The Hungarian (Im)patient - My grandfather at the Gauting DP Sanatorium

In 1946, my 19-year-old grandfather sent a telegram from the Gauting DP hospital. The telegram was found — of all places — in the United Nations Archives. This post delves into my grandfather's brief sojourn at the Gauting Sanatorium near Munich, where hundreds of Jewish (and non-Jewish) DPs ended up after the war.

Jews at the Passover Seder table in Gauting. Courtesy of the Ganzach Kiddush Hashem Archive.

Having survived the Holocaust in Hungary, my grandfather made his way to Germany with a group of Jewish youth of Dror Habonim. I wrote about his story in more detail here and here.

Recently, Indersdorf researcher Shoshan Porat forwarded me an email from Anna Andlauer, author of The Rage to Live, a history of the Kloster Indersdorf DP children's home. It was a link to reports on Indersdorf, housed at the UN Archive. One of the reports mentioned that two boys, who had arrived in the Indersdorf children's home on April 9 with a new kibbutz group, were found to have TB and were transferred to the Gauting Sanatorium on May 9. Shoshan suspected that one of these boys must have been my grandfather.

Report on Kloster Indersdorf; May 13, 1946. Courtesy of UN Archives (p. 44).

And lo and behold, based on his Gauting medical records from the Arolsen Archive, my grandfather was indeed admitted to Gauting on May 9. In addition, there were a few additional telltale signs that one of the boys referenced in the report was my grandfather.

First, the report mentions that one of the boys was uncooperative. This is perfectly in line with what I know about his attitude to medical treatment. The letters sent to him to Gauting on May 15 and 16 by his quasi-adopted mother (discussed here) intimated that my grandfather was very much intent on leaving Gauting. Indeed, his medical file shows that he left the Sanatorium without permission between May 18-28, and although he did return on May 29, he immediately signed a waiver declaring that he forfeits further medical treatment and returns to Hungary.

Based on his file obtained from the Alliance of Swiss Jewish Care Organizations, the above was not a singular occasion. He behaved in a similar manner when — after months of incessant pleas to Hungarian and Swiss authorities — he was allowed to leave Communist Hungary in 1958, to go to Switzerland for medical treatment. In Switzerland, too, he disregarded doctors' advice and then abruptly returned to Hungary.

First page of my grandfather's Gauting medical file. Courtesy of Arolsen Archives.

The ultimate proof, however was the copy of a telegram I found in the same file, which was referenced in the aforementioned Indersdorf report. Written sometime between May 9 (when my grandfather was admitted) and May 13 (the date of the report), the telegram was addressed to Gyula Bandy (pseudonym of a madrich in Indersdorf), and decried conditions in Gauting thus:

"This is not a sanatorium. This is a second Pocking [a DP camp]. I thought this was a better place. I am waiting for you. Please come. Good bye."

The telegram appears to be signed by four people, including my grandfather, appearing as Karcsi (nickname for Károly).

My grandfather's telegram from Gauting. Courtesy of UN Archives (p. 46).

By most accounts, conditions for Jewish DPs at the Gauting Sanatorium indeed left much to be desired. A former German military hospital, Gauting was captured by the US Army in 1945, and transformed into a DP hospital under the auspices of the UNRRA (between 1946-1951), treating mostly TB patients. By mid-1946, it had about 500 patients, about half of them Jewish.

The famed American Yiddish poet, H. Leivick, published a part of his diary in the New York Yiddish newspaper Der tog on his visit to Gauting in May 1946, as well as heartrending calls to deliver the numerous Jewish youth suffering in the sanatorium (here, here, and here); Leivick published an extended version of his diaries in his 1947 Yiddish-language book Mit der sheyres ha-pleyteh (With the Surviving Remnant). Similarly Hungarian author and former Gauting patient Kálmán Sándor described the Babelic-Hobbesian world of DPs of dozens of nationalities in his Tolvajok kertje (Garden of Thieves).

Pinchas Szwarc in Gauting, cca. 1945-1947. Courtesy of USHMM.

In March 1946, a Jewish Patients' Committee was formed in Gauting, which remained in existence at least until 1953 (see the JDC Health Department's materials on Gauting made available online by Center for Jewish History). In 1947-1948, the Committee issued a newspaper titled Unzer Lebn (Our Life), which was then replaced by the radio station Radio Gauting. In 2005, a facsimile edition of the newspaper and a transcript of the radio's 1000^th broadcast was published, along with a history of the hospital. A Hebrew-language collection of documents and recollections was published in 1991 (available online here).

In 2016 — thanks to the efforts of Suzanne Goldschein, whose father was a Gauting patient — Yad Vashem unveiled a plaque in its Memorial Cave to commemorate the 128 Jewish patients who died in Gauting and were buried in a makeshift Jewish cemetery there.

The Gauting Sanatorium in April 1947. Courtesy of Yad Vashem.