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Life After Survival The International DP Children’s Center Kloster Indersdorf 1945 - 1946: A Photo Exhibit by Anna Andlauer (Indersdorf Historical Society/Dachau Concentration Camp Association) Lesson Plans and Classroom Resources by Diana Morris-Bauer and Anna Andlauer Sponsored by a Fulbright Classroom Teacher Exchange Alumni Grant Life After Survival This guide for teachers of middle and high school students provides Child Survivor Profiles materials to support the photo exhibit Life After Survival, which The following biographical profiles of child survivors can be used chronicles the efforts of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation for multiple purposes. They serve primarily to invite students to Administration (UNRRA) to care for traumatized displaced children empathize with an individual child survivor of physical displacement at the end of the Second World War in Markt Indersdorf, Germany. and personal loss during the Second World War and the Holocaust. Students visiting the exhibit should already have a basic under- Depending on class size, students may work individually or in pairs standing of World War II and the Holocaust. Overall, the student on the profile activities. Copies of the profiles are also available at the activities found in this booklet may also be expanded to investigate exhibit. Each profile is composed of two parts: the plight of current refugees and asylum-seekers. ◆ Part one is designed to be read by students before or as they enter The materials include the following: the exhibit and provides them with the story of that child’s life up to his/her care in the children’s center. Each profile includes a ◆ Context and background for UNRRA and the prompted activity for students to complete as they engage with DP Children’s Center Kloster Indersdorf 1945-46 the exhibit. The activities guide students to search for information ◆ Pre- and post-exhibit classroom activities, within the exhibit’s photographs, accompanying film The Rage incorporating a primary source to Live, or text panels. Students may also use Internet access via ◆ Survivor profiles for use before and during the exhibit mobile devices or tablets, where appropriate. Classroom Activities ◆ Part two is designed to be read by students after they have gone Prior to visiting the exhibit, the teacher should familiarize students through the exhibit and have completed the activity in part one. with the historical context and background of the exhibit. The activ- This part updates students on how each child pursued a new life ities in this guide include primary source extracts from UNRRA after the war. worker Greta Fischer’s official report. Students should be prompted to consider the physical as well as emotional needs of children trauma- tized by displacement and war. 2 established in London in February 1944. Even prior to the end of hostilities, the agency prepared to establish food and supply chains The United Nations Relief and to address the consequences of war: famine, disease, and dislocation. Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) UNRRA recruitment included highly skilled individuals from all of and Displaced Persons (DPs) in Germany the United Nations, who were paid well for their service. By mid 1943, UNRRA estimated the number of Displaced Persons (DPs) on the European continent to total 21 million people, who UNRRA was an international aid organization formed in November fled advancing armies or were forcibly removed by invading forces. 1943 by 44 “United Nations,” whose aim was to provide immediate They estimated that 8 million of these DPs had been driven into or postwar relief for, and coordinate the repatriation of, millions of removed to Germany, with another 8 million displaced within their displaced people in European and Asian regions devastated by World own countries. Plans for how best to address the critical needs of War II. By the time UNRRA completed its mission in the summer these people began as early as the spring of 1944. By April 1945, a of 1947, it had provided over $4 billion of relief on these continents month before German capitulation, the first UNRRA teams entered – half of which was food – and had a peak personnel of over 14,000 Germany to assist the allied military authorities with the vast workers. In anticipation of the widespread need for food, medical numbers of DPs. By June of that year, the governments of Britain, the treatment, and other material assistance, UNRRA’s headquarters was United States, and France authorized UNRRA to operate within their respective occupied zones, utilizing existing military infrastructure to expedite supplies. In the wake of the retreating German forces, 6 million DPs had returned to their countries of origin by the autumn of 1945. At this point the allies estimated that there were still 11 million DPs in Europe, with approximately 7,725,000 in Germany alone. By October/November 1945, UNRRA had officially taken over administration responsibilities of DP camps in the American and British occupied zones. Those eligible for UNRRA relief included all nationals of the 44 United Nations, stateless persons, and any national displaced because of race or religion. Countless post-war refugees moved into Germany, the majority of whom were Jewish survivors seeking protection in the Allies’ occupied zones. All Jews had “special status” and were eligible for UNRRA aid. Starting in early 1946, thou- sands of Jewish refugees, so-called “infiltrees,” streamed increasingly into the American Zone from Poland, Hungary, and Romania. Some had survived the Holocaust under assumed names, in hideouts in the ghettos, or in the Soviet Union. The German region of Bavaria within 3 the American Zone became a refuge for Jewish DPs, who saw this area as a migration point to another country: to the United States, to other western nations, or to Palestine, with the purpose of founding The International DP Children’s the nation of Israel. Center Kloster Indersdorf In addition to supplying basic needs to these displaced people, UNRRA’s mission included repatriation, when possible, or reloca- tion to another country, especially for persecuted Jewish survivors Immediately after their liberation from Nazi concentration and who had no desire or possibility to return to their nations of origin. work camps, adult and child DPs lived together in provisional To facilitate this mission, UNRRA set up a Central Tracing Bureau camps. Kloster Indersdorf became UNRRA’s first specially desig- with regional bureaus in all three occupied zones, to locate and nated facility exclusively for children and young adults within the reunite relatives of displaced families. UNRRA workers adminis- US Zone, a model center after which others would be built. In June trated DP camps set up in former German military bases, former 1945, UNRRA Team 182 arrived in southern Germany with the task concentration camps, hotels, and monasteries until the agency of establishing such a first refuge for displaced foreign children, with achieved an appropriate resolution for every individual DP’s situ- material support provided by the U.S. 3rd Army in Munich. By the ation. In preparation for a future after repatriation or relocation, end of June, the Army had expropriated the centuries-old former UNRRA facilitated schooling and training within the DP camps, monastery under the mandate of UNRRA Team 182. Nuns from the which included, in addition to compensating for lost years of basic order of Sisters of Mercy of St. Vincent de Paul had run the facility as education, instruction in shoemaking, tailoring, dressmaking, and an orphanage from 1878 until they were driven out by a Nazi orga- carpentry, as well as other trades. nization in 1938. The monastery had several dormitories, each with beds for up to 25 children, along with activity rooms, workrooms, Of particular concern to UNRRA was the number of “unaccompa- a dining hall, a large kitchen, as well as a comprehensive agricul- nied children,” DPs under 18 years of age with no parents or other tural operation with a vegetable garden and several farm animals. relatives. These youths required special attention for their health, At the UNRRA team’s invitation, the nuns returned in July to assist nutrition, education, and training. They had suffered years of malnu- with the farming, care for the infants, and oversee the German trition and abuse and were deeply traumatized by their profound loss staff. A few of the German former orphanage personnel assisted and the atrocities they had witnessed. These children and teenagers as custodians, secretarial staff, and farm hands. UNRRA’s interna- needed a therapeutic environment in which their basic needs could tional staff included director Lillian D. Robbins (USA) and assistant be met and in which the trauma of their experiences would be taken director Marion E. Hutton (USA), social welfare officers Andre Marx seriously so that they could take their first steps toward a new life. (Luxemburg) and Greta Fischer (Czechoslovakia), as well as other In the U.S. Zone alone were an estimated 7,000 of these children. By educational and child-care specialists, nurses, a doctor, and supply 1946, 20% of all eastern European Jews still living in the American officers. Before long, the first 200 children, teenagers, and young Zone were under the age of 17. adults arrived. 4 In the course of its operation, the children’s center would take August 1946 – September 1948 different forms: The Jewish Children’s Center Kloster Indersdorf July 1945 – July 1946 UNRRA International DP Children’s Center Kloster Indersdorf This exclusively Jewish children’s home for children from Poland, Hungary, and Romania was run by a new UNRRA Team 182 and was assisted by several Jewish organizations, such as the “Joint” (Amer- Run by Team 182, this center housed non-German unaccompanied ican Joint Jewish Distribution Community [AJJDC]) and Dror, a children of all backgrounds to provide these child survivors with Zionist youth group that promoted the kibbutz movement and advo- immediate medical and psychological aid, find living relatives, repa- cated for the orphaned child survivors to immigrate to Eretz Israel.

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