Oral History Interview with Ephraim Glaser

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.

Irving Lautman, a Jewish American soldier later captured as a prisoner of war, served as Private lst Class with the 36th Armored Infantry of the Third Armored Division in France and Belgium in l943-44. He was captured September 1944 during a battle with the Germans near Aachen, Germany. He was sent to prisoner of war camps at Limburg and Brandenburg. During the first three months he was listed as missing in action and held in a Stalag with non-Jewish POW’s. He refers to committing sabotage in a cement factory. Initially his Jewish identification was unknown as the Germans never interrogated him nor examined his dog tags with "H", for Hebrew, designation. This became known during a Red Cross interview that elicited confidential information about prisoners’ religion, after which he was segregated into a group of about 20 Jewish prisoners. They were sent to work in a forest as lumberjacks from February to March l945. They needed to be wary of shell-shocked German guards, just returned from the Russian front who fired at prisoners indiscriminately. He relates cruel beatings of Russian prisoners as compared to treatment of Allied POW’s, including those who were Jewish. Approximately May 1, 1945 German guards abandoned the group of Jewish prisoners who then walked to the West, carrying a makeshift American flag. An American tank column transported them to an airport where they were flown to Nancy, France for several weeks of recuperation. He returned to the U.S. by boat and served at Camp Dix, New Jersey and Fort Ord, California. He was married shortly after his return.

SUBJECT HEADINGS

Prisoners of war, American - Germany

World War, 1939-1945 - Participation, Jewish

Stalag (Limberg, Germany: prisoner of war camp)

Stalag (Brandenberg, Germany: prisoner of war camp)

World War, 1939-1945 - prisoner of war camp