FÖHRENWALD DP CAMP
AMERICAN ZONE
AUGUST 1946
In the warmth of a mid-August morning, several workers stood waiting at the curb outside the storage building on Föhrenwald’s Kentucky Street. Over the previous several days they had gutted the building and stripped it of its interior walls. It now stood as a two-story shell. A light-duty truck pulled up to the curb and the workers began to unload sheets of gypsum drywall and two-by-fours and carry them into the building. Eli, in his role as construction superintendent, had organized the men to transform the facility into a building suitable for a TB sanitarium.
At a recent committee meeting, it was reported that another eighteen residents had exhibited symptoms of tuberculosis and were now in quarantine. The meeting was tense. Many had come seeking answers. What could they do to prevent their families, and especially their children, from contracting the disease in such a tightly packed community? They felt trapped.
Dr. Weisman tried his best to calm their fears while remaining truthful. Reminding them that TB is spread by close contact with infected persons, he said, “We face a problem in that some people don’t know they’re infected. Inhaling TB bacteria into the lungs provides an environment for the bacteria to multiply, and the disease develops rapidly. Sometimes, our body’s defenses, our immune systems, will fight off the infection, and the person will not contract the illness, but let’s face it, many of our people come here with weakened immune systems.”
“How do we avoid breathing the air?” an angry mother asked. “There are six thousand people jammed into eight square blocks. My family’s healthy. Why can’t the healthy ones move to a different camp?”
Dr. Weisman sadly shook his head. “I’m sure you can understand that other camps don’t want an infectious disease transmitted into their area. Some of us may think that we’re healthy, but we may be carriers. We may have what they call latent TB.”
“What about medicines?” a man asked. “Are we getting the best treatments here?”
Dr. Weisman took a folded letter out of his pocket. “I sent this message to USFET, the U.S. Forces European Theater, asking for medical supplies, and I marked it urgent. I said, ‘Our confinement is a principal factor of physical disease and mental fatigue. We have nowhere to go and are at the mercy of UNRRA and U.S. Command in the American Zone. We need help.’ I sent that two days ago, and I am waiting for a reply.”
As many of the residents knew, Weisman’s plea was practically a restatement of the report sent to President Truman the previous summer by Earl G. Harrison, U.S. Commissioner of Immigration and Naturalization. Truman had dispatched Harrison to the American Zone to evaluate and report how the needs of displaced persons were being met. Among his findings, Harrison reported, “There is a marked and serious lack of medical supplies.”
Harrison urged the president to immediately issue immigration certificates to resettle the Jewish displaced persons. He wrote, “The civilized world owes it to this handful of survivors to provide them with a home where they can again settle down and begin to live as human beings.” In an oft-quoted conclusion, Harrison stated, “We appear to be treating the Jews as the Nazis treated them, except we do not exterminate them.”
Newspapers reported that Truman was shocked with Harrison’s report, and in response he issued the “Truman Directive,” instructing Immigration and Naturalization to give preference to displaced persons. However, as of 1946 the quotas remained in place, and in the year following the directive, fewer than ten thousand U.S. visas were issued, despite the requests of 250,000 displaced Jews. Britain still held tight to its prewar Palestine quota. Thus, with the number of tuberculosis cases approaching an epidemic, there was little the Föhrenwald community could do other than try to avoid exposure or hope for effective medical assistance.
Eli found himself conflicted, torn between his obligations as a leader to remain in the Föhrenwald community and his responsibilities as a parent to find a way out before Izaak became ill.