Historical Background and Interviews
II. The War The War ‘
recalled, “let us ride for free on the train and electric cable cars. The poor kids,’ they said. One woman gave us a needle and strings.” “They gave us their seats in the cable cars because we didn’t reach the bars,” added Zakay. Then they made the illegal border crossing at night into Germany. “It was a hard walk in deep snow,” Peleg remembered, “and extremely hard for Aharon because of his legs.” A few of the other children — called “pure Poles” because they came from cosmopolitan Polish cities like Lvov, Warsaw, and Lutsk — were already educated, and leaders sprang up. Aharon was a natural leader to whom the other children turned for guid- ance. He was more knowledgeable, active, and mature, as well as slightly older than the others, said some. According to Trosman, he was the group’s “spiritual” leader and “used to answer questions that no one else knew the answers to.” “While we had reached only third grade,” said Peleg, “Aharon had finished at least six grades and could already speak and write in both Hebrew and Yiddish.” In a sense he was the guardian of the children, and negotiated with the instructors on their behalf. Haklay, too, recalled Aharon as the group’s leader. He was “very smart, with an ability to express him- self and communicate well with everyone,” she said. The DP camp in Landsberg had been a German military compound and was eventually the second largest DP camp in the American zone, with mostly Russian, Latvian, and Lithuanian survivors. Its news- paper, the Landsberg Lager Cajtung (Landsberg Camp Newspaper; later, the Jidisze Cajtung, or Jewish Newspaper), was one of the best in the American zone; its educational system, preschool through col- lege, was extensive; and it offered many cultural activities to revive the spirits of the people. The children settled into an unused school and began studies that included general education, Hebrew, the histo- ry and geography of Eretz Yisrael, and physical exercise. As Trosman pointed out, “Some children had been in hiding for six years, and only in Landsberg did they start to get a preliminary education. Some of them had to be taught things like how to eat properly.” Trosman remembered that in 1946, a delegation arrived at the DP camp to register forty of the children for legal immigration to
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