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The Wild Place
Operation Humanity
They came to the former storm troopers' camp packed into cattle cars. They were the human reckage of World War II - the displaced persons.
Waiting to receive them was a handful of workers dedicated to one of humanity's most gigantic tasks - the resettlement of more than two million people without a country
They came to the former storm troopers' camp packed into cattle cars. They were the human reckage of World War II - the displaced persons.
Waiting to receive them was a handful of workers dedicated to one of humanity's most gigantic tasks - the resettlement of more than two million people without a country
275 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1953
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
March 7, 2020
“[A]n unforgettable report on the struggle, the plight, the defeat or the eventual redemption of countless victims of the time.” — George Shuster, The New York Times
“A shattering book, and one that defines, once and for all, the meaning of that ghastly twentieth-century invention, the displaced person.” — The New Yorker
“The Wild Place is a rare book — powerful and exciting, compassionate and disturbing, tragic and funny — drawn from great and strange material. It is a verbatim record of the most dramatic human debris of our time, the homeless hordes left on deposit in Germany.” — The New Yorker
“Little has been recorded of the heroic postwar work with masses of displaced persons, and it will be hard to find a better account than this. It is crowded with people and incidents and has a special vitality as well as the ring of truth. Highly recommended.” — Library Journal
“Miss Hulme’s story will seize your imagination, keep you fascinated, rouse your compassion, admiration, and respect... The top book of American nonfiction published this year...” — San Francisco Chronicle
“A beautiful book, heartbreaking and at the same time veined with humor. It projects the passionate sense of purpose experienced by a compassionate woman struggling desperately to salvage human lives, and it leaves us with a quickened awareness of the astounding tenacity of the human spirit, the astounding durability of hope.” — The Atlantic Monthly
“A sensitive and moving report, by an UNRRA field worker, of her five years’ experience in European D.P. camps after the war.” — Henry L. Roberts, Foreign Affairs
“A deeply felt and deeply moving record of this whole tragedy of displacement and dispossession, this is certain to engage the heart of any reader who has one.” — Kirkus Reviews
Highly recommended - Review to come
November 25, 2015
The Wild Place is Kathryn Hulme's account of the 5 years (1945 - 1950) she spent as an administrator at several camps for displaced persons (DPs) in Germany after WWII ended. It is a book that I wish more people could read, but due to estate problems, it has been out of print for ages. And since its publication run in 1953 was fairly limited, there aren't a lot of used copies floating around either. It's an absolute shame, because Hulme was a magnificent writer (the book won the Atlantic Monthly non-fiction award for 1953) and the insights she imparts are particularly relevant to our current national discussion about refugees.
I'd been aware, through the also-hard-to-locate documentary film The Long Way Home, that many Jewish people languished in DP camps after "liberation." They couldn't go "home" to where the war had certainly not eradicated anti-Semitism, and Britain dragged its heels on allowing them into the British Mandate of "Palestine." I had been less aware that many non-Jewish people faced similar circumstances. Many of the Poles at Wildflecken, for instance, would have found their hometowns now part of the USSR rather than Poland. And even if they harbored hopes of returning to post-Potsdam Poland, it soon became clear that the "free elections" the country had been promised were anything but, and Poland effectively became a Soviet satellite.
The early chapters of The Wild Place deal with Hulme's introduction to the almost overwhelming logistics of maintaining order in what amounted to small city of 20,000 people set in the midst of a country whose own people were struggling to return to some sense of normalcy after the war. It's almost amusing to read about camp residents stealing cows from the local farmers, but then you think: those farmers may have hated Hitler, too. At first there is a sense of optimism, that the majority of DPs will be resettled soon and the camp just has to get them through one winter, a task that is less daunting once generous care packages of food start arriving from the Red Cross. But as time grinds on, it becomes obvious that the path forward for most DPs is anything but clear and certain.
I cried at least three times reading this 260 page book. The first incident involved the enterprising young man, Ignatz, who had become Hulme's chauffeur after managing to cobble together the spare parts needed to repair an abandoned automobile. He tearfully informed Hulme that his baby had died. She had not even known that he had a new baby, let alone that the infant was ill.
