The Landsberg Carnival: Purim in a Displaced Persons Center

“Unless Germany is victorious... Jewry could then celebrate the destruction of Europe by a second triumphant Purim festival”

- Adolph Hitler, January 30, 1944

In the concentration camps... the whole idea was only to live to see Hitler’s defeat. And what greater satisfaction can there be than to be at a parade, a Purim carnival, in Germany, in Landsberg, in the place where Hitler wrote Mein Kampf!

- Boris Blum, Inmate 114520, Majdanek

In the years following the Second World War, unique temporary Jewish communities came into existence, lived briefly, then vanished into history. These were the communities of the Sheerit ha-Peletah, the surviving remnant of European Jewry in Displaced Persons Centers in Germany, Italy, and other locations. Not all displaced persons — DPs as they came to be known — were Jewish. They included men, women, and children of various religions and nationalities who had been uprooted from their homes by the war. The greatest number were in the U.S.-occupied zone of Germany, where the American army supplied them with emergency aid and assisted the return to their prewar homes. But there were some DPs whose homelessness could not be solved by repatriation. The Jews who had been liberated from concentration camps or who had survived the war in hiding or fighting as anti-Nazi partisans often did not wish to return to the homes from which they had been torn, to live among neighbors who might have collaborated with the Nazis. And there was ample evidence, as in the pogroms of postwar Poland, that these former neighbors did not welcome the Jews’ return.

While the non-Jewish DP population decreased as repatriation progressed, the Jewish DP population increased. Numerical estimates vary according to date, source and area under specific consideration. Leo Srole estimated the number of Jewish DPs in German camps at 175,000 in 1947. Koppel S. Pinson’s estimate for the same year was 200,000. Jews from Poland, Russia, and other areas crowded into Displaced Persons Centers administered by UNRRA — the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (later superseded by the IRO — International Refugee Organization). The Jewish DPs generally regarded themselves as stateless — the great majority of those in the U.S.-occupied zone of Germany refused to be registered according to their former nationality — and special centers for them were ultimately established in recognition of the problems and needs of Jews as a group. Housing in the camps was overcrowded, clothing was inadequate, and food — consisting largely of preserved items — was scarce. As months passed, conditions improved in some respects. With the support of UNRRA, the Joint Distribution Committee, and other organizations and individuals, the DPs organized cultural, social, educational, and religious activities. Kosher food became available, religious study was undertaken, elections were held, and newspapers were published. Schools, workshops, sports clubs, theatrical troupes, and orchestras were established and kibbutzim were organized to prepare young people for life in Palestine. The future of the Sheerit ha-Peletah was uncertain, however. Entry to United States and other countries was slowed by quotas. Most Jewish DPs in Germany, both those living in the DP camps and those living outside, had no choice but to remain.

By the spring of 1946, the Jews of the Sheerit ha-Peletah were ready to express both their joy in being alive and their frustration at not being able to leave Germany. Purim, the festival in which victory over an enemy is traditionally celebrated with revelry, even abandon, was perfectly situated to this time and place. Of the many 1946 Purim celebrations of the Sheerit ha-Peletah, the one at the Landsberg Jewish Center provides a particularly vivid example of the energy and creativity of people who nine months before had been near death.

The Bavarian town of Landsberg had been the scene of drastic change within several preceding decades. In 1924, Adolf Hitler and written the hate-filled Mein Kampf while in the Landsberg prison. During the war years, Landsberg had been the site of a German army camp, and concentration camps were nearby. After the war’s end, the Wehrmacht barracks housed Jewish DPs variously estimated at 4,500-7,500. At the entrance to the Landsberg Jewish Center was a large, impressive gate, rebuilt by the DPs themselves to include Jewish motifs. The gate reinforced the impression that the camp was an isolated entity, guarded by Jewish police and set within the foreign, even hostile, environment of the German town of Landsberg. Leo Srole notes that the police were there not to keep Jews in but to keep unauthorized Germans and U.S. soldiers out. Halper Leivick, writing in 1946 of his impression of the Landberg camp, terms it “a sealed-off little world in itself... One could... call it a completely Jewish shtetl [small town] — if it had around it that atmosphere which Jewish shtetlekh had.” The Sabbath was celebrated in Wehrmacht barracks and parade halls. Schools were filled with orphans — taught by those who had in many cases lost their own children. People in the streets, cafes, and workshops were primarily young adults, since most of the very young and the very old had not survived the war. Families had been murdered and fragmented; people were physically weakened. This was a small town built from the shards and remnants of other towns and a town that was doing its best to become obsolete, for it was on ground from which the residents had every reason to want to escape as soon as possible. Dr. A. C. Glassgold, former Landsberg UNRRA Director, describes the Landsberg Jewish Center as “literally a city of souls snatched from slaughter.”

