Searching For Nazis
What was life like now that you had your freedom?
“In the beginning it was very difficult. Then the GI’s, the American GI’s, the American Jewish GIs started coming. Many of them, you know when things were finding out what was. One day Eisenhower came to our camp. We didn’t even know it was Eisenhower. The next day we saw it in the newspaper.
“Then a group of officers came, I can still picture them standing there in the garden in front. There was a kitchen arrangement, and someone was working in the kitchen, some Jewish woman who came back from Theresienstadt, she was in charge of the kitchen. There were some people who were taking over positions, this one became a little boss and this one became a…
“I wanted to do something to keep busy. I spoke German very well – I don’t remember, probably some Jewish officer – they started coming and they were asked by their families in the United States to let them know survivors who look for relatives in America. Give them their names and maybe they will be able to match it. And I don’t know to how many GIs I gave my mother’s name. I knew my mother had relatives in Los Angeles. My mother was born a Bauman and my grandfather was a brother to the father of my mother’s cousins. These were my mother’s first cousins. Her uncle, my great uncle, grand uncle I suppose, my grandfather’s brother was not alive anymore. The widow was still alive, but when I came here, she was dead already. She died in the war. But I remember my mother corresponded with her aunt. And I knew that they are a pretty large family. I didn’t know exactly how many children there were, but I knew the name was Bauman like my mother’s. And I remembered from the envelope, I remembered that there was a number 400. I didn’t remember the name of the street or anything, but this number 400. When I came here, so my cousins told me that they used to live at 400 South Brando. Anyway, I gave it, we all gave it to innumerable people.
“In the meanwhile, I also started working for the American military government. They were looking for people who know German. At the beginning they were very much in the thing of denouncification. So what they were looking for Nazis. They tried to remove the Nazis from everything.
“Some people were coming to this camp, some out of pity, some out of this, out of friendships, some were falling in love or out of love. They would take care of us in a way. And I don’t remember who that officer was, maybe it was Adler, I started working for the American military government. I was assigned to the so-called public health section. I knew very little English, but I started studying English in the DP camp in Germany. A young woman was teaching me a few words. And I have sort of a facility for languages. So my title? It sounded very impressive. I was a special investigator. To me it sounded as if I was, I don’t know, a Supreme Court Justice.
“The public health section, so what it was, it was field work. What I was supposed to be doing is to, you know in Germany you didn’t have drugstores, you had pharmacies which were only selling pharmaceutical things. You had dental depots, which you have here too, where dentures were being made. These were pharmacies, the dental depots. And one more thing. The Nazi’s, the Nazi owners and managers were supposed to be removed. What you call deputies, assigned by the military American government, were supposed to take their place and run their businesses. I was supposed to come in unannounced and check whether the Nazi is still there, or he isn’t. I was supposed to look through their books, and I was to see who takes out the money. It was something that kept me busy. “I would get up in the morning and come to the office and jot down my addresses.
Then I would – which was quite nice… There was this cafeteria. The food was better than what we were getting. In our camps all day long we got this canned hash, whatever. It was awful. But we were getting those, which we thought was the greatest thing – we didn’t know at the time – those little packages of raisins. This was the best thing we were waiting for every day. What is it called, Sunmaid, Sunshine raisins, in the little red box. And another thing was – you know you remember those silly things – that American there. I was supposed to know a few words of English and sometimes I would help him. And every day he would call me. Not every day, but after we got a little bit acquainted, that short time we were in Weinsberg. He would call me in the morning and give me a little Hershey bar. You know the thinnest Hershey bar, and we would divide it five ways. We were five girls, actually six, Yunka too. And we were waiting all day long to get this little Hershey bar. At that time, to us, it was really something.
“What would they do to the Nazi’s they found working in a pharmacy? I don’t know. I was supposed to report to them. The whole country was Nazis, what were they going to do with them all? Well, people were being arrested. It was also depending upon the degree of your involvement, I suppose. I was, as I say, everybody thought that the title, especially in English if you don’t know the language, it was very impressive. I still have those letters, this little card, ‘Special Investigator American Military Government.’
“Then one day in November, it didn’t come to me, it must have come to the office. There was this telephone call. There were those two organizations. There was this United Nations organization called UNRRA, UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration running the displaced persons camps. And then the American Joint Distribution Committee came in and they were really, I think all through the war – Yehuda Bauer wrote a book about the activities of the Joint Distribution Committee in the European countries all through, actually before the Second World War, through the Second World War and afterwards. They really did a very incredible job.
“There was the Joint Distribution Committee, which opened an office in Stuttgart on Bismarckstrasse, further away from us. And one day I received a telephone call from our office. They let me know that there is a letter pertaining to me from America and I should go and see this Miss Levine was her name, Sarah Levine. So the next day from work I went down there. And there was a letter written by my mother’s oldest cousin. They are all dead now. Of course, there was no correspondence yet to the civilian population. It took quite a long time. They never knew me. I don’t know when they left Poland. But it was important to them that one of my mother’s children survived. So he had a letter from someone in Philadelphia who wrote to him that his son had the name of Anna Lipschitz who is the daughter of Pena and Alter Lipschitz from Lodz. He wrote a very nice, a very nice warm letter that they were overjoyed to hear that someone from the family survived, and that I should let them know immediately what they can do for me, and they would try to do everything possible to bring me to the United States.
“I came to the office and this Sarah Levine showed me this letter. It was written in English, and, of course, I couldn’t quite read it. And then I think he also wrote to me in Yiddish. I have all those letters. The Bauman’s were quite a well-to-do family. There were five brothers and two sisters, and they had a big furniture factory. Of course, I didn’t know any of those details, and at that time they were middle-aged. The oldest, Max, might have been 48, maybe, and the others…
“Miss Levine from the Joint read this letter to me, and then she said that she worked in Los Angeles with the Joint Distribution, and she knows the family. So if I need anything or any money, she would be glad to lend me something because she can rely on the fact that the Bauman’s would, you know, return it all. And she sort of, little by little, she sort of befriended me. She was always saying, ‘Such a nice family and you will be happy there, and they are well known in this city, and they are well-to-do; and…’ She also promised that when the American Consulate opened, I would be one of the first with papers, especially since my cousins wrote at that time right away that she should find out and let them know what is needed. If affidavits are needed, they would be sent right away. In fact, I did receive those two affidavits, but I don’t think they were necessary because by the time the American Consulate opened, the Joint Distribution Committee provided so-called corporate affidavits. And even if I didn’t have any, I think I still could have gone. But she was really quite nice.
“The Joint was trying the same way to get records of everybody who survived. Where they are from, and whom are they looking for. And since I spoke Polish and German, and I spoke Yiddish… So gradually I was helping her a little bit in the office after hours.
Sometimes instead of going home, I would come down to Bismarckstrasse and go fill out papers, or what-have-you. After all, people are coming back from the camps. There were all kinds of people. There were some who were almost still illiterate, who were children when the war started when they were ten years old, and now, six, seven years later they were sixteen years old. Some were hardly educated. Some had maybe four years of education, elementary school, or what-have-you.”
(To be continued)