The second passage that stopped me in my tracks dealt with the hopelessness felt by those for whom the odds of resettlement approached zero.
Am I making the book sound like a total downer? There were some joyous moments, too, and throughout the account, Hulme's prose is captivating and incisive. But of course, it ended on another note that left me sobbing. If I type that one out, I'll be a goner for the rest of the night. So I'll simply urge you to track down a copy of The Wild Place (the Chicago Public Library has one copy), and set aside some contemplative time to read it. Easily the best and most important book I've read in 2015.
I'd been aware, through the also-hard-to-locate documentary film The Long Way Home, that many Jewish people languished in DP camps after "liberation." They couldn't go "home" to where the war had certainly not eradicated anti-Semitism, and Britain dragged its heels on allowing them into the British Mandate of "Palestine." I had been less aware that many non-Jewish people faced similar circumstances. Many of the Poles at Wildflecken, for instance, would have found their hometowns now part of the USSR rather than Poland. And even if they harbored hopes of returning to post-Potsdam Poland, it soon became clear that the "free elections" the country had been promised were anything but, and Poland effectively became a Soviet satellite.
The early chapters of The Wild Place deal with Hulme's introduction to the almost overwhelming logistics of maintaining order in what amounted to small city of 20,000 people set in the midst of a country whose own people were struggling to return to some sense of normalcy after the war. It's almost amusing to read about camp residents stealing cows from the local farmers, but then you think: those farmers may have hated Hitler, too. At first there is a sense of optimism, that the majority of DPs will be resettled soon and the camp just has to get them through one winter, a task that is less daunting once generous care packages of food start arriving from the Red Cross. But as time grinds on, it becomes obvious that the path forward for most DPs is anything but clear and certain.
I cried at least three times reading this 260 page book. The first incident involved the enterprising young man, Ignatz, who had become Hulme's chauffeur after managing to cobble together the spare parts needed to repair an abandoned automobile. He tearfully informed Hulme that his baby had died. She had not even known that he had a new baby, let alone that the infant was ill.
The second passage that stopped me in my tracks dealt with the hopelessness felt by those for whom the odds of resettlement approached zero.
Am I making the book sound like a total downer? There were some joyous moments, too, and throughout the account, Hulme's prose is captivating and incisive. But of course, it ended on another note that left me sobbing. If I type that one out, I'll be a goner for the rest of the night. So I'll simply urge you to track down a copy of The Wild Place (the Chicago Public Library has one copy), and set aside some contemplative time to read it. Easily the best and most important book I've read in 2015.
March 15, 2022
A fantastic insight into the post-WWII camps in Europe told through the eyes of Kathryn Hulme who was deputy director of Wildflecken, a camp deep in the Bavarian Forest that used to be an elite training camp for the SS but post-war became an UN run camp for displaced persons. In this memoir Hulme manages to capture the pain, anger and tears of the time but also the humor, compassion and glimmers of hope as UNRRA looked to rescue, repatriate and resettle millions of the victims of Nazi policy, aggression and war.
October 4, 2011
I very nearly started this off by saying the book tells the untold story of the disposition of displaced persons in the aftermath of WWII. Clearly, the story has been told. This, then, is the forgotten story of what happened to many hundreds of thousands of people in the months and years after the war.
This is one telling of the story of the largest planned mass migration in history and how that migration was affected by the fall of the iron curtain, the creation of Israel, the start of the Korean conflict, and the lethargic changes to the immigration policies of the USA.
Wildflecken (the wild place) was built by Hitler as a training camp for SS ski troops. After the war, it housed 20,000 DP's, primarily Polish. The population of the camp was in constant flux - people came and went all the time. Hulme doesn't try to tell the story of a city (for that's essentially what the camp was) but instead concentrates on individuals - her driver, her translator, the camp police chief, her coworkers.