On Purim 1946, in addition to the reading of the Megillah, school performances, organizational banquets, and literary parodies, the Jews of Landsberg held a carnival. The initial plans for the Landsberg Purim carnival originated at a meeting between Dr. Leo Srole, then UNRRA Welfare Director for Landsberg, and Boris Blum, a concentration camp survivor who served with UNRRA as the Director of the Food Department and Landsberg. Srole recalls that it “was a time when things were very bleak. The British were hounding the ships to Palestine. It was winter, a terrible winter, and the mood in the camp was very low.”

For Blum, a carnival celebrating a villain’s defeat seemed perfectly suited for the occasion: “I suggested that there should be a Purim carnival... I have never seen a Jewish carnival. I saw in my imagination a Jewish carnival for the defeat of Hitler. I imagined masks, and carriages, and costumed people, the hanging of Hitler instead of Haman, and so forth. Also decorating the houses; the best house would win a prize... I myself didn’t imagine that the [actual] carnival would take such a form... It surpassed my imagination.”

Related to the attempt to lift the spirits of the DPs was the goal of inspiring more people to work. The matter of work in the DPs camps was a complex one. Glassgold writes that after years of slave labor, a great many DPs “saw the need to distinguish between imposed and elected work... maintaining... that all work should be done by the residents of the Center themselves,” and that they plunged energetically into self-help activities with a zeal “that drove them relentlessly towards a civilized way of life.” Srole recalls that this communal work “was all milieu therapy, to use a term that was coined later on... It was the road back, the return to normalcy.” He emphasizes however, that many DPs were physically unable to work. Others objected to employment that might benefit the German economy, and still others felt that after their slavery, they needed and deserved a rest. There were constant efforts to enlist more DPs in communal work.

In Boris Blum’s view, “Srole was interested in linking... a Purim celebrating Hitler’s defeat [with] a week of work... There was the idea that work should again become the impetus of reentering life, because many people were depressed after the liberation. They had lost their families. ‘What’s the use of working?’... And the camp at that time needed people to clean the streets, people to join the police, people to cook; they needed hundreds of people to work, so we wanted... to propagandize... the importance of work in the future of the Displaced Persons.”

After weeks of preparatory work on the carnival, the following announcement appeared in the Landsberger Lager Cajtung, the camp newspaper, on March 15, 1946:

Workers’ and Purim Carnival in Landsberg

The week of Sunday, March 17, until Sunday, March 24, is proclaimed the week of work in Landsberg!

The week will begin Sunday, March 17, with a grand Workers’ Purim Carnival. All buildings in the center should be festively decorated for the day!

All residents should decorate the outer windows of their rooms. The block managers should organize the decoration of their buildings.

Prizes will be awarded for the most attractive building and for the most beautifully decorated window!

All departments, all workers and employees, all school kibbutzim, organizations, are to assemble at one o’clock in the afternoon at the former motor field. At 1:30 the carnival will march to the sports field and will be received by representatives of the military, the UNRRA, and the camp administration!

Here the carnival will be greeted by speakers from the major institutions!

Sunday at 2:30 a grand soccer match will take place on the sports field!

At 6 p.m. a folk celebration will take place at the sports field. Hitler’s Mein Kampf will be symbolically burned! In 1943 Hitler declared that the Jews of Europe will never again celebrate Purim!

Friends: Sunday you will show the town where Hitler wrote his “Kampf” Jews will celebrate the great Purim (5706), the Purim of Hitler’s defeat, the Purim of work. Director of the Purim Carnival, Boris Blum, Landsberg, 3-15-46.

The announcement and the organized plans for the carnival were catalysts which sparked dozens of individual and group efforts. Blum emphasizes that although the official plan for the carnival provided a “blueprint for how it should take place,” this blueprint was only the starting point for the creation of floats, signs, costumes, speeches, and performances, that “many things were made in secret... Every person, every Kibbutz, every school, every organization made things in secret as a surprise.” Meetings were held, speeches were written, music was rehearsed, signs were painted, costumes were designed, a reviewing stand was constructed. Each project required an enormous expenditure of effort. For instance, Blum recalls: “We had the idea of writing ‘Purim 1946’ on a roof. And the roof was as big as a block in New York... and for this we needed to have I don’t know how many cans of paint... We went to the UNRRA and said we needed paint and they gave it to us... Imagine, a painter went on the roof and all day for two days he painted Purim 1946,” in which every letter was as large as a floor.”

