50 Children: One Ordinary American Couple's Extraordinary Rescue Mission into the Heart of Nazi Germany

by Steven Pressman

  When Gil appeared on deck, he lost his temper, shouting that he did not want any publicity about the children’s arrival. Gil remained acutely aware of the public’s generally negative views toward opening up the country to Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. He worried that news about the arrival of even a small group of Jewish children would not be greeted so warmly by others around the country.

  Eleanor caught sight of a family friend waiting along the dock. The friend held up a small girl wearing a printed dress. Eleanor recognized the dress even before she could make out the girl’s face. It was her daughter, Ellen. A boy kept bouncing up and down next to Ellen, and Eleanor flashed a smile at her son, Steven.

  By this time, most of the ship’s passengers had made their way off the ship. Gil and Eleanor had a considerable amount of luggage of their own to manage, along with all of the children’s suitcases. “It was quite a procession off the ship, with all of our baggage and all our children,” wrote Eleanor. “We tried to keep the children in line. We tried to keep them all together. We tried to unscramble their baggage, but everything did get mixed up.” More than a dozen volunteers from Brith Sholom were waiting alongside the ship to help keep track of the children. Two school buses were parked nearby, ready to transport the children to the house outside of Philadelphia.

  Some of the children’s relatives—many of them had aunts, uncles, cousins, and others living in the United States—were also waiting on the dock. “They would find the child they had come to see and then the child would bring the relatives up to us and introduce them,” said Eleanor. Paul Beller had an awkward moment with a pair of cousins who had come to see him. “They spoke to me in Yiddish because they figured I would understand since it was pretty close to German,” recalled Paul, who managed to understand what his cousins were saying. “How do you like America?” one of them asked. “How am I supposed to know? I just got here,” the boy impishly replied. “They probably didn’t care for that answer too much.”

  At long last, it was Eleanor’s turn to embrace her own children. For the rest of the morning Eleanor clung to her daughter, holding her hand tightly. Her son, Steven, at thirteen, was more interested in roaming the grounds on his own.

  Bob Schless, who had spent virtually every waking moment with the children during the voyage, came over to Eleanor and pointed to his own three boys and his mother, all of whom had traveled from Philadelphia to greet the ship. “Do you think it will be all right for me to go home with my children now?” he quietly asked Eleanor. She happily insisted that he should.

  Gil remained hard at work. “He opened each child’s suitcase very carefully as part of the customs inspection,” said Eleanor. “He was so tired, so worn, and still working like a steam engine in order to get everything finished.” It took more than two hours to inspect all of the suitcases.

  By late morning, everyone had boarded buses for the three-hour drive to the Brith Sholom house in Collegeville, Pennsylvania. “What joy, what peace,” said Eleanor. “I sat on a seat across from my sister, clutching my daughter all the way there.”

  As the familiar countryside rushed by, Eleanor’s mind wandered over the events of the past six months, which seemed to pass in a blur. She thought back to the evening in January when Gil had first mentioned this fantastic idea to rescue Jewish children from Nazi Germany. She remembered the impassioned pleas from all of those who had been so intent on convincing Gil not to go ahead with his seemingly impossible plan. She could still hear the desperate voices of the parents in Vienna who begged them to take their children from them and bring them to safety in America. And now here they were—rumbling along a New Jersey highway with fifty children in their care.

  Eleanor stared out the window again and then looked back down at Ellen. She squeezed the young girl’s hand tightly in her own. She was home. She was back with her children. Everyone was safe.

  PART THREE

  NEW LIVES

  CHAPTER 22

  For the first time in my life, tears of joy. God has granted you such fortune, and granted us, the parents, to partake in it.