The book is full of joy (people going home after years of slavery, people starting new lives) and heartache (imagine sending trainloads of people home to Poland only to watch the Iron Curtain fall).
Recommended.
This is one telling of the story of the largest planned mass migration in history and how that migration was affected by the fall of the iron curtain, the creation of Israel, the start of the Korean conflict, and the lethargic changes to the immigration policies of the USA.
Wildflecken (the wild place) was built by Hitler as a training camp for SS ski troops. After the war, it housed 20,000 DP's, primarily Polish. The population of the camp was in constant flux - people came and went all the time. Hulme doesn't try to tell the story of a city (for that's essentially what the camp was) but instead concentrates on individuals - her driver, her translator, the camp police chief, her coworkers.
The book is full of joy (people going home after years of slavery, people starting new lives) and heartache (imagine sending trainloads of people home to Poland only to watch the Iron Curtain fall).
Recommended.
May 5, 2010
This book is amazing. Kathryn Hulme was part of the United Nations team to go into Europe immediately upon the close of World War Two and try to take care of millions of displaced persons. She was in charge of a huge camp in Bavaria, and then she moved into other management positions as the effort dragged on and this entity or that changed its involvement, while she and her co-workers simply changed hats to stick with the job. Putting the politics aside, they stayed to the bitter end, trying to get every person a new home (a new country most of the time) and a job. She is the epitome of the single person who makes a major difference in the story of humanity by doing one thing at a time, moving one mountain at a time, changing the lives of millions in the end. It's a great, sad, powerful book.
It is a shame that her literary affairs were left in a mess after the death of her partner who inherited everything from her, so that this and her other books are out of print. I found an original copy among the books we inherited from my mother-in-law. If you can find it, this is a book I recommend very highly.
It is a shame that her literary affairs were left in a mess after the death of her partner who inherited everything from her, so that this and her other books are out of print. I found an original copy among the books we inherited from my mother-in-law. If you can find it, this is a book I recommend very highly.
January 13, 2018
I was living and working in this area of Germany for years with the DOD - It was very hard to leave for reasons that are very difficult to explain. The book is a very good telling of the times before I arrived, and why the DOD left the Wildflecken Military Installation in place for so many, many years.
It's a magical place, full of history and ghosts. The small mountains, forests and terrain have a strange quality about them. Still largely unchanged and unspoiled... so much old history for the miles of tiny villages and the monastery with lively monks and ghost roaming the halls and little cathedral serving beer and real German fare...
I just wanted to know the actual reasons and history of why it was occupied so many times by soldiers and holy men and despots and prisoners who you swear you can hear whispering in the woods where they were housed for so many years...
Read it.
It's a magical place, full of history and ghosts. The small mountains, forests and terrain have a strange quality about them. Still largely unchanged and unspoiled... so much old history for the miles of tiny villages and the monastery with lively monks and ghost roaming the halls and little cathedral serving beer and real German fare...
I just wanted to know the actual reasons and history of why it was occupied so many times by soldiers and holy men and despots and prisoners who you swear you can hear whispering in the woods where they were housed for so many years...
Read it.
February 6, 2018
I read this in college when I was reading all of Hulme's books that I could find, and have wanted to re-read it but it's out of print. So I was glad to find a Kindle edition.
For five years she was an administrator at several camps for displaced persons in Germany. When I read it the first time I didn't know much about post WWII stuff, just that there were a lot of refugees and some came to the US. She goes into the politics of how people were sent to various places, and how the US was quite late in accepting people. But it's her interesting in people's stories and her obvious concern and love for them that really makes it.
I also know more about Hulme, who was a devotee of Gurdjieff in Paris in the 30s. The nurse on her team is the former nun whose story she later told in her bestseller, and they were lovers. A fascinating person.
For five years she was an administrator at several camps for displaced persons in Germany. When I read it the first time I didn't know much about post WWII stuff, just that there were a lot of refugees and some came to the US. She goes into the politics of how people were sent to various places, and how the US was quite late in accepting people. But it's her interesting in people's stories and her obvious concern and love for them that really makes it.