The weeks of activity culminated in a morning of frantic excitement. “When I awoke on the morning of the carnival” Blum recollects, “I actually had tears of excitement... I was moved to tears... I went out in the morning, six or seven in the morning. People had made so many tombstones of Hitler.” Familiar faces, buildings, and streets were transformed. The following extracts, all excerpts from the Landsberger Lager-Cajtung account of the carnival, give an indication of the kind of atmosphere that was generated:

Sunday the Landberg Jewish Center took on a new face. Almost all the walls of the center were decorated and ornamented, virtually immersed in a sea of blue and white flags.

An abundance of slogans, signs, pictures, caricatures of all types covered the walls and windows.

The rushing about was evidence of the rivalry for originality, for outdoing one another.

Some of the displays revealed a complicated mixture of symbols. For instance:

A lion with an American flag, holding in its jaws its bounty: a stick with Hitler on one side and a swastika on the other. On it there sits a Jewish concentration camp inmate holding in one hand a sign with the slogans, “Long live Jewish freedom,” “The people of Israel lives,” etc. and in the other hand a Red Cross package.

The main object of ridicule was Hitler:

At the entrance to the center: Hitler with Mein Kampf hangs adorned with all sorts of medals.

Hitler hangs in many variants and in many poses: a big Hitler, a fat Hitler, a small “Hitler” with medals, and without medals. Jews hung him by his head, by his feet, or by his belly. Or: a painter’s ladder with a pail and brush, near a tombstone with the inscription: “P.M. (po mikbar) here lies Hitler, may his name be blotted out.”

By early morning the festive mood could already be felt within the gates of the center; one could virtually feel it in the air.

The beautiful weather, the many colorful decorations, the music from the radio loudspeakers at the open windows — everything together enchanted and attracted the crowds, as did certain living caricatures, who could not restrain their public performances until the appointed hour that had been proclaimed in the program of the celebration.

Not only residents of the Landsberg Jewish Center, but such observers as U.S. soldiers were caught up in the mood of the celebration. The newspaper account notes that one Berek Gold’s Hitler costume made such an impression that:

Everyone wanted to see him, everyone wanted to take his picture. Even the MPs, who took his picture from all angles, merrily asserted with laughing faces, “Okay!”

Even at the main entrance, which is usually carefully guarded by the Jewish police, there can be seen a bit of “free emigration.” The police amiably looked the other way.

At about 1 p.m., there gathered at the auto field all the organizations, unions, workshops, sports clubs, kibbutzim, trade schools, police, and hospital workers, with their equipment, flags and banners, signs, and pictures. All sorts of transportation are bound here: bicycles, motorcycles, taxis, trucks, tractors, and even horses.

The contrast between the Jews’ former status as concentration camp inmates and their present status as free people working for a new future was emphasized in floats:

Here is the truck of the food department. An exhibit of the products 1945-1946: the traditional concentration camp foods — kohlrabi, a bit of black bread, and three unpeeled potatoes — and today’s UNRRA foods.

Here is the group of “Mapilim” with a ship (a handmade original), then the auto of the firefighters, which was equipped with the most necessary firefighting equipment, even with a siren. And near the firefighters — a burning barrel. Then the autos of the shoemakers’, tailors’, metalworkers’, and lockmakers’ workshops, with a display of their products. Also the lumber brigade with wood, saws, and hatchets. Also, our children had plenty of the time-tested ‘weapons’: Haman clappers and gragers of every description.

The entire parade was accompanied by music; after the orchestra members marched in, they stood to one side and continued playing while the autos, floats, and marchers filed past representatives of UNRRA and the Joint Distribution Commitee and camp administration at the reviewing stand.

To imply that the mood was one of undiluted merriment would be to simplify the complexity of the Purim celebration. Coupled with exhilaration at being liberated was the memory of what had been lost. A tone of seriousness was introduced when, after the parade passed the reviewing stand, a member of Kibbutz Bnei Akiva read a portion of the Megillah.

Jamnik, dressed in the striped uniform of the concentration camp, then read a chapter of the Megillah in a heartfelt traditional melody. It struck at the very center of the aching Jewish heart. It brought to life events, pictures of our past home, our wanderings... “Ad mosai” Till when?

