Children's Exodus

A History of the Kindertransport

Vera K. Fast

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780857730817
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

In the months leading up to the outbreak of World War Two, Britain rushed to evacuate nearly 10, 000 Jewish children from the Nazi occupied territories. Through the unprecedented cooperation of religious and governmental organizations, the Kindertransport spared thousands of Jewish children from the terror of the Third Reich and provided them with host families in Britain. "Children's Exodus" offers an in-depth look at the people and politics behind the various chains of rescue as well as the personal narratives of the children who left everything behind in the hope of finding safety. Drawing on unpublished interviews, journals, and articles, Vera K. Fast examines the religious and political tensions that emerged throughout the migration and at times threatened to bring operations to a halt. "Children's Exodus" captures the life-affirming stories of child refugees with vivid detail and examines the motivations - religious or otherwise - of the people that orchestrated one of the greatest rescue missions of all time.

1

DESCENT INTO DARKNESS¹

BEFORE Ilse Haas left for England on the Kindertransport her father took her to see her old grandmother in Sachsenhagen near Hanover. One senses Ilse’s pride when she spoke of her ancestors living in Sachsenhagen, the family home, since the seventeenth century.² She was probably unaware that there had been a Jewish presence in Cologne since AD 321 and in other German cities for almost as long. The Jews were justifiably proud of their contributions to German society, but were apparently oblivious that these had occurred at the cost of much of their religious birthright. The historian John Dippel observes that the majority of German Jews ‘subordinated their Jewishness to their Germanness’ by various means, especially by marrying into non-Jewish families (by 1930 an estimated one in four German Jews were marrying out of the community),³ by conversion, or simply by non-observance of their religious heritage. Ingeborg Hecht, for example, remembered that she and her brother knew nothing about the Jewish religion. ‘[Our] ignorance of Jewish customs extended to the menorah in Father’s study, which we simply regarded as a candlestick with seven branches.’⁴ Historian Marion Kaplan asserts that, with the children of intermarriage usually raised as Christians and most Jews ‘enthusiastically’ adopting German culture and social mores, by the 1920s ‘some Jewish leaders actually feared the complete fusion of their community into German society by the end of the twentieth century.’⁵

The matter of assimilation was, of course, rather complex and nuanced, but suffice it to say here that, as in Jewish communities elsewhere, there were different kinds and degrees of religious observance among Jewish families in Germany. Observant Jews were largely found among Ostjuden (Jews from eastern Europe, especially Poland and Russia), with whom assimilated Jews felt uncomfortable. Assimilated Jews tended to agree with Walther Rathenau, a Jew and German nationalist who became German foreign minister, that this ‘alien and isolated race [the Ostjuden] … loud and self-conscious in their dress, hot-blooded and restless in their manner [undermined] their [the assimilated Jews] assiduous efforts to blend quietly into Berlin’s business and professional circles to the point of invisibility’.⁶

Certainly, by 1933 the majority of German Jews, especially those in Berlin, had successfully ‘blended quietly’ into the larger society. Theirs was a proud wartime record for the Fatherland in the First World War, with 100,000 men, or nearly 18 per cent of the entire German-Jewish population, serving in the forces. Of these, 35,000 were decorated and 12,000 lost their lives. Rudi Lowenstein was one among several Kinder who remembered that his father, who later perished in the camps, served in the war with pride and was decorated for valour with the iron cross.⁷ German Jews had achieved success in industry and business, especially in banking, medicine, journalism, the law, literature and the arts.⁸ David Cesarani states that, ‘Three-quarters of all Jews in gainful employment were engaged in trade, commerce, the financial sector, and the professions. … [They achieved] prominence in the arts and sciences. Several of the great publishing houses were Jewish-owned; Jews were over-represented among writers and journalists, in theatre and in the film industry.’⁹ The memoirs of the Kinder testify to this: Olga’s father was ‘an important book publisher’; Henry’s grandfather a university professor; Hugh’s (Horst’s) father a musician; Margaret’s father a banker.¹⁰ Helen Bentwich, a prominent British Jewish activist, however, said in an interview at the time, ‘The reason why Jews got more than their proportion in the medical and legal professions is that till fairly recently, these professions were looked down upon socially and the good Germans went into the army or the diplomatic service.’¹¹ A more significant reason, perhaps, was that other professions were closed to Jews.¹² Be that as it may, German Jews were generally very well situated in the early 1930s.