I also know more about Hulme, who was a devotee of Gurdjieff in Paris in the 30s. The nurse on her team is the former nun whose story she later told in her bestseller, and they were lovers. A fascinating person.
May 20, 2021
I struggled to put this down. While many many volumes of words have been written about what occurred during the war, on both sides, about both sides, not much has been written about what happens after the guns fall silent, which is a great shame. This book fills that gap, and personally, hit home for me, because both sets of grandparents certainly would have spent time in a camp like mentioned in this book. The descriptions were wonderful, and while some of the stories were laugh out loud funny, there was enough stark truth to make me think. Personally, I would have preferred to see an ending to this book rather than it just ending.
May 27, 2020
Recommendation from a friend....it is a short but impactful story that brought to life many images that I had seen in movies over the years. It also brought back to mind the often used label of "DP" that was used casually by kids in the 60's and 70's. Kathryn Hulme is a beautiful writer and her skill combined with her experience and perspective bring this story to life in a way few others could. Of note, there are 15 reviews on Amazon for the ebook and they are all 5 star ratings. Almost every person who wrote a review had a personal connection to someone who had first hand experience in the camp. This is a book that will make you appreciate your freedom and be grateful for all that our predecessors have done to secure our freedom.
November 15, 2017
Excellent book. I was born there so always had an interst in finding a copy I really enjoyed the story by Kathryn. Great read
August 29, 2021
In 1966 I had the option of going to Vietnam as a Special Forces radio operator, or going to Officer Candidate School. In a clear eyed moment of decision I chose the latter, went through Engineer OCS at Ft. Belvoir, then was posted to the Engineer Battalion at Wildflecken Germany where I remained until my Army time was up. Never did go to Vietnam.
On my arrival the Battalion commander gave me a tattered copy of The Wild Place, that I still have. I read it in one sitting, and explored the post avidly, feeling always the nearness of those ghosts of the past. Then I read it again, this time more slowly, experiencing the unmitigated pathos of persons whose lives have been trampled by the unrestrained and uncaring violence of war.
Miss Hulme captures with gripping precision the monumental task she helped complete. This book is worthy of high praise, and a new printing.
On my arrival the Battalion commander gave me a tattered copy of The Wild Place, that I still have. I read it in one sitting, and explored the post avidly, feeling always the nearness of those ghosts of the past. Then I read it again, this time more slowly, experiencing the unmitigated pathos of persons whose lives have been trampled by the unrestrained and uncaring violence of war.
Miss Hulme captures with gripping precision the monumental task she helped complete. This book is worthy of high praise, and a new printing.
July 22, 2011
This is one of those books that kills me as a writer. It's the true story of Hulme's experiences as a UN worker in the displaced persons camps of German after WWII, and it won the Atlantic award for non-fiction when it was published. It's a fascinating look into a rather untold piece of WWII history, well-written, with lively characters and fantastic places. And now it's out of print...
February 2, 2023
heart-wrenching story
I had absolutely no idea of the immigration situation after WWII in Germany, how many DP’s the IRO fed and clothed foe so many years! Now I have some clue as to the incredible, overwhelming sea of immigration bureaucracy my grandparents navigated through to finally sail to New York from Italy in 1950, with 4 of their 8 children, speaking no English at all…
I had absolutely no idea of the immigration situation after WWII in Germany, how many DP’s the IRO fed and clothed foe so many years! Now I have some clue as to the incredible, overwhelming sea of immigration bureaucracy my grandparents navigated through to finally sail to New York from Italy in 1950, with 4 of their 8 children, speaking no English at all…
February 18, 2020
Fascinating description of Wildflecken, the displaced person camp where tens-of-thousands of Poles were placed after World War II, by one of the women who ran the camp.
