Five DP's Enrolled as Students
THROUGH THE EFFORTS of the Undergraduate Council, five Displaced Persons were enrolled at Dartmouth this fall under a plan whereby the combined fee is paid by the College, rooming accomodations are provided by fraternities, jobs for meals are given by local businessmen, and other incidentals supplied by fellow students.
One of the five, 24-year-old Kirill Abromowich, narrowly escaped execution by a German firing squad as a member of the Czech underground. The others are Pieter von Herrmann, 20-year-old son of an anti-Nazi German, and Igor Medvedev, Vladimir Shishkoff and Vladimir Baranetsky, three youths born in Eastern Europe who were sent to Germany as forced laborers.
The Undergraduate Council's petition to admit a small number of Displaced Persons to Dartmouth was endorsed by the trustees at their June meeting. With the help of William H. Sudduth of New York City, former UNRRA director at a Displaced Persons School in Heidelberg, the applications of these five DPs were processed in time for them to enroll this fall.
Their background is similar to that of hundreds of Europeans of their generation. Abromowich, for example, was 15 when war broke out. After completing three semesters at Charles University, Prague, he was sent to Germany to work as a forced laborer in a maintenance shop.
He escaped, but was later captured by the Germans while serving as a courier for the Czech underground and was lined up against a wall to be shot. For some unexplained reason, the execution was called off, and he was imprisoned instead.
After the Russian army arrived, Abromowich left Czechoslovakia and came to this country last December. He got a job as orderly in a Nyack (N. Y.) hospital and before coming to Hanover had been working in a factory in Piermont, N. Y.
Both Shishkoff and Medvedev were working as forced laborers near Vienna when they fled to Bavaria at the close of the war. A native of Yugoslavia, Shishkoff had been employed in a Cincinnati piano factory after coming to this country last December. Medvedev arrived in the U.S. in February and has been working on farms near Bridgeport, Conn.
Like Shishkoff and Medvedev, Baranetsky is of White Russian parentage. He was born in Jakubowa, Poland and studied at the University of Lwow before being sent to Germany to repair railroads damaged by Allied bombings. He studied at the University of Munich for a short time after V-E day and came to the U. S. in March. He has been working as a baker in New York.
Von Herrmann was five years old when his father, a member of the German diplomatic service, had to go into hiding because of his opposition to the Nazis, 100 young for military service, he studied at the University of Munich after the war ended. Von Herrmann came to this country in February and had been working for a hardware company in downtown New York.
FIVE DP STUDENTS get the lowdown on American football from Thomas E. O'Corinell '50, chairman of the student committee which sponsored their admission to Dartmouth. Left to right, Igor Medvedev, O'Connell, Pieter von Herrmann, Vladimir Shishkoff, Vladimir Baranetsky, and Kirill Abromowich.