The analogy between the traditional story of Purim and the story of the Holocaust was not completely consistent. The fate of the heerit ha-Peletah was still uncertain. The Sheerit ha-Peletah had survived, “but for every living Jew in the Center,” Glassgold writes, there were two murdered ones buried “in mass graves within a radius of five kilometers of the camp.” And although some Nazis had been jailed, others were free and prospering. The speeches that followed the reading of the Megillah emphasized the seriousness of the situation, and again repeated the theme of work as a means to a free future:

History has shown that the battle against the Jews is a battle against humanity... Eretz Israel celebrates Purim under the banner of work. We, the Jews of the Serith Hapleta, must learn from these bloody experiences and feel the commandment of the hour... Purim 5706 will be for us not only a day of feasting and gladness; we celebrate today’s festival... under the banner of work and battle for freedom. (from the speech of Dr. Samuel Gringauz on the reviewing stand)

Jewish civilization is equated with humanism, and Nazism with barbarism; if the liberation represents a rebirth, it must be accomplished by hard work:

Hitler Germany was the embodiment of the bestial jungle. The beast is conquered, not only for us, but for all of humanity. This is the meaning of the festival that we celebrate today. A year ago today, in the concentration camps, we did not imagine that the prophecy of the Prophet Ezikiel would be fulfilled: “dry bones” again become a living people. We must rebuild our lives from the ground up and build our own home. (from the speech of Jacob Olieski on the reviewing stand)

The proceedings ended with the singing of “Hatikva” and “Techezakno.”

Structurally, the Landsberg Carnival resembles other kinds of festivals in which a core of formal, rehearsed activities is surrounded by clusters of informal, impromptu activities. This core — the proceedings at the reviewing stand — is formal in its predetermined beginning, middle, and end, its predetermined path, and its predetermined duration. Both the beginning and the close of this portion of the carnival were marked by music: first, the orchestra’s accompaniment of the marchers; later, the singing of anthems. At the very center was the most traditional and ritualized act of all — the reading of the Megillah. Following this, there were the less ritualized but still formal official speeches. Formal events are generally marked by assigned audience and performer roles; this is the case with the formal core of the Purim carnival. It is interesting to note that the assigned audience-performer roles shift: the officials are the audience when they review the parade, then the paraders become the audience when they listen to the official speeches.

The larger event of the carnival as a whole is open-ended, unmarked by formal opening or closing acts or statements. No one can state definitely when it begins or ends; the music and masking are not restricted to any specific time or place, but radiate to and from the point of the assembly. Surrounding the planned celebration were many improvised celebrations. “Later they took their own initiative,” Jan Haneman recalls, “boxing riding like wild with motorcycles, and they played music.” Frania Blum recollects that “People were excited... until late at night, people went around doing all sorts of things, having a good time... it was a big holiday.”

In addition to both the formal core of the carnival and the impromptu celebrations, there were various scheduled events of intermediate formality. These included a soccer match, banquets, and school performances, and culminated in the evening with the burning of Mein Kampf. The Landsberger Lager-Cajtung reports that:

At seven o’clock in the evening, at the sports field, there took place the public symbolic burning of Hitler’s Mein Kampf. The flames, which licked at the black night sky, carried far, far, over mountains and seas, this tiding: Am Yisroel Chai! Jews live on, will live! Hitler, may his name and memory be blotted out, has lost his “kampf,” is battle, and we Jews, although we have paid dearly, have won the battle. So Haman ended, so Hitler ended, so will end all enemies of the Jews.

The major theme of the Landsberg Purim Carnival was the parallel between the story of Purim and the story of the liberation. As Jan Haneman sees it: “We killed another Haman... this was the true story of the Jewish people, [of] what we lived through.” Purim, for Boris Blum: “is the one festival which could precisely symbolize the liberation... That’s the reason it caught on so spontaneously.” The floats of cultural organizations underlined the rebirth of Jewish culture. “The only thing we knew was kultur. Everyone was hungry for it,” Esther Haneman explains, and Jan Haneman adds, “I remember it well. It was a very joyous day in Landsberg because [it] was the first Purim after liberation... Every organization, and people, of course, made a special effort to dress themselves and to show the special meaning of the organization... to show the world.”

In keeping with traditional Purim behavior, and with the behavior seen at carnivals around the world, the Landsberg Purim carnival was rich in parody and reversal. A primary reversal was that between life and death. Jews had been murdered; now they were alive while Hitler was symbolically hanged and buried. Jewish books had been set to fire; now Jewish books were once again published while Mein Kampf was burned in the very town where it had originated. Jews had been enslaved and forced to work for their enemies; now they worked for their own community while their former captors were imprisoned in nearby Nuremberg. Jews had been forced from their homes; now they resolved to rebuild a homeland. According to Leo Srole: “It was [a day] of such elation, I nave never seen anything like it... Hitler and Haman now had their due... it was really a joyous celebration in the midst of all the grim bleakness of that camp.”

The reversal of roles was dramatically expressed by Jews masquerading as Hitler and SS officers. Although imitation may at times be a form of flattery, it can also be a powerful weapon and a strong form of ridicule. By assuming the persona of Hitler, a liberated Jew can illustrate his complete power over his former oppressor. The masquerader dictates and controls the actions of the character he is playing; in performing the exaggerated Nazi salute, the Jew can mock the Nazi and emphasize the transfer of power.

When the liberated Jew donned the striped suit of the concentration camp, this dramatized the change of status that had taken place. He wore the striped uniform not as a slave, but as a free person, not in the Nazi death factories, but upon a speaker’s platform. Those wearing the uniform memorialized those who had died and at the same time emphasized the reversal that had come about.

The reversal was in some respects a complex double reversal. The Nazis themselves had been quite aware of, even at times obsessed with, Jewish rituals and festivals including Purim. According to the account of Shimon Huberband, the Nazis hanged ten Jews on Purim in 1942 in Zdunska Vola, Poland in a sadistic reversal of the hanging of the ten sons of Haman. In an article in the Landsberger Lager-Cajtung, Dr. Samuel Gringauz [writing under the pseudonym Almar Digrin], quotes one of Hitler’s last speeches: “ ‘The Jews and the entire world already rejoice and await my end, but I, who have always looked to the future, declare: none of you will live to see Purim!’ ” The hanging of Hitler in effigy was not only a parallel to the hanging of Haman, but a reversal of the Nazi murder of the Jews, which had itself been a brutal reversal of the hanging of Haman.

Carnivals often involve symbolic enactment of rituals of change or rebirth, related to the changing of the seasons. At the Landsberg carnival, the repeated reenactment of Hitler’s death gave it a concrete reality. As Frania Blum explains: “It was like Hitler’s funeral. We knew that Hitler was dead, but we didn’t see where he was... Here we saw that he was being buried, and he was executed.” This concretizing of the defeat of the Nazis and the survival of the Jews is related to the function of photographs, which serve to illustrate and thus actualize events. In Boris Blum’s words: “Various things take place in [a person’s] life that are the culmination points in his life. Really, he should think about it da and night. But when does he remember? When he sees a picture... people can’t remember the day of the liberation because they were so hysterical or so physically spent... but at the Purim carnival he first realized that he is truly free... Often a person... dreams of something... and he says, ‘Pinch me and I’ll know it’s really true.’ ”

The traditional Purim atmosphere of release, excitement, and permissiveness was particularly suited to the emotional needs of the time. Although there had been other Jewish holidays since the liberation, these were not associated with the kind of exuberant celebration that characterizes Purim. Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur connote introspection, solemnity, even mourning. Purim connotes revelry and freedom. As Esther Haneman expressed it: “We enjoyed it very much... it was wild, because the idea was, ee can do everything we please... a year before we were still prisoners, and here it is, Purim.” Or again, Boris Blum: “The entire camp was intoxicated by the idea... spontaneously... no one was indifferent... Ordinarily when something is planned... a certain percentage of people are always passive. Here... most of the people were in the carnival and the only observers were the UNRRA and military representatives... Imagine that there is a Macy’s parade and the streets are empty and everyone is in the parade.”

The use of the term “intoxicated” is interesting in view of the fact that on Purim intoxication is viewed more leniently than at other times. When asked if people actually did become drunk, Leo Srole answered that liquor was scarce and that in any case “there was just too much intoxication in the day and what it symbolized to need any artificial kind of intoxication.”

The permissive spirit of celebration of Purim was a perfect vehicle for expressing the feelings of the Sheerit ha-Peletah. “This was a 100% personal experience,” Boris Blum explains, “the expression of the defeat of Hitler. The entire festival and the entire carnival was the first hurrah shouted after the liberation. If there were no Purim... we would nevertheless have needed [it]... there was a willingness, a rush, a crying out, to celebrate Hitler’s defeat, even if there had been no Haman.”

During its brief existence the Landsberg Jewish Center served as a transition point at which liberated Jews transformed their lives of despair to lives of usefulness and hope. Despite depressing conditions, and with the help of sympathetic relief workers, they made the transition from war victims to creative members of society. With their Purim carnival, they adapted the reversal-filled festival of Purim as the ultimate expression of their rebirth and a new status.

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I am indented to Leo Srole, Esther and Jan Haneman, and my parents, Frania and Boris Blum, for sharing with me their recollections of and insights into the Landsberg Purim Carnival. All of them are quoted extensively in this article. The interviews with Frania and Boris Blum were in Yiddish, translations of this material and of other Yiddish material are my own.