March 9, 2012
What was the story of the 2 million people Hitler had shipped in to run the war factories AFTER the close of WWII? This true account, told through the eyes of the Deputy Director of Wildflecken (meaning in German a place of wild beauty--built originally as a retreat for Hitler's elite ski troops and S.S. and then transformed to a refuge for 20,000 "displaced persons"--mostly Polish, while arrangements were made for their "repatriation" to their homeland)as a volunteer working under the auspices of the United Nations run program UNRRA.
The account is candid, yet told with compassion, humor, and heartbreak. Even my teenage daughter was drawn in by the sections we read aloud together, and that's saying something.
I made a few "vocabulary" notes and there were a few ingeniously turned phrases which I will share in context...
p.44 troglodytes (1.: a member of any of various peoples (as in antiquity) who lived or were reputed to live chiefly in caves 2: a person characterized by reclusive habits or outmoded or reactionary attitudes)Merriam Webster on-line
...Then one night a howling north wind blew down our valley and took every bright leaf from the trees. Freezing rain fell and we all turned into troglodytes in our hooded raincoats and clumping galoshes.
p.53 (to give an idea of the scale of this operation) ...For more than two months with no result we had been requisitioning stoves and stovepipe to complete the winterization of the twenty-eight hundred rooms in our sixty block-houses.
p.71 professional DP's ...The first time I heard "professional DP's" the phrase shocked me. The doctor knew this and would repeat "Gimme, gimme" in German, Russian, and Polish, walking around the breakfast table with his hand outstretched like a DP.
p.75 nascent (coming or having recently come into existence)Merriam-Webster on-line ...His blue eyes flashed incredulity that anyone, a whole army of anyones, should have gone out of the way for the likes of him. How could one explain the nascent philosophy of international relief to one who had always stood on his own two feet and had never asked anything of the world except the right to live privately and in peace?
p.105 chiaroscuro (1:pictorial representation in terms of light and shade without regard to color
2a : the arrangement or treatment of light and dark parts in a pictorial work of art b : the interplay or contrast of dissimilar qualities (as of mood or character)Merriam-Webster on-line ... When dark descended at four each afternoon, scores of bonfires burgeoned over the ice and were fed higher and higher with the spilled logs from firewood trucks until the cherry glow spread to the farthest fences and multiplied by its shadow every bundled shape in the area so that it seemed as if the whole camp had moved up to that frozen acre of chaos in chiaroscuro.
p.164 Hobson's choice (A Hobson's choice is a free choice in which only one option is offered. As a person may refuse to take that option, the choice is therefore between taking the option or not; "take it or leave it". The phrase is said to originate with Thomas Hobson (1544–1631), a livery stable owner in Cambridge, England. To rotate the use of his horses, he offered customers the choice of either taking the horse in the stall nearest the door or taking none at all.) Wikipedia ... "Maybe none at all," I said. "Maybe they're just as desperate ;up there as we are in the field. Maybe they just take what they can get. Hobson's choice."
p.198 Elysian (Elysium or the Elysian Fields (Greek: Ἠλύσιον πεδίον, Ēlýsion pedíon) is a conception of the afterlife that evolved over time and was maintained by certain Greek religious and philosophical sects, and cults. Initially separate from the realm of Hades, admission was initially reserved for mortals related to the gods and other heroes. Later, it expanded to include those chosen by the gods, the righteous, and the heroic, where they would remain after death, to live a blessed and happy life, and indulging in whatever employment they had enjoyed in life.[1][2][3][4][5][6] The Elysian Fields were, according to Homer, located on the western edge of the Earth by the stream of Oceanus.[1] In the time of the Greek oral poet Hesiod, Elysium would also be known as the Fortunate Isles or the Isles (or Islands) of the Blessed, located in the western ocean at the end of the earth.[1][7][8] The Isles of the Blessed would be reduced to a single island by the Thebean poet Pendar, describing it as having shady parks, with residents indulging their athletic and musical pastimes) Wikipedia ... I followed her to the foot of the gardens where elderly DP men sat along the grassy banks of the River Main to fish for the carp that were just coming in following the eels, and I listened to how her small band of Old Russian emigres could live without any help at all from us if only they could remain in the little Elysian economy they had created out of their former slave-laborer quarters.
