Other Schindlers: Why Some People Chose to Save Jews in the Holocaust

By Agnes Grunwald-Spier and Sir Martin Gilbert

The inspiring stories of courageous non-Jews who risked their own lives to save Jews from the Holocaust Thanks to Thomas Keneally’s book Schindler’s Ark, and the film based on it, Schindler’s List, people have become more aware of the fact that, in the midst of Hitler’s extermination of the Jews, courage and humanity could still overcome evil. While six million Jews were murdered by the Nazi regime, some were saved through the actions of non-Jews whose consciences would not allow them to pass by on the other side, and many are honored by Israel's official memorial to Jewish Holocaust victims, Yad Vashem, as "Righteous among the Nations" for their actions. As a baby, Agnes Grunwald-Spier was herself saved from the horrors of Auschwitz by an unknown official, and is now a trustee of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust. She has collected the stories of 30 individuals who rescued Jews, providing a new insight into why these people were prepared to risk so much for their fellow men and women. With a foreword by one of the leading experts on the subject, this is an ultimately uplifting account of how some good deeds really do shine in a weary world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Dec 26, 2010
• ISBN: 9780752462431

Book preview

Dedicated to the memory of my beloved parents

Leona and Philipp Grunwald

I felt the Jews were being destroyed

I had to help. There was no choice.

Oskar Schindler, 1956

You are a shining light amidst the darkness of the Holocaust;

your stunning bravery is a testament to all humanity.

HE Dror Zeigerman, Israeli Ambassador in London, when presenting Henk Huffener with his Righteous Among the Nations Medal 3 February 1999

CONTENTS

Title Page

Dedication

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1 Rescuers with Religious Motives

2 Rescuers with Humanitarian Motives

3 Rescuers with Other Motives

Conclusions

Appendix I Righteous Among the Nations & Yad Vashem

Appendix II Tables

Table 1 Details of Rescuers and Informants

Table 2 Righteous Among the Nations and National Populations

Table 3 Details of Rescuers and Rescued

Bibliography

Copyright

FOREWORD

It gives me great pleasure to write these few words about Agnes Grunwald-Spier’s book about the rescuers. No one can read these pages without a renewed sense of admiration for those who risked their lives to save Jewish lives. Both the stories themselves, and the motives of the rescuers, are examined in this powerful, thought-provoking book, the product of many years of research and effort.

Each story is precious. Each story throws more light into the dark recesses of those evil times. Each story can inspire by its strength of moral purpose.

Agnes Grunwald-Spier makes reference to an important, unavoidable gap in the recognition of righteous deeds. There were many hundreds, even thousands of acts of rescue that failed, mostly through betrayal by a neighbour or a local collaborator, of which no testimony survives: individuals, and even whole families, murdered because they were caught saving Jews. Usually at the very moment of discovery the would-be rescuers and those they were seeking to save were murdered by a savage occupation authority for whom attempting to rescue a Jew was a crime punishable by death. Records of German-occupied Poland show how widespread these reprisal killings were.

Where the names are not recorded, the historian cannot piece together a narrative, and no honour can be bestowed; Agnes Grunwald-Spier rightly calls this a ‘tragic fact’.

But this is not in any way a negative book. Its stories are inspiring ones. There is great suffering in these pages, and also great nobility. Agnes Grunwald-Spier has written a book that can serve as a vista of hope for mankind, a modern-day manual for a code of conduct that contrasts with, and can redeem, the selfish, negative, destructive impulses that are still with us today in far too many areas of the globe.

Sir Martin Gilbert

10 March 2010

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A ‘thank you’ seems inadequate to the large group of informants whose life stories have made this book possible. However, I am most grateful to them for their patience and time and also the information on which this book is based. I started my research in 1999 and so in many cases we have had contact over several years and developed a warm friendship. This book tells their extraordinary stories and I could not have written it without them. Sadly, some of my original informants have died since I initially consulted them but often other members of their family have taken over the role:

John Paul Abranches of California, for information on his father Dr Aristides de Sousa Mendes, a rescuer in Bordeaux. John Paul died in February 2009, but his nephew Sebastian Mendes has provided additional information.

