Ann S. Epstein Writer

In April 1945, the United National Relief and Rehabilitation administration (UNRRA) entered the American zone of Germany and registered between 6,000 and 7,000 displaced children. Both Jews and non-Jews, they included survivors of concentration camps, forced child laborers, and children whose parents were sent to forced labor camps. In July, not far from the Dachau death camp, UNRRA created an international pilot program in Kloster Indersdorf, a former monastery closed by the Nazis. Between 1945 and 1948, it became home to more than 1,000 refugee youth. Led by a disciple of Anna Freud, the institute served as a model for five other centers in Europe. Groups of 12-15 orphans were organized into surrogate families led by an adult parent figure. Said one staff member, “The first thing was to give them plenty of food, clothing, and listen to their stories, days and nights. It had to come out. Sometimes it took hours. You could not interrupt.” Photos of the children were posted in hopes that relatives, if alive, would recognize and claim them. In a few cases this happened, but for most of the Jewish children, “their dark suspicion grew gradually into the horrible certainty, that from now on each was all alone in the world.” Read more in BEHIND THE STORY.

 

In honor of International Women’s Day (March 8) – Many suffragettes were also prohibitionists, defending women against drunken husbands who abused them and protecting children from fathers who spent food and rent money on alcohol. Men were opposed to both movements and the liquor industry was a powerful anti-women’s rights force. Temperance proponents like Susan B. Anthony and Frances Willard took up the cause of women’s suffrage to enact laws against alcohol. Read more about early women activists in On the Shore (see NOVELS).

Researching the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II for my novel-in-progress, One Person’s Loss, I discovered that many famous people worked as agents — that is, spies — for the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Among them was chef Julia (McWilliams) Child; supreme court justice Arthur Goldberg, film director John Ford, Hollywood actors Sterling Hayden and Marlene Dietrich, anthropologist Margaret Mead, and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Ralph Bunche (who was paid $5,600 a year). They were primarily recruited for their “intellectual sweat.” The 35,000 OSS personnel files in the National Archives were not released to the public until August 2008, more than sixty years after the agency ceased wartime operations.

For a contemporary story I’m writing about a civilian father whose wife is deployed in Afghanistan, I researched the changing role of women in the U.S. Armed Force. Women have played a role in military conflicts since the American Revolution, but World War II was the first time they served in an official capacity. Beginning in December 1941, 350,000 women were active in four branches established exclusively for them: Army WACS, Air Force WASPS, Navy WAVES, and Marine and Coast Guard SPARS. About 70% held traditionally “female” jobs as typists, clerks, and mail sorters. Only those working in the Army and Navy medical corps made it close to the front lines. Today, by contrast, women account for one-sixth of active-duty personnel (up from one-tenth in 1970), with the largest number serving in the Air Force and Navy. Since 2001, over 200,000 female soldiers have served in Afghanistan and/or Iraq, including more than 100,000 mothers.