p.200 egress (1: the action or right of going or coming out 2: a place or means of going out : exit)Merriam-Webster on-line ...Their reaction to rejection was immediate and total despair, as if a door had slammed in their faces and shut them forever in a dark room with no other egress.
p.210 Churchill in Missouri (On March 5, 1946, Winston Churchill delivered one of the most significant speeches of the 20th century on the campus of Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. The famous “Sinews of Peace” speech, with its reference to Europe’s “iron curtain,” is still remembered 65 years later.)Local History Kansas City Public Library ...And the clipped bold words of Churchill in Missouri were answered by the growl of Stalin in Moscow and all this was happening in Wildflecken two years ago when we had had our first baptism in DP fears and had worn maskes of pretense because we were two lifetimes younger then and could feel freshly about each new experiencing.
p.211 "This all seems like something in parentheses," said Londa. (what a well-turned phrase)--me
p.213 derisory (Synonyms: belittling, contemptuous, decrying, degrading, demeaning, denigrative, denigratory, deprecatory, depreciative, depreciatory, derogatory, derogative, detractive, disdainful, disparaging, pejorative, scornful, slighting, uncomplimentary)Merriam-Webster on-line ...Their voices were unmusical and hoarse from violent expostulation and their hands moved continuously in manual dialogue of a derisory nature.
p.220 ...Each of us had specific jobs to do in the "settling in" of the new camp but we all felt like fifth wheels on a wagon hitched to a comet... (another wonderful description)-me
p.221 Operation Bird Dog (http://slantchev.ucsd.edu/courses/nss... this link for descriptive information ...Near midnight on the fifteenth of June, 1948, he blitz-called us to announce that Operation Bird Dog was in effect. This was the most closely guarded secret of the U.S. Zone and the only one, to my knowledge, that the DP's did not know about in advance. It was the great overnight currency reform which was to set Western Germany on its financial feet, wipe out the old reichsmark, which had less value than second-hand wallpaper and institute the Deutsche Mark, valued roughly at 4.2 to the dollar, almost at par with the sold Swiss franc. Within the next forty-eight hours, Sam said, every inhabitant in the land, including our DP's, would be permitted to exchange up to forty reichsmarks on a one-to-one basis for the new Deutsche Marks which had been printed nine months earlier by the U.S. Treasury Department in the darkest secrecy of its deepest vaults.
p.231 moribund (1: being in the state of dying : approaching death 2: being in a state of inactivity or obsolescence)Merriam-Webster on-line ...Ignatz completed his documentation in three weeks, with the help of two resettlement officers, a chief welfare and my personal car, which I lent to him for fast tracking of the moribund priest.
p.263 nadir (1: the point of the celestial sphere that is directly opposite the zenith and vertically downward from the observer 2: the lowest point)Merriam-Webster on-line ...It seemed to me in the nadir of the deadlock that the mass moved only becaouse there were those hundreds of eyes that never saw it as a mass, those hundreds of hands that left no stone unturned, those hundreds of hearts that were secretly pledged each one to some single small group of souls in suspense.
The account is candid, yet told with compassion, humor, and heartbreak. Even my teenage daughter was drawn in by the sections we read aloud together, and that's saying something.
I made a few "vocabulary" notes and there were a few ingeniously turned phrases which I will share in context...
p.44 troglodytes (1.: a member of any of various peoples (as in antiquity) who lived or were reputed to live chiefly in caves 2: a person characterized by reclusive habits or outmoded or reactionary attitudes)Merriam Webster on-line
...Then one night a howling north wind blew down our valley and took every bright leaf from the trees. Freezing rain fell and we all turned into troglodytes in our hooded raincoats and clumping galoshes.
p.53 (to give an idea of the scale of this operation) ...For more than two months with no result we had been requisitioning stoves and stovepipe to complete the winterization of the twenty-eight hundred rooms in our sixty block-houses.
