... And the Policeman Smiled: 10,000 Children Escape from Nazi Europe

1

Beginnings

‘At school the class no longer stood up and chorused: "Good

morning, Fräulein Ratchen!" when the teacher came in;

instead we had to stand up, thrust out our arms and shout,

Heil Hitler! I never quite knew whether to join in or not.

I knew Hitler was evil and the cause of all our troubles, but

felt afraid not to raise my hand.’

First memories are of the railway station. Few of the children can immediately recall what happened in the days and weeks before the journey. It is as if their parents deliberately made life as ordinary as possible in a vain attempt to ease the inevitable trauma, or simply as a way of holding off reality.

They gathered in small groups, usually in the early morning when there were few other travellers about, the boys fidgeting in thick tweed suits, the girls more comfortable in woolly dresses and long coats buttoned up to the neck. Each child had a suitcase.

Little was said. The parents were tongue-tied by emotion, the children bewildered into silence. Only the teenagers had any clear idea as to why they were going away. The youngest were mostly consoled by fantasy – that they were off on holiday, or to stay with relatives for just a few weeks. Some were not told anything. It was worst for them. They were angry with their parents for packing them off and refused the final hug as they clambered aboard the train. The hurt was to stay with them always.

The jostle for a seat by the window took up the last few minutes. Those left on the platform waved and shouted through the billows of steam and, as the engine pulled forward, craned their necks for a last glimpse.

In the crowded compartments, the bitter sickness of loneliness took hold and there were many tears. ‘Never mind,’ said the older ones. ‘It won’t be long. You’ll soon see your families again!’ But few of them ever did.

This scene, repeated at least a hundred times in the year up to the beginning of the war, was of a Kindertransport – a random selection of young people, from infants to early teenagers, who were sent away to Britain by their parents as a last resort against Nazi persecution.

Some ten thousand children were saved in this way. They came from Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, Vienna and Prague. A few had relatives in Britain ready to take them in but the rest went to hostels, or were farmed out to foster parents or boarding schools. It was a new beginning with a new language; the start of a mounting succession of powerful and often bewildering demands on their capacity to adapt and survive.

The first transports arrived in the early days of December 1938. The De Praag docked at Harwich on 2 December with over two hundred children, mostly survivors of a Berlin orphanage burnt down by stormtroopers. Ten days later a transport arrived from Vienna with another two hundred children. Thereafter there were at least two children’s transports a week until the movement reached its peak in June and July 1939, with transports arriving daily and all but overwhelming the organisers. Bea Green, from Munich, remembers her escape:

I am fourteen years old and I am wearing a suit, a raincoat, a hat on the back of my head and gloves. I feel quite grown-up and excited. I have already made friends with two girls in my compartment, one older than I and one little orphan, a pretty girl. There is some shouting and waving and slowly the train moves forward. I see my mother stepping behind my father so I shouldn’t see her take out her handkerchief and put it to her face. I see the gesture and suddenly feel hollow in my stomach and my knees. But I cannot cry and we are off. Goodbye, Munich.

And now the excitement of travel and the anticipation of arrival. My tall travelling companion says she will be met by a couple who have already suggested she should call them Mummy and Daddy. I am puzzled by this. She has her own parents. I don’t know who will collect me. I do know that I am going to a lady who already has Margot Alsberg from Hamburg.

We spend what is left of the night in some big hall in Frankfurt where a lot more children join us and then we’re off to the Hoek van Holland. We come to the border of Holland and before leaving Germany we have to show our passports with the letter ‘J’ stamped on the front page in red. Also I have been given another name. I am now Maria Beate Sarah Siegel. I rather like it. I think it’s nice that all the other girls are also called Sarah. The border guards look at our passports. I am a bit nervous because my mother has hidden a couple of extra ten mark notes wrapped up in one of my sandwiches. It’s all right. The border guard is not interested in my sandwiches. More puffing and hissing of the engine and we are in Holland.

