8 - Two voices from Landsberg: Rudolf Valsonok and Samuel Gringauz

Summary

The center of gravity of She'erith Hapleitah was to be found in Munich while among the large DP camps in the area, Landsberg led the way. The camp was blessed with an impressive group of leaders, who in pursuit of internal autonomy, had already set up a temporary Camp Committee in July 1945. The Committee very quickly proved its mettle and by the end of September Major Irving Heymont, the camp commander, decided to grant the inhabitants administrative autonomy. Internal elections followed on 21 October 1945 and a new Camp Committee was elected with Samuel Gringauz voted in, almost unanimously, as its Chairman. From the outset the Committee which took a broad view of its responsibilities assumed, given the unlikelihood of an early departure from Germany, that rehabilitation was the order of the day for the survivors. What was needed was the respite to restore a semblance of order to their lives and to regain the inner strength so critical for a protracted political struggle. “We need to fight for national understanding and national discipline,” wrote Gringauz, “In order to know how to prosecute the struggle for our rights and our dignity.” Accordingly, a wide array of institutions – representative, legal, vocational, educational and political – were set up in Landsberg in pursuit of these goals. These were the first, hesitant steps of a unique community that bore “the stamp of sovereignty … a deformed and sick sovereignty but one full of creativity, human endeavor, intrigues, bursting with vitality and pain.”