Oral History Interview with Eli Rock

Eli Rock shares his war-time experiences and his involvement helping refugees after the war. He drove an ambulance with the American Field Service and the First French Army until the end of World War II. In May 1945, he worked for the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) in Paris. He processed claims from Warsaw Ghetto survivors who had lent money to fund the JDC’s program in the ghetto. In July he headed the JDC program in Bavaria, Germany and helped to establish Feldafing, the first all Jewish displaced persons camp. He describes his work, under the auspices of UNRRA, mainly to help survivors find relatives, the sad state of these survivors, as well as conditions at the camp. He escorted Generals Eisenhower and Patton - who had been ordered to tour Feldafing by President Harry S. Truman. His experiences at Feldafing affected him deeply. He also mentions work done by the Central Committee of Bavarian Survivors and chaplains helping survivors.

He discusses his work in Berlin from 1945 to 1947, again trying to help survivors and their relatives find each other. He explains the problems involved in this tracing process and the work of B’richa1, an organization consisting offormer members of the Jewish Brigade in the British army. B’richa transported survivors and hidden children to Camp Wittenau in the French sector, which was maintained by the JDC, for later transfer to either an UNRRA camp or to Palestine. He describes a Yizkor service held in Schlachtensee Displaced Persons Camp in October 1946. Mr. Rock returned to the United States in 1947 to work with the JDC to process claims from survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto and to set up the Jewish Restitution Program for unclaimed Jewish property.