At our first stop there a team of big and very kind ladies comes on to the train with fresh orange juice and very white bread and butter. The bread is soft and delicious. I am surprised that the ladies are so very kind. I don’t know any of them. The train moves on and I see my first windmill. I am pleased that they are real and not just in story books. I must tell my mother, I think. And then it hits me – I won’t be seeing her to tell her these things.

It’s night time when we get to the ship. We sleep in bunks and arrive in Harwich at dawn. I cannot find all my luggage. I have more cases than originally stipulated. I don’t know why the Munich authorities let me take more. I have to use my English now to ask an official about these cases. I wish I didn’t have to. But I find them in another hall and feel triumphant and – and tired, both. A little girl cries and keeps repeating ‘Mutti, Mutti’. I put my arm round her and tell her she’ll see her soon. Then we have to get on to our train bound for London, Liverpool Street. Funny name, I think: Leberteich.

The exodus from Germany started within weeks of Hitler coming to power in January 1933. At first it was no more than a blip in the demand for extended holidays abroad. Most Germans, including most Jews, discounted Nazi racism as part of the overblown rhetoric of reawakening nationalism. Even after the April boycott of Jewish shops and businesses and numerous well-reported acts of unprovoked violence, a mood of hope prevailed in some Jewish circles:

Listening to his parents and their friends, young Philip Urbach, not then dreaming that within four years he would be on his way to England, leaving his home near Leipzig for ever, recalls a general conviction that ‘the old shame of defeat had been erased and that a bright future of economic and political improvement was beckoning the Germans’. This view was echoed abroad where Jewish leaders urged patience and restraint. Speaking at a London rally in October 1933, Leonard Montefiore, one of the aristocrats of Anglo-Jewry and soon to be a prime force in the Refugee Children’s Movement, refused to believe that Nazism was ‘only composed of hatred and prejudice’. He identified some worthy elements in National Socialism such as ‘a certain austerity and readiness for self-sacrifice, a spirit of patriotism’, and concluded: ‘… were it not for the anti-semitic plank in the Nazi programme there is no doubt that a large proportion of young German Jews would be enthusiastic followers of the movement.’ (Naomi Shepherd: Wilfrid Israel, 1984.)

The popular feeling among German Jews that they could somehow contain the wilder side of Nazism was rooted in a strong sense of national identity with national aspirations. There was no way in which they could be judged as essentially different from other Germans. After all, they shared a history going back a thousand years. German industry, law, medicine, science, literature and art drew heavily on Jewish talent. Defeat in the Great War led to a predictable hunt for scapegoats, but meanwhile, the Weimar Republic removed the last barriers against Jews entering the highest ranks of the civil service. Surely, it was argued, the Nazis would not sacrifice so much proven achievement.

But the dogma of National Socialism dictated otherwise.

In March 1933, Sir Horace Rumbold, British ambassador to Berlin, reported on the mounting hostility to leading Jewish citizens.

Thus, today’s papers state that Professor Einstein’s house has been searched for explosives by SS and SA troops. Herr Bruno Walter, the celebrated conductor, was recently prevented from conducting a concert at Leipzig, and then one at Berlin, on the now classical excuse that such a proceeding on his part would result in the disturbance of public order. The house of Herr Feuchtwanger, the author of Jew Süss, was searched by S A troops, who carried away the manuscript of a novel. One of the most eminent physicians in the country, of Jewish persuasion, who is head of a well-known clinic, was forced to sign a paper agreeing to leave Germany. His assistants who were of the same persuasion were likewise dismissed.

There are many instances of musicians and officials of Jewish race having been dismissed from orchestras and theatres, and in one town in Silesia the Nazis invaded the law courts and summarily forced judges and lawyers of Jewish race to cease their activities.

There was no more euphemistic talk of vacations abroad as an antidote to Nazism. Now, those who seriously thought of getting out knew that they had to plan a long way ahead. Even if, as one observer commented, ‘they stand with one foot in Germany’ the lengthening queue of visa applicants accepted that it would be years rather than months before they could return.