Olympia Barczynska of Leeds, for information on her uncle Jozef Barczynski, a rescuer in Poland.

Judge Moshe Bejski for information on Oskar Schindler, who was himself on Schindler’s list and Gabriele Nissim from Italy, for information on Bejski himself and Yad Vashem. Judge Bejski died in 2008.

Primavera Boman-Behram of London and New York, for information on her mother Hilde Holger, and Dr Margit Granz of Graz University for information on her rescuer Charles Petras and exile in India during the Second World War.

Bertha Bracey’s relatives and friends – Alma Cureton, Brenda Bailey, Joan Bamford and Pat Webb – for information on the rescuer Bertha.

The late 11th Duke of Devonshire (1920–2004) for information on his father’s attitude to Jews.

Miriam Dunner of London, for information on her rescuers Jelle and Elizabeth van Dyk in the Netherlands. Miriam died unexpectedly in 2006.

Betty and David Eppel of Jerusalem, for information on Betty’s rescuers Josephine and Victor Guicherd in France. David died in 2008.

Charles and April Fawcett of London, for information on Charles’ work as a rescuer in Marseilles. Charles died in February 2008.

Otto Fleming of Sheffield, for information on Mitzi Saidler, a rescuer in Vienna, and Dr Ho’s visas to Shanghai. Otto died in 2007. His widow, Dorothy Fleming, a member of the Kindertransport, has provided additional information.

Milton Gendel of Rome, for information on the Costaguti family who were rescuers in Rome.

Lea Goodman of London, for information on Richard Strauch and other rescuers in Poland.

Rose Marie Guilfoyle of Brussels, for visiting Robert Maistriau to hear about his role as a rescuer and also telling me about Gisele Reich’s rescue, both in Belgium.

Gerda Haas of Freiburg, for information on rescuers and for first telling me of Else Pintus’ diary about being hidden in Poland.

Agnes Hirschi of Bern, for information on her stepfather Carl Lutz, a rescuer in Budapest.

Manli Ho of San Francisco, for information on her father Dr Feng Shan Ho, a rescuer in Vienna.

Henk Huffener of Guildford, for information on his family’s role as rescuers in the Netherlands. Henk died in 2006 but Philip Hardaker provided information on Henk’s post-war life.

Margaret Kagan of Huddersfield, for information on her rescuer Vytautas Rinkevicius in Lithuania.

Claire Keen-Thiryn of Belgium, for information on her family’s work in the Resistance and as rescuers in Belgium.

Josie Martin-Levy of California, for information on her rescuer Soeur St Cybard in France. Additional help was provided by Daniel Soupizet of Lesterps, Bernadette Landréa of Confolens and Louis Lacalle, great nephew of Soeur St Cybard.

Ron Mower of Hertfordshire, for information on Hermann Maas, who rescued Martha, his wife, and Paul, his brother-in-law, in Germany. Sadly, Ron died in 2004 and Paul in 2009. I am grateful to Ron and Martha’s son Paul for his support.

Henri Obstfeld of London, for information on his rescuers Jacob and Hendrika Klerk in the Netherlands, and Evert Kwaadgras, the archivist of the Grand Lodge of the Dutch Freemasons in The Hague for information on Freemasons.

Benedetta Origo of Sienna, for information on her mother Iris Origo who was a rescuer in Italy, and for telling me to contact Milton Gendel. Frank Auerbach for information on how Iris Origo saved him, and Kate Austin at the Marlborough Galleries for biographical details on Frank Auerbach.

Monica Porter of London, for information on her mother Vali Rácz, a rescuer in Budapest.

Jaap van Proosdij of Pretoria, South Africa, for information about his rescues in the Netherlands.

Maria Sanders of Poole for information on living in the Hague during the war, particularly the ‘Hunger Winter’ of 1944.

