Letter from Barbara Falik to the PM Standard

Released in September 1945, the Harrison Report exposed the difficult conditions facing Jewish survivors in Displaced Persons (DP) camps. In addition to basic needs such as adequate food, housing, and medical care, Jewish DPs faced other profound challenges that ranged from the psychological to the practical. US Army and UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration) officials frequently had to improvise with the few resources available. Jewish officials often felt a particular responsibility for those under their care—and a special level of frustration with the under-resourced DP camps.¹

The document featured here is a reflection of the frustration that many American Jewish soldiers felt about the care of Jewish survivors. This letter from Barbara Falik to the editor of the PM Standard includes copies of correspondence from her husband, Sidney Falik.² He was a member of a US Army unit stationed at the DP camp in Landsberg at the end of the war, and he struggled to improve the plight of the Jewish DPs he encountered.³

The portions of his letters Barbara reproduced for the PM Standard reveal Sidney's frustration with the situation. The Faliks' efforts to draw attention to the situation of Jewish DPs were part of a broader campaign encouraged by US Army chaplain Abraham Klausner.⁴ Klausner had participated in the liberation of Dachau in May 1945, and he had seen the suffering of its prisoners. This experience inspired Klausner to improve the situation of Jewish DPs. He helped compile lists of names and relatives, promoted Jewish DP immigration to Palestine, became involved in Jewish historical commissions, and publicized the plight of Jewish DPs. In fact, Klausner actively encouraged Jewish soldiers like Falik to write home about the conditions that they witnessed among the survivors.

Barbara Falik's cover letter to the PM Standard reflects her husband's frustration with the situation of Jewish DPs in occupied Germany and shows resentment toward Germans. She writes:

"We, the Americans, the liberators, the Democracy, the ever-loving people of freedom permit conditions to exist in Germany so that the Nazi—they are, every one of them, can do what he wants to, have plenty to eat, and can laugh up his sleeve at the Sucker Americans, while the DPs wonder when they will be finally liberated by death."

For more on the impact that World War II had on American Jewish servicemen and their families, see Deborah Dash Moore, GI Jews: How World War II Changed a Generation (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004).

This letter can be found in the correspondence of Sidney Stenzler, in the Sidney Stenzler papers. Stenzler and Falik were stationed together at Landsberg. How he acquired this document is unknown.

For film footage taken from within this DP camp, see George Kadish's footage.

For more on Abraham Klausner's efforts on behalf of Jewish DPs in a host of arenas, including immigration, see Avinoam Patt, "'The People Must be Forced to go to Palestine': Rabbi Abraham Klausner and the She'erit Hapletah in Germany," Holocaust and Genocide Studies 28.2 (2014): 240–76.

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