The Other Schindlers

by Agnes Grunwald-Spier

  Carl Lutz’s stepdaughter wrote to me: ‘My father always considered his time in Budapest and the rescue of innocent Jews as the most important part of his life.’5 She subsequently told me: ‘It was the main subject he talked about. He wrote lots of letters and reports but never wrote his memoirs.’6 Jaap van Proosdij also said that the period when he was helping the Jews was the time when he felt he was most useful in his life.

  Some of the rescuers were not particularly pro-Jewish but their aid was offered as being part of the Resistance or out of loyalty or neighbourliness. The Thiryn family and the Costagutis fell into this group. It has been said that you don’t have to like someone to save them.

  Many of the rescued kept close contact with their rescuers after the war. Betty Eppel went to see the Guicherds every year until they died and Suze Brown kept in close touch with the Schoens and visited them every year from America. Even after her death, her widower Arnold and daughters have kept in touch with the Schoens, although the people involved with the rescue are all now dead. Arnold told me how much Suze thought of the family and how she had been so traumatised that she had never spoken to her daughters about her experiences.7 Margaret Kagan kept in touch with Vytautas as much as the Cold War allowed, and her cousin cradled her rescuer as she died years later. Hermann Maas kept in touch with the Rosenzweig children and continued his work through the ICCJ. The ties between these people were strong, not just because of the debt of saving their lives, but often because living together created powerful bonds – as with Betty Eppel, who experienced very strong love and affection from the Guicherds. Else Pintus, who never married and had no children, left her property to the Stenzels who hid her for two and a half years and saved her life. Irena Veisaite is still in touch with her rescuer’s family and regards them as close family.

  Some hidden children were traumatised by the need to return to parents they did not remember, as with Miriam Dunner, who remained closer to her foster mother Elizabeth than her own mother; and even after Elizabeth died, she continued to speak to her foster father Jelle every Sunday, until he too died eight months later. The Eppels did not want to go back with the father they hardly knew. When Josie Martin’s parents turned up for her in August 1944: ‘I took one look and I knew I didn’t want to go with them. I even pretended I didn’t know who they were.’8 No one had counselling in those days and people were just expected to get on with their lives and be glad they were one of the ‘lucky’ ones. It appears that Josie’s parents did not stay in touch with Soeur St Cybard, which Josie regrets to this day. Frank Auerbach too regrets not contacting Iris Origo, but he was only 8 at the time and it was never suggested to him. Manli Ho has not found many of the thousands her father saved.

  If we look at the diplomats who saved thousands of people with a signature on pieces of paper, without exception all of them suffered in their subsequent careers – some with considerable financial loss. Dr Ho, Carl Lutz and de Sousa Mendes were all criticised for over-reaching their authority. Both Ho and de Sousa Mendes lost their pensions after decades of loyal service.

  It is significant that many relatives I have been in touch with were unaware of much I had discovered. Louis Lacalle, grand-nephew of Soeur St Cybard, had no idea of her activities until I wrote to him. Paul Mower, son of Martha Mower, who was saved with her brother Paul, had little idea of how they had made contact with Hermann Maas. Benedetta Origo only found out about her mother’s rescue of Jewish children after she died. It seems understandable that rescuers would perhaps not brag about their actions, but perhaps the rescued might have told their families more.

  Nechama Tec, who attempted to establish the social determinants of rescuers, eventually concluded: ‘These rescuers acted in ways that were natural to them’ and she also noted that they came from all strata of society. Zygmunt Bauman juxtaposes Tec’s conclusions with research on the high number of divorces amongst hijack victims, as documented in Le Monde. Previously perfectly happily married couples apparently found that the experience of being hijacked together revealed aspects of their spouse’s personality that were unfavourable, and ‘they saw their partners in a new light’. Le Monde concluded that in fact these two sides of the spouse’s personality were Janus-like, but it was merely the experience of being hijacked that had revealed the other, ‘which was always present but invisible’. Bauman makes a connection between this research and Tec’s concluding observation:

  ‘were it not for the Holocaust, most of these helpers might have continued on their independent paths, some pursuing charitable actions, some leading simple, unobtrusive lives. They were dormant heroes, often indistinguishable from those around them.’ One of the most powerfully (and convincingly) argued conclusions of the study was the impossibility of ‘spotting in advance’ the signs, or symptoms, or indicators, of individual readiness for sacrifice, or of cowardice in the face of adversity; that is, to decide, outside the context that calls them into being or just ‘wakes them up’, the probability of their later manifestation.9

  Varian Fry was precisely this type of person – a most unlikely rescuer. However, this inability to predict future behaviour also applies to the perpetrators. It is significant that in reviewing a new biography of Eichmann it was noted:

  Nothing in Eichmann’s Protestant background in provincial Austria suggests why he became a mass murderer; his family was unexceptional, and he experienced no difficulties in his chosen line of work as a salesman of fuel oils, a job that familiarised him with distribution and transportation.10

  Judge Moshe Bejski, who had been saved by Oskar Schindler, wrote in 1974:

  Unfortunately, no study has yet been carried out on the motives of those who, despite the risk involved, did not bow to the edicts of the occupying authorities or conform to the behaviour of the general population and extended help to Jews. In each case the motives are different, but there is a common denominator among the ‘Righteous’ – the humanitarian motivation which dictates a charitable attitude toward one’s fellow man. Hostility toward the occupying authorities and opposition to the cruel acts they perpetrated against the Jewish population were certainly important, but even in these cases, the humanitarian motivation was dominant. Very often religious conviction motivated individuals to help Jews. This is paradoxical, as it is known, and it has been confirmed at this conference, that the Church qua Church did almost nothing to induce its adherents to extend help to the persecuted Jews. Nevertheless, quite a few cases have come to our attention in which it was the individual’s profound religious feeling that motivated him to fulfil the command: ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.’ Of course personal acquaintance and friendship between the rescuer and the rescued also constituted a motive for extending help in time of trouble. We have already mentioned those of the ‘Righteous Among the Nations’ for whom acts of rescue constituted an integral part of their underground activities.11

  In the preceding chapters the stories of rescuers have been examined, some of whom fall into the categories discussed by Dr Bejski. Whilst the rescuers were gathered in a somewhat random fashion (see Introduction), in that they or the person they rescued presented themselves to me, they come from various countries and from different strata in society. They also stated different motives for their actions. Table 3 gives their background and demonstrates that rescuers were not confined to any particular background, degree of education, political, religious or economic grouping.

  We can therefore see that rescuers were motivated both by conditioning from the various influences on them and by an inherent sense of justice. This sense of justice and fair play appears in comments about many of the rescuers such as Jacob Klerk, who looked after Henri Obstfeld, and John Schoen’s family, who saved Suze.

  Perhaps the most significant aspect is the surprise most of them express when asked why they did what they did. Many, including the Guicherds and Vytautas Rinkevicius, said it was normal – anyone would have done it – yet the maths proves them wrong – most people didn’t. If the
y had, there would have been no Holocaust and I would not have written this book.

  DO SMALL GESTURES OF RESISTANCE AMOUNT TO RESCUE?

  Studies of the Holocaust traditionally discuss four categories: perpetrators, bystanders, rescuers and victims. However, Hubert Locke, who describes himself as a black American Christian, has queried these categories as a vast oversimplification. To support his view he refers to the economic boycott, expected to last a week, announced on 1 April 1933. In fact, it fizzled out after one day because ordinary Germans refused to participate:

  There are countless stories of little old ladies who said, ‘I’ve always shopped at that grocery store. I know it’s owned by the Steins but I’m not going to pay any attention to the Brown Shirt thugs who are standing out front saying, “Don’t buy Jewish goods”.’ People like this don’t fit into any of the conventional categories: they were weren’t perpetrators, they weren’t victims and they certainly weren’t bystanders. How are we to understand their motivation?12

  Did these little old ladies end up hiding Jews? We don’t know about them. We do know about Henry Walton’s parents; we know about the Lovenheim book; we know about the people who were kind to Victor Klemperer and we do know that Mitzi did.

  Victor Klemperer (1881–1960) was an academic who kept diaries of the Nazi years, which were published in 1999. Even though he had converted to Protestantism in 1912 and was married to an ‘Aryan’, he suffered the same gradual and serious deprivation as the other Jews. One of the Nazis’ first acts of discrimination was to remove Jews from the civil service, which covered education and universities. However, Klemperer was a decorated war veteran and was therefore allowed to keep his post until April 1935. By then, displaced Jewish academics had flooded the international arena and he found it impossible to find work anywhere. His diaries record the continual ‘mosquito bites’. ‘1,000 mosquito bites are worse than a blow to the head.’

  He notes the loss of rights as follows: banned from library reading rooms (October 1936); forced to give up the telephone (December 1936); required to add ‘Israel’ or ‘Sara’ to given names (i.e. Klemperer must henceforth sign his name ‘Victor Israel’ – August 1938); restricted to shopping between 3 and 4 p.m. (August 1940); banned from owning a car (February 1941); ‘the milkmaid … is no longer allowed to deliver to Jews’ houses’ (March 1941); ‘new calamity: ban on smoking for Jews’ (August 1941); required to surrender typewriters (‘That hit me hard, it is virtually irreplaceable’ – October 1941); banned from use of public telephones (December 1941); banned from the buying of flowers (March 1942); banned from keeping pets (‘This is the death sentence for Muschel’, their tomcat – May 1942); forbidden to provide for the teaching of Jewish children either privately or communally (July 1942); banned from purchase or possession of newspapers (July 1942); prohibited from purchase of eggs or vegetables (July 1942); prohibited from purchase of meat and white bread (October 1942). ‘Not a day without a new decree against Jews,’ Klemperer writes.

  Yet at the same time he also notes the small acts of heroism he comes across from ordinary Germans. People greeting Jews on the street, visiting them at home, giving them ration coupons for the purchase of bread, helping to carry potatoes, slipping them something extra in a food shop, whispering a friendly word;13 small acts offering that small encouragement and hope.

