Feldafing displaced persons camp
Coordinates: 47°56′41″N 11°17′38″E / 47.944637°N 11.293774°E Feldafing displaced persons camp in Bavaria was the first DP camp exclusively for use by liberated Jewish concentration camp prisoners. It was later used by Jewish refugees from the Russian-controlled Jewish areas. The camp was located in Feldafing's Höhenberg area and beyond.
The camp was opened by the United States Army on May 1, 1945 as an emergency measure to house mostly Hungarian Jews who were in cattle cars when liberated at railroad sidings near at the Tutzing Railroad Station next to a German hospital train. The train has originated from Muhldorf-Mettenheim concentration camp for transporting only Jewish prisoners gathered from Mittergars, Muldorf Wald Lager(Ampfing) and Muhldorf-Mettenheim Concentration Camps to be massacred in the Tyrolian mountains by an SS that was waiting for said transport. The war was near its end when the knowing Wehrmacht transport commander kept delaying the train to be liberated by the advance units of the US Army. The Germans kept guarding the train until the Americans took them prisoner, though the worst of the guards escaped. Some prisoners were immediately transferred to the hospital train and the prisoner train was taken to the track right above the Hitler Youth school in Feldafing (the town next to Tutzing), where the prisoners disembarked. The German Train Commander and two female guards, recognized as having helped the prisoners' survival, were given freedom and living quarters along with the liberated prisoners. In charge of the camp was First Lieutenant Irving J. Smith, a Jewish soldier and peacetime attorney, serving in the Army's Civil Affairs Command.
The Feldafing DP camp was formed in the grounds of the Reichsschule Feldafing consisting of seven large two-story buildings, at least a dozen temporary buildings and six or seven associated large villas, an elite school for Hitlerjugend situated in a villa area on Höhenberg and beyond in Feldafing, with an expansive view of the lake. The villas were variously purchased, forcibly sold, or confiscated by the Nazi authorities, often from Jewish owners. A few of the barracks were used as a concentration camp for Russian POW's, who were repatriated after a few months. Russian prisoners were a security risk in terms of robbery, fighting, attempted rape. The remainder of the liberated prisoners were all Jews, most from Hungary. The non-Jews were definitely not included in the subject transport. The large camp buildings were set up as a hospital complex ready to receive German wounded. A large red cross was painted on each of their roof. One of the barracks was put immediately use as a hospital for a large number of German sick and wounded. Other buildings were also had treatment facilities for lesser cases. The wounded came from the massacre at Poing and a mistaken allied aircraft strafing.
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