In a sense, this made the decision easier for the wealthier families who had to balance the likelihood of the Nazis staying in power against the legal requirement to hand over twenty-five per cent of their capital as a condition of taking the remainder out of the country. Introduced in 1931 to prevent the collapse of German currency, the ‘escape tax’ (Reichsfluchtsteuer) was a powerful argument against emigration only so long as Nazism was seen as a temporary phenomenon. When that illusion was crushed, the exit charge was acknowledged as a bargain.

The moneyed class, particularly those with business connections overseas, had the best chance of leaving Germany without fuss. Along with leading academics, and well-known actors, singers and writers they were best equipped to re-establish themselves without causing their host country any financial embarrassment.

The prospects for the ordinary run of Jewish citizens were far less promising. Europe and America were still struggling to climb out of a massive trade recession which had cut living standards and caused heavy unemployment. The last thing any government wanted was a huge influx of German refugees. If they were unable to fend for themselves they would be a drain on overstretched resources; if they lived up to their reputation for enterprise and hard work they would take jobs from those already in possession. A third possibility, that if the incoming Jews were so industrious, far from diminishing the pool of employment they would actually create jobs, was studiously ignored.

Another factor counting against emigrating Jews was the fear of importing anti-Semitism. If it can happen in Germany it can happen here, went the argument. There was a case to be made on these lines, as subsequent events were to prove, but it was not one that was strong enough to justify shutting out the problem. Yet this is precisely what happened. In one country after another the barriers went up.

The British law on immigration allowed for special treatment ‘in the case of an immigrant who proves that he is seeking admission to this country solely to avoid prosecution on religious or political grounds’, and the 1905 Aliens Act promised that ‘leave to land shall not be refused on the ground merely of want of means or the probability of his becoming a charge on the rates’. But in the early thirties, the government was unwilling to extend these provisions to German Jewry. Instead, all Continental refugees were lumped together under a general rule which allowed them to enter the country if they could support themselves and their dependants or if they had jobs to go to which did not appeal to the British. In effect, this meant domestic service or nursing for women and agriculture or the coal mines for the men.

German Jews in middle-class occupations – teaching, medicine, the law – who were among the first to be ostracised, naturally resisted the offer to take up manual labour. Instead they tried to persuade immigration authorities that they were self-supporting, hoping, once they were in, to find a niche in their own professions. The strategy worked well in the early days of Nazi rule when the refugees were so few as to be easily absorbed, but when their numbers increased to a point where chauvinistic politicians could raise the scare of an invasion by stealth, the restrictions were tightened and stronger evidence was demanded of every immigrant who claimed to be able to pay his way.

It was the same throughout Europe.

The one bright spot was the Netherlands where a liberal policy towards refugees went beyond a friendly welcome to practical help in resettlement, notably by creating training centres like the Wieringen farm, a large acreage of reclaimed land in the Zuider Zee. Having set the example, the Dutch were in a strong position to demand a concerted effort to solve the refugee problem. This they did at the League of Nations in Geneva where intense lobbying by Jewish groups helped towards the appointment of a high commissioner to negotiate with the German government on behalf of refugees and to plan for their resettlement. To avoid the threat of veto by the Germans, who were then still holding on to their League membership, the high commissioner was given the League blessing, but not actually made part of the League administration. He was to have an office outside Geneva, though not too far away, at the Lausanne Palace Hotel, to be financed mainly by Jewish funds, with a staff wise in the ways of international politics but not directly accountable to the League.

But as soon as the plan was formalised, the need for it disappeared. The Germans marched out of the League. In theory the way was clear to rehabilitate the high commissioner. On the other hand, this would have meant another round of negotiations with inevitable time-wasting. In September 1933 it was decided to leave the high commissioner in limbo, of but apart from the League, prestigious but utterly powerless.

The man chosen for this impossible task was the very un-Jewish James Macdonald, a fair, blue-eyed American who was director of a privately funded organisation for international understanding. One of his chief lieutenants was Norman Bentwich, a lawyer academic, a pillar of the Anglo-Jewish community, a Zionist who had lived and worked in Palestine as a high ranking civil servant and a spirited promoter of good causes.