In view of their relative prominence, it is important to remember that in 1933 Jews constituted a very small part of the German population – less than 1 per cent, or approximately 525,000 people. What urgency then prompted the Nazis, immediately on gaining power, to promulgate anti-Semitic legislation that forbade the employment of Jews in universities, schools, the legal profession and civil service?

Unquestionably, anti-Semitism was not exclusively a Nazi or even a German phenomenon. As Raul Hilberg writes, ‘Anti-Jewish racism had its beginnings in the second half of the seventeenth century, when the “Jewish caricature” first appeared in cartoons.’¹³ Yet, by legislation passed in 1869 and 1871, Jews were fully emancipated in Germany, and the German historian Thomas Nipperdey rightly claims that ‘in comparison to that of France, Austria, or Russia, German anti-Semitism on the eve of the First World War was certainly not the most extreme.’¹⁴ It appears to have been this very emancipation, however, that triggered new racial tensions in Germany, for it allowed many more Jews to become socially and culturally assimilated and therefore to attain a higher public profile. Reflecting right-wing German sentiment of the time, in 1895 a Herr Ahlwardt insisted in the Reichstag, ‘A Jew who is born in Germany, is still no German; he is still a Jew,’ and, as a Jew, not a German, he was considered ‘widely obtrusive and subversive’.¹⁵ Ironically, from being hated for being different, the Jews were now accused of being too German, too successful at the expense of ethnic Germans. ‘We really believed,’ remembers a young German woman quoted in Dippel, ‘that the Jews were taking jobs away from Germans and therefore we hated them.’ To this mind-set, ‘race was the distinguishing feature that could not be gainsaid, and it was on these grounds that the Jews were henceforth to be labelled and vilified.’¹⁶ Dippel continues: ‘what assimilated ways and secular manner could mask, Jewish racial stereotyping could strip away.’¹⁷ This was the attitude of most German politicians.

Historian Saul Friedlander holds two factors responsible for the failure of assimilation to eliminate anti-Semitism – namely ‘the survival of traditional religious anti-Semitism and the related proliferation of conspiracy theories in which Jews always played a role’.¹⁸ Religious anti-Semitism, dating back to the time of Martin Luther and before, was deeply embedded in German culture and religious life. It can reasonably be asserted that it was a greater factor in anti-Semitism than the more modern theories of race. Conspiracy theories, by comparison, were relatively more recent. The most widely promoted of these theories was the Protocol of the Elders of Zion, which purported to expose a worldwide Jewish plot to control the world. It attracted attention not only in Europe but also in England and North America. After the publication of Karl Marx’s works, conspiracy theorists inevitably also identified Jews with a revolutionary threat, although the term ‘communist’ did not come into usage until approximately 1919.¹⁹ In Nazi Germany, even so-called ‘liberal’ Jews were afraid of being tainted with the communist label. Ingeborg Hecht, ‘roped’ into joining the German Jewish Comrades’ Hiking Association, reacted with boredom when the leaders ‘felt duty bound to read us extracts from Das Kapital’. She had joined to engage in sports, especially hiking, and enjoyed the fun and the singing. Her parents, however, were ‘now doubly afraid … that our association might be branded Communist as well as Jewish and [be] hounded in consequence’.²⁰ Many conservative Germans had their fear of a link between Jews and communism confirmed when a few German communist leaders and anarchists were identified as Jews, despite these men neither adhering to the Jewish community nor receiving appreciable support from it.²¹

Adolf Hitler exploited these conspiracy fears and communist anxieties for his own purposes. His obsession, however, focused on a belief that the Jews’ ultimate objective was domination of the world and, once this was achieved, its complete destruction. How the Jews were to avoid being destroyed along with the rest of humanity does not seem to have been a consideration. Hitler regarded the destruction of Jews as essential to the salvation of humanity, for beneath the veneer of ‘a human look’, Jews were subhuman, Untermenschen. He promulgated an ideology of racial purity in which Germans, the Herrenvolk (master race), Aryans, were contrasted against non-Aryans, Jews, whom Hitler’s followers designated Ungeziefer (vermin).²² To be Aryan was to be, among other things, blond and blue eyed. Little Inge, Ingeborg Hecht’s half Jewish friend, was blond and blue eyed. Her friends teased, ‘Hitler and Goebbels would be madly envious of your “master race” looks.’²³