  —LETTER FROM HERMANN ROTH TO HIS SON KURT

  COLLEGEVILLE, PENNSYLVANIA–HAVANA, CUBA

  JUNE–AUGUST 1939

  As the buses meandered through New Jersey and Pennsylvania, Henny Wenkart’s first taste of America took on the flavor of inedible chocolate. “Someone had brought a Whitman’s Sampler to the dock, and the box made its way around the bus that I was on,” she remembered. One by one, each of the children bit into the chocolates, which brought at least some of them to tears. “Viennese chocolate was so good,” Wenkart remembered fondly. “And the Whitman’s chocolates were really awful!”

  For Robert Braun, the bus ride to Collegeville provided a dramatic reminder of some of the stark differences between his upcoming life in the casual new world of America and the formal Old World that had been left behind in Vienna. Gil and Eleanor’s son, Steven, had folded himself into a seat directly behind the bus driver, draping his legs over the chrome railing that separated the driver’s seat from the rest of the bus. “That was so shocking to us,” remembered Robert. “If I had done that in Austria, my parents would have clobbered me or the conductor would have thrown me off the tram. But here it seemed very relaxed.”

  Dozens of Brith Sholom members, their wives, and others were waiting on the lawn in front of the sprawling, one-story stone house to greet the children when the buses arrived later that afternoon. The house had been swept clean throughout, and every one of the twenty-five bedrooms had been outfitted with immaculate new furniture. The “ladies’ auxiliary” of Brith Sholom had also excitedly prepared for the children’s arrival. “The dining room was set for all of us,” wrote Eleanor. “I had never seen so much food in all my life. Turkeys, pies, cakes—everything cooked and served by the women of Brith Sholom. No children the world over were ever more beautifully received or had a better welcome.”

  In spite of the effusive smiles and delicious feast that greeted the children, many of them remained understandably nervous as they took in the unusual sights and sounds of their strange new surroundings. The Brith Sholom house stood adjacent to the summer camp that the organization operated for children, which further confused the new arrivals from Vienna. “I had been very apprehensive from the time I got off the ship, particularly when someone told us that we were going to be taken to a camp,” said Klara Rattner. “I didn’t know what a camp was in the United States, but we had all heard about concentration camps back in Germany and Austria.” The children’s fears melted away as the afternoon wore on. There was clearly no reason to be frightened by a camp like this, one where delicious cakes and pies were freely served up to anyone who asked.

  Gil excused himself from the hubbub of the dining room and closeted himself away with a group of men from Brith Sholom. With fifty children now in their care, he wanted to make sure that all of their needs would be met. Among the men was a dentist from nearby Norristown who readily volunteered his services. “He probably did more than any other one man for the children as all their teeth needed attention,” wrote Eleanor. Several doctors also offered to help, guaranteeing that the children would receive ongoing care throughout the summer.

  By early evening, the children had settled into their bedrooms. Most of the younger ones fell asleep immediately after the long and tiring day. A few of the older children stayed up a while longer, talking excitedly about everything they had seen, heard, tasted that day. Before long, however, a comforting silence had settled throughout the big stone house. Eleanor turned to Gil and asked, “Do you think I could please go home now? I’d like to be alone in my own house with my own two children.”

  It was very late when she arrived back home on Cypress Street. She was much too tired to even think about unpacking; it could wait until the morning. She looked in on her children, who had been taken home earlier by one of Eleanor’s sisters. Minutes later, she was in her own bed and fast asleep, alone—Gil remained at the Brit
h Sholom house that first night. He did not want the children to wake up in a strange, new country without seeing at least one familiar face.

  On Sunday, June 4, the Philadelphia Inquirer published a photograph that showed several of the children, their backs turned toward the camera, waving at the Statue of Liberty from aboard the President Harding. “An after-dinner discussion—started casually in the home of a Philadelphia lawyer last January—about the plight of the Jews in Vienna under the Nazi regime neared a happy conclusion yesterday with the arrival in New York of fifty Viennese refugee children,” read a line from the accompanying article.

  Other parts of the article were wholly inaccurate, which undoubtedly disturbed Gil, given his efforts to stifle any publicity about the rescue project. According to the newspaper, Gil and Eleanor “went abroad several months ago and got photographs of the children who need help. The pictures were sent to the backers of the [rescue] plan and the children were selected.”

