The Life and Thought of Louis Lowy: Social Work Through the Holocaust

4. The Social Statesman

68 4 The Social Statesman “Returning” was the title of Louis Lowy’s first publication after the war. Writing for the inaugural issue of Deggendorf Center Revue, the newspaper of Deggendorf Displaced Persons Center, Louis defined “the problem of the Jews” who could never return to their homes: The terrific war is over. Hitler’s fascism has been defeated. Mankind has been liberated from the yoke of slavery. The idea and the victims of the fight have been justified, but many problems remain for those who were saved. . . . One of the greatest problems is the problem of the Jews. Nazi rule drove the Jews to the verge of ruin. A small remnant of Jews was saved. Now this small remnant must face earthshaking facts: Not only have we lost families and dear friends who can never be replaced, not only does reflection cause continuous mourning in our hearts, but also our views of the present and future are unclear as never before.1 Louis wrote from personal experience. When he reached Prague in May 1945, Louis found that Czech nationalism had overshadowed the tolerant, cosmopolitan culture that he remembered. Prague citizens had expelled ethnic Germans from the city, and with the approval of the Allies, Czechoslovakia was now forcing nearly three million ethnic Germans from the Sudetenland. Ironically, the climate was no less hostile to Germanspeaking Jews than to the Volksdeutsche,2 and if any of Louis’s family or friends had made it back to Prague, he did not find them: As soon as we heard the war was over, I wanted to go back to Prague, and the others in the group, where should they go? They followed. Prague was in a state of revolution. Because it was a Czech city, there was Czech nationalism, anthems. I looked for people, and none of The Social Statesman | 69 them were left. Prague was a living cemetery to me. I went to the Jüdische Kultusgemeinde (Jewish Community Council) and registered , and I found that everybody that I had known was gone. Vern and I looked at my old apartment, and meanwhile it had been taken over, formerly by Nazis and now by Czech families. I went to the cemetery to visit my great grandfather’s grave, and then we said, “What are we going to do? Where shall we go?” And we went back to Terezín. We took the train, and I remember thinking, “it’s a sad thing: our only home is Terezín now.” Everybody Was Gone It was less than a year and seemingly a lifetime ago when Louis had been deported from Terezín, and he hoped against hope to find relatives and friends whom he had left behind: “I looked for my father, and I knew I wouldn’t find him. Everybody looked, and we knew it was a fool’s errand, but we thought there were still some people there who never were deported from Terezín.” Few prisoners in Terezín, only 17,000 out of 140,000, had survived. Some older German Jews who had been prominent before the war were spared; Eichmann had held them in reserve as possible assets in his propaganda campaigns. In addition, in a reversal of the dreaded “transports to the East,” 13,000 prisoners had entered the ghetto in forced death marches and transports from Auschwitz, Ravensbrück, and other concentration camps during the last weeks of the war.3 They were “walking skeletons,” in Ruth Bondy’s words, and on May 10, when the Soviet Army liberated Terezín, a typhus epidemic was devastating the population.4 Louis and his group were “smuggled in” to the still-quarantined ghetto: So we went back to Terezín, and thank God, we had decent food by now, Red Cross parcels, and we were installed in houses and barracks. The city was better administered than before the war, but basically not too different, except that there were no Nazis around and the Russians were a very benevolent administration. The Russian commandant, who was Jewish, by the way, was a very nice commander. He was very concerned about what would happen to the Jewish population. 70 | The Life and Thought of Louis Lowy The Soviet commandant, M. A. Kuzmin, feared for the future of the Jews in Terezín, who, like most surviving Jews, had lost not only their families and homes but also their...