John Schoen of Glamorgan, Wales for information on his parents Joost and Anna, who were rescuers in the Netherlands. John died in 2007. I am grateful to his son Peter Schoen, his nephew Ed van Rijswijk of Amsterdam, and Arleen Kennedy of Massachusetts, whose mother was hidden by the Schoen family, for additional information.

Angela Schluter, for information on her mother Edith Hahn-Beer’s story of rescue in Austria.

Doris and Ernest Stiefel of Seattle, for information on Else Pintus and her rescuers in Poland.

Naomi Szinai of London, for information on her rescuers, in particular János Tóth, in Hungary.

Margarita Turkov of Oregon, for information on her paid rescuer Pani Borciñska in Poland.

Henry Walton of Worksop, for information on the rescuers of his parents, Siegmund and Grete Weltinger, in Berlin.

Professor Irena Veisaite of Vilnius, for information on her rescuer Stefanija Ladigiené in Lithuania.

Additionally, there are several other people I’d like to thank here. Three people in particular encouraged me through the long and difficult times between research and publication: Emeritus Professor Aubrey Newman of Leicester University was a kind advisor and also helped with proofreading; Kevin Patrick was a consistent support; and my dear friend Brenda Zinober held my hand through some difficult times. All three were always there for me when I needed their support.

I would also like to thank Sir Martin Gilbert for his support over many years and for kindly writing his generous Foreword when he was so busy with the Chilcot Inquiry.

Thanks go to the staff of the British Library, the Freemasons’ Library, the Friends’ House Library, the Wiener Library and Yad Vashem for their help, and Phil Jacobs, Tom Keve, Bernadette Landréa and Hamish Ritchie for their translations from Italian, Hungarian, French and German respectively.

This book would never have happened without the input and encouragement of: Robert Smith, who helped me write my book proposal and introduced me to Daniel Crewe, who pointed me in the right direction; my editor at The History Press, Simon Hamlet, and his team of Abbie and Christine, with Hazel, who aided the promotion of the book, who all gave me faith in my work and made publication a very pleasant process; my middle son Ben, who helped in many practical ways, as well as my other two sons Dan and Simon; all three encouraged me when I flagged. Finally, I remember with affection and gratitude my history mistress from Sutton High School, Miss Lucy Clarke (1903–93),

who gave me a love of history which has enriched my life.

Inevitably, even with all this help, there will be mistakes and these, I am afraid, are mine alone.

Agnes Grunwald-Spier

Sheffield and London

INTRODUCTION

One morning in Budapest, during the autumn of 1944, an unknown official in charge of deporting Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz sent all the women accompanied by children back to their homes. My mother, Leona Grunwald, was one of those women – and I was a tiny baby in her arms.

I have no means of knowing who that official was and what his motives were for what he did. I cannot know his name or his fate, but it is chilling to think that but for his actions, on arrival at Auschwitz I would have been tossed into the fires with other babies – murdered before I was aware of life. His actions helped both of us to survive the Holocaust.

As George Eliot wrote in the final sentence of Middlemarch:

For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.¹

The actions of the Holocaust rescuers are truly one of the lights in that great darkness – many of the rescuers do lie in ‘unvisited graves’, unrecognised by Yad Vashem or anybody else. Their bravery will no longer be remembered with the death of those they rescued, merely with the passage of time or even because their rescue attempt failed with tragic results for all concerned. This book attempts to record their courage and understand the motivation of those who had the insight to know what was the right thing to do and the courage to do it, whatever the personal risks.

Stories of the heroism of rescuers have been told by many in the sixty-five years since the true horror of the Nazis’ policies became apparent. Even now, however, many still remain untold. There is very little time, as the baby born in July 1944 is now 65; anyone who was an adult witness to the Holocaust will be over 80. Time is running out: for example, Hilde Holger, who responded to my plea for information aged 95, died before I could meet her, but her daughter helped me instead (see p. 136). Additionally, many of those who provided information and stories have not lived to see this book published. Even the children of rescuers and survivors are ageing. It was vital that this task was completed before it was too late and I, as a fortunate survivor, felt an obligation to attempt a small part of it. Encouragement came from the Talmud:

Rabbi Tarphon said, The day is short, and the work is great, and the labourers are sluggish, and the reward is much, and the Master of the house is urgent. He also used to say, It is not thy duty to complete the work, but neither art thou free to desist from it.²

The question may be asked: what is the point of investigating such stories that are now over sixty-five years old? What is their validity in today’s world and for us in the twenty-first century? Certainly the story of the rescuers is one of the few optimistic aspects of the Holocaust. My interest in the subject was aroused by my dissertation on Varian Fry for my MA in Holocaust Studies at Sheffield University (1996–98). I had come across Varian Fry accidentally, through seeing a BBC documentary about him in June 1997, and became so interested in what he achieved that after I had completed the MA, I felt that the motivation of rescuers in general was a subject I should like to research further. I wanted to examine what moved rescuers to take enormous risks, risks not only for themselves but also their families, to save someone’s life at a time when normal moral standards of democratic life were suspended under the Nazis.

Varian Fry was not the stuff of which heroes are traditionally made. Yet he was for many years the only American recognised as a Righteous Gentile – he chose to involve himself in another continent’s woes. He crossed the Atlantic Ocean to become embroiled in Europe’s horrors. He was an unassuming man who, after the fall of France in June 1940, offered to go to Vichy France to rescue refugees for the Emergency Rescue Committee (ERC). He only offered to go if nobody else could be found and he went because nobody else was found. He was meant to rescue 200 artists and writers on a list produced by the ERC, using visas obtained by President Roosevelt’s wife Eleanor. In the end, he probably saved about 4,000 refugees. On his return to America, after thirteen months, he wrote about his experiences. When the book was finally published in 1945, he explained why he had agreed to go on such a perilous venture:

After several weeks of fruitless searching for a suitable agent to send to France, the Committee selected me. I had had no experience in refugee work, and none in underground work. But I accepted the assignment because, like the members of the Committee, I believed in the importance of democratic solidarity.³

However, he also had other reasons. He wrote about his warm sentiments towards many of the writers and artists whose work had given him pleasure:

novelists like Franz Werfel and Lion Feuchtwanger; painters like Marc Chagall and Max Ernst; sculptors like Jaques Lipchitz. For some of these men, although I knew them only through their work, I had a deep love; and to them I owed a heavy debt of gratitude for the pleasure they had given me. Now that they were in danger, I felt obliged to help them, if I could; just as they, without knowing it had often in the past helped me.⁴

Fry cited his sympathy for the German and Austrian Socialist Parties, based primarily on their excellent workers’ housing projects of the 1920s. ‘I had not always agreed with their ideas or their methods, but I knew when I saw those housing projects that their hearts were in the right place.’⁵

But earlier experiences as a journalist were highly influential. Fry had visited Germany in the 1930s and thus had an insight shared by few of his countrymen:

Finally, I knew from first-hand experience what defeat at the hands of Hitler could mean. In 1935 I visited Germany and tasted the atmosphere of oppression which the Hitler regime had brought. I talked to many anti-Nazis and Jews, shared their anxiety and their sense of helplessness, felt with them the tragic hopelessness of their situation. And while I was in Berlin I witnessed on the Kurfuerstendamm the first great pogrom against the Jews, saw with my own eyes young Nazi toughs gather and smash up Jewish-owned cafés, watched with horror as they dragged Jewish patrons from their seats, drove hysterical, crying women down the street, knocked over an elderly man and kicked him in the face. Now that that same oppression had spread to France, I could not remain idle as long as I had any chance at all of saving even a few of its intended victims.⁶

Although some of this was reported in the New York Times on 17 July 1935, with the byline ‘Editor describes rioting in Berlin’, the most horrific incident was recorded by fellow American Mary Jayne Gold. Mary was a wealthy socialite who met Varian in Marseilles and funded some of his rescue activities:

At a café, Varian watched a pair of storm troopers approach the table of a Jewish-looking individual. When the poor man reached nervously for his beer, with a quick thrust of his knife one of the storm troopers pinned the man’s hand to the wooden table. The victim let out a cry and bent over in pain unable to move. The ruffian shouted something about Jewish blood on German blades, withdrew the knife, and swaggered away. Varian heard him say to his companion, ‘this day is a holiday for us.’

