Life between Memory and Hope

Among the remnants of European Jewry both the young and the old were conspicuous by their absence. They – the vulnerable, the weak and the unprofitable – were the first victims of the cold, hunger, disease, forced labor and systematic murder. This helps account for the profound concern of She'erith Hapleitah for the handful of surviving children like the four-year-old Yosef (affectionately called “Yosele”) Schleifstein who, according to the number tattooed on his arm, was Prisoner No. 116543. By December 1945 there were still few children under the age of five and those between six and seventeen years old made up some 3 percent of the survivor population in Bavaria. From February 1946 the picture began to change, with the very young accounting for 2 percent of the population and the children of school-going age 9 percent. The big change came that summer when many families with infants and young children began arriving in Bavaria, a flow that only slowed down towards the end of the year. At this point and through 1947 the surprisingly large, natural increase of the original core of She'erith Hapleitah also began to be felt. At the beginning of 1946 there were an estimated 39,902 Jews in the American Zone of Occupation and by the end of the year the count has risen to 142,084.