In Mein Kampf Hitler wrote, ‘Today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jews, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.’²⁴ Addressing the Hitler Youth in June 1935, Julius Streicher also identified Nazism and its anti-Jewish policies with the will of God when he stated: ‘[we] became fighters against the Jewish people, against that organized body of world criminals, against whom already Christ had fought.’²⁵ Many thousands of right-wing Germans endorsed this view that identified anti-Semitism with Christianity and the Jew with international crime, and thus made possible the anti-Jewish legislation of the 1930s. Most Germans, however, were probably unaware of the implications of these laws, and the legislation evoked little interest or enthusiasm among the masses.²⁶

Anti-Semitic decrees began in the spring of 1933 with the proclamation of a one-day boycott of all Jewish shops, the forcible retirement of all non-Aryan civil servants except for war veterans and their families, and the prohibition of all kosher (ritually clean according to Jewish law) butchering. Although not legally required to do so, already by 1933, well before the Nuremberg laws were enacted, peer pressure and threats had forced Henry K’s grandfather from his prestigious position as a university law professor.²⁷ Kaplan points out that ‘these earlier years shed light on the incremental nature of Nazi persecution.’²⁸ Insidiously, the pressure escalated. By September 1935 Jewish newspapers could no longer be sold in the street, even though Jewish publications – books, newspapers and magazines – could be sold in shops. The logic behind this appears to be that, being inferior mentally, Jews could not be expected to meet the high standards imposed on the German press, but that it was acceptable to allow shops to retail inferior Jewish literature because they were less public.²⁹ As repugnant as such racism might be, it nonetheless provided the Jewish community with a channel of communication when other areas were closed and, indeed, it was through the Jewish press that news of the Kindertransport later reached many families.

On 15 September 1935, the Nuremberg laws, the most prohibitive legislation to date, were promulgated. Among other restrictions, these made it a crime against the state to be married to a Jewish spouse and also deprived Jews of German citizenship. Parks, cinemas and swimming pools were closed to Jewish children and adults. To an adult this might not appear to be of serious significance, but to a child it could, and did, result in grievous humiliation. Hana Brady and her little brother George lined up with other children to see the film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. When they reached the top of the queue, they saw the sign, ‘No Jews Allowed’. Weeping and ashamed, they returned home.³⁰

A much more serious deprivation, however, was that it became virtually impossible to attend public school or university. David Lewinski was required to leave his school, as was Siggi Wasserman. Rudi Lowenstein’s teachers allowed him to stay but his brother suffered greatly from beatings and name calling.³¹Emmi’s teacher insisted that Emmi stand in the hallway while the class saluted the flag. ‘After all, you are a Jew, not a German,’ she said.³² Heidi Wachenheimer related a particularly distressing experience when the school’s principal came to speak to her class. ‘He then pointed a finger at me and said, “Get out, you dirty Jew.” I could not believe that this formerly kind, gentle person would say this to me. He repeated it, took me by the elbow, and shoved me out of the classroom.’³³ Fortunately, not all school authorities behaved that cruelly. Emile, for example, remembers his school principal ‘burst[ing] into tears when forced to forbid Jewish children from taking classes,’ while one of Monique’s teachers hid her temporarily until a permanent hiding place could be found.³⁴ The effect of all this negativity was that Jewish children became increasingly isolated. Hana Brady’s Aryan best friend promised, ‘We’ll be together forever, no matter what.’ Gradually, however, even she no longer came to play. Her parents had forbidden it.³⁵ Children appeared to parrot propaganda slogans picked up from the radio and the Nazi paper, Der Sturmer, which used such terms as Judenschwein (Jewish pig), Parasiten (parasites), and Ungeziefer (vermin).³⁶ The situation for both children and parents was becoming untenable.

Not surprisingly, Jewish emigration soared and approximately 33,000 Jews left the Third Reich almost immediately after the first anti-Jewi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Author biography
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Abbreviations
• Glossary
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• 1. Descent into Darkness
• 2. Exodus and Arrival
• 3. Strangers in your Midst
• 4. Evacuation and Internment
• 5. Crises, Cries and Lamentations
• 6. The Orthodox Experience
• 7. Jewish Christian Children
• 8. Hidden Children and Camp Survivors: The Postwar Refugees
• 9. In Later Years
• 10. Epilogue
• Notes
• Bibliography