p.71 professional DP's ...The first time I heard "professional DP's" the phrase shocked me. The doctor knew this and would repeat "Gimme, gimme" in German, Russian, and Polish, walking around the breakfast table with his hand outstretched like a DP.
p.75 nascent (coming or having recently come into existence)Merriam-Webster on-line ...His blue eyes flashed incredulity that anyone, a whole army of anyones, should have gone out of the way for the likes of him. How could one explain the nascent philosophy of international relief to one who had always stood on his own two feet and had never asked anything of the world except the right to live privately and in peace?
p.105 chiaroscuro (1:pictorial representation in terms of light and shade without regard to color
2a : the arrangement or treatment of light and dark parts in a pictorial work of art b : the interplay or contrast of dissimilar qualities (as of mood or character)Merriam-Webster on-line ... When dark descended at four each afternoon, scores of bonfires burgeoned over the ice and were fed higher and higher with the spilled logs from firewood trucks until the cherry glow spread to the farthest fences and multiplied by its shadow every bundled shape in the area so that it seemed as if the whole camp had moved up to that frozen acre of chaos in chiaroscuro.
p.164 Hobson's choice (A Hobson's choice is a free choice in which only one option is offered. As a person may refuse to take that option, the choice is therefore between taking the option or not; "take it or leave it". The phrase is said to originate with Thomas Hobson (1544–1631), a livery stable owner in Cambridge, England. To rotate the use of his horses, he offered customers the choice of either taking the horse in the stall nearest the door or taking none at all.) Wikipedia ... "Maybe none at all," I said. "Maybe they're just as desperate ;up there as we are in the field. Maybe they just take what they can get. Hobson's choice."
p.198 Elysian (Elysium or the Elysian Fields (Greek: Ἠλύσιον πεδίον, Ēlýsion pedíon) is a conception of the afterlife that evolved over time and was maintained by certain Greek religious and philosophical sects, and cults. Initially separate from the realm of Hades, admission was initially reserved for mortals related to the gods and other heroes. Later, it expanded to include those chosen by the gods, the righteous, and the heroic, where they would remain after death, to live a blessed and happy life, and indulging in whatever employment they had enjoyed in life.[1][2][3][4][5][6] The Elysian Fields were, according to Homer, located on the western edge of the Earth by the stream of Oceanus.[1] In the time of the Greek oral poet Hesiod, Elysium would also be known as the Fortunate Isles or the Isles (or Islands) of the Blessed, located in the western ocean at the end of the earth.[1][7][8] The Isles of the Blessed would be reduced to a single island by the Thebean poet Pendar, describing it as having shady parks, with residents indulging their athletic and musical pastimes) Wikipedia ... I followed her to the foot of the gardens where elderly DP men sat along the grassy banks of the River Main to fish for the carp that were just coming in following the eels, and I listened to how her small band of Old Russian emigres could live without any help at all from us if only they could remain in the little Elysian economy they had created out of their former slave-laborer quarters.
p.200 egress (1: the action or right of going or coming out 2: a place or means of going out : exit)Merriam-Webster on-line ...Their reaction to rejection was immediate and total despair, as if a door had slammed in their faces and shut them forever in a dark room with no other egress.
p.210 Churchill in Missouri (On March 5, 1946, Winston Churchill delivered one of the most significant speeches of the 20th century on the campus of Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. The famous “Sinews of Peace” speech, with its reference to Europe’s “iron curtain,” is still remembered 65 years later.)Local History Kansas City Public Library ...And the clipped bold words of Churchill in Missouri were answered by the growl of Stalin in Moscow and all this was happening in Wildflecken two years ago when we had had our first baptism in DP fears and had worn maskes of pretense because we were two lifetimes younger then and could feel freshly about each new experiencing.
p.211 "This all seems like something in parentheses," said Londa. (what a well-turned phrase)--me
p.213 derisory (Synonyms: belittling, contemptuous, decrying, degrading, demeaning, denigrative, denigratory, deprecatory, depreciative, depreciatory, derogatory, derogative, detractive, disdainful, disparaging, pejorative, scornful, slighting, uncomplimentary)Merriam-Webster on-line ...Their voices were unmusical and hoarse from violent expostulation and their hands moved continuously in manual dialogue of a derisory nature.
