Post-War, Pre-Emigration (1946-1949)

From 1946 to 1949, Bert lived in the Displaced Persons Camp in Feldafing, a municipality in the state of Bavaria, Germany with his Aunt Riva. While at Feldafing, a DP camp particularly known for its rich educational, cultural, and religious life, Bert was in the minority as a German Jew, surrounded mostly by Jewish refugees from Lithuania, Latvia, Poland and Hungary. He learned to speak Yiddish, lived an observant Jewish life, worked as a welding tutor, took special pedagogical training in Stockholm and, eventually, recieved the telegraph that would put him in touch with his family in the United States and a way out.

Bert with his Aunt, Riva Gutman. Her husband and children having been brutally murdered by the Nazis, and Riva herself having survived concentration camps, forced labor, and forced marches, she eventually found Bert in Lübars at the countryside home of the Kusitzkys, where he had been regaining his strength post-war, desperate to discover the fate and whereabouts of his parents and others. Soon after, Bert and Riva would make their way to Feldafing, a Displaced Persons camp for Jewish refugees in Bavaria. Bert and Riva developed a close, intimate, friendship in the camp, and in many ways she became like a second mother to him, his closest surviving family. They would go on to exchange letters for many years after he settled in the US and she in Israel.

Header page for Bert's certificate of successful completion of professional testing by the IRO (International Refugee Organization) an org. founded in 1946 to respond to the massive refugee crisis throughout Europe.

This certificate from the IRO's Displaced Persons Professional Testing Board, dated March 16, 1948, certified Bert's qualifications as a welder. This would become very important as later that year he would apply to and attend training through ORT to study teaching and pedagogy in Sweden — skills he would apply back in Feldafing as a welding instructor for fellow refugees.

Work card page identifying Bert as a "teacher of welder's worskhop" under the auspices of the ORT school. (2/4)

Bert's ID and Work Card through World ORT — issued January 15, 1948 (1/4)

Inner page of Bert's ORT work card. Feldafing DP Camp was founded and initially run by the U.S Army, and was notable for being the first all-Jewish DP Camp in the U.S occupied zone. (3/4)

Back pages, ORT ID card, showing the dates of Bert's seminar in Sweden training as an instructor. (4/4)

An envelope addressed to Bert from Sweden, likely containing some initial correspondence regarding vocational training with ORT (Organization for Reconstruction and Training).

Certificate from the Royal Board of Vocational Training in Sweden, noting Bert’s hours of study and successful completion of a “pedagogical course for the training of instructors and teachers at vocational schools.” Dated November 27, 1948.

A letter from the director of ORT offering Bert a position as assistant instructor in an ORT vocational school in Paris. Dated January 5, 1949.

Envelope addressed to Bert from Stockholm, dated May 26, 1949. Just one month later he would find himself in the USA, making his way to Atlanta, GA where he would live with his aunt and uncle, Sara Hene and Rabbi Tobias Geffen.