To the Editor:

General Lucius Clay and Harold J. Fishbein! I haven’t thought of these names in years. There was a third man in this postwar Berlin drama who is unmentioned in Robert A. Slayton’s article “The Most Precious Cargo” [October 2009]. He was the “Joint” man in Berlin, Philip Skornek, who played a very important part in my life and in the lives of Jews who were shlepping their way through Berlin in the aftermath of the war.

My family’s contact with these great men predates the period described in the article. In late November of 1945, my mother, my father (a graduate of the Soviet Gulag), and I (then a 12-year-old) took part in the great trek of the Jewish remnants from Eastern Europe. Made up of death-camp survivors, those out of hiding, fighters of the Ukrainian and Belorussian forests, and orphans looking for parents and family, we were part of a Jewish stream moving from Poland to points west. Having made across the Soviet border in a heart-stopping escapade, we found ourselves in Poland with other frontiers to negotiate still ahead of us.

From Stettin, then already part of Poland, in a well-organized system of clandestine crossings into Germany, our family was smuggled into the Russian sector of Berlin. This was a source of great discomfort, if not terror, to my father, who had hoped that he had left his Soviet “benefactors” behind him. We were taken to a building owned by the Jewish gemeinde on Oranienburg Strasse, just across the street from a completely destroyed synagogue. We settled there briefly to contemplate our future plans. Without electricity, the windows blown out from wartime bombardment, and the walls partially collapsed, our billet was something less than luxurious.

Within weeks of our arrival, we were informed by a Jewish Red Army officer that the Soviet military authorities were finding the presence of “undocumented” Jews in their sector a nuisance and were planning to “relocate” these unwelcome guests back to Poland. Horrified by the consequences of such “relocations,” with which he was more than familiar, my father made plans of his own, and in the middle of the night, he led a group of about 150 people into the American sector of Berlin.

In those days, refugees of any type, especially those described as “infiltrees,” were not welcomed by the American occupying forces. We had a brief layover in a strange but magnificent villa on one of Berlin’s inner lakes. My father was charged by the commanding officer (General Clay) with securing all the documents strewn about the dirty and wet floors. Many years later, I became aware that our temporary stay was at the notorious Wannsee, where the “final solution” was -formulated.

When my father, with the help of Fishbein and Skornek, managed to negotiate with General Clay a more permanent transit point, the U.S. military authorities opened Schlachtensee Displaced Persons Camp. My father served as president of the facility until our departure from Berlin in the spring of 1947. This was where I heard the aforementioned names discussed frequently in our cramped quarters.

Although, as he was to write later, my father was very impressed with the honorable character of General Clay, he thought of Americans, and of the general in particular, as very kind but extremely -naive when dealing with their Soviet “allies.” What frightened him the most was the American practice in postwar Berlin of handing over Red Army deserters to the eager embrace of Stalin. My father was most anxious to get out of Berlin as soon as possible, because for him a Soviet blockade of the city was certain and only a matter of time.

NATHAN SHUSTER
Toronto, Canada