  That same day, the Inquirer published another story, this one on the front page, about a disturbing development in the situation facing Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. The Associated Press dispatch from Havana described a tense saga over the fate of 937 Jewish passengers who had sailed from Hamburg aboard the SS St. Louis ten days before the President Harding had left for New York. Although the Jewish passengers on the St. Louis had obtained visas to enter Cuba, by the time the ship arrived in Havana on May 27, government officials had changed their minds about honoring the visas. Despite a flurry of international negotiations, as well as desperate pleas from the passengers themselves, the Cuban government ordered the ship to leave on June 2.

  American officials, including President Roosevelt, received a flood of urgent requests to allow the St. Louis into the United States. Cuba was not the final destination for the majority of the passengers; almost all were awaiting American visas. Roosevelt also received a telegram from some of those trapped aboard the ship. “Most urgently repeat plea for help for the passengers of the St. Louis,” read the telegram, written in German. “Mr. President, help the 900 passengers, including over 400 women and children.” The appeals fell on deaf ears. Even as the ship sailed within sight of the United States—at one point, passengers could see the lights of Miami from the deck of their doomed ship—American officials refused to relax the laws that stood between the passengers and freedom. A telegram from the State Department informed the passengers they must “await their turns on the waiting list and qualify for and obtain immigration visas before they may be admissible into the United States.”

  In the end, the Cuban government admitted only twenty-eight passengers from the ship—twenty-two of whom already had valid U.S. visas. One additional passenger was evacuated to a hospital in Havana after attempting to commit suicide while the boat was docked in the harbor.

  Three days after the President Harding docked in New York Harbor, the St. Louis set sail for a return voyage to Germany. Jewish relief organizations, led by the Joint Distribution Committee, persuaded four other European countries to issue entry visas for the passengers. Among those, 288 were allowed into Great Britain and 224 were admitted into France. Belgium took in 214, the Netherlands 181. For many, sadly, the reprieve proved to be temporary. Of the 937 passengers who first set out for Cuba, 254 lost their lives in the Holocaust—victims of roundups and deportations that came in the wake of the Nazi occupation of Belgium, Holland, and France.

  On Monday, June 5, Gil wrote a lengthy letter to Emil Engel, the Jewish community leader in Vienna who had been instrumental in helping with the rescue mission. “No doubt you received my telegram from the ship, which notified you of our arrival in America,” said Gil, who wrote in English “since I am much better in expressing my earnest thanks and deep fondness for you in my own language, and I know you will understand each word.” After reporting that the children “are all happy and well,” Gil asked if Engel would notify the parents that their children were safe and that they had “behaved flawlessly” during the journey to America. “I would ask you to congratulate the parents for the selfless way in which they said farewell to their children.” Immediately after receiving Gil’s letter, Engel translated it into German and sent copies to all of the parents.

  Two weeks later, Gil received a letter, in German, from the father of one of the boys from Vienna. Written just before he escaped to England’s Camp Kitchener, Sigmund Zulawski expressed “my deep gratitude for the fatherly care” that Gil had provided to his only child, Hugo. “It is a great comfort and great reassurance during this difficult time to know that my boy is in good care. My wife and I will never forget this, and we pray hourly to God for your well-being.”

  Gil, meanwhile, made a point of writing another very important letter, now that the children had arrived in America. On June 8, five days after returning from Europe, Gil wrote once again to George Messersmith at the State Department. “It was my intention to come to Washington to personally thank you for your splendid cooperation and helpfulness in this project,” Gil wrote in the one-page letter typed on letterhead from the law offices of Kraus & Weyl. “But because of the rush of things and now being the father of fifty additional children, I have been unable to move from my desk.” Now that the rescue project had come to a successful close, “I frankly wish to say that if it were not for the cooperation, within legal limits, of the Department of State and the Foreign Service, our accomplishment could never have been possible.” Gil closed the letter with an invitation for Messersmith to visit the children in Collegeville.

