their desperate situation.

Consequently, on August 31, 1945, Truman rebuked General Dwight Eisenhower for these conditions in the U.S. zone of Germany, because official policies were “not being carried out by your subordinate officers.”

A similar situation prevailed in the U.S. zone of Austria, where I was then stationed in 1945 as JDC representative. There, the Army was trying to move Jewish refugees from one bad camp to another, precipitating a peaceful but unprecedented demonstration by the Jews in front of Army divisional headquarters in Linz.

CLARK REPRIMANDS HIS STAFF

When a cable was sent to the JDC Paris headquarters through Army communication facilities, describing these events, Clark, the U.S. Commanding General in Austria, telephoned me at 3:00 a.m. to say that he had intercepted my cable. He invited me, together with Chaplain Eli Bohnen, to meet with him and his top officers in Vienna the next day. Clark also informed me that he was sending home the officer responsible for the Linz debacle.

At the Vienna meeting, Clark sharply reprimanded his staff because they “had not carried out his orders” to provide proper facilities for the Jewish refugees — an extremely serious charge. Clark emphasized that these orders would be followed, not only because they came from the President, but because he thoroughly supported the principle that Jews had been the most persecuted by the Nazis, and were entitled to first consideration.

Clark then announced he was appointing General Edgar Hume, Chaplain Bohnen, and myself as a special team to carry out his orders. In a personal meeting afterwards, Clark told me that care of Jewish DPs was a top priority, and the highest Army authorities were available to us for this purpose. The results were immediate and spectacular. Jews were moved out of miserable camps into housing projects formerly occupied by Austrian workers, and into hotels in Bad Gastein, one of Austria’s most beautiful resorts.

This was a most fortunate choice because it was located in the Austrian Alps on a highway to Italy. Encouraged by Clark’s attitude, officers and Gl’s unofficially aided thousands of Jews to go through Bad Gastein to Italy, as part of the Aliyah Beth, the “illegal” emigration to Palestine.

Despite bitter private and public protests by the British authorities who were making every effort to keep the refugees out of Palestine, Clark never wavered. His forthright actions helped make it possible for Holocaust survivors in Austria to celebrate their first JDC-supplied Passover after liberation, with rekindled hopes for a brighter future.

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