Varian told me the story in a low, mumbling voice, as he often spoke when he was deeply moved. I think the mental image of that hand nailed to the table beside the beer mug had something to do with his decision to go.⁷

My study of Varian Fry and his colleagues, such as Charles Fawcett, showed me that rescuers’ motives were not as simple as they sometimes claimed. Although they sometimes gave a single reason for their actions, in fact the background to their actions was far more complex. It also crystallised a simple and obvious truth which may become dwarfed in the statistics of the victims of the Holocaust – one person can make a difference.

Conversely, it also underlined the tragedy of the Holocaust. If more bystanders had become rescuers, then the millions of victims would actually have survived and flourished. Oskar Schindler saved 1,100 Jews and at the end of Spielberg’s film, Schindler’s List, the descendants of these survivors appeared – they numbered around 6,000. I am no mathematician, but on the same basis, if the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis had survived they would now have 32 million descendants.

Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust museum and Jewish people’s living memorial to the Holocaust,⁸ has now recognised 23,226 non-Jews as Righteous Among the Nations⁹ (see Table 2). It should be noted here that not only Righteous Gentiles helped Jews in the war. Belated recognition is now being given to Jews who helped Jews, but many others fought different battles. The Righteous scheme was devised specifically to recognise non-Jewish rescuers, and very strict criteria have to be met. It cannot reward other forms of courage, as in the controversy over Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who Yad Vashem acknowledges as ‘a martyr in the struggle against Nazism’ but has not yet been proved to have ‘specifically helped Jews’.¹⁰

On 2 February 1996 Varian Fry was named as the first American ‘Righteous Among Nations’ by Yad Vashem. The American Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, acknowledging the posthumous honour nearly thirty years after Varian’s death in 1967, said: ‘We owe Varian Fry our deepest gratitude, but we also owe him a promise – a promise never to forget the horrors that he struggled against so heroically, a promise to do whatever is necessary to ensure that such horrors never happen again.’¹¹

Walter Meyerhof, who with his parents escaped from France over the Pyrenees with Varian’s help, established the Varian Fry Foundation in 1997. Its purpose is to teach schoolchildren the lessons outlined by Warren Christopher and, as Walter explained to me, to demonstrate that ‘one person can make a difference’.¹² Walter’s father, Otto Meyerhof, shared the 1922 Nobel Prize for Medicine with A.V. Hill, who was later to become Secretary of the Royal Society 1935–45. In 1933 Hill became involved in the Academic Assistance Council (AAC), which helped scholars and scientists from abroad escape the Nazis.

Many rescuers seem surprised that what they did was of interest to anybody else. Modest expressions such as ‘what they did was normal or anyone would have done the same’ are quite common; loyalty to old friends or good employers are frequent reasons, as is opposition to the Nazis’ policies, if not necessarily being the result of wanting to save Jews. Others saw such rescue as an integral part of being in the Resistance or the logical result of their parents’ upbringing. Many books have examined the background of rescuers and tried to find patterns of behaviour based on class, education or other similar sociological reasons. Perry London was one of the first to study this topic in the 1960s. He noted three main characteristics of rescuers. He specified a spirit of adventure, a sense of being socially marginal and intense identification with a parent of strong moral character. Such categorisation is unsatisfactory because for every rescuer who falls into the neat boundaries of his category, another one pops up who defies them. The most common reasons noted are religious beliefs or perceiving that it was one’s duty to help another who was in trouble. Other reasons are the sanctity of life, obeying one’s conscience or shame at not helping a neighbour.

By examining the motivation of several rescuers who may not previously have been written about, it is possible to establish why some bystanders to the Holocaust became rescuers and why so many remained bystanders. An understanding of what influenced their behaviour has relevance today, when the need to support each other in society still exists even if the circumstances are, thankfully, quite different. Naturally, I am aware that whilst the Jews were numerically by far the major target of the Nazis’ racial policies, many other groups were targeted for persecution and murder. My concentration on the Jewish Holocaust is not intended to diminish or ignore their suffering.

