Refugees Play-Wrestling

Image

Refugees "horsing around" on the ground. Saul Sorrin was interviewed as part of the Wisconsin Survivors of the Holocaust Interviews project. Sorrin, born in New York in 1919, applied in 1940 for a position with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA). He worked with Holocaust survivors as a supply officer for UNRAA team 560 at the Displaced Persons camp Neu Freimann Siedlung in Germany and later, at General Dwight D. Eisenhower's recommendation, Sorrin became the Area Director of the International Refugee Organization based at the Wolfratshausen DP camp in Bad Kissingen. When asked about this image, Sorrin revealed, "No, no, that's simply horsing around. Two young fellows. There was a great macho thing among the Jews. One day a guy came into the camp, I saw him. He was absolutely the duplicate of an SS man in his suit, boots, hat. He just ripped all the buttons and the insignia off. They stole or took from wherever they could get, from fleeing German military. They took their boots. They wore those boots, shtivl. They wore German, and many of them wore Russian equipment because they had served in the Russian army and the Russian military in the beginning. And the girls wore boots. I think I told you. They looked very attractive as boots do today. I've thought about it because boots were unknown to me--in the United States in the 1930s when I was growing up a girl didn't wear boots. Then I saw these women come in with their boots and they looked--there's something about boots on a woman which is so sensuous. Do you agree? Well I saw for the first time these girls these girls who really had nothing but themselves. I mean if they made it through the war some of them--I think I mentioned to you I think the Hungarians were always just terrific." Interview by Jean Loeb Lettofsky and David Mandel, March 3, 1980.