The New Promised Land: Maine's Summer Camps for Jewish Youth ...

1937, Walldorf, who lived on New York’s Upper West Side, arranged to meet up with
a camp friend who lived in the Bronx. “My mother found it unsettling that I was
friends with a girl from the Bronx,” Walldorf said. 176 The next summer, Walldorf’s
parents sent her to Camp Pinecliffe in Harrison, Maine, “because it was more
sophisticated.” 177 Walldorf enjoyed Pinecliffe, though she remained sour that she
could not go back to Diana. “I liked my friends at Diana and I liked the program
there, I didn’t see any reason to leave,” she said. Walldorf’s experience exemplifies
the notion at the time that Maine camps were supposedly more elite.
Though these feelings changed by the 1940s, the best, most well-established
camps were already in Maine. Additionally, the fact that most of the Maine camps
that Jews attended survived the Great Depression proved that these camps were the
best of the best. As Sargent wrote, “the Jews know a good thing and usually secure
the best for their children. They were early to arrive in the promised land of the
summer camp and they settled first in the choice spots of Maine.” 178
The Maine Advantage During World War II
After the United States entered World War II in 1941, a number of Maine
summer camps saw an increase in camper applications. According to a 1945
brochure, “About Camp Walden,” the directors limited enrollment to eighty campers
because they believed that the small, tight knit community was one of the camp’s
greatest assets. The current directors of Camps Fernwood, Kennebec, Tapawingo,
Tripp Lake, Wigwam, and Winnebago said that their predecessors also turned down
176 Marion Walldorf, Interview with author, December 20, 2012.
177 Ibid.
178 Sargent, A Handbook of Summer Camps, 42.
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