I was determined from the start to write about rescuers and the rescued whose experiences were not particularly in the public domain. As a single parent living in Sheffield, I therefore needed to find a way of making contact with people who had not necessarily been approached before. In August 2000 I targeted journals and magazines which would be read by people likely to have personal experiences of the Holocaust, or who might know of others with a story to record, and asked them to publish details of my research. These were: 

Common Ground – the Journal of the Council of Christians and Jews (CCJ)

Jewish Telegraph – a regional Jewish newspaper published in Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester.

Menorah – a magazine for Jewish members of HM forces and small Jewish communities.

Information – The Magazine of the Association of Jewish Refugees.

I also attended two major events where I arranged for each delegate to receive a copy of my project details in their conference pack. These were the Oxford Holocaust Conference Remembering for the Future, held in July 2000, and the European Council of Jewish Communities Presidents’ Conference, held in Barcelona in May 2000. One of the Italian delegates at the latter conference wrote an article for Shalom, the journal of the Rome Jewish Community.

Additionally, contact was made with the South African Jewish community through my friend Brenda Zinober, and all the members of the Leeds-based Holocaust Survivors Friendship Association (HSFA) were also circularised.

In 2002 the London Jewish Cultural Centre held an exhibition called ‘Visas for Life’ about diplomats who between them saved about 250,000 Jews from the Nazis. The opening event gave me an opportunity to meet John Paul Abranches, son of de Sousa Mendes,¹³ who lived in California, and Agnes Hirschi, stepdaughter of Carl Lutz,¹⁴ who lives in Switzerland, with whom I had been corresponding for some time.

Other rescue stories were accumulated through the press, in particular The Jewish Chronicle and obituaries in The Times. Some have been purely as a result of social conversations and sheer coincidence. I attend a lot of meetings and when, in response to enquiries about what I do, I tell people about my research, quite often they can name someone I should contact. There has certainly been a snowball effect over the last few years. I was surprised at being criticised for stating that these stories were collected at random – I find this odd. Collecting stories about Holocaust rescuers cannot be done in the same way as researching the consumption of fish fingers. Extraordinary stories turn up in the most unlikely ways.

In July 2004 I was in Brussels for a meeting at the EU and wondered if someone bilingual would speak to Robert Maistriau,¹⁵ a rescuer who only spoke French, for me. One of the EU secretaries consented and subsequently in conversation told the driver assigned to us what she had agreed to do for me. He quite spontaneously told her that his mother, Gisele Reich, had been saved from deportation to Auschwitz at the age of 5 in 1941 because the Nazi officer at the transit camp at Malines (Mechelen) felt sorry for her – she was a sickly child who suffered from a lung disease. The driver had never mentioned this to anyone outside his family before and the story would not have come to light but for my request for help and this chance conversation.

My efforts resulted in the creation of a group of about thirty rescuers/rescued from a variety of countries, where I have had personal contact with either the rescuer or the rescued, or their child or other close relative. This has enabled me to pursue the question of motivation directly, by questioning someone extremely close to or actually involved in the events described. Some of these people have also written books about what happened and these have been referred to in the text. Nevertheless, additional specific information has always been obtained by interview (face to face or by telephone), e-mail or letter, and these are all detailed in the footnotes.

The book consists of four parts. The first three contain the narratives of the rescuers and those they rescued. These are categorised by their expressed motivation – religious convictions, humanitarian motives, being a member of the Resistance, feelings of loyalty to the rescued and paid rescuers. The final section discusses the relevance of these events to our lives today and attempts to understand what turns a bystander into a rescuer.

This book is a personal attempt to show the general reader the reality of the Holocaust. This is particularly important now, when the Holocaust is being regularly denied and its scale continually trivialised. Additionally, we are seeing a swing to extreme right-wing politics. When I talk to young people about the Holocaust I ask them to remember four things:

Six million innocent Jews were persecuted and murdered through sheer hatred, including 1.5 million children.