David Kahan - April 29, 1982
Feldafing
We were you in uh, an American hosp...field hospital when you...
No, I was not. I was taken to, in uh, Feldafing uh, maybe uh, ten, fifteen kilometers from the place where we were liberated. Uh, there was a German uh, army camp that was taken over by the American army and they put all the survivors into that camp in Feldafing. In the outskirts of Feldafing uh, there were some very nice, large villas, large homes that they requisitioned from the German population and they made 'em into a hospital. And I woke up uh, in one of those uh, large houses that was turned into a hospital. I recuperated from the typhus and then I went to Feldafing DP camp.
What uh, from the Displaced Persons camp, then did you want to go home?
Well, not really. Uh, a lot of the kids in the camp and the people uh, went home. Those who wished to go home uh, the American army who was running the camp uh, told us about it that you can travel and they gave us transport to, to wherever you could get the train to go back home. One of my immediate friends from my hometown went back, but I just didn't uh, I didn't have any good memories about after the Holocaust and, and I thought that I had no survivors from my family. And I just felt that there is no, I had no love for the place, no loyalty and, and uh, I didn't uh, feel like going home. I never went back to my hometown. I stayed in the DP camp uh, waiting to uh, to emigrate from Germany. First I thought that I would go to Israel, but then I decided to come to the United States. But I never went back. Uh, while I was in the DP camp I heard from people who did go back home and then they, they realized that there was nothing there, no family, they came back to the DP camps and then I found out that my brother Ephraim has survived.
© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn