Death Chamber Survivor to Pay Debt Dotan, Beth Transcription and encoding Sayer, Jo Weakly, Laura K. 2024 Nebraska Stories of Humanity University of Nebraska-Lincoln Center for Digital Research in the Humanities
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 Death Chamber Survivor to Pay Debt English Lincoln Lincoln, Nebraska Hanks Auto Store Review Transcription and initial encoding DACHAU TO ARMY CHAPLAIN Death Chamber Survivor to Pay Debt

NEW YORK, Aug. 25.—(INS)—A survivor of Nazi death camps, who was rescued by American troops from the dread Dachau gas chambers, Saturday prepared to repay his debt to the United States by becoming an army chaplain.

For Rabbi Abraham Feffer, his graduation Tuesday from the chaplain's school at Fort Slocum, N.Y., will mark a full circle in the odyssey that began 11 years ago when he was a thin, wasted boy.

American soliders found him amid a pile of bodies on a siding at Munich, Germany. His memories were filled with the horror of living death at Dachau and Auschwitz concentration camps and his gaunt frame marked him as a survivor of many torture chambers.

The soldiers liked the youth and gave him a job as interpreter. He was permitted to wear a cutdown version of the army uniform.

Then he was able to emigrate to the U.S as a displaced person. Working and scrimping, Feffer managed to rise from a DP to a rabbi by studying at the Jewish theological seminary in New York.

All graduates are subject to a "voluntary draft" into the armed forces chaplaincy—a draft set up by the National Jewish Welfare Board and the three major American rabbinical bodies soon after the outbreak of the Korean war to obtain chaplains.

Rabbi Feffer could have claimed exemption from the draft because of his World War II ordeal. But he rejected exemption and chose to serve to fulfill his determination to express "great gratitude" for what his liberators had done for him.

Upon his graduation from the chaplain school, the rabbi will become the first survivor from the World War II concentration camps to become a chaplain in the U.S. armed forces. His first assignment will be to conduct the new year services at Fort Hood, Tex., during the coming Jewish high holy days.