UNRRA Director General Fiorello LaGuardia converses with an unidentified official during a visit to the Neu Freimann displaced persons camp.
Overview
- Caption
- UNRRA Director General Fiorello LaGuardia converses with an unidentified official during a visit to the Neu Freimann displaced persons camp.
In the background a group of children stand in formation. - Date
-
1946
- Locale
- Neu Freimann, [Munich] Germany
- Photo Credit
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Saul Sorrin
Rights & Restrictions
- Photo Source
-
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Copyright: United States Holocaust Memorial MuseumProvenance: Saul SorrinSource Record ID: Collections: 2000.27
Keywords & Subjects
Administrative Notes
- Biography
- Fiorello Henry LaGuardia (1882-1947), U.S. Republican Congressman from New York, three term mayor of New York City and Director General of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA). LaGuardia was born December 11, 1882, in New York City. He was the third and youngest child of Achille Luigi LaGuardia, an Italian Catholic, and Irene Luzzato Coen, a Jew from Trieste. His parents had immigrated to the U.S. only two years before his birth. In 1883 LaGuardia's father joined the U.S. Army, and the family was sent to remote outposts in South Dakota and Arizona. After graduating high school in Prescott, Arizona, LaGuardia, an outstanding linguist, joined the American consular corps in 1900. He served overseas in Budapest, Trieste, and Fiume before returning to the U.S. and settling in New York City in 1906. For the next few years LaGuardia worked for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty for Children and the U.S. Immigration Service while attending New York University Law School. Upon his graduation in 1910, he opened up a small practice that provided much needed legal assistance to immigrant workers in the garment industry and won him many friends in lower Manhattan. By 1914 LaGuardia had become involved in Republican politics. Utilizing his command of five languages (including Yiddish), LaGuardia won the 1916 election campaign for Congress from the 14th district (Lower East Side of Manhattan), the first Italian-American to be elected to Congress. During World War I LaGuardia served in the U.S. Air Service on the Italian-Austrian front. Soon after his return to New York LaGuardia married Thea Almerigotti on March 8, 1919. Tragically, two years later she succumbed to tuberculosis. In 1922 LaGuardia ran successfully for a second congressional term, this time representing the 20th district in upper Manhattan. He continued to serve in this capacity for the next 10 years. During this period he was married again, this time to Marie Fisher. Defeated for re-election in 1932, LaGuardia made a successful bid for mayor of New York City the following year. In addition to his many contributions to the city's infrastructure and quality of life during his three terms of office, LaGuardia made a name for himself as an outspoken opponent of Nazism. His harsh criticism won him the opprobrium of the new Nazi regime, which frequently targeted him in its propaganda. In 1941 Roosevelt named LaGuardia director of the Office of Civilian Defense. In this capacity he was responsible for the creation of a national rationing program, as well as for the preparation of cities against air attacks. Much to his disappointment, this appointment did not lead to a higher-ranking government or military position. After LaGuardia declined to run for a fourth term as mayor, he was tapped to become Director General of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration in 1946. In this role he supervised the supply of food, clothing and shelter to the millions of European displaced persons after the war. At the end of that year LaGuardia was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and he died on September 20, 1947.
[Source: American Jewish Historical Society, "Fiorello LaGuardia (1882-1947)." Jewish Virtual Library, American-Israel Cooperative Enterprise. n.d.
Saul Sorrin (1919-1995), an American Jew who served as UNRRA director and field supervisor of displaced persons camps in the American occupied zone of Germany from 1946 to 1950. Born on the Lower East Side of New York and raised in Brooklyn, Sorrin attended the City College of New York. Upon his graduation he found work with the Procurement Division of the U.S. Department of the Treasury. While in Washington, D.C., Sorrin was recruited to work for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), an agency founded in 1943 to provide aid to countries in economic distress that needed basic commodities and to take care of the millions of displaced persons in postwar Europe. Because of his knowledge of Yiddish he was assigned to work with Jewish refugees in Europe. Sorrin received only about a month's worth of training before being sent to Europe aboard the Gripsholm early in 1946. In Paris, he received another two to three weeks of briefings and then was sent to Munich, where he became a supply officer for one of the UNRRA teams. UNRRA was responsible for administering the DP camps, including providing housing, health and welfare services, entertainment, and vocational training. It also was in charge of the operation of 23 volunteer welfare organizations, including the JDC, ORT and HIAS. Sorrin's team included staff drawn from the U.S., Switzerland, France and Belgium. His base of operations was at the Neu Freimann DP camp on the outskirts of Munich, but he served a number of camps in the region, as well as DPs living on their own in Munich. Sorrin became UNRRA director of the Munich region after the sudden departure of his boss in the spring of 1946. Sorrin's work involved constant traveling from camp to camp to discuss with UNRRA staff and camp administrators problems related to food, housing, education, health, immigration et al. After meeting with administrators, he typically held office hours for camp residents, who came to him for help with such problems as illness, being turned down for visas, and arrests for involvement in the black market. Sorrin spent considerable time in summary military courts in Munich trying to mitigate punishments for offenses committed by Jewish DPs. For a time he also served as a judge on an internal, Jewish DP court in Neu Freimann adjudicating cases between Jews. As one of the few Jewish camp directors, Sorrin became involved in the efforts of the Bricha to infiltrate Eastern European Jews into the American Zone of Germany and then get them and other DPs to Palestine aboard illegal immigrant ships. On at least two occasions he escorted transports of DPs from camps in Germany to France, where they were taken to southern ports and boarded on ships. He also helped Jewish DPs secure proper papers or alter their documents in such a way that would enable them to qualify for immigration to the U.S. under the restrictive measures that sought to keep them out. When UNRRA closed down in 1947 and transferred its operations to the International Refugee Organization (IRO), Sorrin was intimately involved in the transition and oversaw the closing of the Neu Freimann DP camp. In 1947 under the auspices of the IRO,
Sorrin took over responsibility for the Foehrenwald DP camp and the Geretsried transit camp. Subsequently, he was also asked to take charge of the Feldafing camp. Sorrin remained in Germany until 1950. After returning to the U.S. he settled in Milwaukee, where he served as executive director of the Milwaukee Jewish Council for Community Relations and director of the Anti-Defamation League of Bnai Brith.
[Sources: Sorrin, Saul, "Interview with Saul Sorrin," October 11, 1994, U.S. Holocaust Museum Oral History Project.]
- Record last modified:
- 2005-04-11 00:00:00
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