p.220 ...Each of us had specific jobs to do in the "settling in" of the new camp but we all felt like fifth wheels on a wagon hitched to a comet... (another wonderful description)-me
p.221 Operation Bird Dog (http://slantchev.ucsd.edu/courses/nss... this link for descriptive information ...Near midnight on the fifteenth of June, 1948, he blitz-called us to announce that Operation Bird Dog was in effect. This was the most closely guarded secret of the U.S. Zone and the only one, to my knowledge, that the DP's did not know about in advance. It was the great overnight currency reform which was to set Western Germany on its financial feet, wipe out the old reichsmark, which had less value than second-hand wallpaper and institute the Deutsche Mark, valued roughly at 4.2 to the dollar, almost at par with the sold Swiss franc. Within the next forty-eight hours, Sam said, every inhabitant in the land, including our DP's, would be permitted to exchange up to forty reichsmarks on a one-to-one basis for the new Deutsche Marks which had been printed nine months earlier by the U.S. Treasury Department in the darkest secrecy of its deepest vaults.
p.231 moribund (1: being in the state of dying : approaching death 2: being in a state of inactivity or obsolescence)Merriam-Webster on-line ...Ignatz completed his documentation in three weeks, with the help of two resettlement officers, a chief welfare and my personal car, which I lent to him for fast tracking of the moribund priest.
p.263 nadir (1: the point of the celestial sphere that is directly opposite the zenith and vertically downward from the observer 2: the lowest point)Merriam-Webster on-line ...It seemed to me in the nadir of the deadlock that the mass moved only becaouse there were those hundreds of eyes that never saw it as a mass, those hundreds of hands that left no stone unturned, those hundreds of hearts that were secretly pledged each one to some single small group of souls in suspense.
September 2, 2025
I've read many books that take place in or around WWII, but this is the first one I've read or even heard of that takes place in the displaced persons camps in Europe that handled so many refugees after the war was over. This is a first person account by an excellent author who spent five years as a UN administrator in these camps. The first few years she was in Wildflecken, or The Wild Place, housed in a former SS elite training center hidden in the Bavarian woods, which after the war became home to roughly 20,000 at a time displaced persons (DPs), almost all of them Polish. And that 20,000 is misleading, because during her tenure around 100,000 people spent time in the camp - new refugees kept arriving as others were resettled, either back to Poland early on, and then to countries around the world once the Iron Curtain fell. Hulme does a good job of showing both the broad picture in the camps and in the world at the time, while also showing how she got involved in the lives of individual DPs like her driver, Ignatz and others. Her writing style displays both poignant moments and joyous ones with a light and loving touch. I highly recommend this book to any who can find it - I believe it's now available in electronic form, although out of print.
January 1, 2023
This non-fiction account of a UN worker in a displaced persons camp in Bavaria after World War II is gripping! Kathryn Hulme’s writing is beautiful. Her descriptive writing at times took my breath away. She brought me into the world of “her” displaced Poles, and as the story continues, into the lives of displaced persons from the Baltics as well. She weaves the facts and figures of running the camp into their life stories. It is both a sad and triumphant story. It’s marvelous and I strongly recommend it.
Sadly, it also left me shaking my head at our crazy immigration system and wondering if anything has changed for the better in the last 70 years!
Sadly, it also left me shaking my head at our crazy immigration system and wondering if anything has changed for the better in the last 70 years!
May 27, 2015
This book had a brief burst of popularity when it was published in the early 1950s, but remains a historical document and an engaging first person account of the Displaced Persons camps post WWII. The camp in question is Wildflecken, a Nazi army barracks which held about 20,000 Polish DPs when Hulme arrives in 1945 as deputy director of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation mission to the facility.
December 14, 2012
post WWII,DP camps,Red Cross,Wildflecken,Germany
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