  “I know that you must feel a personal sense of satisfaction in having carried through your mission so successfully,” Messersmith told Gil in his reply. He added that he had already heard from Raymond Geist in Berlin “who tells me that he was very glad to be in a position to cooperate with you within the limits of our immigration laws and practice.” Messersmith also mentioned that Congressman Sacks “called me on the telephone the other day to express appreciation” and to invite him to visit the children. He politely declined. “You will appreciate that it is difficult for me for the present to make any plans which take me out of Washington,” he told Gil. The meticulous Messersmith sent copies of his correspondence with Gil to A. M. Warren, who headed the State Department’s visa division. “You will wish to put this with the appropriate file,” Messersmith noted in a cover memo. “I think Congressman Sacks and Mr. Kraus have carried through this project in a very commendable manner.”

  As the days grew warmer, the fifty children from Vienna became accustomed to the comfortable surroundings of the country house in Collegeville. The Brith Sholom ladies’ auxiliary organized a clothing drive that in short order resulted in a steady stream of boxes brimming with dresses, trousers, shirts, swimming suits, and other apparel. “Within a week or so,” wrote Eleanor, “these children owned more good clothes than any other children in the country.”

  They were also getting used to a variety of new foods, though some were decidedly more mysterious than others. Erwin Tepper was not the only child who was baffled one evening when, at the end of dinner, dessert arrived at the table. “It looked like some kind of jelly, which was bright red and with slices of banana inside of it,” Erwin remembered. “I don’t think I had eaten a banana more than two or three times in my life, so that was really a treat. But none of us knew what the red, wiggly stuff was, which we all very carefully scraped away. We thought it was some kind of preservative to protect the banana floating inside. Someone finally tasted the stuff and told us it was delicious.” And so it was that Erwin and the rest of the children came to be introduced to the odd American dessert called Jell-O.

  Henny Wenkart had a puzzling—even a little frightening—experience one night. She watched from afar as some of the counselors, staff members of the adjoining Brith Sholom summer camp, threw each other around inside the camp’s recreation hall. “We had been told that America was a violent country,” recalled Henny, which seemed to explain the counselors’ rough-and-tumble antics.
It wasn’t until later that she discovered that they were simply dancing the jitterbug.

  Gil, who drove from Philadelphia to Collegeville every day during the children’s first week, quickly realized that no one was truly in charge. Although Brith Sholom officials had hired nurses, cooks, and others to care and provide for the children, no one had overall responsibility for running the house. On the following Sunday, Eleanor’s sister Sarah and her husband came for a visit. After Gil explained the somewhat chaotic situation, Sarah volunteered to take over. “She didn’t even go home for a change of clothing,” wrote Eleanor. “She stayed for two months and put the entire place in order. Her husband came every weekend. We never would have gotten through the summer without her help.”

  The children’s English lessons, which had begun onboard the Harding, continued throughout the summer. On the weekends, the Sunday comics provided the children with a particularly enjoyable method for mastering their new language. “It was a great way to learn English,” said Erwin Tepper. “You had all of the words inside the balloons, and you could look at the pictures, which also helped to figure out some of those words. To this day, the funnies are the first thing I read on Sundays before reading the rest of the paper.”

  Amid the lighthearted humor of Sunday comics and the mysteries of American baseball, at least some of the children continued to harbor dark fears that harkened back to their experiences in Vienna. Congressman Sacks visited the camp with his daughter, Myra, shortly after the children had arrived. She spotted one of the younger girls standing nearby on the sprawling lawn in front of the house. The young girl began walking toward Myra and her parents, then abruptly stopped at the edge of the lawn, a frightened look spreading across her face. Not long after the Anschluss, Jews were banned from Vienna’s public parks. Instinctively, she was afraid to step on the grass, even though she knew there was no longer any danger in doing so.