  Rabbi Hugo Gryn wrote of his father’s words about hope when they were incarcerated in Auschwitz. The prisoners in their block saved their precious margarine ration to enable them to celebrate Chanukah by lighting a home-made menorah. Hugo created wicks with the threads from an abandoned cap. On the first night of the eight-day festival everyone in their block gathered around, including Protestants and Catholics, and Hugo as the youngest there tried to light the wicks but they only spluttered and refused to light. No one had remembered that margarine does not burn. Hugo was distraught as much by the waste of the precious calories and turned on his father:

  Patiently, he taught me one of the most lasting lessons of my life and I believe that he made my survival possible.

  ‘Don’t be angry,’ he said to me. ‘You know that this festival celebrates the victory of the spirit over tyranny and might. You and I have had to go once for over a week without proper food and another time almost three days without water, but you cannot live for three minutes without hope!’14

  The current criteria for being recognised as a Righteous Among the Nations are very strict, involving having risked your life, but as we have seen many rescuers did a great deal without doing anything so risky. There is a whole gamut of help that ranges from leaving food on a doorstep at night to hiding someone for two and a half years like the Stenzels did with Else Pintus.

  I came across the following text in 1997, written by Monia Avrahami, in the Beit Lohamei Haghetaot Museum, which is part of the Ghetto Fighters’ Kibbutz. I have always found it very moving in describing the grades and levels of resistance and rescue:

  To smuggle a loaf of bread – was to resist

  To teach in secret – was to resist

  To cry out warning and shatter illusions – was to resist

  To forge documents – was to resist

  To smuggle people across borders – was to resist

  To chronicle events and conceal the records – was to resist

  To hold out a helping hand to the needy – was to resist

  To contact those under siege and smuggle weapons – was to resist

  To fight with weapons in streets, mountains and forests – was to resist

  To rebel in death camps – was to resist

  To rise up in ghettos, among the crumbling walls, in the most desperate revolt – was to resist.15

  The main impact of the small gesture was that it gave people hope and comfort, that they were not entirely alone in their dire plight. Rabbi Leo Baeck wrote a remarkable story about a package he received when he was in Theresienstadt: ‘Its contents had been removed and it was really only an empty cardboard box. But it gave me joy in the knowledge that someone had thought of me in exile. I recognized the sender, a Christian friend, by the handwriting, although he had used a fictitious name.’16

  Ewa Berberyusz, a leading Polish journalist, born in 1929 in Warsaw, did not act and regretted it. She has written with disarming honesty of her failure to help Jews in the war, even though she was very young. She describes how twice she failed to help a Jewish child from the Ghetto when she had the opportunity. She adds that when she saw someone giving food to such a child, she felt relief that someone was doing the right thing, and when she saw her own mother doing it: ‘my morale soared again. It is interesting that we never talked about it at all. Was it just fear? Or was it just shame that nothing more was being done?’ In her 1987 essay, ‘Guilt by Neglect’, she reflects:

  If then, when chance brought me those two children, I had behaved according to my conscience, would that have altered the fate of the Jews in Poland? The answer ‘yes’ is not so unequivocally right, because my desisting in these cases has to be multiplied by cases of similar behaviour by others. Possibly, even if more of us had turned out to be more Christian, it would have made no difference to the statistics of the extermination, but maybe it would not have been such a lonely death?17

  BYSTANDERS

  Leo Baeck’s comments on the economic boycott are significant and damning – they were also reflective, as they were written twenty years after the event. ‘In truth, justice was boycotted. The Jewish business community overcame that day a long time ago; the concept of justice has not overcome that day’. He continued:

  Each retreat begins with a great cowardice. We have experienced it. The first of April 1933 speaks of that. The universities were silent, the courts were silent; the President of the Reich, who had taken the oath on the Constitution, was silent … This was the day of the greatest cowardice. All that followed would not have happened.

  The passivity and indifference of the authorities that day gave Hitler permission to undertake
his next step against the Jews. Baeck felt the individuals did not fail and ‘The little people in Germany remained good’.18

  Dr Frances Henry, a German-born anthropologist, returned to her birthplace in 1980. She conducted research in the small town which had 4,000 inhabitants in 1933, including 150 Jews. She protected her grandparents’ hometown by using the pseudonym Sonderburg, and many people spoke to her frankly because she was ‘Ostermann’s granddaughter’. She added: ‘If anything, their eagerness to talk to me was almost pathetic – as though they had never been able to discuss “those terrible times” with anyone before.’19

  Henry discovered that before 1933, relations between the Jews and Germans were better than those between Catholics and Protestants.20 Yet when the Nazis came to power in January 1933, suddenly everything altered and Jews, in particular, realised that life had changed. Joshua Abraham had for many years met up with his male neighbours twice a week to play cards. ‘As soon as the Nazis came to power, I was no longer told when they were playing cards. Everything stopped. I would see them on the street and we pretended we didn’t see each other. Not one of them spoke to me.’21

  In time, some non-Jews benefited from the persecution of their Jewish neighbours – Jewish homes and businesses were for sale at considerably less than their true worth. However, as life became more difficult for the twelve Jews who remained in Sonderburg after 1939, their neighbours started bringing them food, letters and other necessities until they were all deported in 1942.22 Dr Henry noted a variety of explanations for their behaviour: