#passover 5707

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Jewish orphans in a displaced persons camp near Paris celebrate Passover in 1947.

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Above, from the Jewish Community Bulletin (San Francisco), March 28th, 1947. Below, where some of that matzah was headed, from a report in the B'nai B'rith Messenger (Los Angeles), September 4th, 1947:

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The community of around 23,000 Jewish refugees from Germany, Austria, Poland, and other Nazi-controlled countries that arose in Shanghai, China, beginning in late 1933 is often romanticized as cozy and cheerful. The reality was quite different. Conditions were harsh. (The Wikipedia article on this subject is actually a surprisingly good overview.)

This article appeared in the B'nai B'rith Messenger (Los Angeles) on April 4th, 1947, and presumably recounts the author's experience of a year or two previously.

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From TheJDCArchives, via YouTube:

Silent footage of JDC's extensive efforts to create a memorable Passover for Jews in postwar Vienna. Scenes include the arrival and distribution of holiday supplies for members of the Viennese Jewish community, seders for Holocaust survivors at the Rothschild DP Transit Center, a Viennese Jewish community gathering, and a single-family home.

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Passover, 1947: on the air

The item above, from the Southern Jewish Weekly (Jacksonville, Florida) for March 28th, discusses a national broadcast, but a lot of what I found came from local stations. This is from the Jewish Community Bulletin (San Francisco) for April 4th:

(Note the didactic nature of the program.)

Meanwhile, going back to coast-to-coast radio, it must truly have been a golden age for what was probably a fairly small Hillel Foundation to have had its own choir, and one good enough to have achieved this, as noted in the Washington Star on March 30th:

In the U.K., the B.B.C. did its usual ten minutes, as noted in Radio Times' issue of March 28th:

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The war had been over for most of two years but, as this clipping from the April 4th, 1947, issue of the B'nai B'rith Messenger (Los Angeles) documents, there were still troops on active duty whose needs had to be met.

The same was true stateside, perhaps most of all on the Pacific coast. This is from the Jewish Community Bulletin (San Francisco) for March 28th:

And the same was true in the U.K., as can be seen from this item in the April 3rd Larne Times (©The British Library Board. All Rights Reserved):

About the rabbis from the photo at top: Lt. Samuel L. Zaitchik was born in Russia in 1920 and was brought to the U.S. in 1929. He graduated from what is now Yeshiva University in 1943, where received his ordination in the same year; this indicates that he was Orthodox. Prior to joining up in May 1945, he served the Jewish Community Center in Sharon, Massachusetts. Later in 1947 he moved permanently to Lynn, Mass., serving Congregation Ahavat Shalom for over fifty years. He died in 2013.

Lt. M. Max Herbert Daina was born in Russia in 1907 and came to the U.S. in 1925. He received ordination privately in 1935, then as now a slightly eyebrow-raising fact that in those days marked him as Orthodox. He appears to have come from a whole family of rabbis, all with the same surname and several with ties to the Army; this one apparently served congregations in Brooklyn and Syracuse, N.Y., before joining up in 1944. I haven't been able to find out anything else.

Rabbi Jacob was apparently a civilian, and Chaplain Fraser apparently wasn't a rabbi.

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The cover of The Sentinel (Chicago) for April 3rd, 1947.

A good deal of effort was being put into getting back to normal — even if some of that effort consisted of making no effort at all, as can be seen from these ads from the April 4th issue of the B'nai B'rith Messenger (Los Angeles):

Times were much harder in the U.K., but the same thing was happening there, as you can see from this page of The Jewish Echo (Glasgow) for March 21st (©The British Library Board. All Rights Reserved. I made the file as large as I could, but you might want to open a separate tab and blow it up):

There were more serious stories elsewhere, though, as we'll see.

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From the B'nai B'rith Messenger (Los Angeles), April 4th, 1947.

In 1947 Passover began on the evening of April 4th, a Friday.